Mychal Denzel Smith

Thank You, Rachel Jeantel

Mychal Denzel Smith on June 27, 2013 - 3:29 PM ET

Rachel Jeantel watches defense attorney Don West while on the stand during George Zimmerman’s trial for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. (Reuters/Jacob Langston/Pool)

Rachel Jeantel was the last person to speak to Trayvon Martin before George Zimmerman killed him on the night of February 26, 2012. On the third day of Zimmerman’s murder trial, after opening statements that featured the words “fucking punks” and knock-knock joke, and testimony from a number of witnesses, Rachel took the stand.

Visibly shaken, Rachel recounted the details of her phone conversation with Trayvon the night he was killed. She says he told her that a “creepy-ass cracker” was watching him. He attempted to lose him, but the man kept following, at which point Rachel suggested that Trayvon run. The phone was disconnected shortly after, and when the two were reconnected, Trayvon told Rachel, “The nigga is behind me.” Rachel then heard a bump, the sounds of “wet grass,” and what she thought to be Trayvon saying, “Get off.”

The court took a recess after the state was finished questioning Rachel, as she was too broken up to continue at that moment. When they returned, Don West, a lawyer on Zimmerman’s defense team, resumed the questioning. Rachel’s demeanor noticeably shifted. She became agitated, answering West’s questions with quick “yes”es and exasperated “no”s. The more tedious the questions, the more frustrated she became. She was looking at a man trying to get someone off for killing her friend. West was doing what a defense lawyer does, of course, by trying to catch Rachel in a lie, poke holes in her story and cast doubt on her credibility. And the way she responded reflected the fact she knew exactly what was going on and she was determined not to let him rattle her. She may have frustrated him just as much as he did her.

Rachel’s testimony is an emotional reminder of just what happened. A teenage boy was killed. His family and friends were left to mourn. For some of them, the pain is still fresh. The man responsible walked free for more than a month. There’s a possibility he could be found not guilty.

Several times, West brought up the fact Rachel lied about her reasons for not attending Trayvon’s wake. “You. Got. To. Un. Der. Stand,” she told West, breaking up each syllable to emphasize her frustration. “I’m the last person—you don’t know how I felt. You think I really want to go see the body after I just talked to him?”

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Rachel Jeantel isn’t a Hollywood actress. She’s not a trained professional. She doesn’t testify in court regularly. She’s a young black woman missing her friend. She showed up to court to give all the information she had as to what happened the night he died.

“Are you listening?” she asked West at highly contentious point her testimony where it seemed he had either lost interest or chosen to ignore the things she was saying. How many young black women could ask that question to the world daily? We should be listening more. We should hear what the Rachels of the world have to say. It’s unclear how Rachel’s testimony will affect the jury and the ultimate outcome, whether they’ll read her as hostile and uncooperative. No matter what, though, Rachel stood and defended herself and Trayvon (and frankly, many other black youth) against the condescension, against silencing, and against the character attacks. For that, she should be commended and thanked.

Thank you, Rachel Jeantel.

Mychal Denzel Smith on why justice for Trayvon Martin’s death may never come.

What Will We Do Without Affirmative Action?

Mychal Denzel Smith on June 24, 2013 - 5:07 PM ET

The US Supreme Court building in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Today the Supreme Court decided that it won’t decide the future of affirmative action. In the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, where the plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, a white woman, claimed to have been denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because she is white. She believed that because of UT’s consideration of race in their admissions process, a practice aimed at increasing diversity, she was not able to get into her school of choice and that violated equal protection rights. The university says Fisher wouldn’t have gotten in even if race wasn’t one of the factors used to determine admission, because her grades simply weren’t good enough.

Rather than take this opportunity to decide the ultimate fate of affirmative action, the Supreme Court sent this case back to the lower US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In a 7-1 decision (Justice Kagan recused herself), with Justice Kennedy writing the opinion, they ruled: “Under Grutter [v. Bollinger], strict scrutiny must be applied to any admissions program using racial categories or classifications. A court may give some deference to a university’s ‘judgment that such diversity is essential to its educational mission,’ 539 U. S., at 328, provided that diversity is not defined as mere racial balancing and there is a reasoned, principled explanation for the academic decision. On this point, the courts below were correct in finding that Grutter calls for deference to the University’s experience and expertise about its educational mission. However, once the University has established that its goal of diversity is consistent with strict scrutiny, the University must prove that the means it chose to attain that diversity are narrowly tailored to its goal. On this point, the University receives no deference.”

