Author: jxindivisible

The background of the drive to demonize equity.

Jerry LeClaireMay 12

Conservative: “averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.”

Which “traditional values” exactly?

Forces in the Republican Party (not all Republicans) want to freeze race relations where they were in the mid 20th century. They wish to censor public education and materials in public libraries that challenge either the mythic notions of our founding or any idea that racial equality wasn’t achieved immediately as the result of the American Civil War (or, perhaps for some, achieved by the civil rights legislation of the 1960s). The signs of this form of censorious conservatism are rife, but they are cleverly cloaked in words like “patriotic education,” “Marxism,” and “critical race theory.”

Under the guise of opposing “critical race theory” wordsmiths among Republicans like Christopher Rufo are busy condemning every effort in current law and schooling that is aimed at improving racial and cultural harmony. They condemn such efforts by insisting they are un-American and unconstitutional. 

For those who subscribe to skin-based white racial superiority, equity, social justice, and diversity are the new desegregation. They lost the legal battle over desegregation in the 1950s and 60s, so the battlefront has moved—and many of those attacked have yet to even understand the threat.

The main target of the current state-based, Trump Republicans is the concept of social equity. The dictionary defines equity as “the quality of being fair and impartial,” and adds that, in law, equity is “a branch…that developed alongside common law in order to remedy some of its defects in fairness and justice…” Stated openly, fighting any form of equity should be a hard sell. Who would join you in a fight against fairness and justice? 

Christopher Rufo makes it clear in his speech at Hillsdale College, pursuing equity is evil and un-American:

Equity…sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists.

According to Rufo, equity, the quality of being fair and impartial, is at odds with equality, at least the equality proclaimed in our founding documents. He makes this peculiar claim in spite of the dictionary definition of equality, “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.” His whole argument rests on his noting that unnamed “critical race theorists” “reject” equality, presumably the concept of equality of our founding documents. Considering that our founding documents counted slaves (uniformly dark-skinned Africans) as 3/5 of a person, is it any wonder that someone in the academic discipline of critical race theory might have said that the “equality” expressed in those documents should be rejected?

Since the racist wing of the Republican Party, egged on by Rufo and others, is busy legislating against this straw man of “critical race theory”—and against the equity, social justice, and diversity they wish to tie to those words, it behooves us to understand the argument they’re making.¹

The general concept of equity is that the status quo fails to take into account that different people begin life from vastly different starting lines. To grasp the concept it helps to mentally remove race from the equation for a moment. (I encourage you to google “equity images” for insight into the many ways of framing the idea.) Here’s a good example from that page:

Seen through the lens of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as in this illustration, the pursuit of equity is clearer. Republicans like Rufo see life as a zero sum game. Government helping the disadvantaged, that is, leveling the playing field in any way, by the logic of such Republicans, must be robbing these same Republicans (or the folk they represent) of what they consider rightfully theirs. In their view, the societal pursuit of equity, especially racial equity, must be resisted. (What they avoid admitting is that their argument stems of an underlying belief in white racial superiority. Any disadvantage a person of color experiences is considered to be damn well that person’s own fault. Suggesting that might not be so, they effectively argue, should be outlawed, suppressed, and, especially, rooted out of libraries and education.)

It is worth pointing out that for some Republicans, namely our Congressional District 5 Representative, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the pursuit of equity is selective. As a parent of child with Down Syndrome, she broke with her modern day zero-sum, equity-demeaning Republican Party by voting to preserve the ADA. Apparently, pursing equity is worthy of an exception when it gets personal. She voted to keep the ramp depicted in the illustration. 

It’s all about the words. Republicans want to subscribe to the sort of “equality of opportunity” (part of the dictionary definition of equality) illustrated below, an “equality” that preserves the privilege of height in the opportunity to pick the apple. That’s a tough sell to my 1960s United Methodist upbringing. They suspect it would be a tough sell to rest of us, too, so Republicans disguise their privilege in a cloak of hate for the nasty straw man of critical race theory, the straw they claim is threatening our mythically pure founding principles. 

Those who believe in inherent white racial superiority were the same folk who dragged their feet through the Civil War, supported Jim Crow, and voted against civil rights legislation of the sixties. Now these people twist the word equality to mean the preservation of inequality. These same folk now use the straw man of “critical race theory” to justify damning equity, social justice, and diversity in their latest, most disingenuous, and cleverest attempt to foster a white supremacist doctrine and grip on power.

Pay attention. Push back. We’re headed for rough water.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

There is a worthy parallel between Republican rhetoric around the evils of equity and diversity and the Republican campaign against environmental legislation. Think of the words “critical race theory” as parallel to the Republican railing against the spotted owl. In the latter example the real target was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Attacking the EPA head on would have been just as unpopular (with a large segment of the population) as it would be now to openly assert that all the needed work toward racial equality was finished in the 1960s. The solution? Redefine the argument. Get out in front with attacks from Tucker Carlson and other racist mouthpieces before most people even understand what is being attacked.

