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First of all, a quick thank you to the new facebook readers here at the Texas Civil Rights Review. One nice thing about the software we use is the careful documentation we get about our readership. Which leads us to the next item…

Charles Kuffner, master of the Texas blog world, has posted some kind words about the Texas Civil Rights Review. Kuff was following work posted by blogger Racy Mind, who wrote:

The early heavy lifting on the Texas Elections Administration Management System (TEAM) project was best done by the Texas Civil Rights Review back in 2005. They followed this issue from way back, before IBM-Hart InterCivic even won the contract. I have put alot of time in reviewing this work, and I can only say ‘wow!’. An issue as important as this received minimal attention from the rest of the world, so I can only say that anybody who cares about the Texas democratic process should thank Greg Moses for what must have been a massive amount of work. A long list of links to this work is below. The vendor selection process as outlined by the Texas SOS is here.

Thanks again to facebook folks, Kuff, and Racy Mind. Having readers like you is the blog world equivalent of a merit raise.–gm

By Rep. David Price (D-NC)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6284)

Mr. Chairman, I rise to indicate that we will accept this [King amendment to cut $79,000 from the Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff], but I want to explain my reasoning, if I might, and explain it very carefully.

For 2 hours now we have sat in this Chamber and have heard Republican Members railing against the Bush administration. Member after Member after Member has risen in this Chamber to condemn Bush administration bureaucrats in unsparing terms, and not one voice on that side of the aisle has been raised in opposition, not one.

So, we are asking ourselves, how long are we going to defend a very carefully crafted bill that deals with the administration’s legitimate needs to administer its Department?

By Greg Moses

“I’ve got to show you something I’m proud of,” says Jay Johnson-Castro, pulling a stack of business cards from his pocket and dealing off the top. “The Border Ambassador,” says the card, with a neatly cropped photo of Jay walking, foot up, head down, hat brim filled with sunlight.

“Jane Chamberlain, a very, very frail Austinite made these cards for me. She’s one of the lady champions of this thing. That was a long-distance photograph that John Neck had taken when Teye joined me for the first day of the first Hutto walk four months ago.”

John Neck is the driver who usually accompanies these walks, protecting Jay’s back. But this weekend John is tending to a medical emergency in the family as Jay returns for a second walk from Austin. Over three days time, Jay will walk from the Capitol to the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant families. On Sunday evening the walk will end with a vigil until 8pm.

On Saturday morning Jay sits inside a cozy Austin cafe, sipping a cup of coffee before he drives to Manor for the walk of the day. An impatient wind from the NorthWest chills the faces of the very few who walk the avenue outside.

Last week, before launching his walk from the Capitol, Jay met with the staff of Austin Rep Eddie Rodriguez to get a status report on a House Concurrent Resolution (HCR 64) that would, “respectfully request the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reconsider all alternatives to the detention of immigrant and asylum-seeking families with children.” Rodriguez co-filed the resolution with Dallas Rep. Raphael Anchia on Feb. 5. The resolution was referred to the State Affairs Committee on Feb. 12 where it today still sits on the desk of chairman David Swinford (R-Amarillo).

In a widely reported move at the end of March, Swinford announced that he was going to take immigration off of the agenda at the statehouse, effectively killing about 30 bills, including HCR 64.

“Hopefully we elevated the awareness a little bit, however small, but at least it’s on record that these guys have sat there for two months, let babies be imprisoned, while they continue their cushy lives of authority. I find it kind of appalling.”

“And yet we have 19 representatives, 17 sponsoring and 2 co-authoring, but unfortunately most of them are Hispanic” (sponsors are: Alonzo, Bolton, Burnam, Castro, Escobar, Farrar, Garcia, Gonzalez-Toureilles, Hernandez, Herrero, Donna Howard, Martinez-Fischer, “Mando” Martinez, Rick Noriega, Olivo, Quintanilla, Veasey, and Villarreal). “Of the 17 who have signed on, 14 are Hispanic, which makes it look like a Latino deal, and it shouldn’t be a Latino deal.”

Does it say something about the white voters?

“The white voters I’m talking to are shocked.” At a music gig Friday night in South Austin, Jay met one woman who works with children who said she would try to show up on Sunday. Another woman who runs an international art gallery gave Jay her card and promised to forward information to her clients.

“They’re blown away. They say ‘yeah, I’ve heard about Hutto, that’s terrible.’ But my big thing is to try to figure out how do you get that ‘God, that’s terrible’ into some kind of action. ‘That’s really terrible, now let me get back to my enjoyable life, my routine, my every day stuff,’ you know? I have good friends who joined me on the first walk, but they say they don’t want to get too involved, because they have their lives to live, you know?” Jay laughs a little.

“I’m subjective at this point. I’m not even objective anymore. I’m just focused. So I think I’m like the converted smoker who says everyone ought to quit smoking. Now that I’ve become aware of the children, I think everyone ought to join in, but it isn’t going to happen.” Jay’s brown eyes reach across the table. “I think it should.”

“I had some good interviews. Sharon from SisterSpace interviewed me and that will be on the web. And then Pacifica radio. I had my second interview with them. They interviewed me the first time from Los Angeles when I did my Raymondville walk. This time a producer with Flashpoints called me the night before and asked me great, great questions. So we had that interview yesterday. And then the Spanish-language producers at Pacifica called me and interviewed me in Spanish about 45 minutes later.”

