Why Biden Should Pick Kamala  Harris for VP

She can not only help him win—she can advance the anti-racism agenda.

by Julie Rodin Zebrak

June 25, 2020

POLITICS

Gage Skidmore

 

Joe Biden and his vice-presidential vetting team have their work cut out for them. They bear the responsibility of choosing a running mate who can garner excitement, advance the progressive agenda, help reverse systemic racism, and appeal to independents and moderate Republicans. The stakes are immeasurably high: It’s hard to fathom what four more years of Donald Trump in the White House would do to our country.

As the pandemic and the mass protests over George Floyd’s murder have revealed, the nation is still reeling from centuries of racial injustice and inequities. In this fragile moment, Biden has an incredible opportunity help heal the country through the selection of his running mate.

Of course, Biden has a delicate needle to thread. He needs someone who appeals to the black community and can seize on the momentum surrounding the anti-racism movement. He needs to galvanize support among the liberal army of voters who supported Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. At the same time, he can’t alienate the moderate voters and Never Trumpers who helped carry the 2018 blue wave.

Biden has already committed to picking a woman to join him on the ticket. The good news is, he has an abundance of riches to choose from—whether Elizabeth Warren, Val Demings, Kamala Harris, Susan Rice, or Keisha Lance Bottoms. All of them would serve with honor and distinction as the nation’s first female vice president.

But given the condition of the country—following the brutal killings of not only Floyd but Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks—Biden would be wise to choose a qualified black woman. Such a pick would not only speak directly to the concerns of African Americans who have felt they have not been represented in the halls of power, it could help catapult Biden from his Delaware basement to the Oval Office.

There is one woman who could do this better than the rest: Kamala Harris. (Full disclosure, I helped her presidential campaign, so my support of Harris runs deep.)

Selecting the Black California senator would not just be “symbolic,” as Professor Laurence Tribe suggested this week to the Washington Post after signing a letter recommending the former vice president choose Warren. “I think African Americans above all would be the first to say they are more interested in results than cosmetics,” said Tribe.

What Professor Tribe—and much of the media—seem to miss consistently is that Harris isn’t merely symbolic. She has the receipts. Most recently, she has used her perch as a U.S. Senator to elevate the concerns of minorities and address them with purposeful and data-driven policy solutions. For example:

• Harris introduced with Rand Paul The Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act of 2017, a bipartisan bail reform bill that encourages states to reform or replace the practice of money bail.
• Harris introduced the Water Affordability Act of 2018, legislation that would help low-income families across the country pay for rising sewer and water bills.
• Harris and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal announced the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act, the first ever national legislation ensuring the rights and protections of millions of domestic workers—who are largely persons of color.
• Harris and members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus introduced a historic legislative package to address the United States’ urgent maternal health crisis. The Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020 seeks to improve maternal health outcomes of Black women, as well as other high-risk populations, including female veterans, incarcerated women, and Native Americans.
• Harris and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley proposed the Saving Our Street Act, a bill designed to benefit local institutions, like bodegas or small cafés, with fewer than ten employees, often which are minority owned.
• Last but not certainly not least, Harris joined top Congressional Democrats in unveiling the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 to address police brutality.

Harris’ tenure in the Senate speaks volumes to her values and priorities. And although progressive legislation like hers has not stood a chance in Trump’s Washington, or with Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader, Harris has proven herself as a leader who can take big ideas and swiftly turn them into legislation ripe for a Democratic majority.

By choosing Harris, Biden would signal that he shares the same concerns of Black Americans and would be committed to advancing equality as president. It would also show that he wants someone by his side who can not only beat Trump, but immediately begin cleaning off the stain of his presidency.

Harris’ lifelong career in public service—from her time as California’s attorney general, and her tenure in the U.S. Senate—render her fully qualified and prepared to serve as vice president. (She’s certainly no less qualified than Biden’s former boss was at the time he became president.) Harris’s race and gender are not what would make her a good number 2; it’s her skills, values, intelligence, and experience. But her race and gender make her even more perfect for the moment.

Still, there are plenty of other reasons to believe a Biden-Harris ticket would be successful.

Biden will have prudently chosen a VP that voters can rely on to hit the ground running. As California’s chief law enforcement officer, Harris ran the second largest justice department in the country. She has significant executive experience running an agency, managing a budget, and making tough decisions. Harris’s readiness appeals to the voters anxious to fix the damage of the Trump administration.

A Biden-Harris ticket also communicates that Biden is comfortable with a fighter. Since joining the Senate in 2017, Harris has leveraged her prosecutorial chops on the Senate Judiciary Committee to take on Brett Kavanaugh, Bill Barr, Michael Horowitz, and a host of Trump’s other unqualified judicial nominees. With her razor-sharp and well-proven debate skills, Harris would eviscerate Mike Pence on the debate stage.