Clever Racism and the Word Use that supports it

Jerry LeClaireMay 10

The innovation of American slavery was linking slavery to race, to skin color. We struggle with the consequences of that linkage to the present day.

I was taught in school that “everybody did it,” that slavery, although deplorable, was historically just part of the landscape, and that now we were past that. The Civil War had resolved the issue. The example given, at least the one that struck in my head, was of the Romans enslaving the Greeks—as teachers of Roman children. It took me decades to realize just how fatuous that example was. Mediterranean whites “enslaving” Mediterranean whites left open the promise of assimilation. The difference between the master and slave was cultural—it certainly was not based in any construction of inferiority of an identifiable group.

New World slavery was based on a different premise, the idea that slavery was acceptable because these dark-skinned beings brought to America in slave ships, stripped of their culture and separated from their families, were inherently sub-human. White supremacy over these inferior beings, this “other” identified by skin color, is a mental construct to justify American slavery.¹ When we today recoil at “White Supremacy” we are recoiling at the doctrine that underlay the institution of our slaver past. White supremacy as a mindset was preached from pulpits, justified by passages taken from the Bible, and bolstered by some currents of what passed for “scientific” investigation (take phrenology as one example).

Many a Confederate soldier fought and died in the Civil War not just for the institution of slavery, but for the cause of inequality, of White Supremacy, that was imprinted in the minds of many Americans. Concepts die hard. The belief in inequality based on skin color did not suddenly evaporate with the end of the Civil War and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and its promise of “Equal Protection.” The underlying belief in White Supremacy, in racial inequality, fueled the Jim Crow era, both of the South and, more hidden, of the North.²

Meanwhile, public support for the maintenance of overt racial inequality was slowly waning. Lip service to racial “equality” grew into the concept of “separate but equal,” infamously upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In Plessy the Court ruled that legally required racial segregation was consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, as long as the segregated facilities could, by some stretch, be construed as “equal.” Plessy gave the White Supremacist conviction of inequality based on skin color new cover. “Separate but equal” allowed the notion that a doctrine of fundamental inequality was somehow transformed into equality. The meaning of words can twist and conceal the underlying mindset.

In 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court under Earl Warren ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, even if the facilities were nominally “equal.” Brown v. Board was and is despised by those who believe in the inferiority of non-whites. The Brown decision led to the billboards I saw in my youth (and failed to understand) demanding to “Impeach Earl Warren.” The decision fueled the protests of “judicial activism” still heard today. Arguably, backlash against Brown fueled Goldwater’s and Nixon’s racist “Southern Strategy,” re-aligning many white southerners from the Democratic to the Republican party—and setting the stage for the dog-whistling racism of the Republican Party of Donald Trump.

Many white Americans remain conflicted about race, still subtly influenced by our forebears’ convictions of inherent white superiority that was the foundation of American slavery. Even so, few Americans today openly preach inequality in the form of White Supremacy, even as a belief in fundamental racial inequality may linger. The cultural needle has moved and word usage has changed since the 1950s. People who, in an earlier time, might have openly espoused white racial superiority or lobbied for overt racial segregation now insist they support “equality” and racial “colorblindness.” 

Fueling a modern political campaign with calls for racial segregation and racial purity or openly suggesting that “equality of opportunity” should be scrapped would lose too many voters. The dog whistles need be sounded more quietly, so that only the “right” people hear them. Attacking racial justice and diversity training head on would be unpopular, so, instead, terms like “patriotic education,” “Marxism,” and “critical race theory” are adopted and used as code.

Stay tuned for “Smearing Equity Part II” on Wednesday. In the meantime,

Keep to the high ground, 

Jerry 1

Worries over, horror of, and laws prohibiting miscegenation, racial interbreeding, are a hold over of the need to maintain a class of supposedly inferior beings easily identifiable by their skin. The need to maintain the classification system, the othering, led, in the United States, to the “one drop rule,” by which anyone with traceable African heritage was identified with this inferior category of sub-humans worthy of enslavement.2

That White Supremacy lived on as a mindset broadly through the United States is perhaps nowhere better exemplified than in President Woodrow Wilson’s screening in the White House of D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation (1916)”. The film glorified the Ku Klux Klan while fueling white fear by depicting Blacks as creatures of low intelligence and sexually aggressive against white women. If you haven’t seen that film and contemplated what it meant for Woodrow Wilson to watch it as the first ever film screened in the White House, I urge you to click the link. I can think of no more stark and ascendant example of the persistence of the White Supremacist mindset more than a half century after the Civil War.

