Category Archives: Race

Lourie, Rutherford ask Haley to ditch alleged white supremacist

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This came in today:

Columbia, SC – Today Senator Joel Lourie and House Democratic Leader Rep. Todd Rutherford called on Governor Haley today to immediately remove and condemn Roan Garcia Quintana, a white supremacist, from her campaign committee. The letter below was sent to Governor Haley via email earlier this afternoon.

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Dear Governor Haley,

South Carolina is a place that has faced serious challenges and come together in the past to create a stronger society. But when our leaders embrace those who use the most hurtful and divisive rhetoric, it takes us ten steps backwards and unnecessarily divides the state.

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Garcia-Quintana

This week, the public has become aware of the statements, affiliations and belief in white nationalism that one of your top supporters has engaged in throughout his life. You chose Mr. Roan Garcia Quintana as one of your top supporters and placed him on your reelection grassroots steering committee – which is extremely concerning for all who want South Carolina to attract businesses, grow and move forward.

Mr. Quintana is currently the executive director of the anti-immigration organization Americans Have Had Enough. More disturbingly, he has been identified in numerous reports as a current board member and former director of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have labeled as a hate group.

Additionally, as we are sure you are aware Governor, in 1999 CCC distributed mock advertisements encouraging people to visit our state because, “South Carolina Now Has Whiter Beaches.” The CCC’s newsletter, Citizens Informer has also been used to advocate against “race-mixing,” the superiority of the white race, and the dangers of immigration to America.

This type of leadership is the opposite of what South Carolina needs. We urge you to strongly rebuke his statements and explain why you thought it appropriate to align yourself with him and his extreme beliefs.

South Carolina has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and this kind of divisive outlook will only deter businesses and start ups from coming to our state.

South Carolina is losing the majority of our educated young people to other states in the region, and this kind of backwards thinking will only drive them and their talent further away.

We have a lot of work to do in South Carolina and we cannot move forward if you continue to support the hateful, divisive rhetoric and work of people like Mr. Quintana.

The people and businesses of South Carolina deserve an explanation for why this individual was placed on your grassroots steering committee. We strongly request that you remove this individual from the position of leadership you have bestowed upon him, renounce and condemn his views and the views of the organizations he associates with, and apologize for elevating him to a position of note within your re-election campaign.

The people of South Carolina look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Rep. Todd Rutherford

Sen. Joel Lourie

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Here’s some background on what they’re talking about:

One of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R) picks for her reelection committee in February has now been accused of being a white supremacist, Raw Story reported Wednesday.

Haley, who is actively preparing for her2014 reelection campaign, named tea party activist Roan Garcia-Quintana as one of the 164 co-chairs of her campaign’s steering committee in February.

According to a report titled “SC Governor Names White Nationalist To Reelection Committee” and published on Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Garcia-Quintana serves on the board of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is listed by the SPLC as a white nationalist hate group. The group is, according to the SPLC, a linear descendant of White Citizens Councils, which was founded in the 1950s to combat school desegregation….

‘It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House…’

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Somehow I missed this when it was in the Charleston Business Review way back in January — until Burl, all the way from Hawaii, brought it to our attention today:

Rep. Kris Crawford, a Republican from Florence and also an emergency room doctor, supports the expansion but expects the Republican caucus to vote as a block against the Medicaid expansion.

“The politics are going to overwhelm the policy. It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party,” Crawford said.

Well, he certainly pegged that. The House did indeed do the totally irrational thing and reject Medicaid. Which makes this prophetic statement from a GOP lawmaker — and you did notice the part about him being a Republican, right? — particularly noteworthy.

Why is he so out of step with his caucus? Because he’s a doctor, so he knows better.

That’s chapter one of our story. Chapter two is that this week, Rep. Crawford fulfilled his own prophecy by voting along with his party on the issue. But then, so did all but one Democrat:

Crawford voted against accepting the money on Wednesday because it was proposed as part of the state’s budget — which he says is not the right place to do it. Instead, he wants to propose separate legislation later this year, and he worried that if he voted with the Democrats on the budget none of his Republican colleagues would support him…

Meanwhile, Dick Harpootlian has castigated Crawford for the wrong thing, referring to his “the racist and inexcusable comments by Rep. Kris Crawford regarding Medicaid expansion.

I tend to agree with Todd Rutherford, who said, “I am never bothered by someone stating the truth.”

Meanwhile, Crawford has baked down on the more inflammatory part of his comment, but not on the general thrust:

In an interview on Thursday, Crawford said his vote on the state budget was political, but said it had nothing to do with race — noting that if he had to do it over again, he “might pick different words.” But he stood behind the larger point of his comments, criticizing Haley and the House Republican Caucus for voting against the expansion purely because a Democratic president is for it.

Todd Kincannon seems to have found his own Heart of Darkness

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I’m not sure how else to put it.

I’ve known Todd, slightly, for several years now. Once, I would have said, “I know him to say hello to.” Now, I say, “I know him to exchange Tweets with,” which I have done frequently. I’ve only met him in person a handful of times, and when I have, he’s been a polite, friendly young man who seems to know how to behave himself in public.

