To Fulfill These Rights

This week's topic in Legal Justice Seminar is Critical Race Theory, a fascinating field that I feel like I brushed up against during my work at Georgetown, but never quite got there.

Anyway, during my reflection and discussion of the readings, I thought of Lyndon Johnson's quote about affirmative action: 

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Then, I remembered that it was part of a larger speech about equal opportunity and racial equality given at the Howard University Class of 1965's commencement.  Check out Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge for a great treatment of the machinations that led to the speech, but definitely check out the full text of the LBJ speech, titled "To Fulfill These Rights," here.

Always an important topic to consider, but particularly timely, given the premature talk of "post-racialism" after Obama's election.  Just how far have we come since 1965? Looking at some of the statistics LBJ cites, it appears that progress has been uneven.

By no means is that meant to diminish Obama's accomplishments; rather, understanding the continued struggle for equal opportunity and equal access among people of color today gives it a much more meaningful context than the initial, utopian treatment many media outlets have tended toward.

The work continues.

KKKlassy

As seen on the link blog to the left, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan:

Great to see racism alive and well in California.   In Civ IV, I remember reading about how the John Birch Society morphed into more "respectable" forms during the mid-1960s, especially in Orange County, CA.   Apparently, the Golden State is trying its best to uphold that tradition.

Fighting Racism

And I mean fighting it.  This (via Cogitamus, now on many other blogs) has been on my shared reader, but it needs to be main-paged.  Take the 7 minutes or so to watch this thing in its entirety.  To comment would be superfluous.  

As the old union chant goes: the people, united, will never be defeated.  This gentleman walks the walk.

Time Magazine!

Wow.  Time Magazine (or, in this case, Time's political blog, Swampland) keeps the heat on the racist undertones that John McCain continues to bring into the presidential campaign.  Given that Obama will be accused of playing "the race card" ("playing the race card" is the new "racist") if his campaign even suggests that this ad is doing the work that it doing, it's good to see that the media, at least in one small corner of the internet, is doing its job proactively.

 

"Racism's still alive, they just be concealing it"

-Kanye West

This article by Michael Grunwald at Time hits the nail on the head.  The next time you hear a friend or acquaintance ranting and raving about how "Obama needs to get angrier" or "Obama needs to show some fire," point them in the direction of this article (if only because my thesis is a bit long for a quick read...) so they understand the perils of "getting angry."  I'll expand upon this at some point, but for now, circulate this article.

Then, encourage them to channel their frustration into positive action.  Barack is going to win this election yet, but it's going to require all of us to get involved.  Phonebank.  Donate.  Canvass. Send an email to your friends working on the campaign.  Write a letter to the editor.  Register friends and family to vote.  Nothing that I just described is difficult to do, but yet each of them is essential to getting the Obamas to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.