I'm going to give an academic presentation on the Sharpton campaign at the American Political Science Association's annual conference in Illy. I've already gotten a pissed off version written up, but I think I'm going to do an Issue Watch. Report how long it takes for Sharpton to actually put up issues on his website.
So I checked today...found out that I've been looking in the wrong place. Sharpton has a website for his exploratory committee...then one for the National Action Network. So I take a deep breath, hoping I'm wrong...
Nope. Not a single issue paper.
Know who else doesn't have one? If you guessed Carol Mosely Braun you'd be right. As of 5.25.03 at 1:48am they don't have policies the first. At least with Lieberman (whoa....is he SURE he isn't just PASSING as a democrat?!?), Edwards and the others you know exactly where they stand. And as far as explicit policies dealing with race are concerned most of them stand pretty far away. Hell, when it comes to policies dealing with progressive issues in GENERAL they are pretty centrist. But at least you know where they are, know what focus groups they are fighting for.
With Sharpton...and now Mosely Braun...it certainly appears as if they're just running on melanin fumes. And while I can't speak for Mosely Braun, I KNOW Sharpton's got political scientists working with him.
To beat a dying horse, to run as if one is the sole candidate of "the black community" and not have a policy platform basically assumes that black people vote for candidates based on how they speak rather than what programs they support. On what color their skin is rather than the content of their platform. I have to laugh to keep from crying. This is awful.
I haven't introduced myself formally. My name is Lester Kenyatta Spence. I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science and African Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
I am not an Old School Republican (would've voted for Nader had I been able to register in Missouri in time).
But, like Bowen, I believe that the Republican political enterprise is worth saving from itself, for the larger goal of building a more progressive union. The term "Sankofa" refers to the act of looking backwards in order to go forwards. Looking back to the origins of the Republican Party, what is worth reclaiming? I'd argue that the attempt to use the resources of the state to build wealth and independence is a worthwhile one. Particularly when the goal is to build wealth and independence among the poor and the enslaved.
Thinking forward from looking backward...the current Republican platform against welfare is clear. Welfare builds dependency, destroys families, and removes the communal ties that bind. Fair enough. The problem is that the current Republican platform replaces it with nothing more than platitudes and church donations.
To paraphrase Adolph Reed, only a fool would suggest that NASA build its space program using bake sales. So why would ANYONE suggest that we can replace the largesse of the government with individual initiatives run by churches?
So what do we replace welfare with? How about IDAs? How about a program that gives low income men and women the ability to save money? This can take any number of shapes. Just two ideas off of the top of the head: a tax credit for money put away for entrepreneurial activities...a matching program where the government matches funds put away for a first house purchase. When I think of Republican philosophy at its best--a hard feat, granted--I think of wealth, and I think of civic institutions. Programs that use government resources to build wealth among the poor build civic institutions and build wealth. No brainers...really.
I'll talk more about this in the future, because there is some interesting work being done at the GWB School of Social Work at Washington University.
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then the Republican party is the last refuge of white racists. It's important to know, however, that while desperate scoundrels get patriotic, not every patriot is a scoundrel. Likewise not every Republican is a racist. Nevertheless, I will assume the worst for the sake of argument, and that is that America is 15% racist and that every last one of them expresses their politics through the machinery of the Republican party. This only encourages my integration plans.
So why don't blackfolks integrate the Republican party? To my eyes there are three reasons. The first, and most important, is that they simply don't care. Insinuating oneself into party politics is not appealing to most people. In this blackfolks are just typical Americans who don't have time to wonk any policy, don't attend enough mixers and conventions and don't blog or otherwise soapbox their way into hearts and minds. Party politics is not a working class sport, it's not even a middle class sport. It's a chatting class sport (you know who you are), and like most Americans, blackfolks don't engage that much in chatting class activities. Especially not when there is so *much* on TV.
The second reason is moderately important. Blacks are politically opposed to the policies and practices of the Republican party. I won't belabor the point because I think we can all offer a halfway decent guess on what some of these policies and practices are, and since I don't have any statistics handy, I don't want to be on record as saying something incredibly stupid. (aside from the fact that I am hedging this conversation in the colloquial lower case.)
The third and least important, yet most significant reason is that to which I have alluded: the Republican party has a whites only sign over it, erected by all of its dumbass white racists. So what is a Negro to do when faced with a whites only sign? Stick with the other Negroes of course. Black men such as myself have different plans.
