Facing Reality: Why Jeremiah Wright Is Not the Problem

All,

Finally. At last. A writer has the guts to tell the real and obvious truth in public about the rank pseudo event called "the Jeremiah Wright controversy." It's about time somebody had sense enough to expose the sheer media deception and monumental hypocrisy and infantilism of the public hysteria surrounding this idiotic episode. So thank you Gary Kamiya for simply telling America what it so desperately needs to hear about who and what we really are. Scapegoating Wright or anyone else in this context is just one more mindless evasion of what our real collective responsibility is for our currently abysmal social, economic, and political reality.

Kofi

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/03/25/rev_jeremiah_wright/


Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem

The hysteria over Obama's former pastor's attacks on America shows we're still in thrall to knee-jerk patriotism.

By Gary Kamiya
Salon
March 25, 2008

Maybe we really are doomed to elect John McCain, remain in Iraq forever and nuke Iran. Nations that forget history may not be doomed to repeat it, but those that never even recognize reality in the first place definitely are. Last week's ridiculous uproar over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons proves yet again that America has still not come to terms with the most rudimentary facts about race, 9/11 -- or itself.

The great shock so many people claim to be feeling over Wright's sermons is preposterous. Anyone who is surprised and horrified that some black people feel anger at white people, and America, is living in a racial never-never land. Wright has called the U.S. "the United States of White America," talks about the "oppression" of black people and says, "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11." Gosh, who could have dreamed that angry racial grievances and left-wing political views are sometimes expressed in black churches?

It's not surprising that the right is using Wright to paint Barack Obama as a closet Farrakhan, trying to let the air out of his trans-racial balloon by insinuating that he's a dogmatic race man. But beyond the fake shock and the all-too-familiar racial politics, what the whole episode reveals is how narrow the range of acceptable discourse remains in this country. This is especially true of anything having to do with patriotism or 9/11 -- which have become virtually interchangeable. Wright's unforgivable sin was that he violated our rigid code of national etiquette. Instead of the requisite "God bless America," he said "God damn America." He said 9/11 was a case of chickens coming home to roost. Now we must all furrow our brows and agree that such dreadful words are anathema and that no presidential candidate can ever have been within earshot of them.

This is absurd. We're worrying about someone in Row 245 who refuses to stand up for "The Star Spangled Banner," while the people who are singing loudest and waving the biggest flags are the ones who got us into the mess we're in today.

Wright isn't the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem.

We are now five years into a war that may outrank Vietnam as the most pointless and disastrous one in our history. George W. Bush and his neoconservative brain trust conceived that war, but they were only able to push it through because the American people, their political leaders and the mainstream media signed off on it. And they did so because they were in the grip of the fearful, vengeful, patriotic frenzy that swept the nation after 9/11. Without 9/11 and America's fateful reaction to it, there would be no Iraq war. Every day that the war drags on is yet another indictment of that self-righteous, unthinking "patriotism."

Bill Clinton's line that McCain and Hillary are "two people who love their country" may or may not have been intended to subtly denigrate Obama's patriotism. But whatever it meant, it didn't have anything to do with the actual problems facing the country. Loving America more than your opponent does is not a qualification for higher office.

In fact, the same all-American flag-wavers who called loudest for war against Iraq are now denouncing Wright as a hate-monger and a traitor, and attacking Michelle Obama for saying that only recently has she had reason to feel proud of her country. They insist that anyone who is not permanently proud of the United States, whose patriotism isn't plastered on his or her face like the frozen smile of a beauty queen waving from a Fourth of July float, is beyond the pale. Never mind that the glorious results of their debased version of patriotism -- 4,000 American troops dead, a wrecked Iraq, and a greatly strengthened terrorist enemy -- are plain for all to see.

You wouldn't expect the Republican Party, Fox News, Bill Kristol or the readers of FreeRepublic to issue any mea culpas -- they don't acknowledge that they've done anything wrong. But the mainstream media's pious tut-tutting over the Wright affair shows that it, too, has learned nothing from its disgraceful post 9/11 performance. The worst excesses of media groveling -- the flag pins, the instructions not to run anti-U.S. stories -- may be history, but the timorous mind-set remains the same.

