MichaelFauntroy.com

Radio Interview Clip -- Michael Fauntroy on Race and Barack Obama on NPR's Talk of the Nation

Here is a clip from the January 31, 2008 edition of NPR's Talk of the Nation.  I, along with NPR's Michel Martin, author Keli Goff, and Morgan State University professor Raymond Winbush, talk about race and Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Don't Let Your Love For Obama Prevent You From Seeking Accountability

I've been struggling to find the words to explain why I think too many Black people are not critically assessing the implications of his candidacy on Black America.  Maybe it's because the fawning White media are trying to tell Black people who there leaders should be.  Maybe it's because I worry whenever conservatives like Bill Bennett and Bill Kristol have good things to say about a Black man; given their histories, one can only wonder what's up.  Anyway, listen to this while I continue to find the right words.  It's thought provoking (if thinking is your thing).  I was particularly interested to learn that Iowa, for all the hype given its role in launching Obama's candidacy, is the fifth whitest state in the nation but leads the nation in Black incarceration (per capita).  What's up with that??

The Bush Administration's (at least) 935 Lies

The Center for Public Integrity has done us a service with it's study -- "False Pretenses" -- it has released that details how:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

This is a definitive report for those who continue to resist the fact that we were lied into the war.  Please read and share appropriately.

The Rich Are Getting Richer, While the Poor are Catching Hell

While candidates, their surrogates, and hyperventilating supporters are getting hot and bothered over the race/gender/religion/age presidential nominating contests, the poor and middle-class got another finger in the eye. 

The Congressional Budget Office has issued a report that shows the increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans. The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.The report  is the latest to document the growing concentration of income

Jefferson Takes the Stand

Here is a story from The Hill on Rep. Bill Jefferson, who testified in open court for the first time Thursday in the wide-ranging corruption case against him, and challenged the FBI’s acount of its raid last year on his New Orleans home.  Jefferson argued that he was coerced and was not read his Miranda rights during an early-morning interview that preceded the Aug. 3, 2005, raid. The lawmaker claimed the FBI used intimidating tactics, noting that an agent followed him, prevented him from closing the bathroom door and watched him while he was in the bathroom.

Radio Interview Clip -- Race and Gender Questions in Presidential Politics: The Diane Rehm Show

Here is the clip from the Monday, January 14, 2008 edition of the Diane Rehm Show in which I participate in a one-hour discussion on race and gender in the 2008 Democratic nomination fight.  The other participants were: Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Deborah Simmons, Washington Times Editorial Page Editor and a Columnist,Charles Ogletree, Harvard University Law Professor and Todd Shaw, Assistant Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina.

Radio Interview Clip -- Was it the Bradley Effect?

Here's a clip of an interview I did that aired this weekend on the public radio show "Weekend America."

With Reservations, I'm Voting for Obama

The Potomac River primaries on February 12 are just a few days away and I have to make a decision on whom to vote for in the District of Columbia primary.  I’ve struggled with this decision for some time as my first choice, Al Gore, passed on the race and my second choice, John Edwards, never got the traction I hoped he would and bowed out just before Super Tuesday.  I’m faced with a tough choice between two outstanding candidates.  Barack Obama, while inexperienced, represents an exciting challenge to the status quo that I find attractive.  Hillary Clinton, more of a known quantity, is an underrated fighter for many of the issues about which I feel very strongly.  While she butchered the healthcare reform effort in 1993, the reality is she’s taken that fight farther than anyone else in American politics.  Nonetheless, after considering all the positions, the hype, the hypersensitivity, and history, I’ve decided, with reservations, to vote for Barack Obama.

I have at least three reservations about Obama.  First, I’m always interested in Black political empowerment and understand that for that to occur, Black people must be in the room making decisions.  As a political scientist who specializes in Black political behavior, I’m deeply concerned by what I’m hearing from smart people in Chicago who tell me that Obama has very few African Americans in decision making positions in his campaign.  It is less likely that uniquely Black issues, such as the prison-industrial complex that warehouses Black men, removes them from society and, ultimately, undermines Black families, will get an airing in such an environment.  I understand why he has to run a deracialized campaign – it’s simply the reality of American politics and culture.  I don’t understand why his campaign apparatus has to be deracialized.

Second, there is a rhetorical naivete’ to his campaign that I think is nearly disingenuous.  His talk about unifying the country and that there should be no “red state America or blue state America, but the United States of America,” sounds great, but ignores the history of the country.  America has always been divided along racial, nationality, and economic lines.  From early battles between southern agrarian barons who took credit for building the country on the backs of free slave labor to northern industrialists fighting to drag the country into a new direction, America has careened from one pole to the other on issue after issue.  Other than brief, wartime periods, this nation has never exemplified the unity Obama claims he can bring to the country.  The hordes of naive young voters that are buying this line don’t know their history and he is reaping the benefit.  There isn’t anything wrong with hoping for unity, but we can’t ignore history.

Third, Obama’s ascension will narrow opportunities for Black politicians.  I know that sounds counterintuitive, particularly since there are so many examples where Black politicians already have a low ceiling.  There have been many capable Black mayors over the years who could have been governors in a more open society with a level playing field.  Obama makes it even more difficult because some White voters may take the measure of some Black candidates and say “why can’t he be more like Obama.”  Implicit in that comment is the belief that only certain kinds of Blacks can win the votes of Whites, which disqualifies anyone seen as overtly Black.

