The Presidency Has at Last Been Desegregated

I first wrote about this subject on 10 November, using the phrase “social disruption” to describe one of the effects of desegregating the presidency. A friend’s response to the post made me recast the sentence; now I feel that I should have kept the phrase in. Racial harmony is a myth in Hawai‘i, as elsewhere, but it comes close to being realized here. Reading the following Associated Press article in this, the fiftieth state, made me tremble with anger and sadness.

Posted 16 November. An abridged version of this news report appeared in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin. I’m including the piece in its entirety.

Election spurs ‘hundreds’ of race threats, crimes

By JESSE WASHINGTON – 1 day ago

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama.” Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: “I hope Obama gets assassinated.” That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law’s front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.

“I can’t say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it,” said Millner, who is black. “But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they’re capable of and what they’re really thinking.”

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is “a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.”

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: “I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

“If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama’s) church being deported,” he said.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is “the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War,” said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. “It’s shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries.”

“Someone once said racism is like cancer,” Ferris said. “It’s never totally wiped out, it’s in remission.”

If so, America’s remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama’s victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.

The student’s mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: “Whether you like it or not, we’re in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision.”

Other incidents include:

• Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: “Let’s shoot that (N-word) in the head.” Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
• At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. “Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count,” the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written “Let’s hope someone wins.”
• Racist graffiti was found in places including New York’s Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and “Go Back To Africa” were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
• Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted “assassinate Obama,” a district official said.
• University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. “It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork,” Houston said.
• Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
• Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
• A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted ‘Obama.’
• In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying “now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house.”

Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.

“The principle is very simple,” said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book “A Peacock in the Land of Penguins.” “If I can’t hurt the person I’m angry at, then I’ll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race.”

“We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by ‘the white man.’”

“It’s as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you’ve had a bad day at the office,” Gallagher said. “But it happens a lot.”

Associated Press writers Errin Haines, Jerry Harkavy, Jay Reeves, Johnny Taylor and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Posted 10 November

From Barack As President.

Wikipedia makes a distinction between desegregation and integration. One can argue that it is correct, given Wikipedia’s definitions and arguments, to say that the presidency has been integrated. But it seems to me more correct to say that the nation’s highest political office has been desegregated. The legal aspect of desegregation is probably what many Republicans and people who voted Republican have mistaken the majority will for. They seem to regard Obama’s election as a de facto desegregation that has taken place without their participation or permission.

Response from Mike:

Hi! Yes we can, Yes we will, Yes we did!!! I would like to think that at this stage in our nation’s racial development, the process we are undergoing is integration, which is organic, as opposed to desegregation, which is a deliberate intervention in a social system. The South was desegregated by law and writ, but it started integrating when enough people realized that equality of worth was not based on race, but on human commonality. That is, a realization that that which makes us different is so trivial when compared to that which we all have in common. As for majority rule, if we were going to have to live through 4 or 8 years more of stupid government…

c you in 2012!!!

The title of this post is from an e-mail message sent by Mike, Molly’s human companion. Starting on Friday, 5 Nov., a group of us pondered the role this little lady had to play in national politics.

Me: Dogs can’t vote either. Sorry, Mike, Maryland’s elections office had to discard Molly’s ballot. They asked me to break the news to you.

Mike: Well, that’s downright diabolical, cuz I was told she was eligible. I guess not, huh? Oh well, I hung up posters all over town for Mollyo, and she didn’t get one single vote! It hasn’t affected her, though, she still puts her stockings on one leg at a time.

Gary: Oh yeah, well that’s not what I heard. I heard on Fox & Fiends that Molly went on a crazed spending spree in Nieman and Saks and also at La Pooche Coutierier and ran up bills totalling about half a million bucks, including a diamond-studded collar and leash and a free outfit for all her friends, and that half the stuff is missing, and that she answered the door to her staff members wearing nothing but some strategically placed fur.

Mike: oh…you got that, huh?

well, we gotta get back to our mooser an hockey luvvin con stitch warrants, course, there’s the idittorod coming soon, we always run in that…

c you in 2012!!!

Me: As Molly knows, a well-dressed, well-accessorized dog is worth a dozen Sarah Palins.

