Racism in America – The Wrongologist

Saturday Soother – March 13, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Warwick RI – 2021 photo by Rick Bateman

The WaPo reports that a Georgetown University law professor was terminated and a second placed on leave after a video clip showed a conversation between them that included what a University official called “reprehensible” statements about Black students.

The conversation between adjunct professors Sandra Sellers and David Batson was shared on Twitter this week. It shows Sellers discussing student performance:

“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks,” Sellers said in the video. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”

Full disclosure: Wrongo is a graduate of Georgetown University.

Context for the video: The professors held their conversation on a zoomed negotiations class on February 21. It was recorded so that students could view it later. Sellers and Batson stayed on the call after the students left, and their conversation was also recorded. It was saved online for about two weeks before students noticed the conversation between Sellers and Batson. Then it was reported by students to the administration. The university fired Sellers and issued a statement on Thursday after the video went viral.

Ever notice how racists always start with a comment that gives them away? They try blunting the racism with phrases like “I hate to say it” or, using weird phrasing like “a lot of my lower ones are Black.” Most White people know that they can say 90% of the same shit they’ve always said, if they preface it with a disclaimer:

“I’m not a racist, but…”
“I have black friends, but…”

But what we hear most since Trump is: “(big sigh), I know it’s not politically correct (eye roll), but...”

That’s used when they want to make sure everyone knows that they’re political martyrs who are living dangerously.

Imagine reversing professor Sellers’s thought: “I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Whites…You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom.” That shows how odd it is to divide your law students into racial groups.

Georgetown Law doesn’t have trouble finding top quality students. US News rates it as number 14 among American law schools. They receive more applicants than they can accept. They may not be getting the topmost Harvard and Yale candidates, but they can choose from among the very high quality law students. Logically, all of their admitted students should be able to perform at a high level.

Still, a normal distribution of performance should be expected because multiple factors go into creating a final grade. Think about a student’s commitment to studying, or their individual contribution in class. Sometimes, group assignments are graded, which are at least partially dependent on others. So, it should be common for grades to be normally distributed.

Every day, we learn again that racism is a norm, not an exception in America. One day, that may no longer be true, but that day isn’t going to get any closer by pretending it’s already arrived. So it’s good that Sellers was fired.

Finally, graduating at the top of your class isn’t necessary or sufficient to insure high-level future performance. Doubt that? Remember that Ulysses S. Grant graduated at the bottom of his West Point class and did just fine. While Mike Pompeo graduated first at West Point, so there you go.

It was a big week in DC, with the passage of the American Recovery Plan, and the one-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic. But now, it’s time for our Saturday Soother. We’ve started on the spring clean-up on the fields of Wrong. The deer fences have come down, and we’re starting to think about some new split rail fencing. Remember, Daylight Savings Time starts tonight, but the dog has no plans to “spring ahead”. He’ll still want breakfast at the same time on Sunday morning.

Let’s settle back near a window and listen to the” Flute Quintet in D Major, Op. 51 No. 1: III. Adagio ma non troppo”, by Fredrich Kahlau, Danish composer who knew Mozart, and died in 1832. Here it’s played by the Kodály Quartet along with soloist Ginervra Petrucci:

Saturday Soother, July 3, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Blue Camas bloom, Missoula MT – June 2020 photo by Kurt Kohn. Camas is a plant in the asparagus family, and its bulb was a food staple for Indigenous peoples in the American West.

(Wrongo is taking a break for the July 4^th holiday. Blogging will resume on Tuesday 7/7.)

Good morning fellow disease vectors! Welcome to the holiday weekend.

The legal separation of the 13 Colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring the United States independent from Great Britain.

After voting for independence, the Continental Congress created a Committee of Five to write a Declaration of Independence, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the wording of the Declaration, approving it on July 4. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival… “

Adams’s prediction was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July 4, the date the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress, rather than on July 2.

Coincidentally, both Adams and Jefferson, the only signers of the Declaration of Independence who later served as US presidents, died on the same day: July 4, 1826. James Monroe, a founder, but not a signatory of the Declaration, became the third president to die on July 4th in 1831.

