post-racial society – monoblogue

‘Civil Rights Day’ and the state of civility

First of all, the reason I titled this post as I did is that I think this holiday should be known as ‘Civil Rights Day.’ It rarely falls on the actual birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and given the government’s love of three-day weekends perhaps a name change is in order. For example, we rarely celebrate Washington’s Birthday on its actual date and to most it’s truncated into President’s Day.

While today Dr. King is being eulogized once again in a number of ways, perhaps this is a good time to reflect on the discourse of the civil rights era; a decade which roughly spanned from the mid-1950’s to the mid-1960’s. I was born at the very tail end of the decade, so I won’t claim that I marched in Selma or anything like that. From what I understand about the time, though, there was some seriously heated political rhetoric and on a few occasions this boiled over into violence.

Obviously we’ve come a long way since then, with the election of Barack Obama supposedly the trigger for a ‘post-racial’ society. Yet TEA Partiers like myself are tarred with the moniker of ‘racist’ by simply questioning the wisdom of Obama’s policies and plans. By extension, yes, we are questioning the content of Obama’s character but we are accused of basing our opposition on the amount of pigment in Obama’s skin.

To give another example, ask a black Republican how many times he or she is called an “Oreo” or an “Uncle Tom.”

All this call for ‘civility’ comes in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and many others in Tuscon, a shooting where six victims died. It also comes after lefties got their weekend exercise jumping to conclusions about how shooter Jared Loughner simply had to be a TEA Party regular who got his marching orders from Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and obeyed the target symbols on the internet for Giffords’ Congressional district. Yet once evidence came out that he was a political agnostic who was, if anything, left of center – ::: sound of crickets chirping ::: .

Assuming most of you have read this blog a few times, it’s likely you know that I reside well right of center on the political scale, and had I lived in Arizona’s Eighth District I’d likely have voted for her Republican opponent in November. (In fact, Gabrielle Giffords won this election in a similar fashion to that which Frank Kratovil won our district in 2008 – via plurality, with a Libertarian candidate taking 3.9% of the Eighth District vote.)

It’s also known that I covered the July 2009 event here in Salisbury where Frank Kratovil was hung in effigy. Certainly I believe in First Amendment rights, as one might suspect I would being a member of the ‘pajamas media.’ But as I said at the time:

Let me say straight away that I wouldn’t have recommended the noose and effigy of Frank Kratovil. The “no Kratovil in 2010″ (sign) would have been effective enough.

But don’t forget that the local lefties decided to intrude upon an AFP event just a few months ago, with the intent being to disrupt the proceedings and embarass the eventual winning candidate. Admittedly, a chicken suit is less threatening than a noose but neither rise to the level of actual bloodshed.

The point is that my criticism of Kratovil would have likely been similar to that of Giffords had I lived in her district, and I wouldn’t have been shy in sharing it. But I would have been just as horrified about Loughner’s actions.

(In fact, I have a separate article I submitted to Pajamas Media about another effect the Giffords shooting may have on political discourse, with a somewhat different angle than I present here. It may be on there as soon as tomorrow.)

Some say that the political tone we are saddled with these days, with its superheated rhetoric, can be toned down on both sides. But had Martin Luther King, Jr. been assassinated in 2011 instead of 1968, we likely still would have had the scattered rioting which occurred in the wake of his death. Emotional reactions to the death of popular leaders seldom change but are manifested in different ways.

Like it or not, part of the price of living in a free society as we do is having to put up with these arguments. Normally they are settled by the ballot, though, and it’s telling that it took someone with a mental illness to settle their differences with a bullet. Fortunately, our society still prefers the former solution despite the best efforts of some to argue otherwise.

Cummings on Tea Party Republicans

In a Facebook posting, Rep. Elijah Cummings wrote:

“Just like their desire to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, Tea Party Republicans want to wind the clock back across the board on our progress.”

Of course, when I replied and pressed for examples the Congressman was silent.

It looks like Cummings has become the good little soldier in two Democratic campaigns – one to equate the Republican Party with the TEA Party movement and the other to stir up the undertone of racism that has pitted groups like the NAACP against pro-liberty groups who expound the benefits of limited government.

(continued on my Examiner.com page…)

Broadening the conversation

With his win last month in Kentucky’s Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by the retiring Senator Jim Bunning, Rand Paul termed it a victory for the Tea Party movement. In the May 18 election Paul trounced “establishment” candidate Trey Grayson by a 59% – 35% count, stunning observers with his margin of victory over a candidate backed by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, among others.

For becoming the new darling of the conservative movement, the younger Paul – son of two-time Presidential candidate and libertarian hero Rep. Ron Paul – immediately became the target of the progressives who inhabit the mainstream media. Just as Sarah Palin was bushwhacked by interviews she did with network news personalities Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson during the 2008 campaign, Paul stepped in it just days after winning the primary election with an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” which led to Rachel Maddow browbeating him on her MSNBC show. The line of questioning regarded Paul’s view on civil rights and laws passed a half-century ago.

Obviously the intent of this cross-examination was to play into the media’s template of Tea Partiers as racist hicks far outside the mainstream. You wouldn’t catch those journalists asking a Democrat about his party’s historical opposition to those same civil rights advances dating back to the Civil War, but when they get the opportunity to score points against a rising star of the conservative movement they’re sure to take them.

Perhaps, though, the time has come to make civil rights an issue and ask about the progress we’ve truly made toward a colorblind society. After all, once we elected a President with a multi-racial background it was thought the issue would fade away into a post-racial era – apparently it hasn’t yet sunk in with the media who asked these questions of the Kentucky victor.

Rand Paul brings up a good point about the status of civil rights in America. While the topic of race was the shovel used to try and bury the newly-minted candidate, we could ask the question about a number of other forms of discrimination as well.

One example is the city of Kinston, North Carolina. In 2008 the voters there overwhelmingly supported a change in their municipal elections from partisan to nonpartisan, but they were overruled by the Justice Department based on the Voting Rights Act. Apparently the minority community (which is actually a majority in Kinston) wouldn’t know to vote for the proper candidates if they didn’t have a “D” by their name, according to DOJ logic.

Laws can and do outlive their usefulness. In truth, a business which didn’t provide accommodations for or cater to a portion of their potential clientele would likely find itself closing its doors in short order. As a whole, society is growing more and more tolerant so the prospect of segregated lunch counters is fading into the dustbin of history regardless of whether a law prohibiting the practice exists on the books.

It’s only those who continue to survive on the division of society by race, class, and gender who try to perpetuate the need for outmoded legislation designed to promote a particular party by presenting a facade of tolerance while denying colorblind equality in practice. He may not have made the point in the most eloquent way, but Rand Paul is correct to encourage a hard look at whether equality is better promoted without laws originally designed to keep us equal but evolving into making certain citizens more equal than others.

Michael Swartz used to practice architecture but now is a Maryland-based freelance writer and blogger whose work can be found in a number of outlets, including Liberty Features Syndicate. This cleared the LFS wire on May 26.