But lately, his Tweets — and there are a LOT of them; I don’t personally know anyone who Tweets more constantly — have been trailing off into a strange, dark, extreme place. Following them is like traveling up the Congo (or, in Coppola’s version, the Mekong) in search of Kurtz, who had lost himself in savagery. Increasingly, they are of a sort that I can’t quote here without violating my own standards. Even showing you the ones that this post is about is a departure. But now that Todd has gone on national media to defend these truly indefensible Tweets, and not backed down an inch or admitted in any way that they are beyond the pale, and been identified to the world as a former executive director of the state GOP, well… I’m laying them out before you.

Here’s the one that the above video interview is about:

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Here’s another related to it:

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I don’t know what has led Todd on this path. I know that when he stepped it up (or rather, down) a few degrees a month or so ago, he found himself gaining a lot more attention, and I’ve seen that do bad things to people’s heads before.

Is it just immaturity? When Rusty DePass posted something on Facebook that deeply offended all who saw it, he immediately took it down (too late; it had been grabbed and preserved) and truly, sincerely apologized to everyone for it. (I think Kathryn, and others here who know Rusty, will back me up as to his sincerity.)

Todd operates in an environment where… well, the maturity level is pretty well established in the language used in this Wonkette piece criticizing him. A place where there are no rules of civility, or at least it seems that there aren’t — until Todd manages to find a way to violate them. (The problem with Wonkette’s reaction, of course, is that it helps Todd believe in his explanation that this is just a left-right thing, and he’s just doing what everybody does to people on the other side.) A place where obscenities that would only sound daring to a 7th-grader are the standard.

How hard is it to simply say that, for instance, Trayvon Martin was just this kid, you know? He was neither an angel nor a devil, he was just a kid who didn’t deserve to die because he had a run-in with this George Zimmerman guy, who wasn’t an angel or a devil either. MIsguided people on the left and right have glommed onto these people as some sorts of symbols, but they were just people. And his shooting was what the prosecutors in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities would have called a “piece a s__t case,” a case that’s just a horrible, tragic mess any way you look at it, with no heroes, no one to admire, no good coming out of it, no redeeming lesson to be drawn.

But one thing is clear: Now that the kid’s dead, he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to have his memory trashed in terms that shouldn’t be used in public under any circumstances, about anybody.

Todd’s performance in the above video is nothing short of appalling. I don’t know what to say but to define it in Conradian terms, and express how sorry I am to see it. He might not be sorry, but I am…

Modest turnout for King Day at the Dome

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I went down to the demonstration, as Mick Jagger would say, for just long enough to take a few pictures before walking briskly back to the office (I’m really trying to work in a little exercise each day).

What I saw was a respectable-sized, but smaller-than-usual crowd.

Of course, it might be a bit unfair to compare this to previous such events that had a special “draw.” There was the first of these events, in 2000, at which a throng estimated at 60,000 — you couldn’t move on the grounds, and the crowd covered Gervais and spilled northward up Main Street — demanded that the Confederate flag come off the dome. (Which it did later that year, and now all subsequent King Day events have occurred under the one flapping on the grounds.)

Then there was the big turnout for the aforementioned one in 2008, with all the presidential candidates. The one before that, at which Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd spoke, wasn’t bad, either.

But this time, the event was up against Barack Obama’s second inauguration, and a lot of people who go to demonstrations went to that instead. Or watched it at home, instead of on the screen provided on the State House steps.

I didn’t hear much — as I said, I was just there long enough to take a few pictures. And as usual, that was a challenge, with the crowd in sunlight and the speakers in shadow. One of these days, somebody needs to have one of those on the other side of the State House.

I did hear part of an address by the Rev. Brenda Kneece about gun violence (from what I heard, she was against it). Then, as I was leaving, Tom Turnipseed got up, and after a reference to his having been “hooked up to jumper cables” (it was him saying it this time, not Lee Atwater) in his youth, he started talking about MLK Jr. having psychiatric problems. I’m not sure where he was going with that, but the theme of this event was supposed to be mental health, so…

As I walked away, I ran into Sammy Fretwell of The State. Someone else was doing main coverage of the event, he said, explaining that he was there to look for “fringe elements.” And as it happened, someone had just been arrested… he broke off then to ask a passing cop about it, but didn’t get anything.

Anyway, I hope Sammy found some fringe elements, to make his efforts worthwhile.

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Congratulations to Col. (soon to be Gen.) Elam

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This came in from the S.C. National Guard today:

COLUMBIA – Colonel Calvin Elam becomes the South Carolina Air National Guard’s first African American general officer when he is promoted to the rank of brigadier general this Sunday.col-elam

 

South Carolina’s Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Robert E. Livingston, Jr., will promote Elam during a 3 p.m. ceremony at McEntire Joint National Guard Base on Jan. 13.

 

“Cal has had a long and distinguished career in the Air Force and the South Carolina Air National Guard and this promotion to brigadier general culminates many years of hard work and dedicated service to his state and nation.  He is the epitome of the Citizen-Airman,” said Livingston.

 

Elam currently serves as the Assistant Adjutant General for Air for the South Carolina National Guard. As a civilian, he is Chief Executive Officer for Elam Financial Group.

 

The Greenwood native began his military career in 1980 and spent six years in the active duty Air Force as an enlisted contracting specialist. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1988 after graduating from the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business with a degree in business marketing.

