Gov. George Wallace stands in the doorway of the University of Alabama, refusing a Federal order to desegregate the school.

Civil rights advanced today in the District of Columbia in spite of Marion Barry, who cast the lone vote in opposition to the city’s recognition of same-sex marriage.  The former mayor, drug convict, habitual tax-cheat, and overwhelmingly re-elected councilman from Ward 8 justified his vote with an outrageous claim of racial solidarity:

What you’ve got to understand is 98 percent of my constituents are black and we don’t have but a handful of openly gay residents.  Secondly, at least 70 percent of those who express themselves to me about this are opposed to anything dealing with this issue. The ministers think it is a sin, and I have to be sensitive to that.

That’s completely irrelevant. Mr. Barry believes that civil rights should be up to the popular vote, though he, of all people, as a former civil rights activist, should know how morally problematic that is.  Individual rights (especially the right to equal protection) are for individual citizens to have and not for others to take away; this is the absolutely essential foundation of a free constitutional democracy.

Furthermore, contentious civil rights never pass on popular vote— if they did, they wouldn’t be contentious.  The purpose of federal civil rights laws and Constitutional rights is to prevent the tyranny of the majority from abridging the rights of unpopular minorities.

Mr. Barry, completely oblivious to the fact that his very same arguments have been used to justify racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and discrimination, predicted alarmingly that the council’s vote would provoke a “civil war.”

The language of civil war was also a favorite of Gov. George Wallace (pictured above), who infamously promised “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” in his inaugural speech standing at the same exact spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy.  Whereas Mr. Wallace decades later repented for his dreadful segregationism, Mr. Barry (yet again) has no shame.

After the 2004 election, some asked what’s the matter with Kansas? After this incident and after noticing that Mr. Barry was re-elected to the council with an astonishing 91% of the vote, we wonder, what’s the matter with Ward 8?

"Marriage is not a right." Bishop Harry Jackson of Beltsville's New Hope Christian Church voice his own interpretation of civil rights.

We wrote before of the fact that an astonishing 70% of black Californians voted for Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex marriage.  We also wrote before that when we extrapolate the California results and apply them to the District, a similar city ballot question would pass if one considers income, education, or race.*

Just a few weeks ago, to our surprise, the city council unanimously passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. That very same day, the Vermont legislature stole much of the media thunder by overriding the governor’s veto and legalizing same-sex marriage in the Green Mountain State.  Nonetheless, it was a bold move for Washington, a city whose every decision can be vetoed by a Congress looking to make a statement. The issue of marriage is usually portrayed in the media as a religious-secular struggle and another side of the issue rarely discussed: race.

The relationship between race and opinion on same-sex marriage— a relationship so quietly whispered it dare not speak its name!— has come out of the closet in DC, a city that votes overwhelmingly Democrat and is also 56% black.

Several area churches (all predominantly black and some of them suburban) spent part of Tuesday protesting the city council’s recent decision and lined up outside the Wilson Building on Freedom Plaza to voice their displeasure. (See the Post’s video of the event)

Bishop Harry Jackson (pictured above) of the New Hope Christian Church— which is outside the District— recently penned his own opinion on the matter in Newsweek lamenting his own “robbery” at the city council meeting by those dastardly “equality vigilantes”!

I felt robbed and disenfranchised as I observed “equality vigilantes” setting up an unjust concept of civil rights.

Mr. Jackson seems to have his own peculiar interpretation of civil rights.  In the Post video above, he states:

Marriage is not a right.  Brothers and sisters can’t get married. People who are related can’t get married.  You can’t marry a three-year-old.  There are parameters that are for the benefit of the society about marriage.

Wrong.  In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that marriage is a basic civil right.  To deny a civil right on account of sex (that is, to disqualify a woman from marrying another woman solely because she is a woman) requires a compelling state interest.  Some states have decided there is such an interest, some have found there is not.  Nonetheless, in American jurisprudence marriage is a civil right.

