JXIndivisible

We are still fighting the Civil War and the doctrine of white supremacy over which it was fought.

Jerry LeClaireMay 21

I was a teenager during the centennial “celebrations” of the American Civil War. In my home state of Wisconsin I participated in a few of the Civil War battle “re-enactments” of the time dressed as soldier and firing a vintage muzzleloader. I marveled how some of my Welsh ancestors, people who had arrived in Wisconsin only thirteen years before the war, had, nonetheless, been drawn in to fight on the Union side. I puzzled how, in some other families, brother had fought brother in a conflict over something as obscure as whether the South had the right to secede. The abolition of slavery, I was taught, was an afterthought, a footnote, to the question of secession, a term now clothed in the concept of “states’ rights.” Robert E. Lee was presented as a noble man to be honored and revered. Nathan Bedford Forrest appeared in textbook and myth as a brilliant cavalry tactician, so brilliant that I was supposed to not notice that Forrest had gone on to found the Ku Klux Klan, a group formed to terrorize newly enfranchised Black citizens. 

In the mid 1960s I was vaguely uneasy when, on a brief home stay with a white Methodist family in a very white part of Atlanta, Georgia, I was given a tour of Stone Mountain. There I was proudly shown the massive monument to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and “Stonewall” Jackson carved into the mountain (and dedicated on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s death by an assassin’s bullet). I was treated to a recitation of the valiant service these three men rendered to something called the “Lost Cause” in the “War of Northern Aggression.” Slavery was never mentioned, although I later learned that the 2nd and 3rd Ku Klux Klans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were deeply involved with this memorial. I tried to square my hosts’ pride in this monument with the images I’d seen on television of white state troopers and a white mob brutally beating peaceful black and white civil rights protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. (Only now do I realize that the dedication of Stone Mountain was only a little more than a month after that vivid horror.)

The doctrine of white supremacy is deeply entwined with—and lives on through—the concerted effort to dignify and ennoble those who served in an armed rebellion intended to preserve white supremacy, the slavery it justified, and the economic and social system slavery made possible. 

The rebellion in defense of white supremacy, a rebellion dignified as “The Confederacy,” lives on in the monuments and narrative the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other clever apologists promoted in textbooks and monuments.

Wars don’t end when the shooting stops. The conflict over which the war was fought moves to the desks of writers, to classrooms and pulpits, to dinner tables and family gatherings. Attitudes, “hearts and minds”, change with painful slowness—attitudes are complex and layered. The Confederate battle flag one sees flapping on poles attached to local pickup trucks does not mean the same thing to every person who flies it or sees it—but it should be seen as the flag of white supremacy and it ought to be scorned. Symbolism is important. The battle flag might be symbol in favor of “states’ rights” for some, but it is a dog whistle to white supremacy for most. The doctrine of white supremacy lives on in more American culture than it should thanks to the efforts of some to muddy (“whitewash” if you will) the reason for which the American Civil War was fought. That the South was allowed to re-write the history of that war in textbooks, monuments, and ennoblement of insurrectionists was and is a mistake for which we are now still paying. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. This post was inspired by a superbly written and thoughtful article in June 21, 2021, issue of The Atlantic by Clint Smith, entitled “Why Confederate Lies Live On, For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.” It should be required reading. (There may be a paywall.)

P.P.S. Contrast the treatment of the Confederate rebellion in American schools and statuary to the treatment of the Nazis and Nazi doctrine in modern-day Germany. In Germany the reality of the Holocaust is required curriculum. You will find no statues to Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels or any others of the Nazi pantheon. Of course there are still those today in Germany who still subscribe to the doctrine of Aryan racist supremacy—but they are not offered a public platform from which to preach and spread their malignant ideas. 