Yale Historian David Blight had a short audio piece on NPR on Friday talking about Frederick Douglass. Blight won a 2019 Pulitzer for his book, “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.”

In his NPR talk, Blight recalls a speech by Douglass in July, 1852 to about 600 abolitionists gathered in Rochester, NY. Douglass had been born enslaved. He’d secretly taught himself to read and write. He became one of the best-known abolitionists and thinkers in the world. The speech that Douglass gave before that crowd in Rochester was called “What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?”

Blight says it was one of Douglass’s most riveting and compelling speeches. He goes on to quote from it:

“The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. The Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand, illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”

Blight closes by saying that today, we may be seeing the third great reckoning about race in our history: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The first was the Civil War and Reconstruction. The second was the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s. And now we’re probably having a third one – whatever we’re going to end up calling this…..And he’d [Douglass] warn us that the whole world is watching to see whether this thing called an American republic can really survive.”

Blight also has a series of video lectures on the Civil War that you can watch for free as part of the Open Yale program. Wrongo highly recommends them.

Here’s a fantastic and touching video in which five young descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts of Douglass’s famous speech. You can’t do better today than to listen to these young kids speak the words of their famous ancestor.

Time to let go of the world of politics, economics and policy for a few days. We all want a slice of normalcy: A cold beverage, burgers on the grill, fireflies after dark, and family and friends nearby. Although we want all of that right now, we’ll most likely have to settle for just some of it.

Let’s begin the Saturday Soother by brewing up a Cafe Del Sol Cold Brew Coffee ($15.99/12oz.) from San Diego CA’s Bird Rock Coffee Roasters.

Now, settle back at an appropriate physical distance and listen to Mickey Guyton’s new song, “Black Like Me”. Guyton is a young black female country music singer/songwriter, one of the very few succeeding in the country music idiom. She’s decided to speak out about the subject of racism. That takes courage, even in today’s Nashville scene. Highly recommend the video, which contains the lyrics of her song:

Sample Lyric:

If you think we live in the land of the free
You should try to be black like me

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 14, 2020

Cut it out, root and branch:

Is “Defund the Police” a gift, or a curse for the GOP?

Irony is lost on the police:

The fight continues:

Wrongo is somewhat conflicted about the statues. OTOH, the Confederacy only lasted for five years. It isn’t Ireland where families lived and died fighting for their freedom from England for centuries. The band Nirvana lasted two years longer than the Confederacy. People who say they’re proud of five years of an ancestor’s life really are just white supremacists. They should stop pretending there’s something else they like.

Everyone is for police accountability:

Turns out, we really had quite a lot to lose:

Monday Wake Up Call – June 8, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Banksy – June, 2020

Banksy is a well-known British graffiti artist whose identity is secret. But he’s become well-known, gaining attention for his politically charged works. The above appeared in an Instagram post where Banksy says:

“At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue. But why would I do that? It’s not their problem, it’s mine. People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. The faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t, no one will let them in the apartment upstairs. This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”

Well said. We all should know where the responsibility lies for fixing the problems of racism.

Let’s hope that Americans understand the threat and the opportunity posed by this moment. Racism and the indiscriminate use of violence by police are burning the fabric of our society. How the fire is put out is entirely in our hands.

And the demonstrations continued over the weekend, mostly peacefully, at least as Wrongo writes this. These rallies have quickly become the focal point of a nationwide movement against systemic racism, and for police reform. They’re becoming better organized, and are unlikely to end soon.

Thousands gathered on Capitol Hill on Saturday to join a protest organized by Freedom Fighters DC. It drew one of the largest crowds since protests began there:

Source: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) joined the protesters outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Roll Call reported that: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…he [Sen. King] drew connections between the current uprisings and his experience at the 1963 March on Washington. He was a 19-year-old student at Dartmouth College and was on hand for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the march on Aug. 28, 1963.”