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Mike Allen’s initiative to undermine the Spokane City Council

Jerry LeClaireMay 7

Mike Allen, former City of Spokane City Council member, has filed the paperwork for an initiative for this November. He wants to cap the salaries of Spokane City Council members and the the City Council president. If he and his followers gather just 3,477 signatures from City of Spokane residents before June 7, his initiative will appear on the November ballot. Mike Allen’s initiative push was covered in a short article in the Spokesman on May 3. 

Who is this guy and what is the context? Mike Allen was appointed to a partial term on the City Council in 2007, replacing Mary Verner’s District 2 (South Hill), Position No. 1 seat, when Ms. Verner was elected Mayor. When Verner’s seat’s term ran out in 2009, Mr. Allen tried to hold the seat but was roundly beaten by Jon Snyder. He ran again in 2011, squeaking by Richard Rush by 88 votes out of 21,314 votes cast. By 2015, after voting most consistently with Mike Fagan, Mr. Allen had enough. He announced he would not seek a second elected term on February 25, 2015:

Going forward I plan to focus more on my teaching at North Idaho College, my marketing clients and developing more wine tourism in Spokane via The Cork District.

So for six years Mike Allen held a seat on the City Council justified only by appointment and one 88 vote margin. Six years after he left for better paid employment, Mr. Allen is back hyping an initiative to cap City Council and City Council President salaries (but not the Mayor’s). Sour grapes or political expedience?

The Spokane City Council members are responsible for a budget of just less than a billion dollars. The six city council members’ and the council president’s salaries currently total $342,200. That’s 0.034% of the budget they manage (contrast that with the common 0.9% skim a private investment manager commonly takes). Doubling all six salaries would be inconsequential in terms of taxes—but railing against council salaries piggybacks well on Republican hyped tax worries—in spite of the math. Regardless of Mr. Allen’s treatment of it,¹ a seat on the Spokane City Council is a full time job with a great deal of responsibility. 

Local government of the City of Spokane (pop. ~222,000) doesn’t work in a vacuum. City of Spokane government extensively entwined with the Spokane County government (pop. ~523,000 [including the City of Spokane] ) and representatives from the governments twelve smaller incorporated cities and towns within the County. There are twenty-nine Boards and Commissionswithin the County on many of which both Spokane City Council Members and Spokane County Commissioners sit. 

The County Commissioners pull down a salary of more than $110,000 a year, a fact highlighted when Commissioner Al French, arguably the most powerful elected official in the entire County, accused a state legislature of coveting the salary and considering a run for Commissioner. (Washington State legislators make $$56,881, but, at least theoretically, are only serving when the legislature is in session.) Spokane County Commissioners are not term limited, while City of Spokane electeds are limited to two four year terms. That gives Commissioner French (with 10 years in office) a head start in pulling the levers of power.

The Spokane City Council members currently make $46,700, less than the County’s median 2019 household income of $52,447. The Council President does a little better at $62,000. Mr. Allen conveniently argues to change the City Charter to cap Council salaries to the City’s median household income. (The Mayor of Spokane, for contrast, makes $168,000, a goodly wage by anyone’s standard.) 

A person capable of intelligently managing a budget of nearly one billion dollars, communicating with the public, and working on countless joint committees and boards is highly likely to possess expertise that would land a position in the private sector that commands a salary closer to that of a County Commissioner than that of the median Spokane household. Mike Allen’s stepping down after one term stands as an example of his own lack of altruism compared to current Council members. 

Mr. Allen wishes us to look only at City Council salaries and turn a blind eye to the salaries and power possessed by the County Commissioners. His initiative is meant to undermine the voice of the liberal majority on the City Council. His appeal to salary envy and a misplaced sense of fairness is disingenuous. He couldn’t be bothered to run for another four year term to be paid at less than he thought he was worth. Now he wants to undermine the Council from the outside.

Watch Mr. Allen roll out this initiative. Make opposition to it part of the conversation. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

“I served with Mike Allen, and Mike treated that job as a part-time job, and the rest of us had to pick up the slack,” [City Council Member Candace] Mumm said.

The Republican crazy wing now targets a piece of classical American literature.

Jerry LeClaireMay 3

Some right wing Republicans just took their attack on racial equity, diversity training, and social justice to a new level of crazy. I read the Pulitzer Prize winning 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee in English class in high school in a lily-white suburb of Milwaukee. It left a profound impression, part of which was borne out for me in subsequent visits to the South. Little did I imagine that a Republican legislator, Rep. Heather Scott (R-Blanchard), would from the floor of the Idaho legislature assail “Mockingbird” as anti-white propaganda. The legislature debated (and passed) HB 377, meant to outlaw the latest Republican hobgoblin, “critical race theory.” HB 377 is part of a wave of similar legislative nonsense sweeping Republican majority legislatures and riling the Republican base. (For more on the origin of this latest salvo in the culture wars see my April 26, 28, and 30th posts.)