 

Elam since has served in several key leadership positions with the South Carolina Air National Guard including Chief of Supply, Commander of the 169th Maintenance Squadron and Commander of the 169th Mission Support Group. Elam, his wife Mary and their three children reside in Irmo.

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This takes me back to memories of the first black general in the Air Force, Benjamin O. Davis Jr. (whose father had been the first black general in the Army). He was the former commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, and my Dad worked for him at what is now called Central Command in Tampa back in the late ’60s.

Gen. Davis first became a general officer in 1954. That just puts SC about 59 years behind, but better late than never.

In any case, congratulations to Col. (soon to be Gen.) Elam…

So which is it, Peggy? Is Obama’s situation unique, or what?

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Sometimes, pundits are at their best when the party they oppose is in power. Not necessarily so with Peggy Noonan. I’ve long admired her style, but her drip, drip, drip of condescending disdain for Barack Obama wore thin some time ago.

And her column over the weekend, “There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Kumbaya’,” particularly bugged me because she wanted it both ways. First, she wrote:

Mr. Obama’s supporters always give him an out by saying, “But the president can’t work with them, they made it clear from the beginning their agenda was to do him in.” That’s true enough. But it’s true with every American president now—the other side is always trying to do him in, or at least the other side’s big mouths are always braying they’ll take him down. They tried to capsize Clinton, they tried to do in Reagan, calling him an amiable dunce and vowing to defeat his wicked ideology.

We live in a polarized age. We have for a while. One of the odd things about the Obama White House is that they are traumatized by the normal.

A lot of the president’s staffers were new to national politics when they came in, and they seem to have concluded that the partisan bitterness they faced was unique to him, and uniquely sinister. It’s just politics, or the ugly way we do politics now.

In other words, these rubes just need to put their Big Boy pants on and recognize that there’s nothing unique about the calumny heaped on their guy; it’s politics as usual, as regrettable as that may be.

Then, five paragraphs later, she writes of the president:

He is a uniquely polarizing figure. A moderate U.S. senator said the other day: “One thing not said enough is he is the most divisive president in modern history. He doesn’t just divide the Congress, he divides the country.” The senator thinks Mr. Obama has “two whisperers in his head.” “The political whisperer says ‘Don’t compromise a bit, make Republicans look weak and bad.’ Another whisperer is not political, it’s, ‘Let’s do the right thing, work together and begin to right the ship.’ ” The president doesn’t listen much to the second whisperer.

So… which is it? Is this politics as usual, or is the polarization Obama inspires “unique?”

She would probably defend her inconsistency by saying that the unique part is all Obama’s fault, that the animus aimed at him would be politics as usual, except for the way he deliberately rachets it up.

Which would probably be persuasive to a partisan Republican. Not so much to the rest of us along the spectrum. Not to this independent, anyway.

The polarization that characterizes the president’s relationship with his political opponents is indeed unique. Yes, it exists on a political timeline in which we have seen continuing, rising polarization dating back, I would say, to the early 1980s (from my perspective, about 1982, when Robin Beard ran a startlingly negative Senate campaign against Jim Sasser in the state where I was, while in SC, a young man named Lee Atwater was moving from dirty local campaigns toward national prominence), and becoming overt to the point of completely poisoning presidents’ relationships with their not-so-loyal oppositions starting in about January 1993.

But there’s a unique flavor to the animus toward Obama, and has been since the beginning. That’s not an excuse for him not to work in good faith with the opposition, to the extent that they will let him. But it’s a fact.

Rep. Mia changes her name again

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How we knew her before

In case you needed a program to keep up with the players in the ongoing Richland County election debacle saga, take note that one of the key players just changed her name:

What’s In A Name?

Everything. Our names are a reflection of who we are, the strength of our word and the depths of our character.  After losing my Mom years ago and my Dad just last year, I began to embark upon a more introspective phase of my journey…one that has not only revealed more to me about their legacies, but my own.

I’ve always believed that God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others.  And as I rely on His strength and draw from the lessons I’ve learned from my Mom & Dad, I’m convinced now more than ever, that “to whom much is given, much is required.”

That’s why I take my responsibilities as your House District 79 Representative very seriously, and have since you first elected me in 2010.  Each of you has become a part of my extended family, and I will always put your interests first.

I’m grateful to have come from “good stock.”  My parents are never far from my thoughts and always with me in spirit.  I am who I am because of them, and I wouldn’t take anything for my journey.

Our family-owned business will celebrate 100 years of service in 2014, and I couldn’t be more proud of my family’s commitment to and love for our community.  So as I reflect upon who I am and upon whose shoulders I stand, I realize that I’m blessed to have a name that means so much.

That name is McLeod…and with it comes a rich history and proud legacy that truly reflects the boldness, the passion, the compassion and the strength that I draw from daily to fight for you.

McLeod is my maiden name and the most authentic depiction of who I am.    With my family’s blessing, I have decided to return to the name that truly represents me, so that I can continue to truly represent you.

Many of you already know and refer to me as “Mia.”  While my last name may be changing, I’m the same person you’ve gotten to know over the last two years.   And as we continue to work together, there’s no limit to how much we can accomplish in the next two.

As we prepare to bring 2012 to a close, I wish you and your family a safe, peaceful and joyous holiday season…

— Mia

… which has me confused. I initially knew her as Mia Butler. Her first announcement that she was running for the seat being vacated by Anton Gunn used that name, and that’s what I called her when I interviewed her for the late lamented “Brad Show.”