At the time, Wrongo was also a 19-year-old student, studying at Georgetown in DC. Sen. King says that this is a “full circle moment” for him, and Wrongo agrees. It’s a full circle moment for America. We appear to be on the verge of something big, politically.

Monday Wake Up Call – Wreck It Ralph Edition, February 4, 2019

The Daily Escape:

The Expectation — 1936 painting by Richard Oelze

(Patriots won a tough Super Bowl, and the chili was terrific!)

Ralph Northam is the Democratic governor of Virginia. Ralph is on pace to wreck his political life. Here’s the story so far:

On Friday, Northam’s personal page from his 1984 medical school yearbook surfaced. It includes a picture of two unidentified people, one wearing blackface, the other in a Klan robe and hood.

Within a few hours, Northam says he’s one of the people in the picture, although he doesn’t say which of the two people he is.

A few hours later, he says he’s definitely NOT in the picture, but he confesses to a different racist escapade. Around the time that he graduated from medical school, he participated in a Michael Jackson impersonation contest, and used shoe polish to darken his skin.

Eugene Robinson had a great take, using Jackson’s tunes:

But Northam must have done enough in his youth to mistakenly assume that the picture in the yearbook was of him, even though he had never even seen that picture before Friday.

Is anything about his story even plausible, much less true? So the question becomes, what follows IF the story as he’s telling it now is true? Wrongo condemns his actions, and he’s certainly handled this as poorly as possible.

As a practical matter, his political career is over.

Wrongo was born into a racist family system. Both sides of his family were without doubt, white supremacists. But as a child of the silent generation, living in a white suburban NY culture, by 17 years of age, Wrongo and all of his friends had figured out that white supremacy was unacceptable.

If Northam had said, “I grew up in a place and time when racism was tolerated, and even at 25, I hadn’t quite left it behind. But my record shows I’m not that guy now, and haven’t been for 30 years. I am deeply embarrassed and sorry I was such a dope back then“, we could be more forgiving.

But instead, he says he doesn’t recall, and offers up a different racist experience while invalidating the first racist experience.

Northam is undergoing political death by a thousand cuts. He’s done, he just hasn’t come to terms with it. Sadly, it didn’t necessarily have to be that way. He just wasn’t willing to do the difficult work of first, being honest with himself, and then, being honest with the rest of us.

Northam’s whole story is especially upsetting in light of studies that show that medical students believe black people feel less pain than whites. While Northam was training to be a doctor, apparently, he was dressing up blackface, and possibly in Klan costumes.

Did his racism have a negative effect on any black patients he may have treated?

Even if you take at face value his claim that he isn’t in that yearbook photo, he clearly remembered wearing blackface while dressing up like Michael Jackson that same year. If wearing blackface is disqualifying, then his Michael Jackson imitation is reason enough to step down. Remember that he said:

“I only blackened my face a little bit because everybody knows shoe polish is hard to get off your face”

Sorry, but most people have no idea how hard it is to get shoe polish off your face. Or, that shoe polish is the accepted method of blackening your face. Sadly, Northam clearly doesn’t think his blackface admission is disqualifying. He isn’t sorry for doing it–he’s sorry he got caught.

When this type of thing happens, someone always says we shouldn’t punish him for something that happened 35 years ago, that we should forgive and forget. Some will say that Democrats are showing an inappropriately heightened sense of political correctness. That they are exaggerating the offense in this case.

We ought to forgive, but there can be no forgetting.

Time to wake up America! Racism is our original sin, and it is still practiced by both political parties, and by plenty of average citizens. We can’t call for Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to resign for saying that White Supremacy is A-OK, and not also insist that Governor Ralph Northam step down.

Monday Wake Up Call – MLK Jr. Edition, January 21, 2019

The Daily Escape:

El Capitan in winter, Yosemite NP, CA – photo by Jonkooo

From Tom Sullivan:

Those of us of a certain age, but not quite old enough, were too young to attend the 1963 March on Washington. The march and Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech influenced our era, our views, and changed the country. There are times one wishes, if only I could have been there for that moment in history. Then again, such thinking fixes the civil rights movement in time. The truth is, that struggle never ended.