Anybody read “A Political Manners Manual” at the NYT site? It includes these good paragraphs:

The Republicans are being way more nasty to Sarah Palin than the Democrats are to Lieberman. They’ve been portraying her as both a shopaholic and a woman who walks around in nothing but a bath towel, a hillbilly who’s also a prima donna. The leakathon climaxed this week when Fox News’s Carl Cameron announced that Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Palin says this is untrue. But the worst part is that if these people get any meaner, we’re going to wind up feeling sorry for her. This is not something we are looking forward to, Republicans, and we will resent you for it.

Alan: I’ve been told I got one write-in vote but I don’t believe it. Don’t tell Molly.

Alaska and the Elections

(Re)call of the wild

On Thursday, 6 Nov., our friend Mike asked in an e-mail message, “What’s going on in Alaska? Somethings not right!” and provided a link to Something Smells Fishy in Alaska, a post written by Shannyn Moore for The Brad Blog. Verrry interesting. I subsequently found Crunching the Numbers in Alaska, a post at Mudflats, a blog maintained by “AKMuckraker.”

In response to these postings, Gary said:

I know there are a lot of theories about how the Diebold rig works. I don’t really claim to know what they do but I don’t have any doubt that they do something. That said, after being utterly convinced that Kerry won Virginia in 2004, the VA vote count as announced looks really plausible this year. If somebody came along & said the Obama victory margin was trimmed by 6 to 10%, I would wonder, out of natural suspicion, but the local tallies matched the local polls completely. Local polls showed O. ahead 5 to 1 in town and 2 to 1 in the county and that’s what we got. More to the point, the O. vote matches the Perriello vote with P. beating the noxious Goode in Nelson as well as Alb & Duckville and being all over him in the other surrounding counties. This is how it was supposed to be. Though I don’t think the rural counties experienced a sudden outbreak of progressivism, I think they did revert to their historical baseline of agrarian Readjusterism, which has been kind to black candidates all across the state whenever there were any black candidates, which is not often. In short, looking at the riskier parts of rural VA, it looks to me like Obama got a higher vote there than I would have thought possible, while, on balance, urban NOVA voted less blue that I thought they were going to.

Meanwhile, as to Alaska, if these blogistas are quoting the authorized numbers correctly, then the suggestion that 50,000 or so votes are weirdly missing seems very logical to me.

An article in the 8 Nov. Anchorage Daily News also said the size of Alaska’s turnout was puzzling, given that “the lead-in for the 2008 election was extraordinary.” The article begins:

Did a huge chunk of Alaska voters really stay home for what was likely the most exciting election in a generation?

That’s what turnout numbers are suggesting, though absentee ballots are still arriving in the mail and, if coming from overseas, have until Nov. 19 to straggle in.

The reported turnout has prompted commentary in the progressive blogosphere questioning the validity of the results. And Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore, who usually works with Democrats, said Friday that “something smells fishy,” though he said it was premature to suggest that the conduct of the election itself was suspect.

With 81,000 uncounted absentee and questioned ballots, some of which will be disqualified, the total vote cast so far is 305,281–8,311 fewer than the last presidential election of 2004, which saw the largest turnout in Alaska history.

As it stands now, the numbers for the most closely watched races are as follows:

Race	Republican	Democrat
U.S. Senate	Ted Stevens: 106,594	Mark Begich: 103,337
U.S. House	Don Young: 114,043	Ethan Berkowitz: 97,104

Palling around with errorists

The kind of distortion, lying, and rumormongering that Palin now accuses reporters of is the very kind she was engaging in when she was McCain’s running mate. Now that the (Republican) party is over, she is expressing indignation and hurt. I have to admit that when I watch and listen to her, I feel sorry for her: sorry that she is not better equipped–intellectually and morally–to press her charges. If she had been against character assassination all along–that is, when it was being directed at others as well as herself–she would have some moral ground on which to attack the ethics of reporters.

A Letter from Alaska

John Luther Adams, an acquaintance in Alaska, sent me some weeks ago the letter that appears at this blog. I corresponded with him a bit about his letter, and he brought up the fact that Hawai‘i senator Dan Inouye was speaking in defense of Stevens at the trial. This made me feel ashamed and reminded me of Hawai‘i’s political ties to Alaska, including the support of both of our U.S. senators for drilling in the ANWR.

Here’s a bright note to follow that darkness. The election-day edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin had a picture of a memorial to Obama’s grandmother with a caption that stated, in part:

Though [Madelyn Payne] Dunham died two nights before the election, state elections officials say they will count her vote. Kevin Cronin, the state’s chief elections officer, said yesterday that state law requires absentee ballots cast by someone who dies before Election Day to be discarded, but only if Health Department certification of the death is received before the election. Dunham’s absentee ballot was received by the elections office on Oct. 27, Cronin said.