Then, she started calling herself “Mia Garrick.” Which made me think that “Butler” was her maiden name. Anyway, for a long time after that I referred to her as “Mia Butler Garrick.”

But now I’m corrected. I guess.

Interestingly, this release comes on a morning when she has just appeared prominently in a front-page story in The State, referred to five times as “Garrick.”

That story paints her as being on one side of a generational divide among black Democrats in the county, with Sen. Darrell Jackson standing as an emblem of the Old Guard.

Which is really ironic. It wasn’t very long ago (OK, it doesn’t  seem like long ago to ME, although I guess it’s been almost 20 years now) that Darrell Jackson was the Young Turk who was seen as too big for his britches by older black pols who felt he hadn’t paid enough dues to be heard. They were quite indignant about it. They seemed to believe that as a new senator he should be seen, but not heard from.

Now, he’s the Mustache Pete. I guess we’re all getting older…

The logo that was attached to today's release.

What do YOU think of John Brown, all these years later?

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I used to see this original mural in the state capitol in Topeka when I supervised the people who covered state politics for the Wichita paper. It seems to me to sum up Brown pretty well.

I’ve learned a lot of new things, and been reminded of things I once knew, in reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, the latter part of which inspired the movie “Lincoln.” (I’m not nearly to that part yet; last night I read up through Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861.)

One of them was the radical differences of opinion that existed about John Brown at the time. From my 21st-century perspective, I tend to think of who Brown was and what he meant as being a pretty settled matter. It is in my mind, anyway. But of course, at the time, he was perhaps the most extreme litmus test of attitudes ever to occur in U.S. history.

Today, I perused a review of another book, The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, which consists of contemporary writings about Brown from authors including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Henry Ward Beecher, Jefferson Davis, Herman Melville, Stephen Douglas, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo and Karl Marx.

Emerson saw Brown as a Christ-like “saint” and Douglass hailed him as “our noblest American hero.” His detractors saw him as “a deranged fanatic whose violent actions made civil war inevitable.”

I always thought of him as a deranged fanatic who just happened to be right about slavery. What he did was inexcusable, however laudable his motivations.

What the Union did in the Civil War was justified not only by the nobility of the cause, but by the fact that it was a case of the duly constituted authority of the country taking action against violent insurrection. But what Brown did was itself violent, murderous insurrection, not in any way supportable under the rule of law, and therefore unjustifiable. (There’s another measurement suggested by Just War theory, which is, Were the goals of his actions achievable? His most decidedly were not.)

A person can have the right idea on a burning issue and still be mad. A person can have noble goals and do despicable things in the name of them. To me, that’s always summed up Brown.

Your thoughts?

Last night’s CRC forum on the penny

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Before I head out to go moderate this forum at the library about the presidential election, I’ll share a few words about the Community Relations Council’s forum last night on the transportation sales tax referendum.

On the whole, it was a success I think, in terms of providing a civil place for folks on opposite sides of a local issue to share their views. Although sometimes the civility did seem to wear a bit thin. Redfern II has a somewhat loud, bombastic delivery style that can make it sound like things are getting out of hand, even when they are not. Michael Letts seemed to have quite a chip on his shoulder on the issue, but controlled himself. While on the “yes” side, I thought County Councilman Paul Livingston was going to lose his temper at the “no” folks once or twice.

Fortunately, things stayed in the realm of merely “lively,” which is a good thing. Moderator David Stanton did a good job.

One thing that made me glad, since I was on the committee, and since I tell anyone who wants to know that I’m for the referendum — I don’t think anyone can legitimately complain that the “no” side got short shrift in this forum. While the reasoning was better on the “yes” side — in my opinion, of course — there was more passion on the side of the “nos.” And I don’t say that to denigrate their arguments — they presented plenty of points that I’m sure were effective among a lot of the audience.

A quick summary of the positions presented by the panelists:

  • Lee Bussell, Yes: This referendum presents an opportunity for this community to come together and address its real challenges together, such as the fact that Richland County has the 2nd-deadliest roads in the state.
  • Daniel Rickenmann, No: It’s not a penny; it’s a billion dollars.
  • Paul Livingston, Yes: This is a community plan, not a county council plan.
  • Don Weaver, No: Stressed the impact on the poor of an additional penny on every dollar spent.
  • Jennifer Harding, Yes: Expressed concern about congestion and traffic safety in her party of the county (the Northeast).
  • Redfern, No: The white leadership of the community has given black citizens the short shrift up to now; why should it be trusted this time? (He had a lot of zingers and crowd-pleasers, such as “If you want to get nowhere fast, take the bus.” But his overall theme was distrust.)
  • Brian DeQuincey Newman, Yes: The penny is the answer to the challenge Redfern poses — it will bring in the funds CMRTA needs to provide decent service.
  • Michael Letts, No: “Local control” sounds great, but he doesn’t want to pay this local tax for roads on top of the ones he already pays at state and federal level. Also, wants the bus part separated from the capital, roads part.

I take those mostly from the participants’ opening remarks, but they also give you an idea what went on the rest of the time.

As I said, a lot of energy on the “no” side. Three times, “yes” panelists were asked to speak up or get closer to their microphones. No one had to ask the “no” folks to do that.

