Black and Jewish in America - Balancing Race and Religion

If the tone of my entries on this blog sometimes seem to take particular issue with the divisive politics of the right, it's only because their narrow-minded vision of America stands in complete contrast to my own upbringing.

For me, as an African-American growing up in Bethesda, Maryland in the suburbs of Washington, DC during the 70's and 80's, understanding my own sense of cultural identity was often a perplexing challenge. Being the only, or one of a few black students in schools that were overwhelmingly white was often a lonely experience.

So I was naturally drawn to David Matthews 2007 book Ace of Spades; an eye-opening non-fiction account of his being raised in Baltimore in the '80s as the son of a Jewish mother and liberal African-American journalist father. I felt a kinship with Matthews (pictured left) for wrestling with the strange sense of cultural "in between-ness" and his memoir, which I bought last Spring after hearing an interview with him on NPR, has helped me to re-examine my own childhood.

He's an interesting writer who uses language like a hammer and I kept a dictionary next to my bed to look up the many words I'd never heard of.

Though I grew up with Jewish friends and our next door neighbors were Jewish, I'd never really heard of black Jews until hearing news reports about Israel air-lifting Ethiopian Jews from famine-stricken Africa to Israel during Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991.

There are indeed populations of African-American Jews living here in America, in last Friday's New York Times, Trymaine Lee penned an interesting piece on a small population of black Jews who live in Brooklyn, New York; and their search for an identity that balances religion and race.

Their story, like Matthews, struck me as a timeless illustration of the ongoing struggle of people from so many different religions, races and nationalities to find their place in the changing landscape of America.

The Tea Party Conceals its True Nature While Frank Rich Exposes the Koch Brothers

While right-wing radio host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck exhorted the thousands of the Tea Party faithful gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to reflect on God and pay tribute to the service men and women who've sacrificed for this nation, many people including myself were wondering where the real Tea Party was.

Frank Rich of the New York Times had an answer ready in the form of a must-read blistering critique of the Tea Party's three main billionaire backers; Rupert Murdoch and the highly controversial and mysterious Charles and David Koch.

Men whose extremist ideology stands in complete opposition to Dr. King's vision of racial equality, social justice and government responsibility for workers, the impoverished and those relegated to the margins of this society.

The anniversary and location of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech struck many in this nation as a peculiar place for a rally for a political movement financed in large part by the Koch brother's wealth.

To others, the Tea Party's presence on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and Becks self-righteous attempt to lay claim to a vision of America as a nation of faith was simply an insult and an affront to the ideals of the civil rights movement.

Veteran political reporter Taylor Marsh attended the rally and reported the crowd was not a diverse mix of different segments of America as Tea Party defenders try to present it; despite the appearance of Dr. King's anti-abortion advocate niece. No offense to Dr. King's relative but she's never been relevant to the national political dialog and she isn't now; just because she showed up on stage doesn't mean the Tea Party platform is somehow magically linked to the legacy of Dr. King.

In the end the sanitized public version of the Tea Party on display on Saturday for mainstream media will be a distant memory as the November elections heat up and the reality of Beck's lunatic right-wing ramblings reverts back to the same narrow-minded rhetoric we've become all too accustomed to.

Will history remember Beck's rally more than 40 years from now? Probably not. Cheap political stunts like that rarely stand the test of time. Dr. King's defining vision will forever symbolize America's hope to fulfill it's potential.

GOP Hatred: Ken Mehlman Stirs the Ghosts of the Southern Strategy

Ken Mehlman (pictured left) is out; and in more ways than one.

With the former Bush campaign manager and top GOP strategist's public admission in an Atlantic Monthly interview that he is gay, comes fresh insight and undeniable proof that the Republican party intentionally uses hate, prejudice and fear as the basis of their political strategy.

What is perhaps most shocking is not Mehlman's sexual orientation, but that for years he used the media to help engineer the manipulation of the evangelical Christian right to fan the flames of hostility against homosexuals to score votes.

Among other things revealed in The Atlantic interview, Mehlman admits that he helped to put anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballots of at least eleven GOP-friendly states in an effort to boost votes for George Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and again as the RNC chair during 2006 congressional elections.

As if more proof was needed that the Republican party has declared 2010 the year of hate and intolerance, the TPM Website reports that GOP Louisiana Congressman John Fleming appeared before a Republican women's group and suggested that the upcoming November elections are a choice between America being a "Christian nation" or a "Godless society."

