Author: mopress

Rally the

Mob!
The One Thing Bush Does Best

By Greg Moses
Texas Civil Rights

Review
http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke

Published at Counterpunch
And The Fort Worth Star-

Telegram

Stirring a crowd is one thing. Mob politics is another. Today with his

announcement that he intends to pass a Constitutional Amendment against gay and lesbian marriage,

President Bush reminds us what a mob monger he is. “I’m a uniter, not a divider,” promised

candidate George W. during the election of 2000, but his most effective political initiatives reveal

that his most sinister political talent is to rally us against them, whoever they

are.

That is why so few politicians voted against the Patriot Acts or the wars. When

Bush brought these issues to the table, he did so with his singular genius for relegating the

opposition into an intolerable world apart.

Now he attempts to do the same thing with

gay and lesbian marriage. “If you dare to vote against this prohibition you will be counted among the

forces of darkness, and we will bury your political future.” That is the tone that Bush is able to

strike, even if he never quite puts it that way. He has a talent for raising a mob with code words

that mask naked power with righteousness.

The unforgiving tone of Bush leadership is an

eerie echo of the religious fundamentalism that he purports to oppose in global politics. Even his

most conservative allies, such as James K. Glassman, of the American Enterprise Institute, recognize

that today’s “defense of marriage” initiative is a political invitation to energize the fundamentalists

at home.

Faith-based agitation in Massachusetts, for instance, has helped to shift

public opinion ten points in the direction of intolerance, reports Frank Philips of the Boston Globe.

And this is Catholic, northern fundamentalism, not Protestant southern. So you ain’t seen nothin’

yet.

The Boston Globe story gives us another disturbing detail by reporting that the

popular mood in this case demands majority rule rather than court consideration when it comes to these

crucial issues of civil rights. But appeals to majority rule have usually been bad news in the history

of civil rights.

Beginning with the Bill of Rights, and going all the way up to the

“Defense of Congressional Pay” (Amendment Number 27), Constitutional Amendments have been put in place

to protect the relatively powerless against the state and majority rule. In the case of the

Congressional Pay amendment, two consecutive votes of Congress are demanded, and why? Because when you

get leaders like George Bush in office, mob fervor is liable to sweep reason away.

We

might demand for the American people the same protection the Congress has arranged for itself. Two

consecutive votes of Congress, with an election intervening.

Only once has a

Constitutional amendment been passed by a majority in order to put a minority “in its place.” That was

the mis-guided Prohibition amendment, the only one to be repealed.

With the call for a

Constitutional amendment to ban gay and lesbian marriage, President Bush summons a new American mob,

panders to fundamentalism, and reverses the tradition of constitutional amendments, initiated by the

Bill of Rights. George Bush is a political animal with his back against the wall. And he has made us

in his image, into a nation of claws and teeth.

via email from Asst. Prof. of English at Texas A&M, Elias Dominguez-

Barajas.

The recent Harvard study describing the resegration of U.S. schools has been

mentioned in several different contexts, and I’m sure that many … have not only heard of it but have

actually perused the full report. Despite the latter, I considered it pertinent to pass the information

along in case somebody who hasn’t heard of it wants the actual source for research purposes or

personal information.

[More summary below. Get the link at “Web Links” Module (the

menu at the upper left) under “National Resources.]

Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee began to

circulate their preliminary findings several years ago (starting circa 1997). Those findings have been

confirmed
in their final report, which includes the following points among

others:

There has been a substantial slippage toward segregation in most of the states

that were highly desegregated in 1991. The most integrated state
for African Americans in 2001 is

Kentucky. The most desegregated states for Latinos are in the Northwest.

However, in

some states with very low black
populations, school segregation is soaring as desegregation efforts

are abandoned.

American public schools are now only 60 percent white nationwide and

nearly one fourth of U.S. students are in states with a majority of nonwhite
students. However,

except in the South and Southwest, most white students have little contact with minority

students.

Asians, in contrast, are the most integrated and by far the most likely to

attend multiracial schools with a significant presence of three or more racial groups. Asian students

are in schools with the smallest
concentration of their own racial group.

