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OK, so this Donald Sterling apparently exists …

I know nothing about professional sports, and had never heard of Donald Sterling until this weekend.  Seems he said some blatantly racist (and sexist) remarks that were recorded and now everyone is demanding that he resign.  He’s losing sponsors and otherwise feeling the heat.

So, of course, the first thing the right wing does when faced with a racist in their midst is to run away and disown him.   They tried to do that with last week’s racist, Clive Bundy, and now they’re doing the same with Donald Sterling, except this time they’re using the old technique of lying through their teeth.   donald-sterling

“He’s a Democrat!” claimed the right wing blogosphere, pointing out that he had donated some money to former Basketball player Bill Bradley’s campaign many years ago.

That’s it.  That’s basically the evidence.

Which is contradicted by the easily verifiable search of voter registration records showing him as a long-time registered Republican.

Am I implying that all racists are Republicans?  Of course not, and don’t try to put words into my mouth.  And I know that most Republicans are not liars.

But I’m damned tired of loudmouths on the right spreading lies, while responsible Republicans remain silent and refuse to call them out on it.

 

Editorial cartoon: Not Neutrality

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How to hide your racism

Clive Bundy hasn’t said anything different than what many popular politicians have said on the right;  he just didn’t say it according to the modern rules on how to pretend you’re not racist.  clive_bundy-504x320

(In case you haven’t paid attention, here’s what the lawbreaking rancher said:  “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro … They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”)

Now even racists on the right are distancing themselves from the man they had previously called a patriotic hero.  Here’s what Bundy didn’t know that they do:

Lesson one:  Use code terms.  Don’t say “black” or “negro”.  The proper term these days is “thug.”  Warning:  Make sure you never refer to an actual white criminal as a thug so as not to confuse your listeners.  If talking about welfare, you can also use “inner city” — that seems to have worked well for Paul Ryan (see Lesson two).

Lesson two:  Equate welfare with slavery, but in a good way (not like Bundy did).  Ignore the fact that most people on welfare are white and predominately in the south.  For some amazing reason, racist whites on welfare know they need it and deserve it, and so any comment about welfare cheats never seems to apply to them.  So don’t worry about offending your base.  (Freedomworks, a major Tea Party group, has promoted this idea through its promotional movies and blogs a lot.)  This is what Paul Ryan did a few weeks ago, and he’s still a darling of the right!

Lesson three:  Like any racist, assume that the example you see represents that entire race.  Forget all the black scientists, lawyers, judges, business leaders, preachers, and Presidents of the United States who prove you completely wrong and concentrate instead on the small percentage who fulfill your stereotypes.  Never mention the good examples!  (Bundy has this part down pretty well, actually.)

Bundy is merely repeating the things he hears constantly from some of the leaders of the Republican party.  He just rephrased it in the wrong way.

 

 

 

 

Editorial cartoon: Our hero Clive Bundy

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What is Affirmative Action anyway?

The Supreme Court yesterday decided another affirmative action case, once more holding that discrimination no longer exists.

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When I discuss these things with people, I find that often the whole idea of affirmative action is misunderstood.

Affirmative action began as a way to fix discrimination where it needed to be fixed. Imagine a factory in an area that is 50% minority. If the jobs in the factory required no experience, you’d expect 50% of the employees to be minorities, wouldn’t you? Just based on statistics. Well, of course that wasn’t always the case, especially in the ’60s and 70s when affirmative action began. You’d have these places with 10% minority workers.

So what would happen is that the factory would have to explain themselves. If, for instance, they could show that of the job applications they received, only 10% were from minorities then perhaps that could explain it. But that usually didn’t happen. And so the factory was made to have a policy of accepting minorities to get to where they should have been had there been no discrimination.

Note: this never required you to hire someone who was not qualified. Never. Yet people who scream about “reverse discrimination” always try to give anecdotal examples of where that happened.

Most of the recent cases involve colleges, where there is a different objective. Colleges want to have a diverse student body. They like to get students from all over the country and all over the world, with different religions and beliefs and backgrounds and races. They also look to get people with different experiences and people who were leaders in their community.

It’s how you get a real education. Real education comes from getting lots of different viewpoints and not being in a room where everyone thinks exactly the same. (As an aside, I taught a Constitutional Law class for a semester at Curry College in Massachusetts back in the ’90s — the entire class was full of rich, spoiled white kids and I couldn’t get a good debate going no matter what the issue. It was terrible.)

Lawsuits often come from white kids who got better SAT scores but yet didn’t get in while a minority student whose scores weren’t so good did.

Are SAT scores everything? Do they predict future success? No, and all educators know that. They are an indication, but that’s just one of many factors to consider when accepting students. (Some schools now don’t even consider SATs when accepting students.)

Yet people scream “reverse discrimination” and only look at race when a minority person gets in over a white person. (For all you know, the minority applicant was an Eagle Scout who was High School President, plays a musical instrument, knows three languages, but tests poorly.)

And now we get back to the main point again — qualifications. Even if the minority student is not as qualified as the white student, he or she is still qualified. They’ve met the minimum requirement to get in, and once in, they will have to take the same tests and do as well as every other student or they will fail.

Editorial cartoon: Koch Blocked

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I am in favor of murder and rape, according to Republicans

Yes, it is true.  I have represented some terrible people.  That’s my job as a defense attorney.

Clearly, then, I support criminal activity.  I mean, there is no other explanation.  It certainly can’t be that I support the United States Constitution, especially the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th amendments.

The Republican Governor’s Association knows this is true.  They are running ads against a Democrat in South Carolina who fought against the powerful District Attorneys and Attorneys General, who protected citizens against abuses by the police, who made sure that everyone’s Constitutional rights were not violated as they went through the system, and even helped some innocent people fight against unfair accusations.

So what do the ads say?  “He supported violent criminals instead of South Carolina.”

So yes, it’s true.  I am an anti-American person who doesn’t deserve any respect, because I am in favor of crime.  I am lower than the people I represent.  How dare I demand that we obey the Constitution.

Let’s hope this ad backfires on the GOP, as it should.

But then again, this is South Carolina, where they elected Mark Sanford after he had used government money to support his mistress.  Violating the Ten Commandments?  No big deal.  Supporting the United States Constitution?  What a terrible person!

 

 

Editorial cartoon: A true patriot!

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A thought experiment

Here, let’s see what you think.   bilde

Imagine that instead of a rich, white rancher demanding that he doesn’t have to obey laws or pay taxes while surrounding himself with gun-toting supporters, it was a group of black and latino squatters in an inner-city housing development doing the same thing, guns at the side.

Who here thinks the right wing would be cheering them on as freedom-loving patriots?

Anyone?

Editorial cartoon: Whose disaster?