Saul Anuzis, one of the candidates for RNC chair, made the following comment on Twitter a couple weeks ago:

First woman in the U.S.Senate…Republican. First woman in the U.S. House…Republican. Same for African-Americans…GOP’s history strong.

He implies that because the first black and women representatives in both houses of Congress were Republicans, the GOP is somehow inoculated from criticism of their record on civil rights issues. This doesn’t come out of nowhere: Republicans make these kinds of statements because they feel the need to defend themselves.

First, if the facts Saul cites are the standard for a strong civil rights record, his argument doesn’t hold up today the way it may have historically. Let’s take a look at the balance in the 110th Congress: There are 42 black Democratic Representatives in the House vs. no black Republicans. 53 Democratic women Representatives in the House vs. 20 Republican women. While meaningful, the GOP having the “first” black or women representatives is no longer relevant to our modern political discourse.

Of course, the notion that the GOP, which absorbed the Dixiecrats, has a strong history on civil rights because of these “firsts” is absurd. The broader problem with Saul’s statement is that it reflects the GOP’s tendency co-opt progressive civil rights symbols for the purpose of justifying regressive policies.

Take Sarah Palin: by self-identifying as a feminist, invoking Hillary Clinton in her first campaign speeches, and as potentially the first woman Vice President of the United States, she adopted many of the symbols of women’s empowerment. Although she claimed the symbols of feminism, her actual purpose on the campaign trail was to reinforce existing gender roles. Culturally, she reinforced these existing gender norms by masking her ambition and “putting a skirt on,” as conservative commentators put it. In terms of public policy, she’s virulently anti-choice, opposes birth control and emergency contraception even in extreme cases, believes in abstinence-only education, and wouldn’t take a position on equal pay. She portrayed herself as a figure of women’s empowerment while undermining feminism as a movement.

Much like their attempt at subverting feminism in the 2008 campaign, conservatives use black politicians to advance regressive policies on civil rights issues. Ken Blackwell pushed to disenfranchise minorities as Secretary of State of the most critical swing state in 2004. Ward Connerly is the most prominent figurehead of the anti-affirmative action movement. As someone who supports policies that will lead to discrimination in the guise of advancing equality, he’s one of the best examples of appropriating the symbolism of civil rights for the purpose of undermining them. But as long as the GOP continues to blame black families for the financial crisis, engage in race baiting, oppose legislation to promote equality like affirmative action, actively antagonize the black community with discriminatory voter ID laws, and blame the victims of Katrina, these tactics shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Saul Anuzis’ comment neatly fits into this pattern — a superficial acknowledgment of progress that hides, and is even meant to legitimize, a much more disturbing value system. The next time you see the GOP using the symbols or language of civil rights, remember that they’re selling something very different than what they claim.

(Excerpts from a sermon preached at Tirzah Presbyterian Church in York, SC on October 26, 2008)

Text: Colossians 3:8-17

On both sides of the political spectrum, the anger and hate is no longer confined to a lunatic fringe.  It’s gotten into the mainstream - or, should I say - it’s reached all the way to Main Street.  In this tense and hostile national climate, let us all pray that nothing violent or tragic happens before Election Day finally arrives.

One thing that would help prevent this crisis from bubbling over is if the nation could take to heart Paul’s words from the third chapter of Colossians: “Now you must get rid of all such things - anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new.”

When Paul wrote these words, he was trying to get the church of the Colossians to overcome their many divisions.  First, this early church was made up of people from different racial backgrounds - those of a Jewish background and those who were not (called Greeks or Gentiles).  These racial divisions went back centuries and formed the backbone of the social hierarchy in ancient Israel.  There was a lot of anger and distrust between the two groups as they tried to form one church body together…

… We, too, are struggling with racial unity at this time of national election.  There have been hateful words shouted out at rallies, offensive messages circulated on the Internet, and questionable flyers mailed out to target demographics.  The have been voter registration and voter suppression scandals based on race.  There has been the expectation in some quarters that people should automatically vote for the candidate of their own race.  And there has even been talk that somehow Obama is not really black, or at least is not black enough.

And then there’s what has been the most disturbing example of racism to me, even though it has not been talked about much - and that’s the strong anti-Arab sentiment that has emerged.  You might recall that a woman at one of McCain’s rallies accused Obama of being an Arab.  To his credit, McCain did correct her and say, “No ma’am, he’s not an Arab.”  But then he went on to say, “He’s a decent and honorable man.”