And to the extent that minds were changed, it was in the “no” direction. The audience was asked to turn in ballots “voting” on the matter both before and after the event. Not everyone did, but here are the results from the ones who took part, according to CRC Executive Director Henri Etta Baskins:

  • BEFORE: 32 Yes; 31 No; 11 Undecided
  • AFTER: 32 Yes; 34 No; 8 Undecided

NOTE — those numbers were just updated (the number of undecided AFTER was wrong previously)…

Court panel OKs SC voter ID law for 2013

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This happened about the time I was going to lunch today:

A federal court in Washington, D.C., has upheld the constitutionality of South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

However, the law — which requires voters to present a state-approved ID with their picture at the polls before casting a ballot — will not take effect until 2013, meaning it will not affect S.C. voters during the November presidential election.

The U.S. Justice Department had blocked implementation of the new law, passed in 2011. Civil rights groups also had challenged the law, saying it unfairly discriminated against minority voters, who were less likely to have access to the records or state facilities necessary to get a photo ID.

However, a three-member federal panel ruled Wednesday that the law’s “expansive ‘reasonable impediment’ provision” made it unlikely that any voters lacking a photo ID would be turned away at the polls. Those voters still can vote “so long as they state the reason for not having obtained” a photo ID, the ruling noted.

That was followed in the report by some silly comments from Nikki Haley about the mean ol’ federal gummint trying to do awful things to South Carolina. (“Every time the federal government has thrown us a punch, we have fought back.”) Because you know that’s what this is about, right? The feds just picking on us for no reason.

The same mean ol’ federal government that wouldn’t let us keep our slaves anymore…

Excuse my disgust. Mind you, as I’ve said many times before, I think this is generally an issue blown out of proportion by both sides. But when I see the way the governor couches it, it’s pretty off-putting.

Mayor, chief address violence in Five Points

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John Monk had the right idea with that hat. I realized I had a sunburn in the part in my hair when I got back to the office.

That picture of cops lined up in front of the Five Points fountain, which you see as the new header on my main page, was the backdrop for the news conference that Mayor Steve Benjamin and Police Chief Randy Scott held this afternoon to address violence in the neighborhood.

The headline, which news outlets Tweeted right away: One Stanley McBride, 21, has been arrested and charged with second-degree assault and battery in an incident over the weekend. I believe it’s the same incident as on the video, but not 100 percent certain. The way the incident was described certainly sounded like it.

Being sought are two others, Michael Jermel Kendrix, 21, and John Cornelius Sumner, 21. Both are described as Benedict College students. The release I got from the chief doesn’t describe him as a student, but says police first spoke with McBride on the Benedict campus.

Beyond that, the mayor and chief used the presser — where they took questions from the small crowd of citizens assembled as well as the media — to try to assure Columbians that they’re dealing appropriately with a series of incidents with not only public safety implications, but some pretty ominous racial overtones.

Some highlights from the event:

  • More than one reference was made by the mayor to “more boots on the ground… as you see in evidence behind” him, referring to the officers lined up before the fountain. We can expect to see “more aggressive enforcement.”
  • “Five Points is safe, but it can be safer,” said the mayor.
  • Sensitive to criticism from those who would complain about resources being used on Five Points at the expense of the rest of the city both mayor and chief stressed their commitment to enforcement citywide, saying we should expect more “aggressive enforcement” everywhere.
  • Both men said the blame wasn’t all on the kids; indicating there were some bad actors — a “small number” among bar owners, who have overserved the underage. I asked whether he was speaking of specific proprietors, and whether they knew of the city’s displeasure. Yes and yes, said the mayor. “We’re gonna shut you down,” he said.
  • The mayor’s message to “anybody who wants to make trouble: CPD is here and we’re ready for them.”
  • The mayor had a complaint, however — if you want enforcement, you have to communicate with the police. He said he didn’t know how many video phones there were trained on that one beating the other night, but he knows there were only two calls to 911 — and the police were on the scene before they were received.
  • The mayor added a caveat to the tough talk: Even with 100 officers on the scene, they’re not easily able to contain 10,000 revelers after a football game.
  • Asked about loitering, the mayor said, “we will move people along,” but indicated there’d be no arrests unless crimes were committed.
  • A number of references were made to the involvement of the CPD’s gang unit — but rather than that being a response to a known gang problem, it was presented as a way of determining whether there is gang involvement, and if so, the extent of it.
  • One nicely dressed young white guy who lives in the neighborhood indicated he needed more assurances, saying, “I need to be able to tell my wife that we don’t have to move to Lexington.” The man added that there was a definite difference since he’d moved in from Shandon 18 months ago.
  • Noelle Phillips of The State asked about race. The mayor said the things one says, as a lawyer, to that: That “crime knows no color” and “We are going to enforce the laws equally and fairly.” Beyond that, the racial buzz that’s been underlying this thing all week was not outwardly expressed.

I spoke with a couple of Five Points merchants who were there before the mayor arrived. James D. McCallister, owner of Loose Lucy’s, made an interesting point that I later heard echoed by another in the crowd. He said he was an advocate of the ban on indoor smoking, but it’s had an unintended consequence: The creation of a permanent sidewalk party, which is large and unstable, especially on big football weekends. Adding to the problem is that kids who are too young to get into the bars are joining that sidewalk crowd, adding to the volatility.