Twenty years Biden’s junior, Harris would bring relative youth and energy to the ticket. For a younger electorate that has only known Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Biden has an uphill battle in inspiring millennials. Choosing someone significantly younger can help reassure voters who are concerned about Biden’s advanced age and want a vice president able to lead in case of an emergency.

Like everyone else on the VP shortlist, Harris doesn’t come without some baggage. Most notably, the progressive coalition has taken issue with her prosecutorial record in California, claiming she was too aggressive in pursuing drug charges and long sentencing.

Recently, however, even some of her most vocal progressive detractors, such as Lara Bazelon and Shaun King, have conceded she would serve Biden well as his vice president. That’s because she’s worked deliberately in the Senate and on the campaign trail to tackle criminal justice reform. In fact, Harris knows the criminal justice system’s flaws intimately and has made that abundantly clear in her media appearances since the national Black Lives Matter protests began. If anything, the last few months have solidified that Harris is a smart and shrewd politician who knows how to seize the moment, connect with voters, and advance an agenda.

Of course, we can’t ignore the fact that Biden choosing a woman of color as his running mate would mark enormous progress for the country. With Harris, we have someone who can not only fill that role, but serve as a damn good vice president.   

Harris would also bring another essential feature to the Biden ticket: She would reflect the diversity of America. She attended and graduated from Howard University, a historically black university, and the University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. She’s the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. She talks frequently and lovingly about her own single working-class mother—and the lessons she provided her.

Harris wedded later in life into a biracial marriage with a Jewish entertainment lawyer named Douglas Emhoff. To even the casual observer, it’s clear Harris and Emhoff have a warm, genuine relationship. And though she doesn’t have her own children, she’s a devoted stepmother to Emhoff’s children.

Notably, there’s not a whiff of elitism to Harris, despite her professional accomplishments. She shows ordinary Americans that she is one of us. That’s not nothing: Her warm demeanor can resonate with voters. She has a knack for using social media to connect with them on a more personal level. She loves cooking and even taught Senator Mark Warner how to make a proper tuna melt on Instagram live. In short, she has a unique ability to draw from her no-nonsense prosecutorial background at noon, while welcoming us into her kitchen at night.

Simply put, Harris is uniquely suited to help Biden by leveraging that warmth, relatability, and diversity of experience to win a coalition of the Black, Latinx, and AAPI vote. Not to mention, she can help Biden bring in the college-educated white women Hillary Clinton failed to sway.

As we all know, this is a bizarre election. It’s also the most important of any of our lifetimes. Biden has a slew of great choices in a female running mate. But as the last several weeks of our national crisis have crystalized, America needs him to pick the best possible option.

Kamala Harris will send an unequivocal message to voters that justice and the integrity of our nation are on the ballot this November. Perhaps most importantly, Biden can prove with Kamala by his side that he is ready to govern in a post-Trump era—and committed to making sure this country starts treating black lives like they really do matter

Julie Rodin Zebrak

Julie Rodin Zebrak is the Washington Monthly's director of digital strategy and outreach. She is a veteran attorney with nearly 20 years of experience at the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice, and the founder and CEO of Yes Moms Can.

Panama: Fairer chocolate from the forest

Cocoa farmers in Panama are prone to poor working conditions and low pay. Meivis Ortiz is trying to improve their lot through an agroforestry project that pays women farmers a fair price.

Panama: Cocoa growers protecting the jungle

Meivis Ortiz knows just about all there is to know about chocolate and its natural origins. She studied agroforestry in Costa Rica, specializing in cocoa, and spent years advising international NGOs and chocolate producers on growing this prized crop. In 2015, having seen how long it takes to cultivate cocoa, and how poorly paid the work often is, she founded her own chocolate-producing company, Mayamei Cacao.

Ortiz pays a fair price for raw cocoa, grown by women from the Ngöbe indigenous group, and is less concerned with maximizing profits than making a social impact by empowering the women through financial independence.

They grow their crop deep in the forest of the Province Bocas del Toro, a Caribbean archipelago that is home to 90% of Panama's cocoa production.

Instead of monocultural plantations, these women use traditional methods to grow cocoa bushes among giant trees, clambering vines and the rest of the forest's natural biodiversity. This way, they thrive without the use of harmful agricultural chemicals.

Ortiz says that only by working in such close harmony with nature, is it possible to achieve the very finest quality chocolate for her customers.