Its reaction to Wright shows that the American establishment still cowers before the patriotic idol. It cited the "God damn America" sermon again and again, like the Spanish Inquisition ritually intoning the words of some heretic before drawing and quartering him. It didn't matter that Wright uttered his curse in the context of demanding that America live up to its ideals -- all that mattered were those three talismanic words. Anyone this angry, our media gatekeepers solemnly informed us, must be rejected. The only question was whether Obama was irrevocably tainted by his association with the evildoer. Wright's "chickens coming home to roost" line about 9/11 produced the same unthinking, reflexive reaction. How dare this apostate suggest that America might not be blameless, that its actions could have had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks?

This isn't a brief for Wright. I'm not a fan of Sharpton-style black demagoguery, with its knee-jerk grievance and identity politics. I don't know Wright's political philosophy or racial views well enough to place him on the vast spectrum of black leaders. Based on the few clips I've seen and the excerpts I've read, Wright certainly has his shortcomings. His preaching can be over-the-top, crude and ludicrous. His assertion that the U.S. government spread AIDS in the black population is a caricature of paranoid black demagoguery. In his "chickens coming home to roost" sermon, when he thundered that America's sins were being revisited upon us, he failed to make the essential distinction between saying U.S. actions were partly responsible for the attacks and saying that we deserved the attacks. At times his aggressive, almost gloating tone and delivery made it seem like that's exactly what he was saying.

But if Wright's "chickens" sermon was unpleasant, the fact is that it was also largely right. He had the bad taste, and the courage, to say exactly what America did not want to hear at that moment. He said that although those who were murdered by terrorists were innocent, America itself was far from innocent. He placed 9/11 in a historical context, instead of pretending that it emerged out of nowhere. Critically, he said that lashing out in vengeful anger, however tempting, was not a wise or just response. To make this point, he used the Bible against itself, citing the terrible Verse 9 of Psalm 137, in which David, speaking in imagination to his Babylonian captors, gives voice to his people's desire for vengeance: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." This path, Wright pointed out, had biblical sanction. But it was not the right one.

Yes, Wright was angry, shrill and one-sided. But America would have been better off if his uncomfortable sermon had echoed through every church in the country after 9/11, instead of the patriotic, ahistorical pablum that did.

What's strange, and depressing, is that all this has happened before -- and we've learned nothing. In the days after 9/11, the nation whipped itself up into an ecstasy of moral sanctimony. Among the few who dared to resist the groupthink was Susan Sontag, who in a brief New Yorker piece wrote, "The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?"

Sontag was saying the same things Wright did. Like him, she was instantly pilloried. She was called a traitor, an enemy of the state, an appeaser, a supporter of Osama bin Laden. But she was right.

Today, after five years of a catastrophic war driven by patriotic vengeance, it's still not acceptable to disturb the myth of eternal American innocence. As David Bromwich wrote in a recent piece in the New York Review of Books, "the uniformity of the presentation by the mass media after 2001, to the effect that the United States now faced threats arising from a fanaticism with religious roots unconnected to anything America had done or could do, betrayed a stupefying abdication of judgment." Stupefying indeed: Patriotism has proved to be a stronger opiate of the people than religion.

The taboo against any critical national self-examination has always existed here. But 9/11 sealed it in blood and made it virtually untouchable. Only a few academics, Middle East specialists and outspoken journalists have dared to suggest that U.S. foreign policies played a role in the 9/11 attacks. The Democrats, terrified of being called unpatriotic and "weak on national security," won't go there. Which is a big reason that the desperately needed national discussion over how to deal with the Arab/Muslim world after Bush leaves office still hasn't started.

Turkey has a notorious law, Article 301, that makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime. We're a lot closer to this than we like to think. In fact, we can expect John McCain's entire campaign to basically be an American version of Article 301.

Our currently mandated version of patriotism is banal and genteel, as if we are afraid to dig beneath the surface of America and find out what's really there. But there is another tradition of patriotism -- a prophetic one. It is dark, angry, disturbing, even terrifying. And it cannot be dismissed, for its exponents include figures who exist at the very heart of the way Americans define themselves and their nation. Wright was vilified for saying "God damn America." But it turns out that the words are inscribed in our national charter.

In "The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice," the culture critic Greil Marcus looks at the dark visions articulated and made manifest by John Winthrop, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Like Wright, these three figures did more than demand that America live up to its ideals. Whether in their rhetoric or by the example of their lives, they held a prophetic sword over it.