Debbie McDaniel, owner of Revente and Sid and Nancy, said she is just “sick at heart” over the violence. Debbie, you may remember, has shown her support for the police in the past by purchasing two state-of-the-art flak vests for officers who patrol the district. Debbie lamented that we didn’t have these problems, to this extent, when she and I were young. That sort of led to a free-association suggestion: “Make weed legal. Let these kids smoke dope and not drink.” She immediately told me not to use that, then laughed and said what the hell, go ahead…

This was about 10 minutes before the presser. The crowd got bigger.

‘It’s a word. That’s it. That’s all…’

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Speaking of words, I need to warn you of the use of offensive language in this video. Which, like the one I posted earlier, I cannot embed. (All together now: I. Hate. Facebook.)

But since all sorts of strong opinions are being expressed back and forth on the violence in Five Points, I thought I’d share this one, which is… very passionate, to say the least.

I’d not agreeing with this guy, and I’m not disagreeing with him. I just thought this was one of the most interesting comments I’d heard so far. I like it because it’s idiosyncratic. It doesn’t fit into any boxes, at all. Just a man with a very strong opinion.

I apologize again, in advance, for his language, which is of a sort that I don’t normally allow here. But I thought I’d point you to a part of the dialogue you might have missed…

Randy Newman swings, misses with latest song

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When I saw that Randy Newman had written a song titled “I’m Dreaming (of a White President),” I thought, this is going to be good.

When I read on Twitter that it was “Not a radio hit,” I expected the kind of dead-on, slashing, too-sharp-for-prime-time brilliance that he displayed in “Rednecks,” which we’ll never hear on the radio if we live a thousand years (OK, it’s theoretically possible that we’d hear it — after an hour’s worth of explanation, apology and disclaimer). Oh, and a warning, in case you don’t know that song and innocently follow the link — it uses “N” word eight times. Among other things.

But no. This effort also tries to mine America’s race complexes for profundity, but fails utterly. The lyrics are entirely predictable and trite, the music utterly unappealing.

Either Randy Newman’s lost it — which would mean the loss of a national treasure — or he was just trying too hard on this one.

But since I spent the time listening to it, I pass it on.

Homicide continues to be intraracial

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There will always be those who perceive violence in racial terms, from whites who are angrily convinced that the media underplay what they perceive as an epidemic of black-on-white violence to blacks who immediately call a protest rally when a Trayvon Martin is killed by a man with light complexion.

So it’s helpful now and then to take another look at the actuality:

Bureau of Justice Statistics data show that from 1976 to 2005, white victims were killed by white defendants 86% of the time and black victims were killed by blacks 94% of the time.

Then there is the matter of who is dying. Although the U.S. murder rate has been dropping for years, an analysis of homicide data by The Wall Street Journal found that the number of black male victims increased more than 10%, to 5,942 in 2010 from 5,307 in 2000.

Overall, more than half the nation’s homicide victims are African-American, though blacks make up only 13% of the population. Of those black murder victims, 85% were men, mostly young men…

The carnage is rendered more tragic, although not in the Greek sense, by the fact that most killings are over “nonsense,” as Hillar Moore, the district attorney for East Baton Rouge Parish, put it in the above-referenced story.

You know Joe Biden’s gone off the rails when even Sarah Palin can see it

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Enjoyed this blog post by Alexandra Petri over at the WashPost:

On Fox News, commenting on Joe Biden’s Danville “Put Y’all Back in Chains” gaffe, Sarah Palin observed: “If that’s not the nail in the coffin, really, the strategists there in the Obama campaign have got to look at a diplomatic way of replacing Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary.”

It is seldom that you get such good quotes from the pot about the color of the kettle.

Then again, you know you’ve made a gaffe when Sarah Palin is suggesting you might have chosen your words more judiciously. That’s like Charlie Sheen suggesting you might have a substance problem.

But perhaps we should cut her some slack. Vice presidential candidates whose comments prompt everyone in the vicinity to wince uncontrollably for several minutes is a subject no one knows better than Palin. Maybe she and Biden were better matched than we thought.

After the selection of Paul Ryan to fill the VP slot on the ticket (prompting such exciting merchandise as this button!), it is hard not to think back to August 2008, when everyone was cheering Palin as a game-changer. And she was a game-changer, in the sense that Godzilla is a city-changer. Say what you will about Paul Ryan and the potential risks of having to engage in a Serious Mature Debate of his policies, everyone admits one thing about him: He’s no Sarah Palin. If anyone sets off the trademark “Mayday! Mayday! The Veep’s Saying Something” alarm this year, it’s Biden.

And yep, she oughta know. Onion Joe!

A blast from SC’s past (and present, alas)

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There was a meme bouncing around on Twitter this morning having to do with the expression “dog whistle politics.” It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard before, which is easy to understand intuitively, but I was curious about its provenance, so I looked it up. And I found a little gem that, if I had read it before, I had forgotten.