The same sort of rhetoric on race is floating among some Spokane County Republican electeds—it is just not as clearly stated. (See next Wednesday’s post.)

Rep. Heather Scott’s presentation on the floor of the legislature, seen and well-discussed in this clip from KTVB Boise, is merely the nuttiest assertion focused on “critical race theory.” Nevermind that the term was first coined in 1989. Still, according to Heather, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, published in 1960, is an example of critical race theory “creeping through our schools”. Will Rep. Scott and her like next be advocating for book burning? 

It was Shawn Vestal who first drew my attention to Rep. Scott’s recent legislative antics in an article published in the Spokesman on Wednesday, April 28th, entitled “Critique of ‘Mockingbird’ lifts the hood of Idaho Legislature’s educational intentions.” The writing of Shawn Vestal by itself justifies a subscription to the Spokesman. In case you missed it, I have pasted the article below. He nails it.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

“Critique of ‘Mockingbird’ lifts the hood of Idaho Legislature’s educational intentions.” by Shawn Vestal

I read “To Kill A Mockingbird” as a high school student in a small, conservative farm town in southern Idaho, way back in the early 1980s.

Little did I know I was being manipulated by leftist propaganda. Little did I suspect the pernicious intent of my English teacher, the school district and school board of that small, conservative farm town was to indoctrinate me with anti-white bias.

This is something I discovered recently while trying to keep up with events in the moronic tornado of the Idaho Legislature. From undercutting pandemic safeguards to giving guns more protection than children to an absurd and sustained panic about “anti-white” teaching on racism from pre-K to Boise State, Gem State lawmakers have been setting new lows for representational malfeasance, taking votes again and again that are bad for the state and especially its children.

Still, no one could have foreseen the bizarre critique of “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Rep. Heather Scott, the Confederate-flag-flying conspiracy nut from Blanchard. She raised it last Thursday in a floor debate that concluded with a vote to block salaries and benefits for thousands of Idaho teachers until more state-sanctioned, pro-white propaganda can be mandated for curricula.

Scott said she’d been contacted by a substitute teacher in the Boise area, concerned about messages in the 1960 novel by Harper Lee. This book, Scott said, was an example of how so-called “critical race theory” has been “creeping through our schools forever.”

The substitute told her, Scott claimed, that the novel teaches that “white people are bad, Black people are innocent victims, and the students were encouraged to believe that there was an endless era of Black victimization.”

That is one very odd description of a book that has been critiqued as a “white savior” narrative, and which offers the strong, true, white hero of Atticus Finch.

Perhaps Scott and the substitute teacher haven’t read the book. Or any other.

Scott also relayed concerns that Idaho schoolchildren were learning about too many “non-white race” writers.

“And the English class, (the substitute teacher) said it is more riddled with authors, like our founding historical fiction books and the books that kind of talk about the founding of this country, she said it’s been riddled with writings from third-world experiences by authors that are completely unheard of, but they are non-white race,” Scott said. “So any non-white author is basically being given priority over the historical readings.”

Just imagine the sea of white hoods, nodding with fervent agreement in the firelight.

I was taught “To Kill A Mockingbird” by a very good teacher who did not seem to be an anti-white Marxist. She taught us other great works with race as a theme, such as Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust” and Shakespeare’s “Othello.” I remember she told us that her own high school teacher had discussed the latter play entirely without mentioning that Othello the Moor – referred to frequently with such terms as “black ram” – was dark-skinned.

We all thought that was so funny and dumb. It might represent the future of teaching Othello if the Idaho Legislature gets it way.

As a teenager I responded to “To Kill A Mockingbird” in relatively straightforward terms as a tragic story with clear-cut moralities about racism in America. As I grew older, I began to see my experience of the novel – and the movie – in a more complicated light: as a story that let young, white Americans like me understand racism as a vestige of another time and place, a historic injustice now put to rest. My only remaining responsibility was to understand how bad it had been, and to feel righteous about my recognition of that.

I don’t know if this is the fault of the novel so much as the way in which it has been embraced as one of our main national stories about racism – a tragedy about racism that is ultimately very comforting to white people.

It’s obvious that most members of the Idaho Legislature are just deeply unfamiliar with any classroom anywhere. It’s clear, when they become panicked about anti-white indoctrination in preschool, that they have departed the real world altogether.

Left-wing indoctrination in Idaho schools is a mirage. It’s a MacGuffin meant to drive a narrative of white, racist overreaction attempting to produce actual indoctrination and destroy academic freedom.