In 1630, Winthrop delivered a sermon to his fellow members of the Massachusetts Bay Company. The line that has gone down in history, oft cited by Ronald Reagan, is "wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill." But Reagan, eager to present America as perfect, omitted the passage that followed. Winthrop warned that if the community of Puritans dealt falsely with their God, they would be cursed "till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are goeing." Marcus describes this terrible image as "the replacement of God by a demon who, as citizens went about their work or leisure, would suddenly devour them."

In his Second Inaugural Address, delivered near the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued an equally terrifying warning -- one also largely erased from the national memory. "Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away," Lincoln said. But then he added, "Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'" Of this horrific vision, Marcus comments that it is "a call for a reenactment, on a national scale, of an Old Testament sacrifice."

Finally, there is Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, delivered in 1963 in Washington. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," King thundered. Time has smoothed and sentimentalized King's soaring rhetoric; the sheer force of his language has allowed us to convince ourselves that his words came true. But as Marcus points out, they have still not come true -- a fact that makes his great speech both inspiring and unbearably painful.

I am not comparing Jeremiah Wright to these towering figures. My point is that his angry claims that his nation has betrayed its promises of racial equality and a just foreign policy are part of a long and honorable prophetic tradition. It was not critics like Wright who got us into the bloody mess we're in today. That honor belongs to the flag-wavers, the patriots -- "the real Americans."

The Real Significance of Barack Obama as Leader & Statesman

All,

The following insightful article by Pamela Gerloff in today's Huffington Post goes to the very heart of precisely why Barack Obama's profoundly important and moving speech on the history and politics of racism in the United States last Tuesday makes him a genuine political leader and statesman of our time and indicates what the real challenges are for the rest of us not only in this election year but far beyond it in our collective future. Needless to say if we blow this democratic opportunity for change and social transformation that Obama's candidacy is providing us we'll only have ourselves to blame. Gerloff's piece reminds us in particularly reflective and eloquent terms what is really at stake in this election and why Obama's individual role as catalyst and medium for this mass 'collective consciousness' is so crucial in any proper or accurate assessment of the meaning of his speech and its actual place in our lives as American citizens.


Kofi

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-gerloff/obamas-real-challenge-s_b_92995.html?view=print

Obama's Real Challenge: Shifting the Collective Consciousness
by Pamela Gerloff
The Huffington Post
Posted March 23, 2008

"Most men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and continue as if nothing happened." -- Winston Churchill

Churchill's words about the human propensity to ignore the truth that is right in front of us reminds me of the mainstream media's response to Senator Obama's speech on race. The speech was filled with profound truths, and yet so many in the media -- interviewers, newscasters, and pundits alike -- have merely picked up where they left off, continuing as if nothing happened.

But something did happen, something profound. In years to come, the speech Obama gave this week will be ranked among the most significant in our nation's history. Like Lincoln's Gettysburg address, John F. Kennedy's exhortation to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," or Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" vision of a unified America free of bigotry and hatred, historians will view Obama's speech as an eloquent address producing effects far greater than "just words" ever could. His nuanced truth-telling about race in America, at a pivotal point in our history, offers all Americans a choice:

Will we just pick ourselves up and continue as if nothing happened? Or will we rise to the challenge and finally, as a nation, begin to talk about race in a way that heals, not hurts? Will we use this moment to bring about real change or will we use it to keep replaying the same old tapes of anger, bitterness, and resentment that have not united, but rather, divided us?

Not only did Obama's speech -- at once personal and intellectual -- reveal some of the subtle complexities of American race relations; it also revealed that Obama is the only candidate in this election who even comes close to understanding the underlying mechanics of societal change. Not just how to create policy changes in Washington, but how to create the shifts in collective attitudes and beliefs that are needed to enable more fair, just, and effective policies to take hold. This is the hidden power of words, and of authentic truth-telling. Together, they can change the collective consciousness.

Barack Obama's uniqueness as a politician is that he understands that real change involves a change in consciousness; and he is gifted at bringing it about. The challenge he now faces is the age-old dilemma encountered by anyone who has the potential to move a group or nation to a new level of awareness: How do you introduce to a collective a profound shift in attitude, belief, and understanding -- and not be silenced or marginalized in the process?

Typically, powerful, authentic leadership or new ideas that threaten the status quo evoke reptilian-brain survival responses from the "powers that be" -- be they political or religious authorities, scientific and medical establishments, or modern news media. Consider Galileo, who was put under house arrest and silenced by the Church for asserting that the Earth revolved around the Sun; or Martin Luther, who was forced into hiding for proclaiming his religious views; or the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, gunned down and imprisoned by Chinese authorities for demonstrating on behalf of human rights.

