Barras is, to put it bluntly, a hack for the bipartisan businessmen’s project to create the impression that political conservatism is on the rise among a “new” and “emerging” class of educated, upwardly mobile African Americans. It does not matter to corporate media – and certainly not to hustlers like Barras – that there is no evidence of such a phenomenon among the Black voting public. Big media’s mission is to create their own set of facts, treat them as if they are true, and convince the rest of us to act accordingly….

If she is in her right mind, Barras doesn’t believe the GOP’s grand projections either. Her mission is to sow confusion among Blacks in order to create space for an alternative, corporate-friendly African American leadership within the Democratic Party. That’s where the action is. Barras invokes the Republican threat in order to portray Black Democratic conservatives as the wave of the future, as opposed to the ”outdated” voices of the “far left wing of the party.”

I recently read your article that attempts to analyze the op-ed I wrote in the Washington Post. First, thanks for reading the article. Initially I was excited when a friend told me you had published an opposing view. But while I had hoped for a debate, I was treated to a series of ad hominems. Further, you did not even provide a link for your readers so that they may judge for themselves the value of the piece I wrote.

I would like to respond specifically to a couple of charges you made:

1. The statistics I quote are not mine; they are not those of the Democratic Leadership Council; nor are they those of Republicans. Rather they are from the nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. You took exception to my statement that there has been a measurable rightward shift among black voters. But the Joint Center study notes that "There has been a noteworthy change in black partisan identification (away from the Democrats)."  Further, if you review the survey carefully yourself, you will discern that there is a direct correlation between the drop in those blacks not identifying themselves as Democrats and those identifying themselves as either independents or Republicans.  One last thing on the numbers: What is interesting about this movement away from Democrats is that it is charted in the two years after George W. Bush basically stole the presidency and thousands of voters, many of whom were black, were disenfranchised in the process. It is stunning (and maybe even scary) that the number of blacks who identify themselves as Democrats would drop between 2000 and 2002 and not increase, given the underhanded tactics used by the Republicans during the 2000 election in Florida.

2. I am not a member of the Democratic Leadership Council. Since the early 1990s, I have been tracking changes in the black electorate and have written extensively in several publications about this. I even wrote a book that includes an analysis of this trend.

3. If you admit that black political leadership is trending toward Rep. Artur Davis and Rep. Harold Ford as I suggest, then aren't you also agreeing that the black electorate is moving to the right of the far left wing of the Democratic Party. You can't have it both ways. You can't say African Americans are voting for candidates like Davis and Ford, who clearly are centrists, but assert that blacks are deep in the left, liberal pocket of the party.

4. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I am a registered Independent. I suggest you interview Dr. Lenora Fulani to ascertain the real independent movement that is sweeping through America, and how important this population has become in national elections.

Finally, what I found most troubling about your essay and analysis is that it did not critically examine the Democratic Party. What is it doing that is causing the disaffection among blacks, particularly young blacks? What should it do or what can it do to become more attractive to this segment of our community? Rather than stoop to a snake's level, you may have better served your reader by delving into the issues of why blacks would want to join the Republican Party or why they would want to opt out of partisan politics all together.

Maybe next time you won't be a victim of your emotions.

I read your article entitled "The Serpent in the Garden" and found myself filled with disdain and disgust for this "Jonetta Rose Barras" person.  Evidently, she and others of her ilk seem to think that the only way to fit into the political climate these days is to present a rosy picture to those of the Anglo persuasion, while portraying African Americans as not worth anything if they aren't believing in the lie that is the Republican/Conservative party.  I guess we must have the burgeoning Uncle Toms (and Tomissinas) to go along with whatever is most profitable and agreeable toward these racist beliefs.  She expounds on how the Democratic party is playing "plantation politics," that the new Black voter will need to forget the lessons learned from past struggles, that the present administrative climate is good for everyone, ad nauseam. In reality, it is nothing more than a attempt from the right of nullifying any possibility of cohesiveness and solidarity from the Black voter against the present political climate.  I find it extremely sad that there are young voters who don't understand that these individuals are more dangerous to them and their future than anything that has been in our history.

