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Our
Sad State of Democracy
Portrait of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
By Scott Kurashige
Everyone who
remotely follows Michigan politics has come to expect
Jennifer Granholm to make calculating decisions
consistent with the middle-of-the-road image she has
consciously nurtured. So what possessed our governor to
issue a passionate statement last week declaring that it
was “reprehensible that anyone would seek to silence”
Michigan voters?
Could it be that she was finally abandoning her
moderate, follow-the-crowd manner to become a fiery
advocate of the people? Not likely. Granholm’s comments
and positions with regards to the botched Michigan
primary have been all too self-serving. It is an open
secret that Granholm (who will be termed out in 2010 and
has no other viable office-seeking options) would love
nothing more than an appointment in a Clinton
administration. She has endorsed Hillary and is doing
everything she can to aid her campaign.
As we all know, Granholm and other state Democratic
leaders pushed for a January primary against Democratic
Party rules, thereby jeopardizing the state’s delegates.
They stuck with this plan even when it was clear that
they had played a risky game of chicken and lost. John
Edwards and Barack Obama withdrew their names from the
ballot, while Hillary Clinton famously declared “it’s
clear this election they’re having isn’t going to count
for anything.”
Of course, Granholm and others bought into the hype that
Clinton was the “inevitable” nominee and would have the
competition wrapped up by February 5. Thus, by their
reasoning, Michigan could still help to coronate Hillary
by hosting a “beauty pageant” in January, and the only
risk was foregoing an anti-climactic caucus scheduled
too late in the primary season to count for anything.
So our cash-strapped state went ahead with an expensive
primary that was meaningless for Democrats and
half-meaningful for Republicans. Unwilling to admit
their blunder, Granholm and the state party leaders
continued to insist they had taken a principled stand
that would serve Michigan well. Even though the
Democratic candidates refused to campaign in Michigan,
the governor stoutly declared that the botched primary
had somehow “changed the dialogue” because it had made
the economy more central to the primary debates.
Granholm and Senator Debbie Stabenow both rallied their
supporters to vote for Clinton on January 15. And no
doubt some Democrats enthusiastically did. But Clinton’s
suggestion that she “won” a legitimate election in
Michigan is ludicrous, and her demand (echoed by
Granholm) that the DNC seat the delegates she “won” is a
perversion of democracy.
The facts speak for themselves. Fewer than 600,000 voted
in the Michigan Democratic primary. (By comparison, John
Kerry carried the state with nearly 2.5 million votes in
the 2004 general election.) Thus, in this blue state,
Republican voter turnout outpaced that of the Democrats
by nearly 50 percent. Indeed, Clinton with her major foe
being “uncommitted” got fewer votes than Mitt Romney,
who squared off against multiple contenders. Since
enthusiasm is much higher in Michigan on the Democratic
side (as it is across the nation), the obvious reason
why as many as one million Democrats stayed home is that
they were told their primary didn’t count for anything.
We desperately need a fair and democratic solution to
this mess that we are now in. But it won’t be easy to
resolve. What is clear is that Governor Granholm’s
latest grandstanding won’t help the situation. If she
really cared about Michigan voters being
disenfranchised, she would have acted to stop this
fiasco rather than egging it on.
Instead, she has now joined forces with Florida’s
Republican governor, who would love nothing more than to
see the Democrats bruise each other and demoralize
voters all the way through a brokered convention.
Granholm is no more a neutral arbiter in 2008 than
Florida secretary of state/Bush campaign co-chair,
Kathleen Harris, was when she certified the results in
2000.
The not-so-big news out of Michigan is that
Jennifer Granholm
has finally found something worth fighting for:
Jennifer Granholm.
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Scott Kurashige
is the author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and
Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los
Angeles (Princeton University Press). He is an Associate
Professor of History, American Culture, and
Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the
University of Michigan.
Source: Michigan
Citizen, Mar. 16-22, 2008 / posted 18 March
2008
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New Call for Letters for sequel to Go, Tell Michelle
By Peggy Brooks-Bertram and Barbara Seals Nevergold
Why White America Perhaps Fears
Michelle More Than Barack
Excerpts from a “Jack & Jill politics” newsletter
Responses to Post-Midterm Elections
/
Open Note
to President Barack Obama (Jerry W. Ward, Jr.)
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
1950
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1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
18 January 2012
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