It’s a whitewash. Bob Ewell would be proud.

The Origin of the “Critical Race Theory” Propaganda 

Jerry LeClaireApr 30

Throughout the United States Republican legislators are using the magic words “critical race theory” to justify efforts to outlaw the teaching of legitimate subject matter in the public schools. (See Critical Race Theory??) The entire flap can be traced to one self-promoting journalist, Christopher Rufo, appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show last September. It appears that the Rufo/Carlson presentation of “critical race theory” as a dangerous idea spurred Donald Trump to ban the federal government and its contractors from offering “diversity training on racial and gender biases,” calling it “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

Rufo’s inspirational fear-mongering argument around “critical race theory” recently appeared on the Hillsdale College website. It is a transcript of a lecture Rufo gave at Hillsdale College on March 30, 2021, entitled “Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It” 

In his lecture Rufo leads off with several paragraphs detailing the evils of Marxist thought introduced by “In explaining critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism.” Then, under the subtitle “What it is” he simply asserts that critical race theory “is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism.” Having, to his satisfaction, established the evils of the discipline by association to communist thought, Rufo jumps to his master stroke: he lumps all modern efforts to improve race relations under his non-definition of “critical race theory” (the Bold is mine):

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression. 

Wow. That is a stunning leap of intellectual dishonesty that would merit an “F” on a high school term paper. Equity is the idea that helping people begin at the something like the same starting line promotes the equality declared by our country’s founding documents. To Rufo any effort to promote equity is a dangerous Marxist idea. With a breath-taking and incomprehensible further twist he then claims to be defending our founding documents and laws around civil rights from the looming threat of the “critical race theory” that he never defines. 

He doesn’t stop there:

An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property, but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech. These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, and omnipotent bureaucratic authority. Historically, the accusation of “anti-Americanism” has been overused. But in this case, it’s not a matter of interpretation—critical race theory prescribes a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution.

According to Mr. Rufo, promotion of equity is a threat to the very foundation of America! The rest of the lecture consists of un-referenced quotes snatched from their context with the sole purpose of demonizing all efforts to promote racial harmony and awareness of systemic injustice. 

Mr. Rufo, never one to pass an opportunity for self promotion, goes on to take credit for his cleverness:

Last year, one of my reports led President Trump to issue an executive order banning critical race theory-based training programs in the federal government. President Biden rescinded this order on his first day in office, but it provides a model for governors and municipal leaders to follow.

Rufo’s leaps from Marxism to “critical race theory” to diversity training to the imminent collapse of capitalism and the American experiment is what passes for scholarship at Hillsdale College. (Hillsdale itself is a story for another day.)

The next time you read of the horrors of “critical race theory” or of the need to legislate against diversity training and the teaching of equity and social justice, remember Rufo and his specious argument.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. For me the flap over “critical race theory” bears a distinct resemblance to Christian Fundamentalist efforts to ban the teaching of biological evolution, like those immortalized in the classic movie “Inherit the Wind.” It should come as no surprise that Mr. Rufo was once the director of a wing of the conservative think tank in Seattle, the Discovery Institute. Unable to outlaw the teaching of the science of evolution in the public schools, the Discovery Institute is dedicated to the promotion of the teaching of “Intelligent Design,” a creationist construct. “Intelligent design” creationism is put forward as legitimate science under a campaign to “Teach the Controversy”, when, in the biological sciences, no such controversy exists.

P.S.S. Christopher Rufo is propagandist and self-promoter well-versed in the techniques of the digital age. Google his name and you will instantly find multiple websites extolling his accomplishments and associations with supposedly august institutions. Take his bio at the Discovery Institute for instance. There he is lauded as the “former director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty.” What does that mean? “The Center on Wealth & Poverty” appears to consist of a paragraph on a webpage that mentions homelessness. Is there even a physical office? At the Heritage Foundation Mr. Rufo is “a documentary filmmaker.” On yet another webpageMr. Rufo is the director of “The Documentary Foundation,” a 501(c)(3) established in 2019. The Documentary Foundation consists of a webpage Mr. Rufo constructed to advertise four documentaries spanning from 2012 to 2019 for which Mr. Rufo was the director. I watched Mr. Rufo’s latest and most prominent documentary, “America Lost.” It chronicles the sad travails of a few struggling residents remaining in Youngstown, Ohio; Stockton, California; and Memphis, Tennessee as these towns undergo economic contraction. Rufo’s point seems to be to chronicle misery, not offer analysis or solutions. He mentions, for instance, that the steel mills in Youngstown have closed, but never hints at why they closed, abandoning their workforce to watch the town decay and property values plummet. I was reminded of “Seattle is Dying,” the Republican fear-mongering propaganda film that Nadine Woodward used in her campaign for mayor of Spokane. Elsewhere one finds that Mr. Rufo ran for Seattle City Council in 2018 as a “centrist” candidate that was “socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” His speech at Hillsdale belies that self-characterization.