A film by Anna Marie Goretzki

Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

June 25, 2020 8.18am EDT



Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the country’s ineffective pandemic response on an American “anti-science bias.” He called this bias “inconceivable,” because “science is truth.” Fauci compared those discounting the importance of masks and social distancing to “anti-vaxxers” in their “amazing” refusal to listen to science.

It is Fauci’s profession of amazement that amazes me. As well-versed as he is in the science of the coronavirus, he’s overlooking the well-established science of “anti-science bias,” or science denial.

Americans increasingly exist in highly polarized, informationally insulated ideological communities occupying their own information universes.

Within segments of the political blogosphere, global warming is dismissed as either a hoax or so uncertain as to be unworthy of response. Within other geographic or online communities, the science of vaccine safety, fluoridated drinking water and genetically modified foods is distorted or ignored. There is a marked gap in expressed concern over the coronavirus depending on political party affiliation, apparently based in part on partisan disagreements over factual issues like the effectiveness of social distancing or the actual COVID-19 death rate.

In theory, resolving factual disputes should be relatively easy: Just present strong evidence, or evidence of a strong expert consensus. This approach succeeds most of the time, when the issue is, say, the atomic weight of hydrogen.

But things don’t work that way when scientific advice presents a picture that threatens someone’s perceived interests or ideological worldview. In practice, it turns out that one’s political, religious or ethnic identity quite effectively predicts one’s willingness to accept expertise on any given politicized issue.

“Motivated reasoning” is what social scientists call the process of deciding what evidence to accept based on the conclusion one prefers. As I explain in my book, “The Truth About Denial,” this very human tendency applies to all kinds of facts about the physical world, economic history and current events.The same facts will sound different to people depending on what they already believe. AP Photo/John Raoux

Denial doesn’t stem from ignorance

The interdisciplinary study of this phenomenon has made one thing clear: The failure of various groups to acknowledge the truth about, say, climate change, is not explained by a lack of information about the scientific consensus on the subject.

Instead, what strongly predicts denial of expertise on many controversial topics is simply one’s political persuasion.

A 2015 metastudy showed that ideological polarization over the reality of climate change actually increases with respondents’ knowledge of politics, science and/or energy policy. The chances that a conservative is a climate science denier is significantly higher if he or she is college educated. Conservatives scoring highest on tests for cognitive sophistication or quantitative reasoning skills are most susceptible to motivated reasoning about climate science.

Denialism is not just a problem for conservatives. Studies have found liberals are less likely to accept a hypothetical expert consensus on the possibility of safe storage of nuclear waste, or on the effects of concealed-carry gun laws.
Denial is natural

The human talent for rationalization is a product of many hundreds of thousands of years of adaptation. Our ancestors evolved in small groups, where cooperation and persuasion had at least as much to do with reproductive success as holding accurate factual beliefs about the world. Assimilation into one’s tribe required assimilation into the group’s ideological belief system – regardless of whether it was grounded in science or superstition. An instinctive bias in favor of one’s “in-group” and its worldview is deeply ingrained in human psychology.

A human being’s very sense of self is intimately tied up with his or her identity group’s status and beliefs. Unsurprisingly, then, people respond automatically and defensively to information that threatens the worldview of groups with which they identify. We respond with rationalization and selective assessment of evidence – that is, we engage in “confirmation bias,” giving credit to expert testimony we like while finding reasons to reject the rest.

Unwelcome information can also threaten in other ways. “System justification” theorists like psychologist John Jost have shown how situations that represent a perceived threat to established systems trigger inflexible thinking. For example, populations experiencing economic distress or an external threat have often turned to authoritarian leaders who promise security and stability.

In ideologically charged situations, one’s prejudices end up affecting one’s factual beliefs. Insofar as you define yourself in terms of your cultural affiliations, your attachment to the social or economic status quo, or a combination, information that threatens your belief system – say, about the negative effects of industrial production on the environment – can threaten your sense of identity itself. If trusted political leaders or partisan media are telling you that the COVID-19 crisis is overblown, factual information about a scientific consensus to the contrary can feel like a personal attack.Everyone sees the world through one partisan lens or another, based on their identity and beliefs. Vladyslav Starozhylov/Shutterstock.com

Denial is everywhere

This kind of affect-laden, motivated thinking explains a wide range of examples of an extreme, evidence-resistant rejection of historical fact and scientific consensus.

Have tax cuts been shown to pay for themselves in terms of economic growth? Do communities with high numbers of immigrants have higher rates of violent crime? Did Russia interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election? Predictably, expert opinion regarding such matters is treated by partisan media as though evidence is itself inherently partisan.

Denialist phenomena are many and varied, but the story behind them is, ultimately, quite simple. Human cognition is inseparable from the unconscious emotional responses that go with it. Under the right conditions, universal human traits like in-group favoritism, existential anxiety and a desire for stability and control combine into a toxic, system-justifying identity politics.