My organization coordinates, manages, supervises and conducts elections for private organizations and hopefully, in the near future, for municipalities. We supply the machinery as well as the manpower and expertise to run a non-partisan, totally transparent election. We regularly deal with voting equipment, proxies, ballots, candidates and election rules and regulations as they pertain to federal law. As far as I know we are the only African-American company in New York that does this (there are only 2 other companies in this city that are in the same field). So I have a unique view of our electoral system and how it is failing the people and how it can be fixed. (We were not offered the contract for the overseas votes of our military personnel nor were we told that it existed. It was a no bid contract given to Halliburton – Dick Cheney’s old company).

I bring this up because of the recent article of yours that describes certain people and their paymasters (Barras). It seems that the majority of the problems we face from candidates or anyone in politics (pundits) usually involves money in some form or another.    

We have these problems because our politicians and other spokespeople are not obligated to the people of this country. If you can get anyone to say anything you want because you are paying them, then that is a problem.

The current system is set up to allow candidates to accept money from big business so therefore they are obligated to big business. This process should be stopped. In every election that my organization supervises, whether it is for a union, cooperative apartment, condominium, college or corporate board of directors, each candidates' campaign is paid for by the sponsoring organization (the client) so each candidate has the same access to advertisement. In other words it does not depend on the amount of money the candidate has in their pocket or the amount they can raise (where is it stated in the constitution that only rich folks can run this country). Each candidate’s picture, biography and campaign message is distributed equally and it is not paid for by the candidate – it is paid for by the people that want this election to take place.

So with that in mind shouldn't the American people pay for American election campaigns?  This would eliminate big business from the equation, it would give each candidate the same amount of money to campaign and access to the same forms of advertisement for the same amount of time. If one candidate has a 30 minute spot on channel 2 all candidates should have a 30 minute spot on channel 2. 

It makes candidates obligated to no one person or organization (non-partisan). It makes them obligated to the people of this country.

The world’s elites are seeking to position their institutions and nations as far from the American axis as is feasible, while carefully avoiding economic catastrophe in the process. It is like planning a divorce from an insane, violent spouse who also has a key to the safety deposit box. The divorce will unfold in stages – or, under further provocation from the U.S., in earth-shaking spasms. But there is now no doubt that the U.S. is fated to shrink as the world withdraws from successive layers of entanglements with the madman. Black America must therefore prepare to marshal its collective assets for a long period of retrenchment.

A powerful and insightful piece.  The news is bad enough but there's worse to come: the peak of oil and gas production.  The long, deep slide is longer and deeper than any of us can imagine.  Sometime this decade – sooner, rather than later, I believe – supplies of both natural gas and oil will reach their production peaks and start irrevocably and forever to decline.  That will put a permanent end to economic growth and a hundred thousand other things.  Please don't think that I'm trying to be the more dire Cassandra but I do think that those who face the future with neither optimism nor pessimism but with realism have the best chance to survive the new low-energy world. Anyway, Cassandra was right.

A new British website, Wolf at the Door, offers a good introduction to this grim but essential subject. An article of my own dealing with the subject is in the Online Journal Archive.

I hope this is useful.

Everybody knows where the anti-union pressures are coming from. “This strike is a Wal-Mart strike,” said Willie L. Baker, Jr., UFCW International Vice President and field operations chief, addressing fellow CBTU leaders in Orlando. “It’s really about how Americans finance health care. Will it be every man for himself…?