So why am I voting for Obama?  There are some traits to commend him to the presidency.  First, people who know him say that while he is supremely ambitious, he also knows what he doesn’t know.  That’s very commendable when one considers the fact that most elected officials confuse their electoral success with the notion that they know everything – a sure path to arrogance and failure.  It’s my hope that a President Obama will surround himself with people smarter than he in the areas in which he lacks institutional memory or professional experience.  While I think being president is no place for on-the-job training, an inexperienced officeholder can do great things if he or she is comfortable in his or her own skin enough to listen and learn.  I think Obama can do that.

Second, I’m all about challenging the status quo and I write this with an eye toward November with a conservative status quo slowly losing its grip on the country.  They are responsible for the economic social woes that are now befalling our country.  Moreover, it was neo-conservative thought that led us into Iraq and destroyed our standing in the world.  These regressive moves must be reversed and Obama best represents a move in a new direction.

Third, his election strikes a blow at White supremacist thought that continues to dominate the world.  From Asia to Africa and South America, an Obama win will shake up things in countries that are still under the thumb of an intellectual mindset that suggests that people of color are inferior to Anglo-Saxons.  This blow must be struck and now is as good a time as any.

My decision to vote for Obama is more a leap of faith than a conviction that he will actually the bring real, deep, and substantial change he professes.  Voters who claim to want a transformational president have to be willing to give the country a Congress that will be equally change oriented.  Given that 90 percent of all members of Congress who seek reelection win, voters need to be brave enough to turnout out their own Representatives and Senators to actually make change occur.  History suggests that change is unlikely.  While I have doubts about Obama and the nation, I’m hopeful that the country is ready to move in a new direction.  I’m also hopeful that Obama can bring it all together.

Michael K. Fauntroy is an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University an author of the book Republicans and the Black Vote.  A registered Independent, he blogs at: www.MichaelFauntroy.com

Johnson Did Help Give Life to King’s Dream

Hillary Clinton has been taking a beating for a comment she recently made regarding Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the role President Lyndon Johnson played in bringing about the legislative change sought by the civil rights movement.  She noted that King’s dream began to come into focus when President Lyndon Johnson supported and signed into law important civil rights legislation.  Some African Americans, sadly disconnected from the historical record, took the comment as a slight to King’s legacy.  Conservatives did what they usually do, stoking the fire by suggesting that Clinton simply dissed the Black icon and should be punished by African American voters.  (Disclosure: Neither Clinton nor Senator Barack Obama is my preferred presidential candidate).  Clinton is factually right and, after seeing the video of the comment, I am convinced that she met no disrespect to King’s legacy.

My interest in King is more than academic.  I’m blessed to a nephew of Rev. Walter Fauntroy, one of Dr. King’s chief lieutenants (he’s the one to standing between King and Rep. Peter Rodino at the Voting Rights Act of 1965 signing ceremony).  He has long told me of his work during this period and how the man (King) and the movement coalesced and unified the country, which became outraged by what they saw on the evening news night after night.  He also told me something that I tell my students: ideas and movements mean nothing if they don’t change public policy.  Mass movements and demonstrations are designed to prick the conscience of the country on a given issue.  At that point the legislative process takes over.  That process must go through the president.  A supportive president can accelerate change.  An obstinate president (see Bush, G.W. – Iraq) can thwart a movement, even though it might have a majority of support in Congress.

My uncle has told me a thousand times about how important Lyndon Johnson was to making the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 a reality.  He sacrificed his own favor with southern conservatives to do the right thing.  I see a particular irony that some southern Black elected officials, some of whom owe their seats in Congress to the changes effectuated by the Voting Rights Act, now criticizing Clinton for remembering her civil rights history.  Noting Johnson’s role is not disrespectful to King’s legacy.  It’s simply a historical fact.  And Clinton’s memory seems to be on target.

It’s my hope that the media and racially sensitive people of all stripes will take a deep breath and relax a bit.  Presidential candidates, talking all the time every single day while on the campaign trail, will say things that can easily be taken out of context.  Responsible observers have to encourage the public to pay closer attention to the issues rather than perceived slights that don’t really exist.  There are plenty of legitimate reasons to question whether Hillary Clinton is best suited to win the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House.  Her comment on President Johnson and the civil rights movement should not be among them.

Quick Hits: Your Political News Appetizer

Here are some pieces that caught my eye:

Conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage is an idiot who traffics in racism and religious bigotry.  His target this time? Barack Obama.  Savage insists on perpetuating the consistently debunked story that Obama was educated in and Indonesian Madrassa.  For some people, the truth is irrelevant.  This will a big problem for Obama if he wins the nomination.  The Republicans will stealthily use some voters narrow-mindedness and xenophobia to stoke fears among voters to demonize Obama.

Big Willie explains himself.  From the Politico:  "Bill Clinton called into Al Sharpton's (as well as Steve Harvey’s, Michael Baisden’s, and Tom Joyner’s) radio show just now to make the point that the "fairy tale" he was referring to in New Hampshire was the media's coverage of Obama's campaign -- specifically, his war vote -- not the campaign itself."  Put me down as thinking this is overdone.  Willie wasn't hatin' on Obama, so stop being so sensitive.

Some people hate Hillary Clinton – and then there is Bill Kristol.  So cynical, so negative (unless it’s Bush’s Iraq policy), and so delusional.  He is among the cheerleaders pushing the idea that Hillary Clinton's voice-cracking response to a voters question in New Hampshire was theater.  If she were that good an actress, then she ought to go to Hollywood and claim her Best Actress Oscar.  I take the position that some of her difficulties in seeking the nomination are the residue of conservative attacks on her dating back to the early 1990s.  It's amazing how some Democrats, in arguing for Obama or others, are using conservative talking points to explain their opposition to Clinton.  I guess they never got the memo that the Clinton's were exonerated in Whitewater.

A recession in our midst?  It must be because Congress and the White House are falling over themselves to come up with an acceptable stimulus package.