Mr. Jackson, who, as the Post’s Marc Fisher has noted, has strong connections to the national conservative movement, continues, “I’d rather be politically courageous than politically correct.”  That’s a noble sentiment, for sure, but it is certainly possible to be selfishly courageous, too.

Lynne Breece, a District resident and a bystander at the event, offered some hope that not everyone shares Mr. Jackson’s views:

As a black woman, I know a lot about discrimination on both ends, and I know what it feels like.  And for us, of all people, black ministers to use the pulpit to oppress another minority and then to cloak that bigotry using the bible! This happened to black people!

Indeed, though Dr. Martin Luther King cited scripture to demand equality, Jim Crow supporters and defenders of slavery never hesitated to quote the good book either.

Councilman Marion Barry, who didn’t show up to vote on the bill, but who previously promised to vote for same-sex marriage, managed to make it to the rally and profess his new-found opposition.  Why the change of heart?  Barry provided a great gem of a quotation:

I am a politician who is moral.

Dream on!

Even with Barry’s opposition, the rest of the council and the mayor have all voiced support for eventual same-sex marriage licensing in the city.  Messrs. Barry and Jackson notwithstanding, justice and fairness shall overcome someday.

Though George W. Bush often defined terrorism incorrectly as taking up arms against the United States or its interests, a more accurate definition would be the actual or threatened  destruction of people or property as a means of political intimidation.  States can commit terrorism against opposition parties just as stateless Islamists can bomb hotels.  Either way, the use of violence for political intimidation is terrorism.

The definition came to mind to today when reading about fifteen people who smashed and vandalized two banks in Logan Circle early Saturday morning.  They weren’t there to steal money, but, as the anti-IMF and anti-World Bank graffiti they left in their wake suggests, they had a beef against the capitalist system.  It’s no coincidence that these acts of violence coincided with the annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF, a perennial target of anarchist and anti-capitalist theatrics.

Since this violent destruction of property was motivated by a hatred of the relationship between capitalism and the world’s political systems, this violence, which the Post reported as mere “vandalism” qualifies as terrorism.  The Post won’t classify this violence as terrorism and the city’s police aren’t likely to either.  But had a similar crime been committed not by young, white Marxists, but by middle-aged Muslim extremists, the media and police would have likely classified this violence as terrorism.

This is a shameful double standard we ought to eliminate.  Radical Muslims aren’t the only people who can commit terrorism.

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

So said Kanye West in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when hundreds of poor, mostly black, residents of New Orleans were stranded in the Superdome and atop flood houses in the Big Easy.

No matter, with the election of Barack Obama, surely the Federal government now attends to the best interests of disadvantaged minority populations, right?  Not always.

In 2004 Congress passed the District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act, providing vouchers of up to $7,500 for low-income children in the District to attend private schools. Since the District’s public schools are among the worst in the nation and considering that poor parents love their children, too, it’s no surprise that parents jumped on the opportunity with such enthusiasm that the program developed a waiting list. A recent U.S. Department of Education study found that children in the program scored about the same in math and slightly more in reading.  Nonetheless, voucher parents were much more satisfied with their chosen schools than public school parents were with their schools.*

The voucher program operated with the strong support of the mayor, the District’s “state” superintendent, and the low-income parents of the voucher recipients (90% black, 9% Latino), who finally got the chance to give their children what their neighbors Mr. & Mrs. Obama give to their children: a quality private education.  The parents were happy and the kids’ performance improved modestly.  In an era when the Treasury hands out hundreds of billions of dollars to shoddy banks and failed carmakers, certainly the voucher program’s modest success was worth the paltry $15 million annual cost.

Not so fast!  Enter the teachers’ unions and their partner-in-disparity, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s non-voting Delegate to the House of Representatives.  She made clear her opposition to the program, telling the Post, “…the Democratic Congress is not about to extend this program.”