I should point out that in the era of Jim Crow, even whitefolks in the south could be shocked into a recognition that the evil done in their name (yes, Virginia, white racists are protecting *your* virginity. You are white aren't you?) was partially their fault. I haven't read any of Shelby Steele’s recent screeds but rest assured that he remains popular because his paying audience are whitefolks who wish to assuage themselves of the guilt imposed upon them by their evil cousins. The answer is rather simple: defect. Then those like Matt Hale will have nobody to defend. But whitefolks are fat, lazy, intellectually sloppy Americans just like the rest of us. (well not me of course). And, well, it's nice being white. Nice whitefolks don't like the Klan but they figure they can keep the Klan out of their neighborhood without inviting blackfolks in. Nice whitefolks also don't assume that their neighbors are closet klanners. Nice whitefolks don't ask, racist whitefolks don't tell. The same holds true for nice Republicans.
As defenders of all that is sacred in the sausage-making business of lawmaking and campaign fundraising, party bosses and top dawg congresscritters have developed strong stomachs. Since America is a nice place full of nice people, it comes as no surprise that when somebody steps over some line, the bosses make nice. So it came as no surprise to me that Trent Lott’s cross-in-mouth comments were defended at the outset. There are a lot of ugly things out there for which there is no zero-tolerance policy. The Republicans know they have a lily white suburb, but if one of their neighbors is an actual racist, it's not nice, but to Republicans it can't be tragic. Racist votes count as much as any other kind, and who is going to go through all the trouble to prove this 'racism', hmm? The realpolitik of political racism is that the pain is already priced out of the polls for the Republicans and they're all sleeping just fine.
Strong stomachs and those cute little sleeping blindfolds make for gaffes of biblical proportions which we witness from time to time. Occasionally somebody gets hurt, but it's generally somebody's feelings. These hurt feelings, unfortunately, tend to be the leading indicators of black unwillingness to integrate. And while it's true that they don't make blackfolks as robust as they used to and we're all getting soft now that we don't have to battle the Klan so often, there are still a good number who are hard as nails.
It may come as a surprise to the lay reader that we in the Old School have a strong sense of noblesse oblige, despite the fact that we may not spell it properly. Sue me, I’m writing at quarter to two in the morning, what are you doing? This willingness to do battle marks us among humanity's better examples if you ask me. So there is something of a selfless sense of sacrifice involved here, and that's about as aggrandizing as I’m going to get about it.
Any questions?
This mighty molecule is getting a lot of press lately. Lawyers are salivating and Google ads are beginning to proliferate. The EPA is collecting studies and asking for a review by the National Academy of Sciences. The stakes are very large. Bob Krieger says much of the alarm is 'alarmist'. He says, essentially, that microgram levels of the contaminant passing through the human body are scarcely enough to raise the attention of toxicologists. So are we talking about micrograms?
Larry Ladd has some useful information:
In 2002 the US EPA submitted a proposed reference dose of 1 part-per-billion (ppb) for perchlorate in drinking water. This was based on perceived changes in infant rat brain structure at a dose equivalent to 300 ppb for a 150 pound human adult or as low as 45 ppb for a bottle-fed infant. Increased skin irritability in mice ears, suggesting some sort of immune system effect, was found at a dose about four times higher.Recent research at Texas Tech suggest that tadpoles exposed to as little as 5 ppb perchlorate are more likely to not properly develop fore-legs. Amphibian metamorphisis is notoriously sensitive to thyroid hormone disruption. Regulators are waiting for additional research to confirm these surprising results. The majority of reviewers in an external peer review this year seemed to think a reference dose in the 3 to 10 ppb range was justified by the evidence, and a minority of the reviewers thought the standard should allow higher concentrations.
Current standards in various states reflect this range:
For further information, contact the scientists conducting the government investigation of environmental perchlorate at http://www.clu-in.org/studio/perchlorate_060402/
- A Superfund site in Massachusetts currently requires well shutdown at 1.5 ppb perchlorate, but wells are voluntarily being shutdown and replaced at 0.4 ppb.
- Superfund sites in California require shutdown at 4 ppb; state regulators in California and Texas also recommend public notification and regulatory investigation of perchlorate in any drinking water source containing 4 ppb.
- Arizona has a 14 ppb standard, while Nevada and New York enforce 18 ppb standards.
Some folks here in California are now afraid of lettuce. In that story we have 'detectable levels'.
A bit more sensible is this document. It's interesting to note that going in, potential lawsuit respondants are listed front and center.
What seems reasonable to me is for someone to quickly demonstrate how tapwater can be reduced to the 4ppm standard and make such methods readily available. While I was impressed by Krieger's audio presentation and his comparison of how perclorate is transient in the body like iodide, this kind of information is not linked. It may be that uptake of perchlorate into the thyroid can be blocked as radioactive iodine is with potassium iodide. And while everybody doesn't know that, there are clearly commercially available prophylactics. Making such alternatives available, if they can be shown viable is vastly preferable to the screaming litigation that looks almost inevitable from here.
We'll keep an eye open.