In effect, this means affirmative action, for the time being, is still constitutional. However, its future is unclear. The court will take up another case involving affirmative action in March of next year.

Meanwhile, we are left to debate whether affirmative action is still necessary. You may believe, as Justice Thomas believes, that the case for affirmative action is comparable to that in favor of slavery. Or you may be less hyperbolic and simply believe, like Abigail Fisher, that any consideration of race in any way, shape or form is discriminatory and therefore has no place in our society. Or perhaps you see affirmative action as a way to promote diversity and believe diversity serves the common good.

While the goal of diversity has been the easiest way to sell affirmative action to the public, that isn’t the purpose. The original intent behind affirmative action was to afford the descendants of America’s slave population and those who had suffered under Jim Crow—black people—the educational and employment opportunities denied to them by racist laws. It was expanded to include gender discrimination (and white women have been shown to be the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action) and other racial categories.

Colorlines has a great infographic showing racial disparities in wealth, unemployment and poverty as they were in 1965 and are now in 2013. If we accept that the purpose of affirmative action is to address these inequalities, not simply to diversify public spaces, then this graphic shows we have much more work to do. Detractors may say this offers definitive evidence of the failure of affirmative action, but really it’s the failure of not enough.

The best refutation of a race-based affirmative action is the idea that it should be class-based—that those most economically disadvantaged, regardless of race, should be the first considered in these programs. However, an argument for class-based affirmative action should not cancel out race-based programs but highlight the fact that what we need is more affirmative action. What’s needed are programs that address inequality, whether based on race, gender, class or any other classification, with respect to the nation’s history of discrimination and an eye toward eradicating the inequalities such discrimination has caused.

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It’s the type of program we’ll never get, because a real affirmative action program would undermine the American notion that we are a meritocratic society, one in which people succeed based on their own merits and hard work. It would be an admission on the part of the US government that some citizens in this country have long benefited from discriminatory policies and the only way to counter the legacy of those policies is an aggressive program in which those who have been discriminated against are guaranteed education and jobs.

The United States prides itself on being the land of opportunity. But the fact is, opportunity has been in short supply if you were not lucky enough to be born an upper-class heterosexual white male. Affirmative action is meant to correct that. If in the next year the Supreme Court decides that affirmative action is unconstitutional, it will be incredibly difficult to implement any program at all that seeks to address inequality of any kind, particularly racial inequality. While that wouldn’t be the state endorsing racism, it would be them turning a blind eye to it.

Why does Aiyana Jones’s death matter?

Why Aiyana Jones Matters

Mychal Denzel Smith on June 19, 2013 - 3:52 PM ET

In this May 18, 2010, file photo Dominika Stanley, left, the mother of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, sits next to Aiyana’s father Charles Jones, holding Aiyana’s photo, in Southfield, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

The trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin will grab most of the major headlines this summer, but there is another trial involving the death of a black child that warrants our attention. Yesterday, June 18, a judge declared a mistrial in the case of Joseph Weekley, the Detroit police officer charged with involuntary manslaughter after shooting and killing 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones back in May 2010. Weekley was the lead officer in a raid on the home of Chauncey Owens, a suspect in the murder of a 17-year-old. The Special Response Team (Detroit’s version of SWAT) entered the home just after midnight, throwing a flash-bang grenade through the window and kicking down the unlocked door. Aiyana was asleep on the couch. Weekley fired a single shot that struck her in the head and killed her. The police entered on the first floor; Owens lived in the upstairs unit.

Weekley was indicted on October 4, 2011, and his trial started on May 29 of this year. He faced up to fifteen years in prison, but after three days of deliberations a jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision.