Science denial is notoriously resistant to facts because it isn’t about facts in the first place. Science denial is an expression of identity – usually in the face of perceived threats to the social and economic status quo – and it typically manifests in response to elite messaging.

I’d be very surprised if Anthony Fauci is, in fact, actually unaware of the significant impact of politics on COVID-19 attitudes, or of what signals are being sent by Republican state government officials’ statements, partisan mask refusal in Congress, or the recent Trump rally in Tulsa. Effective science communication is critically important because of the profound effects partisan messaging can have on public attitudes. Vaccination, resource depletion, climate and COVID-19 are life-and-death matters. To successfully tackle them, we must not ignore what the science tells us about science denial.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 31, 2020.
Author

Adrian Bardon
Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University
Disclosure statement
Adrian Bardon received funding from the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project at the University of Connecticut.




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Trump’s presidency is a symbol of the last gasp of white supremacy

Published on June 26, 2020 By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute


When President Donald Trump first began talking about ending “chain migration” in 2017, media outlets pointed out that his own parents-in-law had likely obtained lawful permanent residency through their daughter Melania—a naturalized U.S. citizen. At the same time that Trump was ranting on Twitter, “CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!” his wife’s parents were in the process of becoming U.S. citizens after five years as so-called “green card” holders.
When the coronavirus pandemic was declared, Trump saw his chance to attack immigration policies that reunite families, and in April 2020 he announced a 60-day ban on green cards that impacted people like his parents-in-law were when they lived in their home country of Slovenia. At the time he announced the ban, I was in the process of applying for my own elderly parents to obtain lawful permanent residency in the United States, just as Melania Trump must have done only a few years ago.

Under existing immigration law, U.S. citizens have been able to sponsor their spouses, children, siblings, and parents, to obtain green cards, or permanent residency. Since his presidency began, Trump has wanted to limit that sponsorship to only spouses and children under 21. To that end, he backed the RAISE Act, which would effectively have done through legislation what his unilateral ban accomplished through executive order under cover of the COVID-19 crisis



When the 60-day ban was up in June 2020, Trump extended it to the end of the year and added a number of other visas to the list, including H-1B visas for foreign workers, to match the outlines of the failed RAISE Act. The White House claims that the ban will keep 525,000 foreign workers out of the country and make those jobs available to U.S. workers at a time of mass unemployment. One immigrant advocacy group pointed out that Trump’s ban is designed to favor immigrants from Western Europe.

The ban is the brainchild of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who entered the White House with Trump and is considered to be the “driving force” behind Trump’s racist anti-immigrant agenda. Miller began his job with a wish list of the types of immigration and immigrants he wanted to ban, both undocumented and legal. He is considered the “architect” of the Trump administration’s most cruel policy—separating parents from their young children after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Since 2017, he has been the brains behind Trump’s “Muslim ban,” the restrictions of refugee quotas, the cancelation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and more. Today, under cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump has been busy deporting young immigrant children in violation of the United States’s own anti-trafficking laws.

Miller’s uncle David Glosser wrote about the hypocrisy of his nephew’s agenda, saying that had the United States adopted Miller’s anti-immigrant wish list when his ancestors were escaping the Nazis, the family would have perished. America’s immigration policies have long served white elites like the first lady, but the rest of us have often been deprived of accessing those same policies.

For all of Trump’s talk about prioritizing American workers, he has already carved out exceptions for “any alien seeking to enter the United States to provide temporary labor or services essential to the United States food supply chain.” In other words, there are some jobs that Americans are too good for and that only low-wage immigrant labor will do. The Washington Post pointed out, “So far this year, the Trump administration is approving H-2A visas at a rate 15 percent faster than last year, and it took steps to make it easier for farmers to hire temporary farmworkers even after the pandemic began.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decried Trump’s new ban, saying, “Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back.” Indeed, at a time when health care workers especially are in short supply, and more than 15 percent of all doctors and nurses nationwide are immigrants, it is unclear how a ban on H-1B visas that limit such workers into the country until December will help Americans. Jobless Americans are hardly going to rush to medical and nursing schools, incur huge debts, fast-track their degrees at an unheard-of rate, and emerge as fully-fledged professionals in time to handle the expected surge of new COVID-19 cases.

It is also unclear how preventing U.S. citizens like me from bringing my retired elderly parents will help American workers. My parents plan to bring their entire life savings with them to spend on private health insurance and other basic needs until the end of their lives, thereby creating jobs and stimulating the U.S. economy. More importantly, they will be able to spend the golden years of their lives with their daughter and family, instead of alone and isolated. But to Trump, my parents do not deserve the same treatment as his in-laws did.