Electing a President

On 4 November, I spent the hours from about 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (except for a twenty-minute drive from my office to home) at my computer, watching election events as they were presented at the BBC News site. The network had sent a news team to Washington, D.C., and broadcasters-reporters to other parts of the U.S., as well as to the small town in Kenya where Obama’s step-grandmother (stepmother of his father) lives; broadcasters from the BBC’s home office interviewed American expatriates in London. While I was watching the discussions, interviews, and so forth, I also tried to read the live text commentary, which I found almost as engrossing. The following are excerpts from e-mail correspondence in which some friends and I share our thoughts and feelings about the election.

3 Nov 7:26 pm

I’m not as confident as some of the people around me are that Obama will win. When I read [Frank] Schaeffer’s piece, I wondered if I’d been unwilling to hope and believe that a miracle could occur.

My friend George, who lives in Philadelphia and is a newspaper editor, is a big fan of the Phillies. He’d been writing me now and then about Shane Victorino, and when the Phillies won the World Series, he sent me a picture of Shane wearing a lei and hugging the trophy.

Obama’s win would be a miracle of an entirely different magnitude, of course; yet nothing else is acceptable to millions of people all over the world. They have to believe that it is possible and will happen. I have to believe too.

4 Nov 10:17 am

Proudly wearing my Obama T-shirt from Moveon.org.

I voted at around 7:30 this morning. Rainy, gray day in Honolulu, but humid. I walked the three blocks to the cafeteria of a school I went to as a teenager (a horrible period of my life, though not as horrible as the years to come) and voted for the Obama/Biden ticket. The cafeteria wasn’t crowded, but almost every voting booth was taken, and there was a longish line to the tabulating machine. Afterward, I walked to one of my favorite breakfast places and had two eggs over easy, a couple of pancakes, and two pieces of bacon (I’m trying to stop eating meat, but still haven’t quite made it).

5 Nov (throughout the day)

Gary: I know it was spiteful of me but I could not help thoroughly enjoying the local coverage of the GOP victory room, from the early returns where the utterly mean-spirited and vicious 5th Dist congressman, Virgil Goode–who used face-morphing technology in his endlessly repeated attack ads to make his opponent appear to be African-American–appeared to be ahead by 40%, to the hushed environment where it was Perriello 48, Goode 52, to the dead tie, to the final recount where Perriello was ahead by about 800 to 1000 votes, Virginia had gone for Obama, and the bar was empty with just the reporter and a couple of amused waiters sweeping up.

George: I think Obama’s top two challenges are disengagement from Iraq and the economy. The mess that Bush made will not easily be undone, but I think Barak will take a methodical approach to both. There’s another big challenge, perhaps bigger than the other two, which is the polarization of the country. Neocons’ reaction, I’m hearing, is vituperative, with buying more guns a prominent feature. They can’t very well leave the country unless they give up their guns, so it will be interesting to say the least.

If he can get a handle on those three issues, the rest of the mess will be relatively easy to deal with. Environmental issues, energy, infrastructure, health care, and restoring the graduated income tax will be easier to resolve, but by no means slam dunks. Restoring our reputation abroad will be the easiest thing to resolve. After he takes the oath of office, that will be his first fait accompli.

Neither the Phillies winning the World Series nor Obama’s victory has totally sunken in yet. I spent so much time and effort wishing for those two things that when the event happened a sense of disbelief set in. But the Phillies are the world champs and Obama is president-elect. The days of Junior and his demented Uncle are dwindling. High-fives and much rejoicing.

George: In West Virginia’s 2nd District, incumbent Republican Shelly Moore Capito narrowly defeated Democratic challenger Ann Barth. Capito torpedoed the proposed Seneca Creek Wilderness, so I was hoping she would be put out to pasture.

Me: Yes, that’s a shame. Maybe with a Democratic president and majorities in both houses, she’ll have to be more respectful of an environment-focused agenda, though.

Too bad the D.s didn’t get a [larger] majority in the Senate.

You might recall that our Republican governor predicted that HI would be for McCain. The final numbers, according to the BBC News site: 71.8% (298,621) for O.; 26.6% (110,848) for M.; 1.5% (6,526) for others.

Governor Linda can commiserate with her counterpart in Alaska.

George: I don’t think a Democrat administration will have any effect on Capito, or for that matter, any other Repugnican congresstwit. She did back Dolly Sods North, so that is one positive outcome. We just hoped she would lead on the issue and not follow the flock.