Even if what Weekley claims is true, that his weapon was discharged by accident after a tussling with Aiyana’s grandmother, the entire ordeal could have been avoided if the police acted as police should. If it sounds irrational to require a SWAT team to apprehend one man accused of killing one person, that’s because it is—but it has become standard operating procedure. What happened to Aiyana is the result of the militarization of police in this country, itself a byproduct of the “war on drugs.” Over the course of the past thirty-plus years, police have become more and more reliant on military weaponry and tactics (big and small police forces alike have bazookas, machine guns and mini-tanks for domestic use) in response to crime. They hardly pretend to be interested in information gathering, investigating, protecting and serving any longer.

New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t being hyperbolic when he said he has own army in the form of the NYPD. The same is true for mayors across the country, and the people most vulnerable to these heavily armed militias just so happen to be among America’s most maligned.

Part of what it means to be black in America now is watching your neighborhood become the training ground for our increasingly militarized police units. The issue is that while, ideally, police would be interested in maintaining peace, when you turn them into soldiers who believe they’re fighting a war they will do what soldiers in a war zone do: harm and kill indiscriminately. Children aren’t exempt.

If the death of 7-year-old Aiyana isn’t enough to change the way we feel about our militarized police forces, perhaps a more selfish motive would do.

Writing to political prisoner Angela Davis in 1970, James Baldwin told her: “…we must fight for your life as though it were our own… For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” What Baldwin knew was that the attack on Davis was not just an attack on her, or black women, or self-proclaimed communists or the black liberation movement. It was an attack by the powerful on the powerless. And sure enough, if the powerful get away with one attack there will be more to come.

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Concern about paramilitary police forces sprung up in the wake of the Occupy movement and the excessive force experienced by protesters, and somewhat in the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11, but they got their start in predominantly black neighborhoods. And the country collectively shrugged because the specter of black criminality loomed large.

If you want to know what’s going to happen to powerless people of any color in this country, watch what happens in black America. If you don’t want it at your doorstep, show concern when it affects the least protected and most marginalized among us. We’ve seen these forces in action in Seattle, New York, Chapel Hill and Anaheim. But it wouldn’t be that way if we cared enough to stand up and demand an end to this when kids like Aiyana were placed in harms way.

Can lessons learned in Iraq be put to use in Syria? Read Bob Dreyfuss’s analysis here.

Ad Policy

White America Is Here to Stay

Mychal Denzel Smith on June 13, 2013 - 4:03 PM ET

A girl eating a Burger King hamburger. More than a quarter of black households in the United States are food insecure. (Courtesy of Flickr user Steven Depolo)

It’s a rare moment when I’m in the position to soothe white people’s anxiety around an issue concerning race. My usual preference is to start riots. So please allow me this one opportunity I have to assuage any fear white people may be experiencing around the recent news that more white people died in the United States last year than were born. Ready? OK.

Relax. White America isn’t going anywhere.

We went through this last year when the Census Bureau reported that whites were a minority of all newborns, and Jay Smooth did a nice job of calmly explaining why that shouldn’t scare white people. But as the demographics continue to shift and more of these stories become news, our white brothers and sisters may require more consoling. Those of us who are members of historically oppressed racial groups are surely accustomed to a barrage of grim statistics about our community’s future. This isn’t a reality many white-identified people have had to deal with, and I think it’s the humane thing to do to help them through this time of great consternation.

The first thing to note is, if you’re truly in fear of losing the majority, just change the definition of “white.” There is more than enough historical precedence for doing so. We’re told over and over again that race is a social construction. It is not a fixed category. If you simply allow more people to identify as white, problem solved. Jamelle Bouie bets we will reach the point where some groups of Latinos and Asians “will identify themselves as white, with Hispanic or Asian heritage, in the same way that many white Americans point to their Irish or Italian backgrounds.”

But also, understand that holding the majority in terms of population has never been the key to white America’s success. What makes whiteness successful is the control of America’s political and economic systems. The two go hand-in-hand, and so long as wealth is largely concentrated in the hands of a white oligarchy, so too will political power be. The centuries-long project of creating race and then using the idea of racial inferiority to exacerbate the inequality between the races, otherwise known as racism, has done an amazing job of ensuring the capital attached to whiteness will not fade any time soon. White privilege is a hell of a drug.