With Democratic majorities in both houses and at the behest of the teachers’ unions, Congress, fresh from passing $410 billion budget bill, callously failed to renew the voucher program.

If we ran our elections the way we run many of our public schools, there would be civil rights investigations and lawsuits to match.  Instead, when public-sector mediocrity denies poor children their right to a decent education, thereby reducing their future life opportunities, the Right doesn’t much bother with an issue it never noticed anyway and the Left willfully averts its eyes toward its well-heeled funders.  If voting patterns still hold true, the beneficiaries of these programs would vote overwhelmingly Democrat anyway; the G.O.P. has nothing to gain, the Democrats have nothing to lose.  Sadly, the children have much to lose.

In noting the disparities in the quality of public education in America, Rev. Al Sharpton, in a rare moment of clarity, stated why public education continues to fail millions of Americans:

The people standing in the schoolhouse doorway now are people we thought were our friends, liberals wearing suits not bibb overalls, principals and teachers who want to uphold the status quo — condescending bigots who perpetuate a system we know is profoundly unequal.

Conservatives typically don’t make public education their issue, except when it comes to biology (evolution), health (sex), and school prayer.  Liberals typically advocate the use of government power to equalize social opportunity and even equalize social outcomes.  Even though one would normally expect the Left to advocate policies that best benefit marginalized populations, the Democratic party still knows that both money and ballots talk: the nation’s two big teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, support Democratic candidates with massive investments, volunteers, and votes.  When the interests of the unions conflict with the interests of disadvantaged children of color, the former constituency holds the trump card.

Tellingly, Ms. Norton also told the Post several months ago, “We have to protect the children, who are the truly innocent victims here.”  Indeed they are.

Image source: LA Times

Much has been made of the surprise passage of California’s Proposition 8, which amended the Declaration of Rights of the state’s Constitution to state that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”  What hasn’t received much attention, however, is that the city council of Washington, DC, may move in the coming months to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.  In the past, the main obstacle cited is Congress; even if the city council approved a same-sex marriage bill (probably with near-unanimity), Congress, which has legislative authority to overturn any DC law, would overturn it in a heartbeat.

But since the Democrats now control Congress and the White House, the city now faces the best opportunity to introduce a marriage bill that would face the lowest chance of Federal opposition.  However, even if the measure escaped a snarling Congress, the measure would likely face stiff opposition from a large bloc of city residents.  If the civil rights measure is put to popular vote in Washington, DC, voters may in fact reject it.

Since there are no public opinion polls of District residents gauging opposition to same-sex marriage in the city, it is hard to predict how a ballot question would fare.  However, if we extrapolate November’s exit-poll results on Proposition 8 from California, the civil rights landscape in DC looks a little bleak.

In the best scenario, a DC vote would reflect the results among California’s urban voters.  Forty-five percent of California’s urban voters opposed Proposition 8.  Since all DC voters qualify as urban voters, if the proportions voting for and against held the same, a ban would lose.

(All the following data are drawn from CNN’s exit-poll of California and extrapolated based on each cohort’s share of the DC electorate as provided by MSNBC’s exit-poll of DC)

If we extrapolate from other measures, the outlook isn’t as good.  Based on income group, the results show a ban would just squeak by.  Interestingly, among all income groups, only those making less than $30,000 and those making more than $150,000 opposed Proposition 8 by a majority.  The vast middle supported it.  Now if we multiple each group’s support and opposition in California by each income group’s respective proportion of the DC electorate, a same-sex marriage ban would pass in DC by a slight majority.

It gets worse.

In California, 53% of college graduates opposed Proposition 8, whereas only 42% of those without college degrees opposed it.  Though 58% of District voters are college graduates, that is still not enough to stop a ballot measure in the city.  Based on education, a ballot measure in DC would ban same-sex marriage with a 52% majority.