P.P.P.S. On the topic of symbolism I have a vivid memory to share. One Halloween when I was about ten years old I thought it would be spookily consistent with the holiday to put burnt cork on my upper lip and go “trick or treat” as Adolf Hitler. I will never forget my mother’s horror at the idea nor will I forget her heartfelt explanation to my youthful self how my impersonation of Hitler might deeply hurt people who had lost sons in the then recent conflict of WWII. Flying the Confederate battle flag should be seen in the same way.

Will the new capital gains excise tax stand up to legal scrutiny?

Jerry LeClaireMay 19

A new Washington State law, SB 5096, signed on May 4th, would levy an excise tax on “certain capital gains.” Here’s how Laurel Demkovich described the measure in a May 10 Spokesman article:

It implements a 7% tax on the sale of stocks, bonds, businesses and other investments if the profits exceed $250,000 annually. Exceptions include the sale of all real estate, livestock and small family-owned businesses.

It’s expected to bring in about $415 million for the state to pay for child care and early learning. Revenue would start coming in 2023.

Four hundred and fifteen million is a big number by itself, but $415 million in collections at a tax rate of 7% means that the amount taxed would be close to $6 billion. That $6 billion dollars in long term capital gains not counting real estate (any real estate, including your home or the family farm), not counting family owned businesses with annual revenues less than ten million dollars, not counting gains accrued in retirement accounts, and not counting any other gains that do not exceed $250,000. It astounds me that with all those exceptions there remains $6 billion dollars of capital gains among individuals and couples in the State of Washington to which to apply the tax. This tax will apply only to the wealthiest of the wealthy and even then it will apply primarily to massive profits made dealing in financial instruments. 

How will the money derived from this tax be used? Ms. Demkovich in the Spokesman article gives scant attention to the purpose of the tax: “It’s expected to bring in about $415 million for the state to pay for child care and early learning.” Ms. Demkovich might better have quoted the law as passed(the bold is mine):

To help meet the state’s paramount duty, the legislature intends to levy a seven percent tax on the voluntary sale or exchange of stocks, bonds, and other capital assets where the profit is in excess of $250,000 annually to fund K-12 education, early learning, and child care, and advance our paramount duty to amply provide an education to every child in the state. The legislature recognizes that levying this tax will have the additional effect of making material progress toward rebalancing the state’s tax code.

That paramount duty to provide ample funds with which to educate our children is enshrined in the Washington State Constitution (Article IX, Section 1). 

The law as passed is also clear about the lack of fairness in our state tax system:

Washington’s tax system today is the most regressive in the nation because it asks those making the least to pay the most as a percentage of their income. Middle-income families in Washington pay two to four times more in taxes, as a percentage of household income, as compared to top earners in the state.

It is the right thing to do. If you’re going to live in Washington State and enjoy the benefits of an educated citizenry and workforce one ought to be willing to chip in to fund that education. The wealthiest among us have benefitted the most from this educated workforce. We currently fund education through a maze of regressive taxes, so this new slightly progressive tax is a done deal, right? Not so fast. 

The conservative group Freedom Foundation, along with the Seattle-based law firm Lane Powell, filed a lawsuit on April 28 seeking to overturn the capital gains tax.

A lawsuit on what basis? In 1930, the Washington State Constitution was amended¹ (the footnote is a copy of that amendment) to read, “All taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property.” That Amendment 14, however it was passed and for whatever purpose at the time, has been used ever since as a legal argument to claim that an income tax is unconstitutional (from the perspective of the state constitution). The “Freedom Foundation,” funded by the wealthiest of the wealthy, will, no doubt, take this all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court over the issue of whether this new capital gains tax is prohibited under Amendment 14. (This amendment has been used to claim an income tax is “unconstitutional” ever since its enactment.) It will all come down to whether this nearly century-old amendment is interpreted by the nine justices of the Washington State Supreme Court can see this new tax as an excise tax (as the law states) versus a tax that is unconstitutional based on Amendment 14. 