And if that’s not enough, consider this: according to Feeding America, more than a quarter of black households are food insecure. One in three black children live in households that lack access to enough food to ensure a healthy lifestyle. In fact, “of the 104 US counties with a majority black population, 92 percent of these counties also record high food insecurity rates.”

We can talk about incarceration, wealth, education, housing, healthcare and other important disparities, but black America is struggling with even the most basic of human needs—food. Of course, this is a problem in communities across the country, white and non-white alike, but that’s with anything we discuss. What makes these things unique to non-white people, and what assures me of white America’s bright future, is that they hit communities of color hardest and there is little-to-no political will to do anything about it.

Whiteness is and will continue to be the norm in American society, not because white people have represented a statistical majority of the population, but because of where power and resources have historically been concentrated.

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So, fear not white people, the “Rise of the Colored Empires” is not upon you. Whiteness still has the upper hand, and that will change only when more white people decide that racism is a morally corrupt injustice worthy of eradication. Your country is safe for now.

Sean, Oscar and Trayvon

Mychal Denzel Smith on June 6, 2013 - 10:42 AM ET

(Reuters/Mike Segar)

Sean Bell was killed on November 25, 2006, in New York City. The night before his wedding, NYPD officers approached Bell’s vehicle outside a club and fired fifty shots at him and his companions, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, on the suspicion that one of the young men had a gun and was intending to shoot someone. No gun was ever recovered, and while Benefield and Guzman survived the shooting, Bell did not. Officers Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver (Oliver fired thirty-one of the fifty shots himself) were charged with manslaughter, reckless endangerment and assault, while Detective Marc Cooper was charged with two counts of reckless endangerment. In 2008, all three were acquitted of all charges. They remained on the force until March of last year. Bell was 23 years old.

Oscar Grant was killed on New Year’s Day 2009 in Oakland, California. Officer Johannes Mehserle fired one shot into Grant’s back while he lay face down and restrained on the platform of the Fruitvale train station. He and his fellow officers were responding to a report of a fight involving about a dozen people on the train. Grant and his friends were identified as being involved in this fight and were confronted by the officers, several of them handcuffed, with Grant reportedly resisting arrest, which led to officers’ attempts to restrain him. Mehserle claims to have meant to reach for his taser, pulling out his gun and shooting Grant by accident. The incident was captured on several cellphone cameras. Of the three possible convictions, a jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the charge carrying the least amount of prison time. In November 2010, he was sentenced to two years minus time served, and was released on parole in June 2011. Grant was 22 years old.

Trayvon Martin was killed on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida. During halftime of the NBA All-Star game, he walked to a nearby store to get snacks for his younger brother. While returning home, he was spotted by George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman. Zimmerman called the police, and while they advised him not to follow, he disregarded this and approached Martin. A scuffle ensued that ended with Zimmerman shooting Martin in the chest and killing him. All that was found on Martin’s person was a wallet, a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. The police who arrived on the scene took Zimmerman in for questioning and later released him without charges, determining that under Florida’s “stand your ground” law Zimmerman had acted in self-defense. After forty-five days of national outrage and protest, Zimmerman was finally arrested. He has been charged with second-degree murder and his trial starts June 10. Martin was 17 years old.

The details of each are different, and fiercely disputed by everyone involved, but each story ends the same way—with a young black man dead. It’s an all too familiar story, and I could go on and on, adding to the list many more names, but I mention these three because they have been the most high profile in recent memory and because they have become defining moments in my early adulthood. And I hate that.

I have no desire to be anything but what I am—a black man—but I hate that part of what that means is walking through life prepared to die. I hate that I mark time by whether people were saying “I Am Sean Bell,” “I Am Oscar Grant,” or “I Am Trayvon Martin.” I kinda hate the “I Am…” rallying cry, because none of us are, because they are all dead. I hate the part of being a black man that’s forever conscious of what racism is capable of, and I hate that America thinks I need reminders. I hate that those reminders are Sean, Oscar and Trayvon.