This is from the Wikipedia entry on the term. WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE:

One group of alleged code words in the United States is claimed to appeal to racism of the intended audience. The phrase “states’ rights“, although literally referring to powers of individual state governments in the United States, was described by David Greenberg in Slate as “code words” for institutionalized segregation and racism.[8] In 1981, former Republican Party strategist Lee Atwater when giving an anonymous interview discussing the GOP’s Southern Strategy, said:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”[9][10]

Assuming that actually was South Carolina’s own Lee Atwater speaking (and it sounds like him), that’s the most direct line I’ve ever seen drawn — by an insider, that is — from the old segregationist politics, through the Southern Strategy and the redefinition of the Solid South, to today’s anti-government, anti-tax ideology.

The implication has been, ever since we entered this phase, that government is all about taking money from people like us and giving it to those people. Which of course is an idiotic understanding of what government is and whom it benefits, but it’s a line of thinking we often hear, with varying degrees of explicitness.

The thing is, most of the anti-government crowd would be furious at being called racist, and would indignantly point to Tim Scott and the sometimes nonwhite Nikki Haley as “proof” that they haven’t a racist bone in their bodies. And indeed, some of them (such as Mark Sanford, and his longtime friend and ally Tom Davis) are just natural-born libertarians. But far, far from all.

The thing about Atwater was that unlike the true believers, he was aware of what he was doing. That’s what made him so good at it.

Of course, as he points out, this is a process of distillation that takes us from the physical-world idea of race and transforms it to a pure abstraction that doesn’t literally bear on skin color. So it actually does become something other than racism, a set of attitudes more intellectualized than merely a visceral response to melanin. So those who become indignant at cries of “racism” do have a leg to stand on, and get angrier and angrier at having such an epithet flung at them. And so the back-and-forth accusations about what such attitudes really imply leads to even greater alienation, and the polarization of our politics gets worse and worse.

But you knew that, right?

More evidence in defense of John Rainey

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As long as I’m mentioning Cindi and Warren today, I’ll go ahead and call your attention to something else I saw in The State this morning. It was a column by Kathleen Parker, in which she stuck up for John Rainey in light of our governor’s emotional attack on him.

Remember her oh-so-classy way of defending herself against the ethical questions Rainey had raised? She called him “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

I briefly touched on a couple of things that just leapt to mind about John Rainey that seemed at odds with that assessment. Since Kathleen is still paid to write columns, she dug a good bit deeper and came up with some other examples of things that make Rainey sound like anything but what Nikki Haley says he is:

Inarguably, the governor’s charges, made publicly and aimed at a citizen, albeit a powerful one, are far more damaging than whatever Rainey said during a private meeting. Judge as you may but consider the following facts before accepting Haley’s indictment of Rainey.

Rainey

For no personal gain, Rainey frequently has raised money and organized groups in common cause across party lines. He and his wife, Anne, marched in 2000 with 46,000 others to protest the Confederate flag, which then flew atop the state Capitol dome. He personally hosted several private meetings with NAACP and legislative leaders to find a compromise for the flag’s removal.

He served as executive producer and raised funds to finance Bud Ferillo’s documentary “Corridor of Shame,” about the dismal condition of public schools along the Interstate 95 corridor through South Carolina. Candidate Barack Obama visited one of those schools and cited the corridor in campaign speeches.

In 1999, Rainey chaired the fundraising committee for the African-American History Monument on Statehouse grounds. In 2002, while chairman of Brookgreen Gardens, he raised funds to erect a World War I doughboy statue in Columbia’s Memorial Park and sponsored a bust of a 54th Massachusetts Infantry African American soldier. He received the sixth annual I. DeQuincey Newman Humanitarian Award in 2004, named for the United Methodist minister and first African American elected to the state Senate following Reconstruction.

Latest to the roster is a sculpture that Rainey has commissioned, honoring two Camden natives, financier Bernard Baruch and baseball great Larry Doby. Baruch was a philanthropist, statesman and consultant to presidents (Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt). Doby was the first African American to play in the American League and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.

The sculpture, which will be unveiled in April, is a monument not only to two local heroes but also to the sort of reconciliation Rainey represents. His record speaks louder than words.

Panel clears Haley, again, of corruption charges

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This just in:

Gov. Nikki Haley did not use her office for personal gain while serving as a representative from Lexington County, the S.C. House Ethics Committee ruled Friday.

The committee weighed seven allegations against Haley that included illegally lobbying for her employers and using her office to pressure lobbyists and their clients for donations to a foundation where she worked.

All the charges were dismissed….

It’s good to know that Lexington Medical Center paid her $110,000 per annum, and Wilbur Smith paid her $48,000, because of sterling qualities of hers that had nothing, repeat nothing, to do with her influence as a legislator. Perhaps it was because she’s such an awesome accountant, or something like that.

Whew.

Of course, now we’re left with her as governor. We’re left with the woman who defended herself from these charges by getting all emotional and painting her accuser, John Rainey, as “a racist, sexist bigot.” From The State’s report:

Her voice shaking slightly, Gov. Nikki Haley told House members Thursday who are looking into whether she illegally used her office for personal gain that the GOP activist who filed the complaint against her is “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

Haley’s allegations of bias came after an executive testified that a Columbia engineering firm paid then-state Rep. Haley, a Lexington County Republican, $48,000 over almost two years as a “passive” consultant to scout out new business, but Haley turned up no new work…

Nothing like character assassination and innuendo for persuading people of the quality of your own character, eh?