Finally, race is the pink elephant in the room few want to bring up.  Traditionally, black voters, gays, and those with socially liberal views overwhelmingly vote  for Democrats.  However, on the issue of homosexuality, one Democratic constituency, blacks, holds views strong opposed to those held by other Democratic constituencies (social liberals, gays, etc.).

An astounding 70% of California’s black voters cast ballots in favor of Proposition 8 and an even more astounding 75% of black women voted in favor.  Proposition 8 only found greater support among self-identified 2004 Bush voters (80%), white evangelicals (81%), Republicans (82%), McCain voters (84%), weekly churchgoers (84%), conservatives (85%), and those who approve of the war in Iraq (85%), among others.

When we extrapolate each ethnic group’s vote in California to adjust it for each group’s proportion of the DC electorate, a same-sex marriage ban easily passes by 61% of the popular vote in the District.

Admittedly, California and DC, though both Democratic strongholds, differ in some important ways.  DC is entirely urban, whereas California is home to urbanites, a huge portion of suburbanites, and sizable rural counties.  Furthermore, unlike DC, California is more ideologically diverse and contains some very conservative areas (San Diego and Orange Counties, most notably) as well as liberal enclaves such as San Francisco, Hollywood, and Berkeley.  Washington’s singlemindedness leans decidely leftward, but in California the tilt, though still to the left, has counteracting forces that DC largely lacks.

Nonetheless, it’s premature for the city council and gay civil rights campaigners to assume that everyone shares the same view of what constitutes a civil right.  Though same-sex marriage might not raise eyebrows in upper Northwest, not all DC residents are ready to embrace a progressive view of marriage.  When the council starts to debate such a measure, don’t be surprised when you hear opponents ironically claiming civil rights for me, but not for thee.

An rhythmic illustration of the troubles of à la carte scriptural interpretation.  One cannot solely cite one passage as the basis of a moral principle without conceding all other passages as equally valid.  To uphold one passage but not another must be the result of extra-scriptural motivations, e.g. prejudice.

Black voters in California voted overwhelmingly to elect Barack Obama—and to write discrimination into the state’s constitution.  The Post writes:

Any notion that Tuesday’s election represented a liberal juggernaut must overcome a detail from the voting booths of California: The same voters who turned out strongest for Barack Obama also drove a stake through the heart of same-sex marriage.

Indeed the New York Times reported earlier the worry among the proposition’s opponents that a high turn-out among California’s blacks would likely increase the measure’s passage while simultaneously ensuring Obama’s election.

Exit polls show that a bare majority of the state’s white voters voted for the measure, 53% of the state’s Latinos voters voted for the measure, and an astounding 70% of black voters voted for the measure.

One Californian discussed what drove her to vote to reduce the state’s civil rights commitment:

“I think it’s mainly because of the way we were brought up in the church; we don’t agree with it,” said Jasmine Jones, 25, who is black. “I’m not really the type that I wanted to stop people’s rights. But I still have my beliefs, and if I can vote my beliefs that’s what I’m going to do.

“God doesn’t approve it, so I don’t approve it. And I approve of Him.”

The overwhelming rejection of same-sex marriage by black voters was surprising and disappointing to gay rights advocates who had hoped that African Americans would empathize with their struggle.

The article continues with other quotations from people who wish to rework the state Constitution’s equal protection guarantees to suit their prejudices.  I’m sure many of these same people would decry any state measure that denied them rights or privileges solely on account of race, but it’s sad to see that they deem it acceptable to do the same regarding sex.

The proposition faces challenges in court (it was passed as an Amendment, though some argue that should be a Revision since it partly nullifies equal protection guarantees).

Nonetheless, Dr. King famously said that “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” Perhaps we shall overcome.

There I said it.

Admittedly Al Jazeera’s reporting has a bias just as all media do, but the fact that the reporter found it so easy to find such sentiments is worrying.  Let us hope such sentiments exist only on the fringe.