The naysayers and detractors say I and others like me are paranoid for no reason. To them, it wasn’t racism that killed these young men. These are simply unfortunate incidents, these colorblind optimists say, in part brought on by the actions of the young men who tragically lost their lives.

I don’t hate people who think this way; I envy them.

I’m straight-up jealous of everyone that doesn’t have to think about racism. I can only imagine how free they are. I’d like a life that didn’t involve me mourning young men I’ve never met as martyrs. There are people who can say, without laughing, that the election of the nation’s first black president means that racism, as a defining factor of American life, is over. I envy those people who are able to look at President Obama and see only progress. Like many, I was overcome with emotion I still can’t quite define that night in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected. But the thrill is gone and in the aftermath all I can see is Sean, Oscar and Trayvon standing behind him asking everyone “when does this end?” I’d like to think the lesson of their deaths is that racism eats the young and America would do well to abandon it, but history lends me a different lesson altogether, one which has me rigid with anxiety as we approach the trial of George Zimmerman.

I’ve done my best to avoid any news regarding Zimmerman in the past year. In the age of social media that has been an impossible task, but each time something new has reached my eyes it has reaffirmed my decision to ignore it all. The news could only serve to remind me of the psychic toll racism takes on a country still afraid to call it what it is, and I’m full up on reminders.

But I’ll be watching the trial closely, because I want this to be a turning point. I’m breaking out the rabbit’s foot and the four-leaf clovers while avoiding all ladders and mirrors. I’m hoping for change like an Obama campaign volunteer in ’07. I want this trial to mean a new day is upon us.

Last year, while Zimmerman was still at large, I wrote, “The crime of killing a black person still is not greater than the crime of being black.” I want 2013 to prove me wrong. I want this moment to be the one where all those things I hate about being a black man, passed down from generation to generation, cease to exist.

I probably sound as foolishly optimistic as people who think racism is already over. But I think Sean, Oscar and Trayvon deserve some foolish optimism on their side.

To Be Young and Black in America: Always Considered a Threat

Mychal Denzel Smith on May 31, 2013 - 2:05 PM ET

Over the course of my twenty-six years, I’ve developed three responses to most news headlines: “Couldn’t have been a black person,” “Please, Lord, don’t let it be a black person,” and “Oh, that was definitely a black person.”

Miami-Dade police officers pinned a 14-year-old to the ground and put him in a chokehold after the teen gave them, in their words, a “dehumanizing stare” and clenched his fists. Can you guess which response I had?

Tremaine McMillian was walking the beach on Memorial Day when police officers riding an ATV approached him and another teen to tell them their roughhousing was unacceptable behavior. The officers asked McMillian where his parents were, and as he walked away from them (McMillian says he was walking toward his mother, in an effort to answer the officer’s inquiry as to where his parents were) they jumped off the ATV and restrained McMillian. They choked the teen until he could not breathe and he urinated himself. The six-week-old puppy McMillian was holding and feeding when the officers approached him was also injured.

Tremaine is being charged with felony resisting arrest with violence and disorderly conduct.

I saw the story making the rounds of my social media networks and knew without clicking any links that the 14-year-old in question was black. And not because the headlines identified him as such, or because I saw that his name was Tremaine, or because I was there and witnessed the whole thing, but because racism is predictable. It’s the most consistent thing in my life.

Also predictable is the trying to pretend this isn’t racism. Attempting to justify the use of force in this situation, Detective Alvaro Zabaleta said: “Of course we have to neutralize the threat in front of us. And when you have somebody that is being resistant, somebody that is pulling away from you, somebody that’s clenching their fist, somebody that’s flaring their arms, that’s the immediate threat.” You see, this had nothing to do with racism, it’s just the police doing their job.

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But it’s a matter of who constitutes a threat. Who but a black teenager has the ability to dehumanize a police officer with a stare? Who but a(n unarmed) black teenager can make (armed) police feel threatened by clenching his fists? Who but a black teenager can simultaneously clench his fists and feed a puppy? Who but a black teenager isn’t afforded the opportunity to comply with a request before it’s determined that they’re not complying? Who but a black teenager is choked to the point they urinate themselves while being handcuffed? When does any of this happen to people aren’t black teenagers?