The masses, although sometimes at the forefront of consciousness shifts, nonetheless also have a long tradition of rejecting opportunities to lift their consciousness. The Christian story of Easter offers a timely example. On Palm Sunday the crowd hails Jesus as King of the Jews. Only a few days later, they demand that he be crucified. In the Christian tradition, the triumph of Christ was of course that he rose again, thereby profoundly shifting the consciousness of all "who have ears to hear."

This story of resistance to transformational change, followed by eventual triumph, has replayed itself throughout human history. Individuals with high ideals, vision, and a capacity to communicate important truths to others manage to be left alone initially -- until they come out from under the radar. Then the gatekeepers of the collective consciousness step in to swat them down.

Eventually, however, a consciousness shift does occur, simply because it must. Consciousness cannot remain static forever.

A legitimate role of gatekeepers is to examine a potential shift in consciousness to be sure it will benefit the whole. Gatekeepers may rightly stall it long enough to ask reasonable questions, in order to vet the change before it spreads too far, knowing that any shift in consciousness will change our ways of thinking and believing, our very way of life.

The trouble comes only when the human mind cannot discern between legitimate vetting of a new potential shift and survival-response reactions to a threat to the status quo. When the latter occurs, humanity's familiar pattern repeats itself: two steps forward, one step back. In this way, we make slow and plodding progress, as a nation and as a species.

But every now and then a bright light shines. Those who recognize that light are drawn to it. They see it, hear its message, and welcome it into their midst. They allow it to call forth the better nature in themselves. And if humanity is lucky, there are enough visionary representatives among the people to produce a leap in the consciousness of a nation, perhaps the world. In such cases, the usual patterns of plodding gain don't hold; instead, significant advances in political, scientific, religious or other realms occur: the civil rights and women's movements in the United States, glasnost in the USSR, the end of apartheid in South Africa. Even the radical reduction in patient infections -- brought about through the simple practice of washing hands before surgery -- required a collective shift of consciousness within the medical profession, which had initially resisted the idea.

Barack Obama's challenge is to lift the consciousness of the people -- and still remain in the game. Although profoundly skilled at the change game, he cannot do this alone. Success will require a genuine shift of consciousness in the people he hopes to lead.

This is why so many Obama supporters are so profoundly committed to this election. They are not merely swooning over a cult figure. They are responding to the call to go higher, wider, deeper, truer. They know it is only a leap of consciousness that will produce the depth of change the world now seeks.

Obama's remarkable success thus far suggests that we may indeed be approaching a tipping point in our collective psyche. The people of our nation may perhaps be ready to "tip" to a higher level. But will the gatekeepers of the consciousness let the new consciousness break through?

Each of us, like the media commentators and reporters, is a gatekeeper. Each of us is part of the collective psyche. And each of us now has a choice to make. Having stumbled over the truth, will we just pick ourselves up and continue as if nothing happened? Or will we seize this opportunity and assist the leap to a new level of consciousness--in ourselves and in our nation?

Will we let the truths Obama has been speaking be seen and heard for what they are? Will we help our country turn to dialogue and respectful examination of these truths? Will we dare to continue the conversation about race that Obama has begun? Will we stand with him in this pivotal moment? (And will we let the media and others know where we stand?)

Or will we let this messenger's voice be trivialized and marginalized, drowned in the din made by those who are missing the point?

What kind of gatekeepers will we be?

Pamela Gerloff is co-author, with Robert W. Fuller, of Dignity for All: Rankism Unmasked (forthcoming, Spring 2008).

The Great Ivan Dixon (1931-2008)

Julius Harris, left, and Ivan Dixon in the 1964 film “Nothing but a Man,” about a black couple navigating the Deep South.

Ivan Dixon (right) with Diana Sands In this March 1967 photo, actor Ivan Dixon and actress Diana Sandsare seen in an episode of the ABC-TV show 'The Fugitive.' Dixon, who brought the problems and promise of contemporary blacks to life in thefilm 'Nothing But a Man' and portrayed the levelheaded POW Kinchloein TV's 'Hogan's Heroes,' has died. He was 76. Dixon died Sunday, March 16, 2008, at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, N.C.,after a hemorrhage, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixonof Charlotte. He had suffered complications from kidney failure, she said.