Thomas Friedman at the New York Times condemns Thabo Mbeke’s defense of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.  The South African president has refused to apply strong pressure to the Zimbabwean autocrat and has also arranged for South Africa’s U.N. Security Council minister to vote against a resolution targeting sanctions at Mugabe and his ruling clique.  You would think that a South African president would be well aware of the usefulness of international pressure in removing odious regimes, especially since it was international pressure that led to the end of apartheid.

Friedman laments:

So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.

Friedman’s cyncism is sadly true, but this particular criticism often goes unrecogznied.  The world narative, particularly on the Left, holds that it is the West—or rather, the whites of the West—who are responsible for all the world’s misery.  This view fails to account for much of the violence and mayhem in Africa that has occured since the sunset of European imperial rule.  It is time to change the narative lest we continue to excuse internecine violence and thuggery in poor countries.

When visiting the Georgetown University campus, a student showed me the free speech zone aptly named Red Square, the only place on campus where students may pass out flyers and advocate various causes. I joked that I had always thought the free speech zone was a place called the United States. Sadly, that zone may very well end at the 49th parallel.

A group of Canadian Muslims is suing Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine for publishing an article they consider “hateful and contemptuous” toward Muslims. Canada’s human rights code criminalizes speech that is “hateful and contemptuous” toward any group and so it is the magazine that is on trial.

Canada’s law on this matter, however, contrasts sharply with American law, which steadfastly protects the right to free speech. This case immediately raises an interesting question for Canada: isn’t the freedom of speech a human right, even if not written into law? Secondly, how can Canada reject one of the key principles of modern society?

I’m not sure whether to congratulate or to condemn Canada for being more even-handed, if more restrictive, than many European countries that criminalize denying the Holocaust but permit offensive cartoons of Mohammad. Canada’s law appears to be less a reaction to violent Nazism that tore Europe asunder and more about protecting social harmony— individual liberty be damned. A Canadian civil rights (or human rights?) activist describes the Great White North’s attitude thusly:

“Canadians do not have a cast-iron stomach for offensive speech,” Mr. Gratl said in a telephone interview. “We don’t subscribe to a marketplace of ideas. Americans as a whole are more tough-minded and more prepared for verbal combat.”

Mr. Gratl might be surprised by the number of Americans, particularly administrators of the ivory towers, would also prefer an asterisked First Amendment. Though the Ontario court rejected the plaintiffs’ similar case, the British Columbia courts have yet to rule on the matter pending there.

In America, Canadians are stereotyped as a friendly, polite folk. It may soon turn out that this politeness is legally mandated.

Paul Krugman asserts that much of American’s political discourse over the past forty years has really been a disguised discussion on race. The Right, Krugman states, has more effectively taken advantage of this new, disguised racism since,

Without racial division, the conservative message — which has long dominated the political scene — loses most of its effectiveness.

Krugman asserts that the following political mantras are really racially charged code meant to quietly reinstate Jim Crow:

Thank you, omniscient Paul Krugman, for translating these political code words of the bigoted masses. Here I was under the impression that all the people who wanted reduced government spending simply didn’t want to saddle their children with enormous debt. Little did I know they wanted to cold-heartedly snatch welfare payments from blacks.

I was also under the impression that people who were fed up with heinous, incivil, urban violence merely valued human lives and the safety and civility of civilization. Little did I know they were merely looking for an excuse to incarcerate blacks.

Leave it to Paul Krugman to trivialize and dismiss the political beliefs of others as mere racism. Maybe he’ll next take a page from the Obama playbook and write a column about guns and religion.

Now that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is on its deathbed, the eulogies are starting to appear.  Marie Cocco in the Post catalogs the series of sexist name-calling and belittlement Clinton faced throughout her campaign.  Though it causes little public uproar when media figures pelt misogynist epithets at Clinton, Cocco wonders what would happen had similar but racist insults been hurled at Sen. Barack Obama.