Wal-Mart is George Bush’s kind of company, the behemoth at the import end of the domestic disinvestment loop that begins with the export of U.S. jobs to the low wage world. From points south and west across the Pacific the retail monster sucks up merchandise for sale to families that formerly made such goods. Ultimately, the abominable engine wipes the landscape clean of all competitors and impoverishes its own customers. While Wal-Mart and its corporate protégés lock their employees (literally) into abject impotence, the Bush regime seals the door shut through its war on the public safety net. The Bush/Wal-Mart vision of America is labor locked in a box.

Your commentary on the Black labor movement is breathtaking in its depth of information and willingness to draw a bright line in the sand. Black labor will play an important role in saving the nation.

Unfortunately, even some of Wal-Mart’s detractors miss the significance of its growth and paint it as some sort of aberration in the history of American capitalism. In fact Wal-Mart has perfected this system and the result is the logical conclusion of capitalism unrestrained. One can argue that it all works out. The Wal-Martization of America provides us with the lower cost goods we will all need when our wages are lowered by the Wal-Marts of the world.

Black leadership should not give into the argument that our communities are in such need that Wal-Mart and its acts of harassment can be considered an asset. Wal-Mart employees are punished for involvement in union activity and are encouraged to spy on one another. Is it asking too much for these leaders to think of other ways to bring new employment opportunities or respond to redlining and other factors that keep businesses out of our neighborhoods? Apparently it is, and not just in Crenshaw.

I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart but I am a big advocate for needed jobs in our black communities. Additionally, I'm very familiar with the Wal-Mart dispute in the City of Oakland because I have lived and worked there for many years. I can tell you without equivocation that the City leaders in Oakland have come under great criticism for their foolish decision aimed at Wal-Mart to prevent competition with other large grocery store chains. Oakland, as you may know, does not have the most intellectually enlightened leadership. Remember, Ebonics was the language of choice of its teachers a short while ago. Moreover, the City just approved a new Wal-Mart that does not include the selling of groceries. Apparently, Wal-Mart is okay but not discounted cans of pork and beans. I mention that fact just to illustrate the hypocrisy of elected officials in the City of Oakland. You might want to do a bit more research before badmouthing a corporation that provides jobs, albeit low paid, to minorities, teenagers and seniors who the city has ignored for years.    

It is difficult to vouch for the people who gave us Ebonics, but I stand by my assessment of Wal-Mart. According to the New York Times, a Wal-Mart internal audit showed 1,371 child labor law violations, 15,705 instances of employees working through meals and over 60,767 instances of workers not taking breaks. Wal-Mart workers on night shifts are literally locked inside the stores. They are allowed to exit via fire doors, but only in case of fire. Workers have been ill, injured, and on the verge of giving birth but if they leave before a manager arrives to unlock the jail, I mean store, they risk being terminated. Oakland and other cities are making a grave mistake if they accept the twenty-first century version of a plantation in exchange for a few low wage jobs.

Thanks for your piece on Wal-Mart in the black community. I have been working with grassroots citizens groups against Wal-Mart for the past ten years, and I can tell you many blacks think wonderful things about the company that feeds them slave-labor jobs. In my own community, a black woman is leading the effort to bring in more and more big box retailers, arguing that poor people need the jobs.

I am a part-time employees at Wal-Mart and I agree with the article. I chose to be part-time because I would like to run my own nonprofit. Working there in the evenings I see most of the slave mentality going on. Just last night I had to work the whole softlines department alone due to lack of staffing. Their response was, when we can we will try to send someone over to help you. I live a small town Rhode Island town called Woonsocket and Wal-Mart just bought out the land of a roller skating ring to add a superstore. The local supermarkets like Shaws or Price Rite were not pleased because this will hurt local union stores.

I am also one who is on Public Assistance and Section-8 and making only $138 a week at Wal-Mart, so I really understand. My goal is to continue to build my nonprofit called The Extra Mile which is an information referral service for low and moderate income working individuals offering case management and life assessment skills. We also have a program on low self-esteem called Sister2Sister for women and teen girls and our final program RI Double Dutch league just began to teach the young kids double Dutch. So thru the grace of God my eye is on God's prize.  But I really agree with your article. People in this town are believing in the mentality that something is better than nothing. 