As the immigrant advocacy group Value Our Families declared recently, “Immigration is not just about the economy. Our system is designed to unify family members and is a legal right for many Americans.” Trump has trampled over that right and the rights of so many people over and over since he took office. His trampling of rights is precisely why millions of Americans—comprising a minority, albeit a significant one—voted for him in 2016 and plan to vote for him a second time. Trump did not come into office in spite of demonizing immigrants—he was elected because he repeatedly dehumanized non-Americans, particularly brown-skinned ones. He brought with him Steven Bannon, a man who said he was a fan of The Camp of the Saints, a horrendously racist tome written by the late French author Jean Raspail, that depicted ugly caricatures of Indian immigrant hordes destroying the European way of life.

Trump’s presidency is a clear symbol of the last gasp of white supremacy angrily asserting its power over a country that, in spite of centuries of institutional policies designed to privilege whites, is becoming browner every year. As someone who spent the last 30 years of my life navigating the intricacies and obstacles of the U.S. legal immigration system, I am one of the relatively privileged ones, especially when compared to the traumatized undocumented children who have been separated from their desperate parents, or the refugees fleeing violence whose legal right to seek asylum has been decimated. And yet today, even I remain separated from my parents.

Trump’s unilateral ban on green cards and immigrant work visas upends congressional legislative oversight. California Representative Judy Chu (who happens to be my representative) last year introduced the Reuniting Families Act to streamline legal immigration pathways and make them more humane. So far the bill has 78 sponsors.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court, which far too often tilts rightward, slapped back against the president’s egregious attacks on DACA registrants. In a 5-4 decision on June 18, justices voted to keep the Obama-era program intact, offering some measure of relief to the 650,000 young immigrants who have been able to defer deportation and legally work in the United States. Justice Sonia Sotomayor correctly pointed out that Trump’s decision to cancel DACA was marked by “impermissible discriminatory animus.”

Trump has expressed such “discriminatory animus” to non-white Americans since the beginning of his candidacy and presidential tenure. Through his anti-immigrant policies, he is keeping families like mine separated. He has made no secret that his goal is to preserve white domination in America, and it is for that reason he has enjoyed the fervent, irrational, cult-like following of millions of Americans terrified at the prospect of equality with non-whites.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Fox News panel struggles to cope with the network’s own devastating new polling on Trump

 June 26, 2020 By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet


There’s a new Fox News poll out surveying key swing state opinions about the 2020 race for the White House, and it paints a bleak picture for President Donald Trump’s chances:

 FOX NEWS POLL 
FL: Biden 49, Trump 40
GA: Biden 47, Trump 45
NC: Biden 47, Trump 45
TX: Biden 45, Trump 44

— Ashley Moir (@ashleymoirDC) June 25, 2020

As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out, Biden doesn’t need to win a single one of these states to prevail in the election. If Biden wins any of these states, he’s most likely already surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president. I wouldn’t bet on him winning all four states; the idea that Biden will win Texas, in particular, seems farfetched — if not impossible — despite what this poll found. But Biden’s 9-point lead in Florida should be particularly concerning for Trump. The president absolutely needs to hold the Sunshine State to maintain his grip on the presidency, and this poll — as well as many others — makes it look like a real challenge for Trump.

In the face of this grim news for the president, a Fox News panel struggled to spin the findings to offer comfort to its Trump-loving viewers. The result was an outright comedic display of searching for caveats and extraneous considerations to avoid grappling with the truth. Of course, despite this poll, and many others like it, Trump could still win. Major upsets do happen in politics. But there’s no comfort to be found in these results for the president.

Brett Baier, a regular Fox News anchor, began the spinning right away, suggesting many “everyday Americans” might not yet be tuned in to the election. This might be true, to some extent, whatever it means. But the fact is that Trump and Biden are two of the most recognizable figures in American life. Respondents to the polls know who they’re talking about.

But it was Charlie Hurt, opinion editor for the Washington Times, who really spun hardest for the president.

“I think you gave a very good rundown on why some of these polls, this early out, are to be taken with at least a slight grain of salt,” he said. “And I think those caveats become even greater when you look around at the environment that we’re looking at right now where you have, you know, one of the reasons that people are reluctant to talk to pollsters has a lot to do with, you know, the toxic environment that we’re in.”

It’s not clear why people are any more “reluctant” to talk to pollsters right now than at any other time. This just seems like a made-up claim.