Wrongo was in Washington in 1963. Dr. King is one of his heroes. And, as Tom Sullivan says, the struggle has never ended. Wrongo spent the 1960s and 1970s convinced that America would turn a corner, see the wrong in slavery, and know that racism was holding us back.

He thought that we would achieve a point of equilibrium where Americans of all stripes would accept each other as part of a larger tribe, one that shared common beliefs about democracy and equality for all.

Wrongo was wrong. We’re not there. We’ve made some progress, but then we fell back on old beliefs.

Today we are 51 years removed from Dr. King’s assassination, and while America is better and fairer than it was then, we will enter the 2020’s needing to do much to improve society.

This brings me to MLK’s last book, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” published the year before he died. In it, King lays out a vision for America’s future, including the need for both better jobs and housing, higher pay and quality education. King called for an end to global suffering, saying that for the first time, humankind had the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

He wrote about how Civil Rights reforms had fallen short, but he couldn’t have envisioned what the Supreme Court did in gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with its 2013 decision in Shelby County vs. Holder.

So here we are in 2019 with white kids mocking Native Americans at the Lincoln Memorial, chanting “Build that wall, build that wall.” This happened days after Trump made light of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee to mock Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

And for context, we live in a time when chanting the president’s name has become a tool of racial intimidation.

Here we are: Income inequality is the highest it’s been since the 1940s.Our federal government is shut down because we can’t agree about the threat posed by illegal immigrants asking for asylum at the US southern border. And racism is marching back into the light from under rocks all across the country.

Time to wake up America! Racism is the wound that won’t heal. We have much to do, and the work won’t be easy.

To help you wake up here is a 2019 song by The Killers, “Land of the Free”. It is broadly about America and the intolerance holding us back. Listen to it, and reflect on what it makes you feel. Depending on what about it makes you angry, it is a reflection of who you are. The video is very powerful. Please take the time to watch it.

Think about what’s at the heart of this song. People who want the same things we do:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Finally, a quote from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time:

“White men have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.”

Monday Wake Up Call – October 29, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Fisherman on the Housatonic River near Cornwall, CT – November, 2017 photo by Mike Jacquemin

The World Series is on, and it may actually be over by the time you read this. Wrongo lived in Brooklyn as a young boy, and got to go to Ebbets Field twice to see games. He grew up on Mays, Mantle, Berra, Koufax, Drysdale, Hodges and Snider, each were legends and heroes.

But in 2018? The only baseball Wrongo watches is the World Series, and that’s only with clicker in hand, vectoring to other entertainment. And he certainly doesn’t stay up until the game is over. Let this sink in: In 2018, for the first time in baseball history, there were more strikeouts than hits: 188 more to be exact.

So today, who watches these games from start to finish? It’s doubtful that those under the age of 30 do. Particularly if someone like Wrongo who was a baseball fan 60 years ago, is too disengaged to watch it in real time.

But the weekend’s news wasn’t dominated by sports, but by yet another mass shooting. This time, at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 mostly elderly people died at the hands of an anti-Semitic, hate-motivated gunman. He leaves behind waves of grief.

It’s a sorry commentary that this killing, along with the attempted bombings of 14 Democrats, obscured the hate killing of two African-Americans in Kentucky last Wednesday. Maybe it’s because only two Black murder victims at the hands of a white supremacist doesn’t garner attention anymore.

To those crying out after a wave of pipe bombs and another mass shooting, that this is not who we are, sorry, this is exactly who we have become as a people. The MAGA-bomber and the Synagogue murders are the tip of the spear: Alt-right fellow travelers blatantly acting out, seemingly without fear of reprisal, is the world we live in now.

And yet, at a time when America sorely needs moral leadership and unity, consistent reminders that we are one people, that we’re all in it together…we have Trump.

From James Fallows in the Atlantic:

Donald Trump has never once, in his life, spoken…as bearer of the whole nation’s grief, as champion of its faith and resolve–so there is no reason to expect that he could possibly do so now.