Would the silence prevail if Obama’s likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they’d compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama’s sex organs play?

Certainly such behavior would be scandalous, but in America race as an identity is much more sensitive than sex, and thus we are socially afforded different levels of disrespect for different identities.  Perhaps this is the result of race-consciousness, which, wishing to compensate for past transgressions (slavery, Jim Crow, etc.), places particular meaning on race.  The race-aggrieved will note that women were not enslaved for hundreds of years.  Feminists will retort that women have been enslaved since the beginning of time.  In the case of more-aggrieved-than-thou arguments, I choose not to take sides.

Clearly, though, Sen. Clinton has faced a mean, protracted, and costly campaign.  She may not be as offended as we think as she has openly admitted her excited anticipation of the mess of politics that would come.  Clinton is no shrinking violet, and therein lies the problem.

Unfortunate as it may be, the reality is that women who are assertive are frequently called “bitches” whereas equally assertive men receive social admiration.  Steadfast conviction!  Standing tough!  Staying the course!  All these have little negative connotation when applied to men, but when a woman refuses to back down (refuses to accept electoral defeat, even), she’s called a bitch.

We can avoid the issue completely if we afforded everyone the equal respect we all deserve.  However, if men were angels, as James Madison wrote, we would need no government.  Then there would be no nasty campaigns.

Two good articles from Post today.

The Manhattan Institute finds that immigrants in America adapt quickly. Though measuring economic, cultural, and civic integration is difficult, it’s useful to look at the index as a good way to compare different groups rather than interpreting 100 as a full integration (whatever that really should mean). Either way, the numbers tell a story that contrasts sharply with what one will find in the Parisian banlieues.

Despite this, sadly, there’s still plenty of racist hostility to blacks, as Sen. Obama’s campaigners are finding. It’s a story barely reported on the campaign trail over the past few months, but Sen. Clinton may have hinted at it when she discounted Obama’s electability. At first I thought she was referring to his liberal, if scant, voting record. Now I suspect she may have been referring to something else.

What’s most disappointing about Rev. Wright’s racists and paranoid tirades is that he neglects to discuss the veracity of his statements.  Some of his most outlandish claims include his accusation that the U.S. government invented AIDS to kill black people and his suggestion that those 3,000 people who died on September 11, 2001, deserved what they got.

Instead of discussing his statements, he prefers to whip out the trusty race card if anyone dares to criticize him, since to criticize him is really an attack on “the black church”, so he says.

After several weeks of blowback from his absurd remarks, I finally read a column in the Post explaining the real trouble with Rev. Wright.  The problem is not that he has been influential in Sen. Barak Obama’s life—Sen. Obama rejects Wright’s racist lies.  However, when Rev. Wright speaks, plenty of people listen and take him seriously, eventually adopting a fatalist attitude that no matter what they do, the white man will conspire against them.  The column gives an example:

I … recall a conversation I had during a visit to the maximum-security prison in Joliet, Ill. As I sat in the library there, talking with three men about why they were incarcerated, one man said: “Look around this room — almost everybody here is black. This is white man’s genocide. You put us in here to keep us down.” Where would this 20-something black man, or other relatively uneducated young people, get such an idea? From the vitriol spewed by the Rev. Wrights of this world.

Rev. Wright does a disservice to his congregation when he encourages people to adopt the mentality of hopeless victimhood.  That’s the real scandal here.

Today’s New York Time editorial appears to agree with John McCain on issues of trade:

Blaming Nafta and other trade agreements for American workers’ pain may play well on the campaign stump. But it will not solve the country’s economic problems. It will only make them worse.

A cynic would argue that editorial board writers face little competition from cheap labor abroad, but the editorial is right, nonetheless, for various reasons explained in the article.

I’ve also been wondering lately why people criticized international trade, but not interstate trade. Southern states, for instance, have attracted many auto manufacturing jobs even while Michigan has shed them.