Editor's Note:

All,

Ivan Dixon (1931-2008) was an absolute GENIUS and one of my all-time favorite actors. What a great and enduring artist this man was! One of the authentic giants in fact. "Nothing But A Man' (1964) is one of the finest films featuring African Americans in the history of cinema and Dixon's pathbreaking role as the Nigerian student who romances the late, great Diana Sands in "A Raisin in the Sun" was equally brilliant and yet another outstanding example of the creative ability that Dixon had to steal any scene he was in as his longtime friend and colleague Sidney Poitier so aptly pointed out. ORIGINALITY and EXCELLENCE were this man's benchmarks in everything he ever did as both actor and director.

REST IN PEACE brother. You left a very important and powerful legacy for all of us

Kofi

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/movies/20dixon.html?ref=obituaries


Ivan Dixon, Actor Dies at 76

By DENNIS HEVESI
The New York Times
Published: March 20, 2008

Ivan Dixon, an actor and director who was best known for playing Sgt. James Kinchloe on the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” but whose films included vivid portrayals of black struggles in the American South and insurrectionist inclinations in the North, died on Sunday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 76 and lived in Charlotte.

The cause was complications of kidney disease, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixon.

Ms. Dixon said her father was always pleased to be recognized as Sergeant Kinchloe, the American radio technician in a World War II German P.O.W. camp who could adeptly mimic his captors. But he was most proud, she said, of the 1964 movie “Nothing but a Man,” in which he starred, and of the 1973 film “The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” which he directed.

In “Nothing but a Man” Mr. Dixon played a young black railroad worker who gives up his job to marry a minister’s daughter, played by Abbey Lincoln, and then runs into trouble for not knowing his place in the Deep South. In a 1991 article on the history of black films, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that “Nothing but a Man” was “way ahead of its time.”

“Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln give tough, moving performances as a couple making their way in a white world without apologies to anyone,” he wrote. “No thoughts of integration for them. They demand their own lives and are willing to fight for them.”

“The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” based on the novel by Sam Greenlee, tells the tale of Dan Freeman, the first black officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. After five years of menial assignments, Freeman quits, takes what he has learned about terrorist tactics and goes to Chicago, where he tries to put together a black guerrilla operation.

Although “The Spook” aroused controversy and was soon pulled from theaters, it later gained cult status as a bootleg video and, in 2004, was released on DVD. At that time Mr. Dixon told The Times that the movie had tried only to depict black anger, not to suggest armed revolt as a solution.

Mr. Dixon directed scores of television shows, including episodes of “The Waltons,” “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “Quincy” and “In the Heat of the Night.” In 1967 he played the title role in a CBS Playhouse drama, “The Final War of Olly Winter,” about a veteran of World War II and the Korean War who decides that Vietnam will be his final war. For that role he received an Emmy nomination for best single performance by an actor.

Ivan Nathaniel Dixon 3rd was born on April 6, 1931, in Harlem, where his family owned a grocery store. Besides his daughter, Doris, who lives in Charlotte, Mr. Dixon is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former Berlie Ray; and a son, Alan, of Oakland, Calif.

Mr. Dixon graduated from North Carolina Central University in 1954 with a drama degree. His big break came in 1957 when he appeared on Broadway in William Saroyan’s “Cave Dwellers.” Two years later he played Joseph Asagai, the charming, mannerly Nigerian student visiting the United States in Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun,” the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.


IVAN DIXON (1931-2008)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Actor Ivan Dixon, who brought the problems and promise of contemporary blacks to life in the film "Nothing But a Man" and portrayed the levelheaded POW Kinchloe in TV's "Hogan's Heroes," has died. He was 76.

Dixon died Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte after a hemorrhage, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixon of Charlotte. He had suffered complications from kidney failure, she said.

Dixon, who also directed scores of television shows, began his acting career in the late 1950s. He appeared on Broadway in William Saroyan's 1957 "The Cave Dwellers" and in playwright Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking 1959 drama of black life, "A Raisin in the Sun." In the latter, he played a Nigerian student visiting the United States, a role he repeated in the film version.

While not a hit, the 1964 "Nothing But a Man," in which Dixon co-starred with Abbey Lincoln, also drew praise as a rare, early effort to bring the lives of black Americans to the big screen.