“Colorblind” or just blind?

Jerry LeClaireApr 28

I grew up in the North. I went to high school in a lily-white suburb of Milwaukee. I never questioned—and I certainly was never taught in school—that there was a reason embedded in law that people of color lived only in what locals referred to as the “Milwaukee ghetto.” The citizens of my white suburb condemned the people living in the “inner city” for their presumed sloth. When that “ghetto” burned in the summer of 1967 we wondered at the inanity of rioting and burning their own neighborhood. 

When you grow up on the white side of a systemically racist system, when you are surrounded by well-meaning, church-going, civil rights supporting people in that system, you grow up blind to your own society’s complicity in the outrages of the day. 

Much of the wealth average Americans possess is tied to home ownership. Obtaining and steadily paying off a mortgage on a home is a savings program and a source of pride and credit. I was five years old when my economically lower middle class family of three purchased a modest home. It was a memorable event. The course of my life would have been quite different if my parents had been people of color who were denied a mortgage because the only place they were allowed to purchase a home were in a re-lined district. How different my life would have been without my parents’ home investment, how much of a blow to the family’s tiny financial nest egg and overall self-esteem? 

For much of the 20th century for anyone not “Caucasian” (sometimes stated as “Aryan”) being shut out of home buying was the legal and economic reality. For black, brown, Jewish, asian and other minorities faced this reality when they tried to establish themselves and their families in the cities of the North—while we smug, white Northerners, oblivious to our own complicity, decried the more obvious racism of the South. 

This history of legal systemic racism is now coming to light. To shine that light requires combing through the wording of thousands of deeds, a project now aided by digitized records, optical character readers, and computerized searches. I highly recommend an hour long documentary focused on such a project in Hennepin County, Minnesota, the county that contains the City of Minneapolis. It is entitled “Jim Crow of the North.” You can watch it on Youtube (with annoying commercials) or on KSPS (which might require a membership—well worth your money). 

It should come as no surprise that Spokane has its share of racially restricted covenants written into property deeds. There have been a few articles in the Spokesman (for example) about such covenants. Efforts to map these local covenants by a local historian, Logan Camporeale, are part of his blog, The Local History, a fascinating resource.

This is exactly the sordid history of racism in our country that white supremacists like Tucker Carlson, Christopher Rufo, and their (sometimes unwitting) Republican legislative allies seek to ban from our schools as they demonize “Critical Race Theory,” weaponizing the words even as they carefully avoid discussing what it really is. (See Critical Race Theory??) My fervent hope is that the Carlsons, Rufos, Trumps, and Allsups of this country are too late, that this train of historical understanding of our racist past has already left the station, that honesty will prevail, and that we can teach our children of the past of which we were made intentionally unaware. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. After you’ve watched “Jim Crow of the North” be sure to watch “13th” on Youtube or Netflix, the story of mass incarceration based on a loophole in the 13th Amendment.

County Power Politics 

Jerry LeClaireApr 23

An historic change in the governance of Spokane County is about to occur. In 2022 Spokane County will elect five county commissioners each from five new commissioner districts to the County Commission. Importantly, the new commissioner elections must use district nominations AND district elections. This is in contrast to the current process where the three member County Commission is elected on a county-wide basis in the general election after surviving an in-district top-two primary. Having five commissioners directly representing five districts should offer markedly better representation than the current system. 

Predictably, the three Republican Spokane County Commissioners, especially Al French, have fought tooth and nail against this new system put in place by state law. County Republicans, happy in their ascendant power, see the expansion as “a solution to a non-existent problem.”

Usually 40-45% of the votes cast in Spokane County go to Democrats. It seems reasonable to expect, absent partisan gerrymandering, that two of the five commissioners might be Democrats, people who would offer a different perspective than the current three-person, all-Republican County Commission.

The voters will elect five district-based Spokane County Commissioners in 2022, but, first, the new district lines must be drawn by the all new Spokane County Redistricting Commission (CRC). That process deserves our close attention. County Republicans hold a lot of the cards. They will do everything they can to control the process. At the very least they need to know the voters are watching.

The structure and function of the CRC is specified by state law passed in 2018, and codified in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW). (See RCW 36.32.053 and RCW 36.32.054.) The CRC is closely modeled on the Washington State Redistricting Commission. The principle of both the state and county redistricting commissions is that redistricting is a balanced partisan process, a process in which the two major parties of the time are charged with reaching 3-1 or 4-0 agreement on the new political district boundaries based on the decennial nationwide census. (This is in contrast to the majority party of a state legislature shutting out the minority party, still the process in many states.)