It happens… when a person poses a threat, not when they’re walking on the beach. This is what it is to be young and black in America: you are always considered a threat. And that’s why, as livid as this makes me, it’s so incredibly unsurprising. Racism, in all its predictability, lost its ability to shock me a long time ago.

Read Mychal Denzel Smith on media perceptions of black kids.

When Black Kids Want to Learn and the World Tells Them 'No'

Mychal Denzel Smith on May 28, 2013 - 12:54 PM ET

First lady Michelle Obama speaks at the commencement ceremony for Bowie State University at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)

In light of the recent news out of Chicago, I think we should take another look at first lady Michelle Obama’s remarks from her commencement address at Bowie State University. Particularly this part:

But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of “separate but equal,” when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered. Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they’re sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they’re fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper.

I hope the first lady has seen this video of 9-year-old Asean Johnson, on the eve of Chicago’s Board of Education vote to close fifty schools, telling a crowd of protesters, “You should be investing in these schools, not closing them. You should be supporting these schools, not closing them.” He wasn’t alone and this wasn’t the first demonstration. Young black people were out in the streets fighting for their right to an education and they were ignored.

The situation is similar in Philadelphia. Twenty-three schools in that city are slated to close, and on the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the one that was supposed to end “separate but equal,” students organized a walkout to protest budget cuts that would further decimate their schools, eliminating libraries, extracurricular activities and, yes, sports. I hope the first lady has read the statement issued by these students where they said: “We are willing to break the stereotypes and expectations of urban youth, and are taking this opportunity to tell the world that urban school districts deserve funding, and it is your responsibility under the Commonwealth Charter to provide us with more than a ‘bare bones education.” They want more. They want the resources for an education that will become the foundation of their future. Their government is building prisons instead.

What was so frustrating about hearing the first lady regurgitate these well-worn stereotypes about black children being more interested in video games than getting an education, aside from pathologizing in black kids rather normal childhood activities, is that it ignored what black children have in store when they do show up to school. If black kids are more disinterested, it would serve us well to ask why. It’s hard to find value in a place where you don’t feel welcome.

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Let’s not pretend the school-to-prison pipeline isn’t real. Black children’s very existence has been criminalized inside the same institutions responsible for educating them. They find their hallways policed, their behavior over-disciplined; they are over-suspended, and eventually shipped off to juvenile detention facilities at alarming rates. They are chastised by community and thought leaders for not wanting an education, but when they show up for one they’re met with all the hostility and contempt one reserves for their greatest enemies.

There are black children who don’t value education. Not because they are black, but because they are children and that’s what children do. The more tragic and infuriating thing is that they grow up in a society that doesn’t value educating black children and is hellbent on doing everything it can to stop them from learning.

The GOP's Black Friends Need More Black Friends

Mychal Denzel Smith on May 21, 2013 - 3:25 PM ET

Bishop E.W. Jackson publicity photo

The Republican Party knows it cannot continue to compete nationally if it remains the party of old white men. In order to not be the party of old white men, it cannot afford to look racist. It’s not so much interested in distancing itself from the racist elements within the party or abandoning racist policies, but it would like to not appear racist. To that end, it has come up with a solution wherein the few black and brown faces that dot the party are deployed to regurgitate the staid policy and rhetoric.

The newest member of this club is the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, Bishop E.W. Jackson. He’s a pastor from the Chesapeake area of Virginia with extreme right-wing views on homosexuality and abortion. In other words, he fits right in with the modern Republican Party. But he’s also joining the ranks of Herman Cain, Allen West and Ben Carson as the next great black hope of the GOP, the singular figure that will provide a counterweight to the Democratic monopoly on the black vote. It’s a long shot, as Jamelle Bouie points out, “African Americans have yet to give support to anyone from this wing from the Republican Party, but this hasn’t stopped white conservatives from embracing them.”

Republicans fail to grasp that the rejection they experience from black voters is not due solely to the lack of black faces but because of their actual record. Despite the attempts by conservatives to cherry-pick Republican Party history to highlight the good times (they’re the party of Lincoln, don’t ya know), they refuse to atone for their misdeeds.