Other film credits included "Something of Value," "A Patch of Blue" and the cult favorite "Car Wash."

"As an actor, you had to be careful," said Sidney Poitier, star of "Patch of Blue" and a longtime friend. "He was quite likely to walk off with the scene."

In 1967, Dixon starred in a CBS Playhouse drama, "The Final War of Olly Winter," about a veteran of World War II and Korea who decided that Vietnam would be his final war. The role brought Dixon an Emmy nomination for best single performance by an actor.

He was probably best known for the role of Staff Sgt. James Kinchloe on "Hogan's Heroes," the hit 1960s sitcom set in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

The technically adept Kinchloe was in charge of electronic communications and could mimic German officers on the radio or phone.

Dixon was active in efforts to get better parts for blacks in movies and television, telling The New York Times in 1967: "Sponsors haven't wanted anything negative connected with their products. We must convince them that the Negro is not negative."

"Heretofore, people have thought that, to use a Negro, the story must pit black against white. Maybe we're getting to the problems of human beings who happen to be black."

While Dixon was most proud of roles such as those in "A Raisin in the Sun" and "Nothing But a Man," he had no problem about being recognized for Kinchloe, his daughter said.

"It was a pivotal role as well, because there were not as many blacks in TV series at that time," Nomathande Dixon said. "He did have some personal issues with that role, but it also launched him into directing."

Dixon also directed numerous episodes of TV shows, including "The Waltons," "The Rockford Files," "Magnum, P.I." and "In the Heat of the Night."

In 1973, he directed the film "The Spook Who Sat by the Door," a political drama based on a novel about a black CIA agent who becomes a revolutionary. He also directed the 1972 "blaxploitation" story "Trouble Man."

His honors included four NAACP Image Awards, the National Black Theatre Award and the Paul Robeson Pioneer Award from the Black American Cinema Society.

Born in 1931 in New York, Dixon graduated in 1954 from North Carolina Central University in Durham.

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife of 53 years, Berlie Dixon of Charlotte, and a son, Alan Kimara Dixon of Oakland. At Dixon's request, no memorial or funeral is planned, the family said.

Governor Bill Richardson Endorses Obama

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/politics/22richardson.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1206184082-TgQIByIjdYPKRv2BQJzPzA

All,

What Governor Bill Richardson says in his surprise endorsement of Obama speaks volumes about the fierce battle within the Democratic Party over the negative and divisive role of the Clinton Machine in the primary race and about Governor Richardson's own considerable political integrity and independence in embracing Barack despite the fact that he is a longtime friend of the Clintons and served with them in important cabinet positions in both of Bill Clinton's two administrations from 1992-2000. Finally what Richardson says about Obama indicates that he fully realizes what Obama's actual strengths are as both a man and a politician and that he knows Obama has the right stuff to make a decent President. Whether Richardson's endorsement will help Obama at this point with the national Latino vote is anybody's guess and probably problematic given the Clinton's tight political rein on other national Latino leaders but it does indicate that not every major national Latino politician is for sale to the Clintons and that ideas, values, integrity, and vision do count more to Governor Richardson than cynical slavishness to political cronyism. Thank you Governor for having the guts, honesty, and the vision to fight for what you know is right instead of just "going along to get along" in the Clinton camp.

Kofi

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/politics/21text-richardson.html?ref=politics&pagewanted=all


TEXT
Richardson’s Endorsement of Obama

Published: March 21, 2008

The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Governor Bill Richardson's speech endorsing Senator Barack Obama in Oregon.


My friends,
Earlier this week, an extraordinary American gave a historic speech.

Senator Barack Obama addressed the issue of race with the eloquence and sincerity and decency and optimism we have come to expect of him.

He did not seek to evade tough issues or to soothe us with comforting half-truths.

Rather, he inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility.

Senator Obama could have given a safer speech.

He is, after all, well ahead in the delegate count for our party's nomination.

He could have just waited for the controversy over the deplorable remarks of Reverend Wright to subside, as it surely would have.

Instead, Senator Obama showed us once again what kind of leader he is.

He spoke to us as adults.

He asked us to ponder the weight of our racially-divided past, to rise above it, and to seize the opportunity to carry forward the work of many patriots of all races, who struggled and died to bring us together.

Senator Obama reminded us that cynicism is not realism, and that hope is not folly.

He called upon us not just to dream about a less racially-divided America, but also to do the hard work needed to build such an America.