“On Thursday morning I was on a call-in show for a Spanish-language radio station in Phoenix, and the calls were lining up, and it was really neat, and I know it was a listened-to show, because I’ve hosted a radio talk show, and sometimes you get the calls and sometimes you don’t. There was just a long stream of call-ins.”

“There was only one that was kind of questioning. He was an an immigrant who became a citizen, got his green card. And he says this is really a great country, why do people say that it’s not? My response is, it is a great country, but we’re losing our greatness. There’s an element within the government that’s doing this. But anyway, everybody else was pretty well responsive.”

“Every time something like that happens tells me that maybe a few hundred, maybe a few thousand more people are hearing this message, and overall the response is the same. There are very few people who would defend this policy. And I’m not sure what gets people the most. When I tell them about the incarceration of children, they say, ‘oh really, wow, that’s terrible.’ Then I say it costs $7,000 per month and they say, ‘God, that’s gross!’ Is it because of the money? I think everybody believes it’s wrong, it’s immoral, but then it’s almost like they’ve become really sleazy when it’s for money.”

By Greg Moses

In its 1954 ruling against school segregation, the US Supreme Court made it the Constitutional business of the nation to care about the motivations of African American children.

Segregation, argued the court, was unfair to African American children, because the practice of separating blacks by law conveyed a sense that they were inferior to whites. And the sense of inferiority tended to damage a black child’s motivation to learn. On the basis of these particular considerations, the Court found that segregation was inherently unequal.

The wisdom of that ruling lies in its twin findings, that white superiority has effects worth fighting, and that a nation should be busy building institutions that encourage black children to learn, too.

De-segregation or integration was therefore prescribed by the Court as an antidote, because the larger effects of white superiority were deemed harmful to black children.

Fifty years later, if we wish to measure our progress by the criteria set forth in the text of the Brown decision; perhaps we should simply ask the broader questions. What have we done to counter the effects of white superiority and how have we re-organized our schools to serve the motivations of our African American children?

Has the black child today been liberated from the social effects of white superiority? Has the nation transformed its schools to uplift the black child’s motivational needs? I imagine several national responses to these questions, but I think that an honest report card would not place America’s efforts on the honor roll.

Overwhelmingly, I suspect these questions will mostly come as a surprise. You mean the Supreme Court was actually ruling against white superiority, in deference to a black child’s motivational needs? Not to “all children,” mind you, but to black children in particular, the Court was quite literally kneeling with sacred respect.

Where is that bronze statue? The Supreme Court Justice, in flowing robes kneeling to care, calling to black children, overtly, not embarrassed to be so publicly particular about the object of his (at the time) sacred concern? If we could carve that image and place it on the Washington mall, we would weep before it today.

Today, we have a mob of media images, chattering away about how any special attention paid to the needs of black children is simply a way of robbing (de-robing?) whites and catering to the black child’s “inferiority.” Reverse discrimination, special preferences, catering to minorities. These are the terms of chatter that would hum around our bronze monument were it set before our eyes in the marketplace of today’s ideas.

And where, for the past 50 years, have been the politicians who were brave enough to stand up and say, “I’m with the Supreme Court on this one. If elected I am going to get in the way of white superiority and kneel to the needs of the black child?” How many of us have demanded to hear that promise before we cast a vote?

But I don’t want to leave the impression that we have failed completely. National polls continue to show majority support for affirmative action “for blacks,” so long as the question is fairly put, without the loaded language of “preferences”, “special consideration”, or “quotas”. That is a fairly remarkable achievement for American public opinion given the money and mouth that has been put to work against affirmative action ever since it was first invented to enforce the moral dictates of integration, to fight against white power, and to respect the prerogatives of black citizens.

Yet even here, notice how the Supreme Court of 1954 was not embarrassed by its own “preferences” or “special consideration” of black children. If we have moved the Constitution since 1954, it seems we have moved it away from the great wisdom of Brown.

According to Pew Research, carefully asked questions about countering the effects of discrimination yield majority support for affirmative action, even among whites. But it surprised me to see that such questions drew the more positive responses from lower education levels. Hostility to affirmative action among whites tends to grow with education.

Contrary to stereotypes about prejudice and poor whites, more hostility can be found among whites who have “some college”, “upper income”, and who are “male.” Half of whites with High School education or below believe not only that affirmative action is good, but that it is also fair. In sum, the more elite the white person, apparently the more hostile he usually is to the principles of Brown. The data raises a question about the quality of leadership that is likely to come from white elites.

Of course, there is no one more elite than a US Supreme Court Justice. Which makes it all the more marvelous to recall how in 1954 the most privileged powers on earth opened a door that we have not yet dared to fully enter.

And finally, a focus on the broader questions of Brown leads us away from integration for integration’s sake, and away from traps that confuse integration with cultural assimilation. When we ask the questions, who is protecting black students from white power and catering to their motivational needs, we may very well answer black schools, black colleges, and black teachers. Only the most cynical strategist, therefore, would use the Brown principles to attack the very institutions and people who set the standards for black education. Neither do the standards set forth in Brown lend support to demoralizing agendas of “assimilation.”

To revisit the text of the Brown decision after 50 years is to read a record of unusually wise principles shamefully ignored or strategically misconstrued. There is nothing to prevent us from returning to that broader wisdom today.

***

This article was written in 2004 for Alternet, where an edited version appeared..