Law and order, welfare queens, the war on drugs, Willie Horton and Hurricane Katrina aren’t ancient history. These are the living memories of the Republican Party’s engagement with black America. Republicans are still pulling from the discarded playbook of Lee Atwater, as if Atwater himself didn’t leave a warning before his death about where that path would lead. They are also still running away from the legacy of the last Republican elected president, one George W. Bush, though a generation of voters were politicized during his presidency and are now living in the wake of the wars and financial crisis over which he presided. Some cosmetic changes are in order, but they will hardly be sufficient.

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Ironically, the person they should turn to in order to understand how to sell conservatism to black people is the same person they so desperately have tried to defeat: President Obama. They can take notes from the commencement address Obama gave at Morehouse College this past weekend. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Aura Bogado and Kiese Laymon have done a great job of explaining what was problematic in Obama’s speech, but I think it’s also worth looking at why he feels comfortable delivering personal responsibility lectures to black people. First, on issues of race, Obama has never been particularly progressive. Even his famed Philadelphia race speech from the 2008 campaign trafficked in the kind of false equivocation between black radical politics born out of a reaction to racism and actual racism that we generally associate with the Fox News wasteland.

But beyond that, he knows this kind of message will, generally, play well in front of black audiences. As Kai Wright notes, “There’s always been a deeply conservative strain of black politics that embraces the American ideal that we get only what we earn.” Whether we’re talking about Booker T. Washington, the Nation of Islam, Bill Cosby or Condoleezza Rice, there is long tradition of prominent black public figures and organizations touting lifestyle “improvements” as an adequate rejoinder to systemic racism. As wrongheaded a philosophy as it is, it continues to resonate in black communities, as it appeals to the intellect and sense of self-determination. It also makes for rousing speeches that touch the ethereal, especially when coupled with the bravado of the black Southern Baptist church. It shouldn’t be mistaken for a substantive critique of white supremacy, but it is anyway and Obama has mastered it. He makes it sound almost revolutionary.

This is where the GOP could find its opening if it was willing to talk to more than one black person at a time. The party’s black representatives have made the mistake of insulting black folks, like when they call the Democratic Party a “plantation,” and they’ve been using the issue of racism, which to their minds is no longer relevant, to keep blacks on that plantation while never seeing any actual benefits. In the process, Obama has beaten them to the right, tapping into the conservatism of black communities that recognizes racism but positions it as simply an extra hurdle on the path to black achievement. But he’s only one man, and he won’t be running for elected office again, so a window of opportunity will eventually be open.

If I had it my way that wouldn’t be the case, but I also only one man and can’t force the whole of black America to adopt my politics. The GOP, however, won’t win over many black voters if even their black representatives behave as if black folks don’t have eyes, ears and minds of their own.

Voting Rights Watch takes readers past the ballot box and into the community.

Let's Call Racist School Closings What They Are: Racist

Mychal Denzel Smith on May 16, 2013 - 2:10 PM ET

Last night, I was happy to hear Chris Hayes report that the Buena Vista, Michigan, school district, which had been closed since May 7 with the intention of canceling classes for the rest of the school year, has reopened.

While it was good to see that these kids will indeed have classes for the remainder of the school year, I couldn’t help but hear this story and think about what’s happening with the school closings in Chicago. The city plans to move forward with the closing of fifty-four schools, despite protests from students, parents and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

They differ greatly in size, but what Buena Vista and Chicago have in common is that the populations most affected by these school closings just happen to be mostly black. Buena Vista is home to just under 7,000 residents, 74 percent of whom are black. In Chicago, where black students make up about 40 percent of those enrolled, 88 percent of those who would be displaced by these school closings are black.

“Let’s not pretend that’s not racist,” CTU President Karen Lewis said at a rally back in March.