Trump Can’t Lead

The Daily Escape:

Zion NP Utah, 2001 – photo by Wrongo

Leader of the Free World. Leader of the Republican Party. Commander-in-Chief. Leader of the US Government. Donald Trump holds all of these titles, but he isn’t a leader. We just lived through a lab experiment in Trump’s leadership, his curious response to the Charlottesville protests. Either he had a lapse in clear thinking, or he cannot show empathy when the rest of us need it.

Either way, he failed as a leader.

On Saturday, America reacted to a moment in which armed racism was celebrated by members of the KKK, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists, who sought a confrontation to help them achieve high status among the far right. The ugliness of the rally – which included crowds of young white men carrying torches, an air of menace, and the offering of the Nazi salute — should make our president think about how not just to defuse the situation, but how to blunt this from becoming a wave of similar protests across the nation.

Trump’s remarks on Saturday said in essence, “All lives matter”. By Monday, when most of America thought that what he said was far less than the situation required, he gave a terse speech saying:

Racism is evil…Those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

There was no emotion or believability behind it, he said what he was told needed to be said, not what he believed. Where was Trump’s sympathy for Jews, African-Americans, Muslims and others that these white-right protesters savaged?

And where was his leadership? Richard Neustadt wrote “Presidential Power” in 1960, a definitive book for its time. Wrongo read it as a freshman in college. Here is a quote:

The president’s primary power is to persuade and bargain, not to command. When a president has to resort to commanding people, he is showing weakness. Commands only work in very special circumstances. The essence of a President’s persuasive task is to convince…that what the White House wants of them is what they ought to do for their sake…

The power to persuade is perhaps the most important tool a president has. Power in our government is dispersed, so the president must bargain and persuade others that what he knows is in their best interest, and coach them to move in the right direction. Do you see Trump doing that?

Dr. Christine Porath of Georgetown thinks that “warmth” is the most important trait for a leader to have:

Warmth is the primary characteristic that people judge you by, and they make that judgment first…Can I trust you? If you seem warm, then that’s great…Leading with warmth, for leaders, has shown to be helpful. It’s a way to connect with people and again they’re more likely to work harder for you and perform better.

Do you see any warmth in Trump? Any empathy? It isn’t there.

Neustadt agrees. He calls how the public views the president, “public prestige”. Even though the public has no direct association to policymaking, the public’s view of the president affects how legislation moves through the Congress and into law. Neustadt also says that a president should think and act prospectively, so decisions he makes today aid his ability to persuade tomorrow.

Trump’s opinion polls are in the dumpster. A very small core of Americans find him believable.

Scott Adams the Dilbert guy, has said that Trump is a master persuader, and that he won the election because of his mad persuasion skills. But, those skills, which did seem to exist in the 2016 primaries and general election, have deserted Der Trump, and have been replaced by continuing Twitter attacks on a growing list of institutions, groups of people, and individuals.

Charlottesville was a protest by those who define themselves not just by who they are, but by who they hate. And they also define themselves as Trump supporters. There were shouts of “Heil Trump” on Friday night. They see no benefit in finding commonality with a diverse America, but pointedly, thrive off of hating our differences.

These people are content to blame “The Others” for their lot in life, and Trump persuades mostly by telling us what he hates, rather than what he likes.

In the 1960s we had much larger, and more violent (though mostly unarmed) protests. Those protesters didn’t want to jet us back to the past, but to propel us forward to a better future.

The white nationalist agitators in Charlottesville want to return us to an era that cannot (and should not) be recreated. All in the name of making America “great again.”

And they back Trump, a charlatan who pretends to lead.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Tag: Racism in America

Saturday Soother, July 3, 2020

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 14, 2020

Monday Wake Up Call – June 8, 2020

Monday Wake Up Call – Wreck It Ralph Edition, February 4, 2019

Monday Wake Up Call – MLK Jr. Edition, January 21, 2019

Monday Wake Up Call – October 29, 2018

Trump Can’t Lead