He continued: “And so with that caveat, I think it’s important to also note that the campaign has just begun. Obviously, as anybody would note, you know, you want to be ahead in the polls at all times.” (Indeed!) “But the campaign has just begun and when people look around and they see the lawlessness in the streets and they see we’ve just been through a pandemic, an economic collapse the likes of which this country has never seen before, you know, it’s going to be a full three-, four- or five-month campaign before these issues start to get sorted out.”

One would typically think that a deadly pandemic, economic collapse, and public unrest would all be bad for a sitting president, but that’s clearly not the message Hurt wanted to send.

It seems to be something of an article of faith among many on the right that the “lawlessness in the streets” will work for Trump’s benefit. Much of this supposed lawlessness has been exaggerated in right-wing media, but such as it exists, there’s no reason to think it doesn’t reflect badly on Trump himself. Trump is the president. He’s overseeing the disorder. The idea that he’s the solution to it is hard to believe.

Baier, too suggested that the trend of statues being torn down, and the lack of consensus in Congress on police reform, might somehow “boomerang” back against Democrats. He didn’t consider the possibility that it could make things worse for Trump.

Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal said the answer to Baier’s question has “yet to be seen.” Again, he didn’t consider that the issue could hurt Trump as much as it may hurt Biden. He did admit, though, that while the White House wouldn’t be “panicking” about the new numbers, it should be concerned, and it’s clear Trump is behind where he was against Hillary Clinton this time in 2016.

Watch the clip below:

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WATCH: Driver ignites firework at Black Lives Matter protest — but protester tosses it back into his car

 June 26, 2020 By Sky Palma


A video taken in Riverside, California, shows a driver lighting a firework during a protest, only to have someone toss the explosive back in his car.

ABC7 reports that police released video of the incident that took place on June 1, and it shows the vehicle stopping at an intersection and the driver getting out to light a large firework. A person in the crowd then tosses it back in the vehicle, prompting the driver to run off. The firework then explodes into a fireball inside the vehicle.

Police say a “group of onlookers and the suspect driver” then attacked the person who threw the firework into the vehicle.

The driver was identified as 20-year-old Gabriel Castillo, who is currently on probation for evading police. He was arrested this Tuesday.

Watch ABC7’s report on the story below:

FROM THE BOOKSHELF

Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race
By Jeffrey b. Perry


May 3, 2013


The Invention of the White Race, Vol. I: Racial Oppression and Social Control (New Expanded Edition, Verso Books, November 2012)

Theodore W. Allen’s two-volume The Invention of the White Race, republished by Verso Books in a New Expanded Edition, presents a full-scale challenge to what Allen refers to as “The Great White Assumption” – “the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the ‘white’ identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct.” Its thesis on the origin and nature of the “white race” contains the root of a new and radical approach to United States history, one that challenges master narratives taught in the media and in schools, colleges, and universities. With its equalitarian motif and emphasis on class struggle it speaks to people today who strive for change worldwide.

Allen’s original 700-pages magnum opus, already recognized as a “classic” by scholars such as Audrey Smedley, Wilson J. Moses, Nell Painter, and Gerald Horne, included extensive notes and appendices based on his twenty-plus years of primary source research. The November 2012 Verso edition adds new front and back matter, expanded indexes, and internal study guides for use by individuals, classes, and study groups. Invention is a major contribution to our historical understanding, it is meant to stand the test of time, and it can be expected to grow in importance in the 21st century. 

“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.” 

That arresting statement, printed on the back cover of the first (1994) volume, reflected the fact that, after pouring through 885 county-years of Virginia’s colonial records, Allen found “no instance of the official use of the word ‘white’ as a token of social status” prior to its appearance in a 1691 law. As he explained, “Others living in the colony at that time were English; they had been English when they left England, and naturally they and their Virginia-born children were English, they were not ‘white.’” “White identity had to be carefully taught, and it would be only after the passage of some six crucial decades” that the word “would appear as a synonym for European-American.”

Allen was not merely speaking of word usage, however. His probing research led him to conclude – based on the commonality of experience and demonstrated solidarity between African-American and European-American laboring people, the lack of a substantial intermediate buffer social control stratum, and the “indeterminate” status of African-Americans – that the “white race” was not, and could not have been, functioning in early Virginia.

It is in the context of such findings that he offers his major thesis — the “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the later, civil war stages of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) the ruling elite, in its own class interest, deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” and 2) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also “disastrous” for European-American workers, whose class interests differed fundamentally from those of the ruling elite.

In Volume I Allen offers a critical examination of the two main lines of historiography on the slavery and racism debate: the psycho-cultural approach, which he strongly criticizes; and the socio-economic approach, which he seeks to free from certain apparent weaknesses. He then proceeds to develop a definition of racial oppression in terms of social control, a definition not based on “phenotype,” or classification by complexion. In the process, he offers compelling analogies between the oppression of the Irish in Ireland (under Anglo-Norman rule and under “Protestant Ascendancy”) and white supremacist oppression of African Americans and Indians.