Me: One of the highlights of the evening for me was when the head of the BBC news team in D.C. interviewed Gore Vidal, who is now, it appears, nasty, uncooperative, and addled beyond help. When some minutes of this meandering unpleasantness had gone by and the newsman asked V.–pointing out that he had been close to the Kennedys–what he thought of Obama’s victory, V. said he couldn’t answer the newsman’s question because he didn’t know who he was. I should add that V.’s nice suit was too big for him, and his large head seemed to be nodding right, toward the floor, as if he couldn’t hold it up; he kind of looked like an aardvark, actually. The newsman then said to those seated around the table–which included Larry Sabato, of UVA–that maybe they should quit while they were ahead. Then he muttered, “That was interesting–not quite what we expected.” Har-har, that was a good laugh, and I laughed liberally!

Gary: It bears out what I always said–When you go to interview an aardvark, things are going to get awkward. Or as my old pal Andy Anteater used to say, “You can suit an aardvark, but it’ll be a cold day on the veldt when an aardvark suits you.”

Sabato’s on Cloud 9 because he actually called the electoral vote — exactly. It was a direct hit. The Polysci Dept also had Perriello within a few hundred of Goode one way or the other. Which was a much easier call than the electoral college.

Me: Sabato seems like a good egg.

After the BBC newsman returned to the people at the table, he asked S. a question, and S. started his answer by saying HE knew who the newsman was. Triggered a round of chuckles…

George: I have to say that when Obama delivered the keynote address at the convention four years ago, I realized that he would not only win the senate seat, but be a positive force in the party in the future. As the primary season unfolded, I realized that his vision was powerful, and it seemed to me that his time had arrived. I was on the bandwagon from the get-go, but the primaries were my primary (pun not intended, but cheerfully embraced) concern. I believed if he got the nomination he would go all the way.

I felt the nation was in deep need of a sea change or a course correction and he was the man to make it happen. Nothing that happened changed my belief. I was very confident that he would win, but I have to say that the McPalin street theater of the absurd made the win even bigger. I expected a much narrower margin. But in the electoral-college pool at work yesterday, I said he would take 325 electoral votes. I was too conservative. Somebody else picked a higher number, damn him.

Me: I did think, watching M. give his concession speech, that he was a good, honorable man. As one commentator said, though, it’s too bad he stopped being that person while he was campaigning.

6 Nov (throughout the day)

George: You’ve got that right. McCain was like bad theater. I forget where he was at the time, but he was making his speech in front of a very sparse audience and acting as though he was spotting friends in the audience, pointing out and giving thumbs-up as though he recognized someone. I thought to myself, okay John, you’ve now made more gestures than there are people in the audience. Get it over with so the sanitation workers can clean up the site and get home at a decent hour.

Gary: That McCain allowed the old Bush handlers to stage most all of his events as Potemkin rallies, script him up for Bushite attack speeches, and string Palin around his next like an albatross, basically demonstrated that he was a desperately bad choice for president. He had to actively let all that happen, and the inside story of it is going to be fascinating.

George: Bits and pieces are leaking out around the edges as we speak. Here’s the NY Times story about the schism between the McCain and Palin camps. It’s an interesting look.

Me: A paragraph from a Huffington Post article:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family–clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Me: Here’s something about Joe the P.:

Joe the Plumber has spoken. It seems he regrets the level of exposure he had from the McCain campaign. He tells the Guardian newspaper: “You know, fame is fleeting, leaves you hungry, leaves you cold, leaves you tired. Fortune never comes with it.”

The following is from a 5 Nov. message written by me to another good friend; I’m putting it at the end because it captures the intensity of my feelings on election day and the strength of my hopes for the future. I didn’t say in the text above that I cried frequently while watching BBC News, tears streaming down my face.

I was thinking about you yesterday, wondering if you were working or able to catch any news of the election. All sorts of things ran through my mind as I saw the numbers change on my computer screen, listened to the BBC News commentators, and watched the various events being filmed live. I saw all of McCain’s concession speech and Obama’s acceptance speech and got to listen to people like Ted Koppel and John Bolton, as I mentioned to you.

It seemed to me that the news commentators were trying to be objective while trying to rein in their excitement about what was happening. I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed this.

It seems to me that Obama is not only a great political leader but a great spiritual leader, someone worthy of following in the steps of Martin Luther King.