Amendment 14 was passed by the legislature in 1929 and sent to the voters in the 1930 general election. The 1930 voters pamphlet argument in favor of its passage certainly suggests there was no intent to include capital gains on stocks and bonds as “property” for the purposes of the amendment: 

Under the proposed amendment it will be possible to tax bonds and stocks other than those secured by or representing property taxed in this State, at moderate rates, leaving them still desirable as investments.

One hopes that the justices will refer to the voter’s pamphlet (the link to which I found here). How legislators marketed Amendment 14 to the public surely must speak to their intent. 

Brace yourselves for the onslaught from the Washington Policy Center and other Republican anti-tax outfits funded by wealthy conservatives. Fully expect to hear that this new tax must be struck down because it is the beginning of a “slippery slope” that will end in the government taxing everyone’s meager income.² They will strictly avoid discussing how the wealthy have avoided paying their fair share in this state for at least a century.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

Amendment 14 (1930) — Art. 7 Section 1 TAXATION — The power of taxation shall never be suspended, surrendered or contracted away. All taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax and shall be levied and collected for public purposes only. The word “property” as used herein shall mean and include everything, whether tangible or intangible, subject to ownership. All real estate shall constitute one class: Provided, That the legislature may tax mines and mineral resources and lands devoted to reforestation by either a yield tax or an ad valorem tax at such rate as it may fix, or by both. Such property as the legislature may by general laws provide shall be exempt from taxation. Property of the United States and of the state, counties, school districts and other municipal corporations, and credits secured by property actually taxed in this state, not exceeding in value the value of such property, shall be exempt from taxation. The legislature shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to exempt personal property to the amount of three hundred ($300.00) dollars for each head of a family liable to assessment and taxation under the provisions of the laws of this state of which the individual is the actual bona fide owner. [AMENDMENT 14, 1929 p 499 Section 1. Approved November, 1930.]2

Observe that the same “slippery slope” argument is used in various forms in the controversy over gun regulation: any registry, any control over gun sales, is immediately posed as the top of a “slippery slope” that will end in the government regulating not just military weaponry but confiscating your hunting rifle! The “slippery slope” argument ought, by now, to be wearing a little thin…

The right wing certainly thinks so.

Jerry LeClaireMay 17

Republican state and federal legislators, aided by right wing media, are busy ramping up rhetoric and passing laws against the teaching of something call Critical Race Theory. Most everyone else’s initial reaction was, “Huh???” Most of us hadn’t heard the term before Trump started using it in September 2020. Mr. Trump latched onto it after watching Tucker Carlson interview Christopher Rufo on Fox News. Rufo is a self-promoting polemicist linked to a think tank in Seattle that promotes teaching “Intelligent Design” as science and a failed Republican political candidate. Rufo spoke at length on Carlson’s show about the supposed evil origins of Critical Race Theory and its use in polluting young minds with what Rufo considers scary and un-American concepts like “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.”¹

Trump, convinced by Carlson’s signature scrunched face and Rufo’s rhetoric, soon after the program issued an executive order banning “critical race theory-based training programs” in the federal government, singling out diversity training for particular scorn.

Words are important. Rufo is no scholar, but he understands getting in front of an issue by picking the right words, defining them to one’s own ends, and using them to sway public opinion.²

The best article I’ve come across explaining why Rufo, Trump, and Republican legislators are so enthusiastically arguing and legislating against critical race theory was written by Steven Woolley, a retired “small town preacher,” writing a blog as “Country Parson.” I’ve copied and pasted his post below and have bolded what I consider a few key phrases.

Critical Race Theory: Why is it such a threat to the right wing?

My limited understanding of critical race theory is that it investigates the role and place of race at the intersection of law, social mores, and political power.  Not exactly a new thing, it’s been around since the 1970s.  It threatens right wingers partly by the assertion that race played a central role in structuring American society, and partly by academics drawing from Marx that social problems are more a function of social systems than of individual beliefs and attitudes. 