Allen emphasizes that maximizing profit and maintaining social control are two priority tasks of the ruling class. He describes how racial oppression is one form of ruling class response to the problem of social control and national oppression is another. The difference centers on whether the key component of the intermediate social control stratum are members of the oppressor group (racial oppression) or the oppressed group (national oppression).

With stunning international and domestic examples he shows how racial oppression (particularly in the form of religio-racial oppression) was developed and maintained by the phenotypically-similar British against the Irish Catholics in Ireland; how a phenotypically-similar Anglo bourgeoisie established national oppression in the Anglo-Caribbean and racial oppression in the continental Anglo-American plantation colonies; how racial oppression was transformed into national oppression due to ruling class social control needs in Ireland (while racial oppression was maintained in Ulster); how the same people who were victims of racial oppression in Ireland became “white American” defenders of racial oppression in the United States; and how in America racial oppression took the form of racial slavery, yet when racial slavery ended racial oppression remained and was re-constituted in new form.

In Volume II, on The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, Allen tells the story of the invention of the “white race” in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Anglo-American plantation colonies. His primary focus is on the pattern-setting Virginia colony, and he pays special attention to the fact that England alone, of all the European colonizing powers, exported so many of its own surplus poor laboring population. He also pays particular attention to the process by which tenants and wage-laborers in the majority English labor force in Virginia were reduced to chattel bond-servants in the 1620s. In so doing, he emphasizes that this reduction was a qualitative break from the condition of laborers in England and from long established English labor law, that it was not a feudal carryover, that it was imposed under capitalism, and that it was an essential precondition of the emergence of the lifetime hereditary chattel bond-servitude imposed upon African-American laborers under the system of racial slavery.

Allen describes how, throughout much of the seventeenth century, the status of African-Americans was being fought out and he documents significant instances of labor solidarity and unrest, especially during the 1660s and 1670s. Most important is his analysis of the civil war stage of Bacon’s Rebellion when, in the final stages, "foure hundred English and Negroes in Arms" fought together demanding freedom from bondage.

It was in the period after Bacon's Rebellion, in response to class struggle, that the “white race” was invented as a ruling-class social control formation. Allen describes systematic ruling-class policies, which conferred “white race” privileges on European-Americans while imposing harsher disabilities on African-Americans resulting in a system of racial slavery, a form of racial oppression that also imposed severe racial proscriptions on free African-Americans. He emphasizes that when African-Americans were deprived of their long-held right to vote in Virginia and Governor William Gooch explained in 1735 that the Virginia Assembly had decided upon this curtailment of the franchise in order "to fix a perpetual Brand upon Free Negros & Mulattos," it was not an "unthinking decision." Rather, it was a deliberate act by the plantation bourgeoisie and was a conscious decision in the process of establishing a system of racial oppression, even though it entailed repealing an electoral principle that had existed in Virginia for more than a century.

The key to understanding racial oppression, Allen argues, is in the formation of the intermediate social control buffer stratum, which serves the interests of the ruling class. In the case of racial oppression in Virginia, any persons of discernible non-European ancestry after Bacon's Rebellion were denied a role in the social control buffer group, the bulk of which was made up of laboring-class "whites." In the Anglo-Caribbean, by contrast, under a similar Anglo- ruling elite, "mulattos" were included in the social control stratum and were promoted into middle-class status. For Allen, this was the key to understanding the difference between Virginia’s ruling-class policy of “fixing a perpetual brand” on African-Americans, and the policy of the West Indian planters of formally recognizing the middle-class status “colored” descendant and other Afro-Caribbeans who earned special merit by their service to the regime. This difference, between racial oppression and national oppression, was rooted in a number of social control-related factors, one of the most important of which was that in the West Indies there were “too few” poor and laboring-class Europeans to embody an adequate petit bourgeoisie, while in the continental colonies there were '’too many’' to be accommodated in the ranks of that class.

The references to an “unthinking decision” and “too few” poor and laboring class Europeans are consistent with Allen's repeated efforts to challenge what he considered to be the two main arguments that undermine and disarm the struggle against white supremacy in the working class: (1) the argument that white supremacism is innate, and (2) the argument that European-American workers “benefit” from “white race” privileges and that it is in their interest not to oppose them and not to oppose white supremacy. These two arguments, opposed by Allen, are related to two master historical narratives rooted in writings on the colonial period. The first argument is associated with the “unthinking decision” explanation for the development of racial slavery offered by historian Winthrop D. Jordan in his influential, White Over Black. The second argument is associated with historian Edmund S. Morgan’s similarly influential, American Slavery, American Freedom, which maintains that, as racial slavery developed, “there were too few free poor [European-Americans] on hand to matter.” Allen’s work directly challenges both the “unthinking decision” contention of Jordan and the “too few free poor” contention of Morgan. Allen convincingly argues that the “white race” privileges conferred by the ruling class on European-Americans were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans; they were also against the class interest of European-American workers.