I give Turnbull credit for confessing, albeit lamely. Another revered Harlem institution, Hale House, was not so lucky. In 2001 it was revealed that its president, Dr. Lorraine Hale, had charged market rents in an apartment building given to her by the City of New York to house low-income residents. As the charges of malfeasance multiplied prominent leaders such as Rev. Al Sharpton and Congressman Charles Rangel very publicly leapt to Dr. Hale’s defense. Of course, every day another sordid shoe dropped. It turned out that the person listed as the Hale House Treasurer was deceased, and had been deceased for several years. Dr. Hale had borrowed money from the organization both to renovate her suburban home and to finance her husband’s theatrical production. I often wanted to be a fly on Sharpton’s and Rangel’s walls when those stories broke….

Once again we see the Black community beset by a lack of imagination when faced with a crisis that should be confronted. There is little doubt that the Choir would suffer a difficult transition with new leadership, but it could survive if those who circle the wagons were instead motivated to bring new ideas to a challenging situation. Turnbull is obviously a very gifted man, but he can’t be the only Black person in America who can teach children to sing. Instead of defending the disgraced Director, the Board should have begun searching for a replacement to undo the damage that has been done.

Once again Margaret Kimberly shows the integrity and hard hitting reporting that is missing far too often when the focus is on those in positions of prestige. These "icons" are routinely pampered, protected and pardoned for behavior that would result in serious repercussions for us ordinary folk.

Ms. Kimberly lets the chips fall where they may in calling Turnbull to task for his willingness to do that which was self-serving and expedient rather than that which was right.  Black leaders need to know that they carry a heavy burden of trust placed in them by the communities/constituencies they serve.  Fairly or not, they are also subject to more intense scrutiny than others.  When they fail to live up to expectations for honor, decency and ethical  behavior  it is good to know that Ms. Kimberly  or someone like her will be there to  speak with clarity  and truth about it.

Until very recently the clergy was one of the few avenues to civic and political authority open to black Americans. As a result some of the greatest minds in our community became religious leaders. Unfortunately it also meant that some of the less gifted among us also heard the call to preach. The time has long passed when the pulpit should be the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Excellent article!! Remember the membership is either uncomfortable having this type of frank conversation with preachers or has the mindset of "it's a sin to confront the Preacher no matter what."  Leadership and lay people alike should read this article.

I should be out trying to clear the snow that fell last night from my front porch. Instead, I am reading (for the first time), the articles on your web site.  I just learned of it a couple of days ago from a friend. I am so glad there is a place for true defenders of the Black community to let others know about what is happening in the Black community.

One of the most important and not reported (or under reported) incidents that will surely further weaken the minds of our young Black people, is the sexual abuse they continue to suffer at the hands of Black ministers.  I'm not talking about just in the Catholic Church.  I'm talking about in Black Pentecostal, Baptist, etc. churches.  This is a travesty of the true mission of the universal church.  Parents of these victims are afraid to speak up, lest they be viewed as "attacking" the "mand of God."  This is nonsense!!  The "mand" or "womand" of God is supposed to protect the flock, not prey and devour the flock which they oversee.

Again, your web site is marvelous!

They cannot find themselves or their fellow African Americans on the sweeping map of history, and so have no idea what direction to take. They are only vaguely aware that the “triple evils” King spoke of 37 years ago – racism, economic exploitation, and war – are now infinitely more dangerous to world survival than while King lived. Consequently, these “leaders” possess only the narrowest understanding of the threat that the Bush Pirates' global offensive poses to African Americans, specifically.