This one-dimensional, intellectually bankrupt "You're either with us, or against us" point of view cannot possibly co-exist in a nation as culturally diverse as America.

On Countdown with Keith Olberman last night, Olberman reminded viewers that the anti-gay GOP strategy is merely the latest version of the notorious "Southern Strategy" used by Republicans to capitalize on the racial fears of white, Christian voters during Richard M. Nixon's 1968 campaign.

What's unsettling here is that even Mehlman KNEW it was morally and politically wrong to race-bait voters - and the RNC chair admitted so in front of the NAACP National Convention in Milwaukee in 2005. Yet a year later he was using the same tactics against both homosexuals and illegal immigrants.

Only time will tell how this will impact restless American voters, but it does raise the question of whether the GOP actually intends to offer ANY new ideas to steer the country back out of the worst economy since the depression, or are they simply banking on stoking the fears of intolerance and prejudice as a means to win the hearts and minds of American voters.

What's happened to the voices of reason and principle in the GOP? When did it all become about marginalizing people and sewing the seeds of division?

I don't know whose party this is right now, but it sure ain't the party of Lincoln.

The Sovereign Citizen Movement Gains Traction

The fringe extremist front known as the sovereign citizen movement in the US rarely seems to pique the kind of mainstream media scrutiny that the proposed construction of a mosque near the site of the World Trade center in New York receives, but the threat they pose is real and their membership is growing.


Pictured left, Joe Zane, 16, lies dead after he and his father, Jerry were shot by police officers shortly after the two sovereign citizens killed Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans, two West Memphis, Arkansas police officers on May 20th.

Sovereign citizen activists Jerry Kane and his 16 year-old son Joe were pulled over in a routine traffic stop by Paudert and Evans and minutes later were shot and killed by Joe when he jumped out of the passenger seat of their white minivan and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle killing both officers.

NBC Nightly News ran a piece on the story and the story did make headlines across the country, but serious examination of the movement seems to have fizzled in the mainstream press.

The incident shed light on a group that lacks a central leadership, but boasts a growing membership organized into cells across the country. Who are sovereign citizens?

The FBI and the IRS have begun to monitor the sovereign citizen membership and their activities more closely.

The Anti-Defamation League Website describes the sovereign citizen movement as:
"...a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who have adopted a right-wing anarchist ideology originating in the theories of a group called the Posse Comitatus in the 1970s. Its adherents believe that virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate and they seek to "restore" an idealized, minimalist government that never actually existed."

In its fall 2010 intelligence Report the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) raises the alarm about the sovereign citizen movement, detailing the murders of the Arkansas police officers as well as the bizarre array of activities of sovereign citizens.

Sovereign citizens believe themselves to be members of separate sovereign entities and hence are not subject to state or federal laws. Some beliefs seem harmless, but in this post-911 era are actually extremely dangerous.

They don't think they should be required to carry drivers licenses, social security cards or identification of any kind. They hold "courts" where they issue arrest warrants for police officers and judges; and even sanction violence against members of government and private citizens.

Most famously, sovereign citizens believe they are not bound to pay taxes and have developed a strange array of seminars, court filings, letters and protests to avoid doing so. I'd never heard about sovereign citizens until actor Wesley Snipes emerged as a advocate of the groups beliefs and I blogged about it here on culturegeist.

I believe the Constitution gives all Americans the right to believe what they want and to protest; but any group that advocates the execution of law police officers is a danger to us all.

More on Sovereign Citizens

Welcome to the Kochtopus - The Koch Brothers Meet Mainstream Media

Why has it taken so long for credible main stream media to begin taking a closer look at Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who have quietly and almost single-handedly bankrolled the far-right Tea Party movement?

Are these guys (David and Charles Koch pictured left) really dangerous to Democracy?

New Yorker magazine reporter Jane Mayer pens a piece in the latest issue - but why so long for the Koch brother's names to be linked to the ultra right conservative causes they espouse? The Koch's certainly aren't invisible, they're the 9th richest people in the nation. No surprise that they oppose bigger taxes.

If you've bought Brawny paper towels, Dixie Cups, a Georgia-Pacific lumber product or used Stainmaster to clean your carpets you've done business with Koch Industries - regarded by some as the biggest debunkers of climate change data in the world. Why? Perhaps because Koch Industries is one of the biggest owners of oil pipelines in the country.