As if an Arab person cannot be decent and honorable.  As if calling someone an Arab is about the worst thing you could call someone.  How would an Arab-American - someone who is just as much an American as any of us are - feel if they heard this exchange?  What if one of the candidates had said the same thing about a different group of people, such as “No m’am, he’s not Jewish.  He’s a decent and honorable man.”  That would be the end of the campaign right there for that candidate…

… Before you start thinking that I’m picking on just McCain here, let me point out that Obama and the media have been just as complicit in this very subtle but very dangerous form of racism that has made Arab-Americans feared and despised in their own country.  For this and for all of the other reasons, we can know without a doubt that racism is alive and well in the United States, and we can know that it is still causing a lot of anger and distrust…

… So I really do wish that our entire nation could take Paul’s words to heart - especially this key verse when he says, “There is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, slave or free, male or female, Republican or Democrat. ”  OK, I added that last part.  It wasn’t on Paul’s original list.  But I don’t think that he wouldn’t mind me putting it there, because our political affiliations seem to be dividing us more than anything else these days…

… Agreeing to disagree has become a thing of the past.  Respecting your opponent has become a thing of the past.  Seeing the value in the other side’s point of view has become a thing of the past.  And knowing the difference between passion for your side and hatred for the other side has become a thing of the past.

And because all of these things seem to be falling by the wayside; and because the anger and distrust has increased to the point of being frightening; we are called on more than ever to reflect the virtues that Paul lists in Colossians 3 - virtues that, if enough people on both sides followed, would return our electoral process and our nation as a whole to the respect and the civility I am told once existed.

For Paul says, “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other.”  May a sense of peace and humility come to our nation during these next ten days, and may it carry forward into the time of healing and forgiveness that is to come.

Democratic Representative Dan Boren of Oklahoma has announced that he will not endorse Barack Obama for President, while he will vote for Barack Obama in his role as delegate to the Democratic National Convention. The reason? Obama is “the most liberal Senator in Congress.” Boren did endorse Hillary Clinton during the primary process, but somehow Obama doesn’t pass his own personal litmus test. What Boren does not talk about are issues — or in fact any issue — that makes Hillary Clinton a candidate he can endorse, but that makes it impossible for him to do the same for Obama. Instead he just uses the tired, old, Republican talking point, that Obama is “too liberal” without actually backing that up with any substance.

So which differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama caused Boren to endorse her in the primary, but refuse to endorse him in the general election?

Is it the fact that Hillary Clinton voted to give the authorization for the President to invade Iraq, but Obama had come out against that move? I wonder if Boren still believes that the US should have gone to war against Iraq — but in any case, both Clinton and Obama had campaign positions that the troops should be brought home, so that can’t be it.

Maybe the issue is guns — Oklahoma is a big Second Amendment state. But the only time Obama and Clinton differed on a gun issue was when there was a vote for an amendment to stop the confiscation of legally-owned guns during natural disasters — but Obama took the pro-Second Amendment position of preventing confiscations while Clinton voted to keep those confiscations legal. So that can’t be Boren’s problem with “liberal” Obama.

Another difference in the way they voted was when Obama actually voted to allow a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, to still practice not-for-profit medicine while being a Senator. So Obama took the free-enterprise position and Clinton took the more restrictive position — but I doubt that Boren would have voted against allowing Coburn to be a pro-bono physician so that doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Maybe it is their health care plans. But Clinton’s health care plan is considered larger with greater government involvement than Obama’s plan, so if you had to label them, Clinton’s plan would be described as the more liberal proposal.

So I would like someone to ask Congressman Boren what are these liberal votes that Obama made in which Hillary Clinton took the opposite position? What is so egregious exactly about an Obama candidacy?

An essential component of effective leadership is the ability to step outside of your own viewpoint, if only momentarily, to better understand the position of another. This is what is referred to as being “open-minded.” Of course, being open-minded doesn’t mean that you have to adopt the view of the other, but you need to be able to understand the roots of that other party’s actions and views.

An anti-example of this open-mindedness is found in the reaction of many U.S. citizens’ to suicide bombers. Rather than try to understand the life circumstances of these desperate individuals — exploring the role poverty, political repression and foreign intervention played in their decisions– closed-minded individuals attribute it to a religion and culture which they do not understand, and do not attempt to understand. Dismissive terms like “satanic,” “barbaric” and “bloodthirsty” are attached to Islam and that, for many people, is explanation enough; suicide bombers = evil believers in an evil ideology.

That sort of thinking, most often displayed by the right in U.S. politics, extends beyond the “War on Terror,” and pervades issues both domestic and international. In its zeal to defend America against its “enemies,” both internal and external, it latches onto the quickest, easiest interpretation. A recent comment made by Harvard Law alumnus and model U.S. citizen Michelle Obama, and the subsequent reaction to it, offers a domestic example of this closed-minded approach, substituting political opportunism and jingoism for rational thinking.

The comment from Michelle: “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

As a teenager, my experiences with the war on drugs taught me that politics wasn’t just about voting. Politics is a struggle to control and define your life and the life of your community. That experience, moreover - the experience of daily politics - is different for everyone depending on how their race and class affects their access to power and privilege.

