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Here we find two emails that are a perfect match. First, from a reader who has “no interest in ‘black movies’ “:

You said: “one must choose between racism and
economics.”

As a business man, I’ll chose economics every time.

Sincerely,

A finacially secure white dude from Oklahoma who only
spends my hard earned money on white movies. It’s not that I’m racist, I just have no interest in “black movies”.

Second, from a reader who asks, is there such a thing as racism of indifference?

Hi Greg,

I enjoyed your article in todays Counterpunch & also
enjoyed the article “Reject the Language of White
Supremacy.” in Black Commentator. And I agree with you
that we should not buy into the easy convenient
separations.

As you well know, 25% of young African American men
are either incarcerated or under the supervision of
the judicial system at any time. Also, one in every
eight humans in jail on this planet is an African
American.

THE INTENT being, in the name of crime-prevention, as
we are told. No need to re-state here the impact THE
EFFECT on the Black community/family.

Where this leads the Black community over time is
scary to comtemplate as no society can remain healthy
or viable in this condition. In any society
experiencing such a sociological disaster, there would
be massive INTENT to correct the situation. Or the
society would degenerate otherwise.

But there is little or no such intent in this country.

Is this racism or is it not ?

Is this racism via “NON-INTENT” ?

One way to look at this is to study the class
dynamics. America has come a long way from when Blacks
were treated as a sub-human class. African-Americans
now enjoy a place (sometimes priviledged) in the
mainstream American class tree. But our nominal spot
is still at the bottom. We can rise above it but loss
of priviledge (or plain lack of it) drops us right
back to the bottom faster than any other ethicity
because the bottom remains our nominal in this
country. The White being the normative against which
we (like all other ethnics) are measured.

The reason I mention class is two-fold. First is to
explain why there is little or no intent to correct
the over-excessive incarceration of the Black-class
young male. And we as African-Americans are well
guilty of apathy/neglect (or even self-loathing) on
this one because we have also bought into the
“SELF-EVIDENCE” of the class structure. In other words
we have bought into the White Supremacy that makes
this an acceptable outcome of the comtemporary class
structure.

Also on class, the original ideas behind the great
epic saga of Western Civilization was not geared
towards creating a class system that included
non-Whites. The class re-oragnizations that occured in
Europe were primarily internal, native & indigenous.
We (African Americans, Africans, Native Americans,
Asians …) just got roped in along the way. And the
notion of White Supremacy & Manifest Destiny were
concocted along the way to provide justification.
Today the “SELF-EVIDENCE we see in the media & other
monuments (both mental & physical) serve to sustain
the status-quo.

Sometimes I wonder how well Whites understand or
perceive the nature of their class re-organizations.
It may be difficult as it challenges the notion of
SELF-EVIDENCE.

Fortunately, the rest of the world including the
Chinese, Africans & South Americans are gradually
seeing through. The SELF-EVIDENCE of the Western saga
is being scrutinized, and we are learning that we as
non-Whites have many choices.

Please keep up the good work.

Thanks.

Beyond the obvious answer provided by email number one — that there can be a racism of indifference — email number two suggests that it is the indifference itself which must be categorized as racist, regardless of the skin color of the believer. The usual term for such racism on the darker side of the color line is “internalization.”–gm

National Edition of ‘Why Andy Taylor Should Have His Law License Revoked’, posted at ILCAOnline

By Greg Moses
Editor, Texas Civil Rights Review

Texas attorney Andy Taylor set out to prove that illegal and fraudulent voter behaviors were the main reasons behind the November election defeat of a Republican incumbent in a West Houston race for the Texas House. But according to archives of original documents that Taylor submitted in support of his case, it appears that he willfully ignored plain evidence that a number of voters were more likely victims, not perpetrators of wrongdoing. He went after them anyway.

Several voters of Nigerian descent discovered when they tried to vote in the November elections, that they had been fraudulently re-registered into a neighboring House District. Sometime in late 2003, someone had submitted new registrations for these voters, placing them into a legislative district that would soon involve a candidate of Nigerian descent. The candidate lost to an incumbent in the Democratic primary election.

During public hearings in the election contest that he brought to the legislature on behalf of his client Talmadge Heflin, Taylor argued that these African-American voters who preferred Democrat Hubert Vo should have their votes tossed out because they were cast in a legislative district other than where the voters were registered.

Yet, anyone with access to the original documents in the Heflin-Vo election contest (including Taylor himself, who submitted the docs in the first place) would have been able to plainly read the explanation that “fraudulent addresses” for voters of Nigerian descent had been allegedly submitted by someone other than the voters. In fact, the assertion was twice stated in carefully written explanations on envelopes for provisional ballots submitted by a husband-wife pair of voters.

The provisional ballots were approved by Harris County election officials who accepted that the voters should be considered as properly registered. And legislative Master of Discovery Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) also ruled the ballots to be legal. Hartnett explained in the election hearing that he had taken the time to call up one of the voters and discuss the predicament.

While it appeared to someone viewing the hearing that Hartnett was being exceedingly perceptive in his discovery of a pattern of fraud against the voters, in fact he was just reading what was plainly written, not once but twice, on the evidence submitted by Taylor. This plainly stated explanation, which was accepted by Harris County officials and Hartnett, never stopped Taylor from trying to suppress the votes of these African-American voters nevertheless, along with their votes for Vo.

