Race Baiting Spikes, Critique of Pragmatic Politics pt. 2

The narrative is all-too familiar. Group of pimply-faced adolescents get drunk and decide to go out and smack down a scapegoated victim, whether it's Bensonhurst, Howard Beach, or Jena, Louisiana. Fueled by racism absorbed through family circles, backyard parties, locker room chatter, and maybe now video games and internet neo-nazis, they take to the streets in a search and destroy mission to erase perceived blight. 

            But as they televise the above-pictured perp walk again and again, you can't help but thinking, what's wrong with this picture? The lead goon, Jeffrey Conroy, looks the part, and there are always a couple of undersized wannabe thugs trailing in the ringleader's wake, but check out the two black (one half-Puerto Rican) faces bringing up the rear. How do we explain Jose Pacheco and Anthony Hartford? 

               "It's tragic to see our youth of color adpoting the racist anti-immigrant culture," writes a veteran anti-racist activist in an e-mail. 

              Long Island has had a noticeable recent history of anti-immigrant hysteria, and one town's case even prompted a well-known documentary. But is it also becoming a site for a new melting pot, where even people of color can band together with racist whites to act out against newly perceived others? 

              This is actually the second time in a year that someone with partial Puerto Rican ancestry was involved in a race-baiting controversy. The late Daniel Cicciaro Jr. was killed by John White, an African American man who came out of his house to defend his son, who had been chased by Cicciaro and friends flinging racial epithets. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that a neo-Nazi group bent on making a martyr out of Cicciaro backed off when talking to his mother, who informed them that she was Puerto Rican.

                Perhaps some of the facts regarding Pacheco and Hartford's involvement will come out during the grand jury process. And of course this is a great opportunity for the well-meaning members of Long Island's highly segregated communities to make something out of the healing process. 

                 But those of us complacent with the idea that the Northeast, or even the New York metro area is a "safe" multicultural zone should revisit some basic presuppositions. Racial incidents in Staten Island, as well as across the country may be seen as temporary spikes caused by the shock waves from Obama's election, but they also might signal a troubling future.

Critique of Obama Pragmatism, Pt. 2

Well all this smiling and sitting down with previous political foes, this "reaching across the aisle" as it were is all well and good. Still I wonder how Obama (we?) can do this in a way that doesn't assume "all things being equal." How much did the Bush administration concern itself to reach across the aisle? How many Democrats did they put in Cabinet positions (I'm jumping the gun on this, but there is much chatter about Secretary of Defense Robert Gates staying and there was at least a hint about Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar up for the cabinet)? Today's new stuff about some disturbing CIA connections for individuals picked to head Obama's Intelligence Transition Team doesn't sit well either. 

          I'm not talking revenge here, nor am I presuming to "descend to the level" of the one-party state Republican thugs that tried to hijack the constitution permanently. It's just that this country was pushed so far to the right in the last eight years, it's not exactly time for meeting people who relentlessly race- and communist-baited you halfway. 

          Is the essential contradiction in ObamaLogic that the more important "change" to be brought about in his administration is the "break from politics as usual," meaning "partisan politics," rather than a complete break from the catastrophically undemocratic policies imposed by the Bush administration? 

           Okay, it's true, the guy isn't even in office yet and I'm giving him a hard time. It was pretty great to see the happy couple on 60 Minutes last night.