Erroneously assuming that personal wealth equals group leadership, too many beneficiaries of the great leap out of Jim Crow use their influence to lull the rest of the Race to sleep.  Like an adolescent class, they believe they have achieved their present status in life independent of historical Black struggle – or worse, that Dr. King, Malcolm and countless others were sacrificed for the purpose of their own eventual affluence. On King’s birthday, they celebrate themselves, oblivious to the blasphemy they are committing.  These “distracting classes” – in that they purposely present distracting stories of anomalous Black successes to counter the facts of massive social disintegration – have always been with us. However, with each ratcheting up of the global and domestic crisis, we can afford them less.

This article is right on time. Dr. King would die from depression and hurt to see the state of Black America. African Americans have been lulled into a sense of prosperity by being able to purchase things that have little to no real long term value: cars, clothes, electronics, car accessories, and jewelry. The ancestors of African Americans that came out of slavery had the intelligence, even though they were grossly illiterate by our standards, to understand that the ownership of real property, knowledge, education, and faith and belief in the Great Yahweh would open doors that the institution of slavery and hatred could not close. From 1865 to 1968, Blacks had the greatest period of productivity and growth. People then sought uplift and progress of the race. Now we search for another Dr. King, and God only sends one deliverer to an oppressed group of people, and it is their task to correct the wrongs that have been fraught against them.

The problem with African Americans today is apathy.  I teach at an HBCU and at a majority university, and the attitudes of the students are like night and day. The black students at the majority university see education as the key, while many at an HBCU do not view college as the opportunity to open one's mind to succeed.

Dr. King was not about status quo, cliques, Greek Worship, bourgie mentalities, and other superficial perks that many African Americans demean others and themselves with. The solution is right in front of our faces, but we choose not to take the right approach.  First we must empower those of us that are less fortunate, instead of disempowering and lauding over them with more severe repercussions than the most racist bigot on the face of the earth. Secondly, we must take our neighborhoods back and stop coddling psychopathic social parasites that only seek to destroy instead of build. Thirdly, we must once again educate our children at home prior to public school matriculation. Many of our grandparents and parents did it for us, and that is why many of the Baby Boom Generation are able to enjoy the levels of success that they have today. Fourthly, we must become a village again and help raise those who have parents or significant others that are incapable of parenthood. Fifthly, we must turn off the television and turn on the faucets of knowledge. We must be willing to read and learn and not be programmed and brainwashed by the media. Sixthly, we must be role models in our community, and stop looking to entertainers and athletes to complete our children's self worth and esteem. Seventh, we must learn to use our financial resources in a progressive manner to stimulate the growth of the group and the start of business enterprises. .Eight, we must stop looking for a system that never included us in its development to correct all of our problems.  Nine: We must teach our children of their history and heritage. For when a man does not know his history or heritage, he is doomed to repeat it.

should be commended solely on your coverage of the nations of the Caribbean – particularly the recent series on Haiti.  While I became acquainted with the Jacob Lawrence series on Toussaint and the Haitian revolution a few years ago, these articles have filled in the back-story, including the inevitable US involvement in placing the world's first Black Republic in the dire straits it still inhabits today.  These communiqués give me the history I was never taught in school, regardless of how well I did on the Regents exams, but they still leave me with questions.

Why do we – Black people – continue to give credence to nonsense terms like West Indies?  How is it that for over several hundred centuries we continue to reinforce the inane notion that a lost Italian navigator "discovered" a westerly passage to India?  What rationality states that an African – once transported across the Atlantic Ocean in chains – transmutes into a West Indian?

Only once we – Black people – learn to recognize ourselves, learn to realize that the face we see in the mirror, whether in the US or the Caribbean and South America, is all part of the same family tree (albeit on different branches) will we ever be able to break through all of the madness that exists around us.

How is it possible that with the collective economic power of what has to be over $2 trillion from just the Africans in the Western Hemisphere alone, we fail to be able to organize ourselves to prevent those who wish to do us harm from doing so?