The right wing seems terribly threatened by something most people outside the academy have never heard of.  Trump issued an executive order in 2020 demanding that federal funds be prohibited from underwriting teaching critical race theory.  Arizona and Idaho have passed bills against teaching it in their public schools.  Right wing groups are apoplectic about it. Sen. Scott’s rebuttal to Pres. Biden’s speech to Congress asserted boldly that the United States is not a racist country.   It causes one to wonder what could be so frightening to them.

We can’t pretend that race is not a factor in American society.  No matter how much we desire to believe we’re all made of the same stuff, and that all lives matter, we have been diligent about prejudicially dividing the population into discrete groups according to skin color, countries of origin, and ethnic traditions.  Examining race in the context of law, social mores and political power requires understanding the experiences unique to each race.  Critics call it identity politics, and complain that it divides us into competing minorities when what we need is greater unity as Americans.  Michael Ramirez published an April 26 editorial cartoon in which the left side of the panel labeled “Liberals” listed dozens of race, ethnic and social subsets.  The right side of the panel labeled “Everyone Else” had only one category: American.  His point?  The left is dividing us against each other; everyone else sees only Americans.  His cartoon reflected a common belief that until recently there was a common narrative defining America and Americans that worked to unite us in common purpose.  Liberals are destroying that narrative.  In truth, it was a  narrative held in common only by portion of white America that assumed everyone else could easily assimilate into it if they wanted to.  If they didn’t or couldn’t, there was something wrong with them.  Never-mind that the legal structures of the nations worked against them. 

Moynihan called it benign neglect, but there wasn’t anything benign about it.  The old common narrative was blind to the history and social structures that prevented non-whites from assimilating; it reserved for itself the right to dictate terms and conditions for what assimilation meant; and it was disinterested in how the values and traditions of others might add to create a different common narrative.  So entrenched is the old narrative that even today there are efforts to enshrine Anglo-Saxon culture as the official definition of America and Americans. 

To its critics, critical race theory is a frontal attack on the glorious story of how Anglo-Saxon culture built the nation.  The attackers they point to are academics whose voices angrily accuse white America without mercy or desire for reconciliation.  But critical race theory is not a thing.  The many books that try to say ‘This is It’ can’t agree with each other on a common definition.  It’s a wide ranging field of study with no fixed dogma.  Academic work in critical race theory is an essential key that helps unlock a more complete and honest understanding of American history.  It focusses on the stories of each of our people, told in their own voices about the roles they played in the building of the nation.  

There are many strands to the story of who we are woven into the fabric that is American society.   Some fear that examining each strand will deconstruct the fabric so that it can never be put back together.   I think it will help us up better understand how the fabric was woven so it can be repaired where torn, and made stronger to last longer.  Shared knowledge of how the American fabric is woven is what can create a new common narrative that celebrates the dignity of each of us.  

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

For more on Rufo see Rufo’s Third Grade Argument2

Consider “‘Intelligent’” Design” as opposed to “Creationism,” to disguise a religious teaching in words that have a ring of science to them. Promotion of teaching “Intelligent Design” as science is the raison d’être of the Discovery Institute with which Rufo is associated. 

The fallout from Covid and the Lutz firing fiasco brought it on

Jerry LeClaireMay 14

On May 10th Governor Inslee signed into law a bill that will bring statewide improvement to Washington’s public health system. One provision of the new law is a mandate that local public boards of health have equal numbers of elected and non-elected officials. This provision was put forward in the legislature by State Representative Marcus Riccelli (D-LD3, much of the City of Spokane) in response to the firing of Dr. Bob Lutz. Dr. Lutz was fired from his position as the Spokane Regional Board of Health’s Health Director (see below) in October 2020. 

The Spokesman article by Arielle Dreher and Laurel Demkovich discussing the new law indicates that:

The non-elected members must include an equal number from three categories:

• Those with experience in public health or health care, such as physicians, nurses or health care workers.
• Consumers of public health, such as residents in communities that face health inequities.
• Other stakeholders, such as community-based organizations or representatives from the business community.