The significance of this finding is that Taylor (the same attorney who defended the heavy-handed redistricting of the Texas Congressional map in 2004) continued to pursue allegations in a public hearing that a number of Nigerian-American voters (4-9 cases according to my preliminary estimate) had cast illegal ballots, even as he placed exculpatory evidence on the record that plainly indicated they were victims not perpetrators of fraud.

By pursuing his allegations against these voters in the context of a rare legislative election contest, Taylor used his law license to call down the power of the state to pursue certain voters under threat of arrest, when he had every reason to suspect they were innocent from the start. If the law is going to jealously guard Taylor’s right to pursue election irregularities, should it not just as jealously guard the rights of voters against willful and obnoxious harassment by agents of the law?

Taylor’s bad faith attack on these African-American voters counts as a Civil Rights infringement in two ways. First, it was an effort to criminalize voters of color by deliberately overlooking exculpatory evidence on the record. Second, it counts as a bad faith effort to overturn the election of a candidate of color. Using the power of law to harass voters of African descent in an effort to unseat a candidate of Vietnamese descent, accusing all parties of fraud when your own evidence indicates they have done nothing wrong, this is offensive, outrageous, indecent, and should cost Andy Taylor his license to practice law in Texas.

Note: The Texas Civil Rights Review contacted Andy Taylor via voice mail on Thursday afternoon and invited him to reply. As of Saturday morning, he had not responded.

Got an email tip about Indiana. Democrats staged a walkout there, too, and the Secretary of State spreads more baseless suspicions (Read More).

Google found this March 3, 2005 legislative report from Indiana Rep. Bob Kuzman (D-Crown Point):

House Bill 1439 also sounds deceptively simple. It requires voters to provide a photo ID before being allowed to vote on Election Day. In reality, this proposal is designed to intimidate voters, particularly senior citizens, minorities and people on
lower incomes.

With the type of voter identification system contained in House Bill 1439 in place, I believe that Election Days in Indiana will be similar to what people in Ohio had to endure last November: waiting for hours to cast a vote. In Iraq, a person simply had to put his or her finger in a bowl of ink in order to vote. Do we really think that we should place more
restrictions on voters than they do in Iraq?

I supported an effort that would have enabled voters to offer other pieces of identification – such as utility bills, vehicle registration or Social Security cards – in order to vote. Those efforts were defeated.

Jim Shella of WISH-TV (Indanapolis) reports on March 10, 2005:

Republicans in the Indiana House of Representatives have now revived both of the bills that led to last week’s walkout by Democrats, causing one Democrat to walk out of a committee hearing Thursday.

That walk-out took place in a hearing on the bill that would require voters to show a photo ID. One Democrat objected to both the bill and way the committee meeting was being conducted.

The hearing on the voter ID bill had to be moved to the House chamber when 200 members of the United Auto Workers union showed up to protest. They believe the bill is designed to discourage elderly and low-income voters who may not have a driver’s license.

“If it’s gonna be a law that affects everybody it has to be fair for everybody,” said Connie Thurman, UAW.

Supporters insist the measure is designed to reduce voter fraud. Currently, registered voters are only required to sign in.

Secretary of State Todd Rokita says it’s possible to sign in more than once and therefore vote illegally even though he couldn’t cite a case where it has been done. “Why should we wait to become a problem state? Clearly Washington was, clearly Florida was, clearly New Mexico was… to address the situation,” he said.

“I think it’s just a ploy to erode voter confidence and erode the number of people who take part in the process. It amounts to a poll tax,” said Rep. Mae Dickinson (D-Indianapolis).

When it appeared the committee was about to take a vote, Democrat Craig Fry of Mishawaka objected. “A driver’s license is a privilege and voting is a constitutional right. You can’t do this,” he said.

Fry left and no vote was taken. The committee is now scheduled to vote on the voter ID bill next week.

On Sunday evening, Quorum Report maestro Harvey Kronberg wrote a “Daily Buzz” story about developments in the Texas school funding trial, citing the Texas Civil Rights Review story, “Inaugural Day Betrayal.”

We pasted the “free version” of Kronberg’s accunt under Read More. Or go to the Quorum Report and look under Daily Buzz at quorumreport.com

Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report

Hot Buzz

January 23, 2005

5:16 PM

SCHOOL FINANCE PLAINTIFFS UNITED FRONT SPLINTERS OVER EQUITY ISSUES

Property rich districts want fast track to Supreme Court, property poor want Dietz to reconsider equity issues

The first cracks in the education coalition that took the state’s school finance case to court have appeared in the last week as the group has split on the question of equity.

The lawyers from the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represents the Edgewood interveners, are disappointed that the other plaintiff groups agreed with Attorney General Greg Abbott’s statement of jurisdiction, asking the Texas Supreme Court to expedite the school finance case and hear the case as soon as possible. Even in a best-case scenario, the case will not make it to Court before the session ends.

MALDEF Attorney David Hinojosa told the Quorum Report he was not ready to give up on the equity claims they want Dietz to reconsider. That reconsideration, which could mean a trip to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, could significantly delay the case.

On Friday night, Hinojosa told the online Texas Civil Rights Review he was surprised by the West Orange-Cove plaintiffs’ agreement with Abbott’s office that the case should move forward. The Texas Civil Rights Review, edited by Greg Moses, spoke of the West Orange-Cove brief as “an Inaugural Day Betrayal,” when the property-rich districts who gave “lip service” to maintaining Robin Hood finally tossed aside their property-poor cousins.

The rest of the story, subscribers only

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