As I’ve read much on the material on blackcommentator.com I’ve been impressed with the focus and dead-on analysis of U. S. society.  Specifically, on the current misadventure in Iraq, much of the commentary focused on the enabling character of the white U. S. population. Although there is some truth to Noam Chomsky’s assertion that the high levels of support for the war is a result of the massive and unprecedented propaganda campaign unleashed on the North American populace, I have always maintained that the strength of the propaganda campaign is not solely based on its intensity and pervasiveness but on the receptiveness of the white American audience that it is directed at. It does not take much to convince a population who are inured to violence (witness the popularity of professional wrestling and reality TV), mesmerized by popular media that consistently and unabashedly define democracy and freedom as uniquely American values and finally, are heirs to three plus centuries of fashioning a national identity based on white superiority and privilege.

What is disturbing is that much of the rag tag left in this country continue to insist that if only the American public were better informed by the media then a movement would arise to challenge the neo-con’s plans specifically and all injustices generally. But the truth does not get through the filters of the corporately controlled media and naturally, the color red or orange or any other color can mean something only to someone who can see to begin with. Clearly, the white U. S. population by and large has been blinded by centuries of racism. As, indeed, historically is the case with settler states, which typically have genocidal origins. The pogroms (what else can they be described as) carried out in Tulsa and Rosewood should be a lesson to those who believe in the inherent goodness or benevolence of white U.S society as a whole. As a people, sectors of the white population throughout the long and tortured history of the country, have personally engaged in genocide or ethnic cleansing. Many of those that have not, which may be the majority, have either cheered from the sidelines or tacitly agreed through their silence. The main difference between the genocide of the past and that ongoing today being that for much of the country’s existence it was accomplished by the settlers themselves and now its labeled “the war on drugs” and carried out by the various state institutions comprising the prison-industrial complex.

Even if one charitably assumes that the U. S. media can and will accurately report on U. S. adventures or misadventures abroad, will as racist society such as the U. S. be able to muster the appropriate moral outrage and countervailing action appropriate to the slaughter and maltreatment of black and brown peoples? Not likely since so much of their identity is based on the domination of and perceived superiority over black and brown peoples. Then, when someone among their own, such as Eugene Debbs, decides to stand with humanity and attempt to move the white U. S. masses away from their allegiance to the brutish U. S. ruling class, he is either quickly marginalized (ala Noam Chomsky) if he or she is lucky or simply murdered or imprisoned if not. But lets also not forget the economic dimension. Much of the wealth of not only the U. S. but of the global North as a whole originated and continues to originate with the destruction and exploitation of people of color. Racism is integral to the maintenance of a modus vivendi with the conscience (such as it may be) of whites individually and collectively. This is why poor whites consistently vote against their material interests by voting for the most reactionary politicians.  Abandoning racism would simply mean the destruction of their collective identity. An identity that while having spelled doom for non-white peoples and perhaps ultimately whites themselves cannot be easily discarded. Apparently, the psychological comfort of their white skins is more valuable than decent healthcare, wages and schools. In short, if the Iraqis, or the rest of the world for that matter, are waiting for the white masses in the U. S. to wake up from their stupor and put the clamps on their ruling class, we all should collectively not hold our breath.

This is the first time I've visited your website.  Your article on Howard Dean was very informative.  I mostly want to congratulate you on the beauty of your website design.  I love the layout and colorful, playful feel of it. Congratulations on great design!

Just had to thank you for your wonderful commentaries.  I find your commentaries to be the most thought provoking take-no-prisoners analyses of issues since the now defunct "EMERGE" Magazine articles. Although I don't get the chance to read every article due to my hectic schedule, I try to read them as often as I can.  The articles help me to maintain my sanity in the midst of the suffocating propaganda masquerading as "news" in the mainstream media.  Your articles let me know that I am not alone in my thinking and that some people really do see through this massive mainstream "bamboozle" as I call it. I hope you never stop writing and publishing.

January 29, 2004
Issue 75

is published every Thursday.