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I was surprised her remark didn’t cause more of an uproar. I agree, what’s happening is racist, but, generally speaking, the public has a way of not calling racism by its name. We dance around the issue by noting the size of the black population, or using creative language like “racially charged,” but consider racist an accusation best left unspoken. And in part that has to do with what our conception of racism is. We don’t call this racist because no one was caught on tape saying the “n-word.” No one was secretly recorded saying black children are inherently inferior to white children and therefore undeserving of an education to begin with. There won’t be any Eyes on the Prize–style documentaries made of this moment featuring Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledging “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever” in a fiery speech. There are no ready-for-Disney fire-breathing racist demons on the scene who find joy in denying black children a proper education. It’s all so… boring.

But that’s how racism operates for the most part. It goes about its business as items on a budget while those in charge remain massively indifferent to the suffering of communities of color. And what was it but indifference when Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was refusing to release 0.1 percent of the state’s rainy-day funds in order to keep Buena Vista schools open? What else but indifference explains why Mayor Emanuel is open to using $125 million of taxpayer money to fund a basketball arena, but can’t find any money to help keep some of those schools from closing? Neither of these men has set out to deliberately destroy the educational opportunities of black students, so far as anyone can tell, but the point is they don’t have to. The effect of their indifference is the same racist result. All they have to do is not care.

As long as the education we need costs more than we are willing to invest there are going to be budget issues. But we don’t call it racism when the budget shortfalls wind up shortchanging people of color first and hardest, even though that’s what it is. And we’ll continue to live with this problem so long as we’re afraid to name it properly.

Read Mychal Denzel Smith on the right to bear guns—and whether we really still need it.

Guns Are a Right, Yes—but Do They Have to Be?

Mychal Denzel Smith on May 10, 2013 - 2:14 PM ET

Protesters, some armed (L), attend a pro-gun rally as part of the National Day of Resistance at the state Capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 23, 2013. (REUTERS/Jim Urquhart)

We are at a point in the debate over gun control where these are dueling headlines: “At Least 71 Kids Have Been Killed With Guns Since Newtown” versus “A march on Washington with loaded rifles.” Given the status of gun control legislation in Congress, they’re equally infuriating, but one gives insight into why this debate is stalled.

Libertarian radio host Adam Kokesh is planning a gathering of gun owners and gun rights activist where they will…maybe it’s best to read him in his words. From the Facebook page:

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

Currently, 3400+ people on Facebook have stated their intention of participating (an admittedly shoddy means by which to gauge likely attendance), but it makes me wonder if anyone involved is reading the same news that I am.

What’s telling is the language used to promote this action. On May 3, Kokesh tweeted: “When the government comes to take your guns, you can shoot government agents, or submit to slavery.”

It’s not that he doesn’t know the horrors of guns, but that he views his right to own guns as integral to his freedom as an American. That’s the strain of thinking among pro-gun folks that’s difficult to defeat.

It’s why Glenn Beck doesn’t flinch when co-opting the message and symbolism of Martin Luther King Jr., to promote a pro-gun rights agenda. King’s nonviolent philosophy isn’t as important to Beck as the fact that his life represents a fight for freedom and Beck sees his crusade in the same light.

Here’s a thought this group may want to consider: the rights we have can, and do, have and will continue to change.

Slavery was once a right. Now-outdated notions of privacy and property allowed marital rape as a right. But the costs of those rights were the violation of others’ rights, and we reached a point as a society (through much debate, struggle, blood, sweat, tears and more) where we decided that protecting rights like slavery and marital rape was no longer worth the damage they inflicted. Alcohol was a right, then it wasn’t, and then it was again because prohibiting drinking caused more trouble than we were able to tolerate. However, when the right returned it did not go unchecked. This is how we negotiate rights in a democracy.

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But on guns, we seem unwilling to even consider the idea that a citizenry free to bear arms may impose more of a threat to freedom than it guarantees. I understand why that is, as guns are tied into our national identity, our sense of masculinity, our desire for power, and it frightens some of us to think who we would be without that. And then more headlines read “13-year-old Florida boy shoots 6-year-old with handgun at home” and I just want us to pause to consider: Is the right to bear arms worth the deaths of our children?

We may well decide that it is, but a debate about guns that is afraid of that core question isn’t one worth having.

Assata Shakur is a black woman who dared to fight an unfair conviction—so the US government labeled her one of its “Most Wanted Terrorists,” Mychal Denzel Smith writes.