By law, the four voting members of the five member Spokane County Redistricting Commission (CRC) are appointed by specified Democrats and Republicans currently serving in the Washington State Senate and House. 

On March 1 the appointments of Natasha Hill and Brian McClatchey were announced by the Democratic legislators. The appointments of Robin Ball and James McDevitt by Republican legislators was announced a little after the March 1 deadline. 

So far, so good. The next step was for these four appointed members to appoint a fifth member to the CRC by April 15. Although this fifth member is non-voting, they hold considerable power. They serve as the chairperson of the commission, setting the agenda and running the meetings. In an ideal world this person would be relatively non-partisan—but this isn’t ideal, this is local politics. After three meetings in which the four CRC members suggested nominated, interviewed, and winnowed candidates they met on the April 15 deadline for final votes on a fifth member to serve as chairperson.¹ (See the footnote for notes on all four meetings.) 

Jim Camden (who was not physically present) detailed the candidates and the commission members’ objections during the final meeting of the CRC in an article in the Spokesman entitled “‘Only going to get tougher from here’: Spokane County redistricting committee deadlocks on picking leader.” Four candidates were interviewed during the prior day’s meeting (see footnote below). Only two of those were put to a vote on the 15th.. Both of these votes ended in a 2-2 deadlock. A third vote, on a nominee who was not interviewed at the meeting, ended the same way, deadlocked at 2-2. (James McDevitt had said earlier that he would have “trouble working with her based on past experiences with the city.”)

Robin Ball and James McDevitt, the Republican appointees to the CRC hold the cards—and they know it. They read the law (RCW 36.32.053). All they had to do is vote “no” on any nominee put forward by the Democrats in order to throw the selection to current Spokane County Commissioners, Al French, Mary Kuney, and Josh Kerns, all of whom are staunch Republicans who take a dim view of this whole process.

The prime (and only) candidate McDevitt and Ball finally nominated, Bill Hyslop, has a long record of donating to Republican candidates, including current Spokane County Commissioner Al French. French is a staunch opponent of the whole idea of redistricting. Mr. French sued (and lost) to block implementation of the state law that mandated it. Considering that fewer than 10% of Americans ever contribute to a candidate’s campaign, it seems fair to view Mr. Hyslop as a certified Republican partisan with a high probability of being antagonistic to the whole process.

The objections raised at the meeting by Jim McDevitt and Robin Ball to Gary Stokes, general manager of KSPS and a journalist with a long history of covering politics, were weak by comparison. Robin Ball objected that Gary Stokes lacked “mediation training”, while Jim McDevitt pointed out that Mr. Stokes voted on the Democratic ticket in the last two Presidential Primaries. Wow. Really? There are two major parties in this country. Deciding to help choose a presidential candidate of one of those parties makes you a staunch partisan? Hardly. No one asked about Bill Hyslop’s presidential primary voting record. The answer would have been obvious. The third vote, on Gloria Ochoa’s nomination (also mentioned above), was doomed from the start by McDevitt’s unspecified aversion. 

You can bet Al French already knows who the fifth member, the non-voting chairperson, of the CRC will be, just like he presented Dr. Lutz’ replacement to the Spokane Regional Board of Health moments after Dr. Lutz was fired. Al French holds more power in Spokane County than any other elected official—and he’s not about to let any of that power go without twisting every political and legal knob at his disposal. All he needs to assure the appointment of his preferred candidate is the agreement of one other county commissioner, either Mary Kuney or Josh Kerns. Not a difficult task.

The deadline for Spokane County Commissioners to announce the fifth member and chairperson of the County Redistricting Commission is April 30, just eight days away. Here’s what you can do to let the County Commissioners know that you’re paying attention:

1) Contact the County Commissioners. Visit https://www.spokanecounty.org/1123/County-Commissioners , click on each name and email them. Ask to be updated on the redistricting process. Suggest that it is inappropriate to name a fifth member to the CRC who has contributed to the current commissioners’ campaigns. Ask if the public can attend the County Commissioners’ deliberations on the appointment. (There is a “Public Hearing” on Tuesday, April 27. Is that where the decision will be made?) Make the point. Ask a question. Keep it short.

2) Visit https://www.spokanecounty.org/ . Go to the far bottom right corner of the page under Site Links and click “Notify Me.” Follow the directions to receive notifications of the County Commissioners “Special Meetings” and “Weekly Meetings”. If they receive a bunch of signups it might give them notice that people are taking an interest and their choices could have consequences. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. It gets worse. According to RCW 36.32.053, “The legislative body of the county will provide adequate funding and resources to support the duties of the redistricting committee.” In other words, the current three County Commissioners control the purse strings of CRC. Moreover, it looks like the staff that will provide technical assistance to the CRC are all county staff employed by, and directly accountable to, the current Commissioners. Brian McClatchey and Natasha Hill will need technical assistance of their own. 