I’m trying to think of the last time I spent any time with John Rainey. I think it years ago, the time he invited me to sit at his table at the annual NAACP banquet.

And the last time before that, years earlier, I had a lunch with him at the Capital City Club, in which he went on and on about his plans for the African-American Monument on the State House grounds. He left shortly before I did, and when I was heading back to the office, I saw him meandering about on the grounds, scouting out the place where the monument would eventually be placed. He was really passionate about getting that thing built…

But I digress.

Whites not the majority? Nothing new in that…

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Did y’all see the “news” the other day — ironically, the day before my grandson was born — that white babies are no longer the majority? I first heard it on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. Quoth Neal Conan:

We’ve known for years this day would come, but here it is. The Census Bureau announced today that nonwhite births now make up a majority in the United States. Data gathered in 2011 show that nonwhite, Hispanic, African-American, Asian, Native American, mixed race and others combined for 50.4 percent. That’s the first time that white births were not a majority in U.S. history, and that raises some questions about policy – from education to social services programs – and about how we see ourselves as a nation….

Perhaps this is a good time to inject a bit of historical perspective…

I’m still off-and-on gradually making my way through Charles C. Mann’s 1493, while reading several other books at varying rates, and every time I read a stretch in it, I learn something startling. For instance, I refer you to the fact that for most of the history of Europeans in the Americas — up to the mid-nineteenth century — there were far more people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere than there were white. Way more. An excerpt (I hope the publishers will excuse the length of this quote. I share it within the context of urging you to run out and buy this book; there are many other things in it that will surprise you, and enlarge your understanding of our world.):

This was surprising to me for a couple of reasons. For instance, I had long known that before and after the Civil War, South Carolina had a larger black population than white. Which means that before 1860, most of the state’s population was enslaved.

I used to think of that as anomalous. I thought of it as helping explain the fact that South Carolina slaveholders were more fanatically devoted to their Peculiar Institution that the white elites anywhere else. Hence that firing on Fort Sumter thing.

But as it turns out, if you look at ALL post-Columbian immigration across the hemisphere, not just English, you see that far, far more were brought here as slaves from African than came here, either free or indentured, from all Europe. By 1860, this balance had changed in many places (thereby making SC somewhat anomalous), but for most of the time from 1492 until then, a larger black population had been the norm. (Of course, for that same period, there remained more Indians than whites or blacks, in spite of the way native populations had been decimated by European and African diseases.)

I also found it surprising because I spent part of my childhood in Latin America, and it did not prepare me for this statistic — even though I studied history in Spanish in school (Mann’s references to Columbus as Cristóbal Colón seem very natural to me). In Ecuador, where I lived for two-and-a-half years, it was very unusual to see anyone who looked at all African. I knew that Brazil had imported vast numbers of slaves during the colonial period, and that you could see the results on the streets of Rio. I would have said the same of the islands of the Caribbean.

But for there to be that many more blacks than whites across all the Americas? I had no idea. We all are aware that black labor largely built this country, but I guess I thought that was because those workers were owned by a white majority. I was wrong. At least from a hemispherewide perspective.

In any case… whites not being the majority? Nothing new about that on this side of the world.

Obama: ‘If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.’

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On a previous post, Phillip said that he likes Bill Maher (or at least excuses him) because “I find myself agreeing with him about 99% of the time.” I made it fairly clear that I do not.

But there are people who I find myself agreeing with to a degree that it is remarkable — a rare experience for me, since I reject the orthodoxies of left and right (which enable the people who do adhere to them to find themselves agreeing with certain people a lot). A good example would be Tony Blair. When he expresses his reasoning behind a position, I am struck by how much it is just like what I would say — or wish I were clever enough to say.

I have a similar experience with President Obama. There are a lot of things I disagree with him on, rather vehemently in some cases. But then he expresses himself on an issue in a way that strikes me as just right, and I am deeply impressed. (Needless to say, on these occasions he’s being about as different from Bill Maher as any one person can be.)

Today was such an instance, when the president carefully weighed in on the Trayvon Martin tragedy. I haven’t commented on it myself because I have thought that everyone else was commenting in such a facile manner — generalizing the incident to fit their own political and social predilections — and I couldn’t find a way to grab ahold of the matter in a way I found meaningful.

But then the president said this:

“I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this,” Mr. Obama said. “All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen.”…

“Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through,” Mr. Obama said, his face grim. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”…

“You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama said, pausing for a moment. “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

Normally, I tend to react against such a personal, emotional response. But in this case, it was exactly right, and the president was wise to recognize it.

To me, this isn’t some microcosm of racial injustice or gun culture gone wild or any other generalization. This is a case — as near as I can tell, and my knowledge of the case is limited — of a confused, emotional, panicky, cowardly man with a gun in his hand pulling the trigger and causing a deep, personal, specific tragedy.

Yes, the president made a genetic, racial observation in saying that his theoretical son would look like the victim in this case. But the more important part of it is that he appeals to “every parent in America” to look at this situation AS parents, rather than as participants in a political debate. It says to whites who may want to recoil and get indignant at seeing, for instance, Al Sharpton exploit yet another tragedy, Set that aside. Look at the personal tragedy. Think of your own kids. That’s what I’m doing.

That’s the wisest possible thing he could have said.

If there’s anything else useful to say about this case, that is the best starting point.