The Invention of the White Race is a compelling work that re-examines centuries of history. It also offers Allen’s glimpse of “the future in the distance.” When he completed Volume II sixteen years ago, the 78-years-old Allen, in words that resonate today, ended by describing “unmistakable signs of maturing social conflict” between “the common people” and “the Titans.” He suggested that “Perhaps, in the impending . . . struggle,” influenced by the “indelible stamp of the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1960s,” the “white-skin privileges may finally come to be seen and rejected by laboring-class European-Americans as the incubus that for three centuries has paralyzed their will in defense of their class interests vis-à-vis those of the ruling class.” It was with that prospect in mind, with its profound implications for radical social change, that the independent, working class intellectual/activist  Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005) concluded The Invention of the White Race.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/theodore-w-allen-s-the-invention-of-the-white-race-by-jeffrey-b-perry/

Theodore W. Allen and The Invention of the White Race - Jeffrey B. Perry

•Jun 28, 2016

 
 
 

Jeffrey B. Perry

This slide presentation/talk on “Theodore W. Allen and ‘The Invention of the White Race’" by Jeffrey B. Perry was presented on Sat., June 18, 2016, at a "Multiracial Organizing Conference" on "Organizing Poor and Working Class Whites: The Challenge of Building a Multiracial Movement," at the Beloved Community Center, Greensboro, NC. The conference pulled together a “multiracial” group of organizers from the South, who are doing work among poor and working people, and who oppose class exploitation and oppression and emphasize the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to social change efforts. Organizer Ben Wilkins coordinated the two-day conference and other speakers included long-time activists Joyce Johnson, Rosalyn Pelles, Bob Zellner, and Al McSurely. Special thanks to Eric Preston (and Fusion Films) for his work on this video. Please share this video with others! The struggle against white supremacy is central to efforts at social change! For a 2012 video on this topic see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gq77... "When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years." Theodore W. Allen (Written after searching through 885 county-years of Virginia's colonial records) Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," with its focus on racial oppression and social control, is one of the twentieth-century's major contributions to historical understanding. This two-volume classic (Vol. 1: "Racial Oppression and Social Control" and Vol. 2: "The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America") details how the "white race" was invented as a ruling-class social control formation and a system of racial oppression was imposed in response to labor solidarity in the wake of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77), how the "white race" was created and maintained through "white race" privileges conferred on laboring class European-Americans relative to African-Americans, how these privileges were not in the interest of African-Americans or laboring class European-Americans, and how the "white race" has been the principal historic guarantor of ruling-class domination in America. (See http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... ) "The Invention of the White Race" presents a full-scale challenge to what Allen refers to as "The Great White Assumption" -- "the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the 'white' identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct." Its thesis on the origin and nature of the "white race" contains the root of a new and radical approach to United States history, one that challenges master narratives taught in the media and in schools, colleges, and universities. With its equalitarian motif and emphasis on class struggle it speaks to people today who strive for change worldwide. Jeffrey B. Perry contributed new introductions, back matter, internal study guides, and expanded indexes to Verso Books' new expanded edition of "The Invention of the White Race." See http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... For information on Dr. Perry and his work on Hubert Harrison "the father of Harlem radicalism" (1883-1927) and Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005) see http://www.jeffreybperry.net 1) For comments by scholars and activists About “Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918” http://www.jeffreybperry.net/disc.htm 2) For information by and about Hubert Harrison http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... 3) For information by and about Theodore W. Allen http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... 4) For information on Hubert Harrison’s “When Africa Awakes: The ‘Inside Story’ of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World” see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... For the video “Hubert Harrison, Theodore W. Allen, and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcuvU... For a video on Hubert Harrison the “Father Harlem Radicalism” and Founder of the “New Negro Movement” -- in 2016 see https://youtu.be/5V9UEEqB5aM For a 2014 video on Hubert Harrison see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heBKm... For a 2016 video on “Hubert Harrison” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szp7e... For videos of an interview with Theodore W. Allen by Stella Winston see http://youtu.be/EtS7yUyCsvU and at http://youtu.be/7JYYnNzjJrU For the article “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” by Jeffrey B. Perry, which offers the fullest treatment of the development of Allen’s thought, see http://www.jeffreybperry.net (Top Left) or see http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/2010.html