If the CRC deadlocks on the final district proposal the decision goes to the Washington State Redistricting Commission. (If the WSRC deadlocks it goes to the WA State Supreme Court.)1

Bill Siems, a member of Spokane Indivisible, listened in or physically attended all four meetings of the CRC. Below is his detailed summary of the proceedings. 

The Redistricting Commissioners met 4 times: April 7, April 13, April 14, April 15.
On April 7 McDevitt nominated Bill Hyslop, Ball nominated David De Wolf (attorney and emeritus Gonzaga law professor, never mentioned again) and Catherine Brazil (UW’s Director of Government and Community Relations for Spokane and Eastern Washington, board member Hutton Settlement, STCU, has worked for Slade Gorton and Cowles Corp), McClatchey nominated Judge Jim Murphy, and Hill nominated Gloria Ochoa- Bruck. The Commissioners were to consider these nominations and meet again for discussion on April 13.

On April 13 McDevitt refused to consider either Ochoa-Bruck (she had butted heads with McDevitt when he served as interim Spokane police chief) or Murphy (“too liberal”), McClatchey and Hill objected that Hyslop is too partisan (McClatchey cited $ contributions to all 3 current Commissioners). McClatchey and Hill spoke strongly for a less partisan Non-voting Chair, both to keep the process peaceable and to present an appearance of impartiality to the public. They suggested Lars Gilbert (CEO of Spokane University District) and Gary Stokes (President of KPBS) as possibilities. Agreement to meet on April 14 to interview Lars Gilbert, Bill Hyslop, Gary Stokes, and Catherine Brazil, if they are available. Note the effect of the looming April 15 deadline on an orderly process. What are the chances that the slow-walking of the CRC meetings was not a deliberate choice emanating from the County Commission?

On April 14 Gilbert, Hyslop, Stokes and Brazil were interviewed, in that order, for about 15 minutes each. The interviews nominally had four points 1) introduce yourself and background, 2) why are you interested, 3) why are you ideal, 4) any questions for us. Hyslop was scheduled to interview first but arrived late. One effect of this was that Hyslop was present in the room for most of Gilbert’s interview! Another irregularity was that Brazil, whose interview was last, never got a chance to ask questions. The questions from Stokes elicited declarations from both McDevitt and Ball that the redistricting (which they took oaths to perform to the best of their ability) was a “solution” to a non-existent problem. Stokes also suggested that a good first act for the full CRC would be to provide a joint editorial about their work to the S-R and other media. Both McDevitt and Ball made joking references to the liberal bias of the S-R. The Commissioners agreed to meet the following day to offer resolutions.

On April 15 McDevitt and Ball said they would support only Hyslop. Their objections to Gilbert and Brazil were perfunctory, on the order of “fine people, but not qualified.” Stokes’ experience with resolving workplace disputes was deemed shallow compared to Hyslop’s professional mediation experience (McClatchey said “this is not a mediation.”). McDevitt had discovered that Stokes had voted in the Democratic primary in the past two Presidential elections. No one mentioned Hyslop’s voting in these elections. McClatchey said he found only Hyslop unacceptable, in part because during the interview Hyslop conducted himself as though he were “interviewing to become my boss,” and because he stared at McClatchey the entire time, never meeting the eyes of either Ball or Hill. When asked how he would counter a public perception of his partiality, Hyslop replied that the public should watch him and see for themselves. Hill and McClatchey spoke eloquently of the negative effects of selecting a chair as strongly partisan as Hyslop, both for the smooth progress of the work, and for public perception of partiality. Three nominations (Hyslop, Stokes, Ochoa-Bruck) all produced 2-2 votes.

County employees present ex officio at the four meetings were Gerry Gemmill (Chief Executive Officer, administered oaths of office, chaired first 3 meetings), John Dickson (Chief Operations Officer, chaired 4th meeting and described himself as a technical type), Ginna Vasquez (Clerk of the Board, secretary/recorder), and an attorney for the County whose name I did not catch supplied legal advice and properly worded texts for resolutions. For example, the Commissioners were inclined to discuss candidates in Executive Session (public not allowed), but were informed by the attorney this was not legal. Also present for all four meetings as a “member of the public” was Karen Corkins, Al French’s assistant. The only others present as “members of the public” at each meeting were one to three representatives of Spokane Indivisible.

Chief Operations Officer John Dickson said that all staffing and support for the CRC will come from the County. He mentioned as a possibility contracting with an outside firm to provide technical assistance to the CRC. This timeliness and sufficiency of the County support will bear close watching. This would be the next arena of foot dragging and slow walking.