The vast

majority of intensely segregated minority schools face conditions of concentrated poverty, which are

powerfully related to unequal educational
opportunity. Students in segregated minority schools face

conditions that students in segregated white schools seldom experience.

Latinos confront

very serious levels of segregation by race and poverty, and non-English speaking Latinos tend to be

segregated in schools with each other. The data show no substantial gains in segregated education for

Latinos even during the civil rights era. The increase in Latino segregation is particularly notable in

the West.

Feb. 2004

“We Don’t Want to Integrate!”

That was the outcry

made by 4,000 students in 1963 when Texas A&M President, General Earl Rudder, convened a campus forum

to discuss plans to admit women. According to the Brazos Genealogical Society online, “Rudder’s

concluding remarks are drowned out by a chorus of boos.”
Even today at the College Station

campus, if 4,000 people are shouting together about something, it will not be a good day for

diversity.

How do we approach these persistent and discouraging dynamics? During Black

History Month, we are going to try to keep our scholarly wits. There are crucial questions to

answer.

For instance, we have yet to locate a document that supports the Texas A&M

announcement to extend the vestiges of Hopwood. We tried looking in the Regents’ agenda packet, but

there was absolutely no mention of race or affirmative action there.

Where is the

documentary trail that leads to the decision to uphold the vestiges of Hopwood and why was it made? It

is remarkable that the Regents didn’t put a single word in writing.

Professor Marco

Portales reports that A&M President Robert Gates met with “minority” faculty on Dec. 18, two weeks

after the announcement was made. So who did he meet with before?

As we continue to

collect materials and to think about the possibilities of winning a civil rights victory, we cannot

forget that we live in a state rich with civil rights intelligence. James Farmer, Sr., taught at Sam

Huston College in Austin (now Huston-Tillotson) and Wiley College in Marshall. He raised up a son,

alright, who was not a Young Conservative.

And speaking of Wiley College, we marvel at

the golden age of scholars who would today still be considered heroic for their intellectual

courage.

Oliver Cromwell Cox, for instance, who taught at Wiley College, wrote a durable

analysis of Caste, Class, and Race. For him, the anti-integration fervor of young people was not to be

explained by any innate tendencies to wickedness. These attitudes have to be cultivated. And behind

that cultivation, Cox looked for interests served.

So how do we understand the

conditions that cultivate such dreadful images as jungle parties, affirmative action bake sales, and

open protests against the arrival of a Vice President for Diversity?

As we continue to

sift for documentary evidence, we will also continue to read our Black History and reflect on the Texas

struggles that have brought us this far.

And we will not apologize for following quite a

different path of scholarship than what is being pursued by Young Conservatives these days, who are the

intellectual heirs of a staunch tradition to be sure. In the end, will the elite leaders of the state

do what Cox predicted they would do–cultivate neo-fascist youth–or will they stand up to the boos?

Mark your calendars for March 11, when the Univ. of Texas Regents have scheduled a

special meeting during Spring Break whose agenda has yet to be announced.

Greg

Moses
Site Editor

‘Defeat ignorance, support diversity’
Hundreds of students, faculty and

staff
attend rally to promote diversity
By Anthony Woolstrum
Published: Thursday,

February 19, 2004
—–Caption—–
Michael Jackson (left), class of 1988, and Thomas

Spellman, class of 1986, hold hands in front of the Academic Building in support of the march Wednesday

afternoon. The march through campus was organized by the members of the Faculty Committed to an

Inclusive Campus and included a rally at Rudder Fountain. (Photo by John C. Livas / The

Battalion) “Aggies are diverse; we are diverse.”

This statement and others were

chanted Wednesday afternoon as hundreds of Texas A&M faculty, staff, students and members of the Bryan

-College Station community gathered for a rally sponsored by the Faculty Committed to an Inclusive

Campus (FCIC) to promote diversity on campus.

“We have to make sure that we represent

Texas A&M to the outside community the way we want to be represented,” said James Anderson, vice

president for diversity.