Back on December 9, 2009 the Think Progress Website Progress Report detailed how the Koch (pronounced like 'Coke') brothers have funneled millions (over $45 million to dozens of conservative groups since 1997) to oppose almost every agenda item from the Obama White House from the Stimulus Package to the health care bill.

Don't get me wrong, Charles and David Koch can spend the proceeds from their wealth any way they want. But it strikes me as odd that the same media that shows video clips from Tea Party events with 'outraged Americans' carrying signs depicting the President as a Nazi or a spreader of Socialism - never even mention Charles and David Koch, the guys who foot the bill to send 40 busloads of people to Tea Party events.

The Koch brothers are rich even by American standards. Their staggering wealth finances a wide range of politically conservative organizations and think tanks; including Americans for Progress (which might as well be called Tea Party Central)and The Heritage Foundation.

From "Obama isn't really an American Citizen", to "Obama is a Muslim" and the Glen Beckian "Obama is a racist", the squeakier wheels in the right-wing media movement have presented a strange tapestry of fabricated nonsense for their angry minions to flaunt - but what if it's all just a bunch of BS generated by a couple of hardcore right-wing conservative guys who own one of the largest private companies in America?

Is that First Amendment expression or media manipulation?

Let's see if Katie Couric or Brian Williams have the journalistic balls to introduce the heartland of America to the Koch brothers and the actual scope of their one-sided agenda. Now THAT would be a real Eye on America.

More About the Kochtopus!

The Growing Tolerance of Intolerance in America

Whatever happened to the idea of America as a melting pot?

If the tone and substance of the current conservative media message is any gauge, apparently we’ve got a lot of people taking issue with certain ingredients in the stew.

Used to be it was the Michelle Malkins, Ann Coutlters and Rush Limbaughs trying to couch bigotry in intellectual terms. No more.

Stirring up fear in the minds of those agonizing about what the fabric of this nation is going to look like in the future has become like a sport.

On truthdig.com Joe Conason reports that in family-friendly Seaside Heights New Jersey, hucksters at Lucky Leo's offered patrons a chance to take out their political frustrations by hurling objects at an offensive caricature of the President seen by some as racist.

Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch seem content with Glen Beck's use of his televised stage to pass off unsubstantiated rumor, opinionated nonsense and misrepresentation of fact as journalism.

According to MediaMatters.org Beck is now declaring his rants a religious mission, even suggesting the officials enacting policies in Washington are "enemies of God."

Is this a 1st Amendment free speech issue, or are people are listening?

Elias Ebuelazam was arrested as he tried to board a flight to Israel after the FBI pegged him as the suspected serial killer responsible for up to 20 stabbings in three states that were racially motivated - 18 of the victims were black, including a minister stabbed outside a church while smoking a cigarette last Saturday.

Intolerance hasn’t just gone mainstream, in some circles it’s become fashion. The button to push, the emotion to nudge; the pot to stir.

Views once considered marginalized are merging into the mainstream.

Or perhaps as Fordham University professor Mark Naison suggests, it was never really that marginalized to begin with.

Just quietly intolerant.

Glen Beck slips further from reality.

The Tea Party: Who's Party is it Anyway?

Is the Tea Party an actual political party in the traditional sense of American politics?

Lately the Tea Party seems to be less about fair taxation than a platform for intolerance, religious persecution and even hatred. The growing flap over the proposed construction of a Mosque and Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site has sparked a bizarre backlash against even moderate Muslims across the US.

Today's New York Times reports that in late June a Tea Party group in Temecula, California took signs, dogs and anti-Muslim rhetoric to protest while Muslims were attending Friday prayers.

But it's not just Muslims the Tea Party seems opposed to.

In a July 20th Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson called for the Tea Party to purge what is now widely seen as racist elements within their ranks in the wake of the group severing ties with the Tea Party Express and one of their most outspoken leaders, former right-wing radio host Mark Williams after he posted a fictional letter from NAACP Ben Jealous to Abraham Lincoln that was so overtly racist that even members of the Tea Party demanded his ejection from the broader movement.

Is the Tea Party marginalizing itself in the lead up to the November elections? Slowly it seems to be morphing into an intellectual dumping ground for some of the deep-seated fear and mistrust that simmers just below the surface of the fabric of this nation.

Not convinced? Read the full text of Mark Williams letter for yourself.