I suppose I could have told you that from a fairly early age. But at the age of nineteen, Dead Prez’s album Let’s Get Free brought the lesson home to me with a renewed urgency.

Never before had I experienced a musical world so full of political anger and passion. Nor had I ever felt so keenly that for some people, I as an individual was part of the white power structure: a cracker, in Dead Prez’s eyes. For these neo-Marxist activists, America split along both racial and class lines, and it seemed I was not on their side.

Who shot Biggie Smalls? If we don’t get them, they gon get us all/

I’m down for runnin up on them crackers in they city hall…

The word cracker, which they use frequently throughout the album and which seems sometimes to include all white people in its scope, was somewhat of a shock to my ears. For once, I was on the other end of a stereotype, trying to make out how I felt about it.

Now, for me cracker does not parallel the n-word in intensity or offensiveness. It’s not the first thing I’d choose to be called, but it doesn’t automatically drive me away from the conversation either. And I came to see why someone whose experiences in dealing with the white power structure had been entirely negative would choose a word like that to convey their emotions. So I listened to Dead Prez, obsessively, despite my discomfort with some of their language. And working through that discomfort turned out to be an invaluable stage in my political development.

This season’s neck-and-neck primaries remind us that tight elections rarely come down to how people vote, but rather, which people vote. Yet sadly, amid the historic popularity of the nation’s first serious black presidential candidate, observers are already reporting instances of minority-targeted voter suppression throughout the country.

Last month, the NY Times reported that Indiana’s strict voter identification law, requiring state-issued photo ID in order to vote, is being challenged at the Supreme Court:

Opponents of the law, most of them Democrats, view voter identification requirements as a deterrent that disproportionately affects poor, minority and elderly voters, who more often than other people lack the required forms of identification and who also tend to back Democrats.

A 2007 study found that 13% of registered voters in Indiana lacked sufficient ID under the state’s law, highlighting what voter advocates have known for years: strict ID requirements deter voters, and voter suppression is an infinitely bigger problem than voter impersonation, the problem the laws claim to solve.

Nevertheless, over half the states in the country have proposed legislation to tighten ID requirements so they look more like Indiana’s. These efforts, nearly universally spearheaded by Republicans, are fervently backed by the Bush administration, which has also filed a brief with the Supreme Court encouraging it to uphold Indiana’s law.

This week, we want to know how you get your news. But first, last week’s results:

Last week, we asked you if you thought Obama’s race would play a role in the primary or general election. 50% of you said yes. While 21% weren’t sure, almost one third (29%) said Obama’s race would not play a role. Personally, it’s hard to tell. The media will certainly try to make it an issue, but whether that will really effect voters or not is an open question. Lately I’ve been of the mind that the media plays less of a role in determining people’s voting habits than we may think.

Speaking of the media, this week we want to know what your most trusted source for news and information is. Voting begins in the sidebar on the left.

With the stroke of a pen, Lyndon Johnson secured the African-American vote. When he quipped that by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the Democrats “lost the South for a generation,” he also knew that he won the hearts and minds of black Americans.

Indeed, he was right. Starting in the 1960s, African Americans have been overwhelmingly Democratic. And while the idea of the Republican South shows signs of crumbling as Democrats like Jim Webb get elected, African Americans still support Democrats by a 2-1 margin. While Johnson may have lost the South for a generation, he may have won the black vote for a longer period of time.

Tactically, Johnson’s endorsement of the Civil Rights movement was genius. It allowed Democrats to simultaneously win a coveted voter block and reaffirm that the Democratic party was the party of the people, as JFK once proclaimed:

“The Rights of Man”–the civil and economic rights essential to the human dignity of all men–are indeed our goal and our first principles. This is a Platform on which I can run with enthusiasm and conviction.

Johnson strengthened the Democratic brand while winning a ton of votes. And Democrats have a chance to do the same thing now with the Hispanic vote.

Much has been and will continue to be made about the importance of race and sex in this year’s Democratic primary—about the importance of “identity politics.” Given the makeup of the Democratic field, I guess that such talk, on some level, was and still is inevitable. But at which level it is that this discussion takes place, well, to my mind, that doesn’t need to be as predetermined.

Here’s my overarching point: That a large majority of African Americans exhibit an affinity for candidate Barack Obama, or that a majority of White women exhibit an affinity for candidate Hillary Clinton, is not exactly the same thing as and does not justify the assumption that African Americans overwhelmingly voted for Obama because he is African American, or White women by-and-large voted for Clinton because she is a White woman.

In honor of Black History Month and in light of the extraordinary role race may play in this years election, The Seminal will delve into issues of race and politics this month. From voter suppression and crime and punishment to identity politics in the ‘08 elections, we’ll be looking at these well-worn issues from new directions.

I’m sure there will be plenty of material in there to stir up discussion. Enjoy!