This should be a heads up for rational, civic-minded citizens to consider applying for positions on the Board of Health (BOH). The qualifications for and the number of positions available will be determined with a re-write of the Bylaws of the Board of Health to conform to the new state law. The upcoming change in Spokane County government coming with the 2022 elections makes it unclear when this re-write of the Bylaws will happen.¹

As noted in the more detailed section below, the current Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) BOH is comprised of twelve members, only three of whom are non-elected. The new law will require a major shift in number and composition. It is time to have voices on the board that better represent the population the SHRD serves.

BACKGROUND: 

The structure and function of the Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) Board of Health (BOH) was mostly out-of-sight and out-of-mine until Covid struck and put the BOH in the spotlight. One of the Board’s three citizen Board members, Jason Kinley, a naturopath, made news by publicly deriding public health measures against Covid. Kinley held forth in a minutes-long polemic at a May 1 protest organized by the disgraced extremist, soon-to-be-former WA State Representative (and now pastor of Covenant Church) Matt Shea. Jason Kinley still sits on the BOH despite his public undermining of the mission of the SRHD. 

I naively assumed that a Board of Health might contain people with medical and epidemiological expertise. Such assumptions, I’m learning, are foolish. The SRHD BOH is one of twenty-nine boards and commissions listed at the Spokane County website many of which consist mostly of combinations of County, city, and village elected officials. Currently, nine of the twelve members of the SRHD BOH are elected officials, none of them with medical background. The three non-elected members are nominated by the three Spokane County from their commissioner districts. They are Jason Kinley, the naturopath discussed above (nominated by Commissioner Kerns, District 1); Andrea Frostad, a dental hygienist who expresses views against vaccinations (from Commissioner French’s District 1); and Chuck Hafner, a Spokane Valley businessman (from Commissioner Kuney’s District 2). Notably, somewhere I read that Commissioner Kerns’ excuse for nominating Kinley was that “Kinley was the only one who applied.” If that is true, either the position was poorly advertised or the sense of civic duty in our community is in bad repair. (Note that Mr. Hafner’s and Ms. Frostad’s four year terms are up this year, 2021, regardless of the upcoming state-mandated reorganization.) 

It wasn’t just Kinley’s May 1, 2020, public protest that made news for the SRHD BOH. In late October Amelia Clark, the salaried SRHD Administrator, after a brief presentation in a closed-door “executive session” of the BOH summarily fired Dr. Bob Lutz, the SRHD Health Officer. Dr. Lutz, a highly qualified M.D. with training in epidemiology, had been managing the SRHD’s response to the Covid pandemic. Who it was that instigated Amelia Clark’s firing of Dr. Lutz remains a matter of speculation. As an administer, though, Ms. Clark got out ahead of herself in her zeal to rid SRHD of Dr. Lutz: This week the Washington State Board of Health issued a preliminary ruling that Clark violated Washington State law with her action against Lutz. The consequences of that ruling are yet to be determined.

Ms. Clark and the SRHD BOH made news for weeks after the Lutz firing. The BOH’s struggle in a partly open Zoom meeting to rubber stamp Clark’s action added to the drama. The whole episode stank of power politics. Commissioner French seemed to float behind the scenes. Immediately after the vote to confirm Lutz’ termination, French thrust forward his pre-determined candidate for the new Health Officer. Observers were left with the sense of carefully orchestrated and thinly disguised back room power play.

The SRHD BOH needs revamping. The new state law requires it. It behooves the citizens of Spokane County to pay attention and, when the member-at-large positions are clarified, to offer their applications, their time, and service. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

Spokane County is in the midst of the re-districting necessary to transition to a three to a five member Board of County Commissioners (BoCC). The new BoCC will have each commissioner elected from one of five newly drawn commissioner districts. For more detail see Indivisible-County Redistricting Impasse

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.