He asked every American to see the reality and the pain of other Americans, so that together we can rise above that which has divided us.

He appealed to the best in us.

As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by his words.

I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants--specifically Hispanics-- by too many in this country.

Hate crimes against Hispanics are rising as a direct result and now, in tough economic times, people look for scapegoats and I fear that people will continue to exploit our racial differences—and place blame on others not like them.

We all know the real culprit -- the disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration!

Senator Obama has started a discussion in this country long overdue and rejects the politics of pitting race against race.

He understands clearly that only by bringing people together, only by bridging our differences can we all succeed together as Americans.

His words are those of a courageous, thoughtful and inspiring leader, who understands that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

And, after 8 years of George W. Bush, we will desperately need such a leader.

Our national security and our global standing have been gravely damaged by the divisive partisanship of recent years.

We need a President who can bring us together as a nation so that we can face urgent global challenges and repair the damage done in the last 7 years.

Barack Obama will make the historic and vital investments into renewable energy, to help create clean energy jobs and fight global warming.

Barack knows that the safety and future of every American child requires that we restore our shared sense of national purpose, so that we can then set about the hard work of rebuilding our alliances and rehabilitating our image in a dangerous world.

By uniting our nation, we can reverse America's global decline.

We need a realistic, principled, and bipartisan foreign policy again.

We must restore our international reputation, our influence and our capacity to lead others.

America must become the beacon for the world again.

We need a foreign policy based upon American ideals, and not upon the mere ideology of a President.

A foreign policy of diplomacy and respect for international human rights.

We prospered and prevailed in the Cold War because both our friends and our enemies knew that containment of the Soviet Union and the promotion of democratic values was not a Democratic or a Republican policy – it was an American policy--the very essence of what America was.

Senator Obama understands the importance of realism, principle, and bipartisanship in foreign policy.

He opposed the Iraq war from the beginning because he knew that, despite what the Administration claimed, this war would not be easy.

He also opposed the war because he saw President Bush's rush to employ military force, and to do so without the support of most of our allies, as dangerous and unwarranted.

And he saw the war also for what it so quickly became – a terrible source of partisan political division -- and a catastrophic distraction from the war that had united us against the real threat posed by Al Qaeda.

Now, I trust him to do what is so long overdue—End the Iraq war and bring our troops home!!

I know Senator Obama well.

I first got to know him when I chaired the last Democratic National Convention, where he gave that wonderful keynote address.

And then, last year, as we campaigned against each other for the Presidency, I came to fully appreciate his steadfast patriotism and remarkable talents.

I also felt a kinship with him because we both had one foreign-born parent and we both lived abroad as children.

In part because of these experiences, Barack and I share a deep sense of our nation's special responsibilities in the world.

Barack Obama, you are an extraordinary leader who has shown courage, sound judgment and wisdom throughout your career.

You understand the security challenges of the 21st century, and you will be an outstanding Commander in Chief.

Above all, you will be a President who brings this nation together and restores American global leadership.

You will make every American proud to be an American, and I am very proud indeed to endorse your candidacy.

Before concluding my remarks, I would like to say that we are blessed to have two great American leaders and great Democrats running for President.

My great affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver.

It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the Fall.

The 1990's were a decade of peace and prosperity because of the competent and enlightened leadership of the Clinton administration, but it is now time for a new generation of leadership to lead America forward.

Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.

I know that all Democrats will work tirelessly to get him elected.

It is my distinct honor and privilege to introduce to you the next President of the United States, my friend, Barack Obama.



First a Tense Talk With Clinton, Then Richardson Backs Obama

Senator Barack Obama accepted the support of Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico on Friday in Portland, Ore. Mr. Richardson ended his own bid for the Democratic nomination in January

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

Published: March 22, 2008

PORTLAND, Ore. — “I talked to Senator Clinton last night,” Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said on Friday, describing the tense telephone call in which he informed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that, despite two months of personal entreaties by her and her husband, he would be endorsing Senator Barack Obama for president.


Senator Barack Obama at a rally Friday at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Ore. The Oregon primary is May 20.

“Let me tell you: we’ve had better conversations,” Mr. Richardson said.

The decision by Mr. Richardson, who ended his own presidential campaign on Jan. 10, to support Mr. Obama was a belt of bad news for Mrs. Clinton. It was a stinging rejection of her candidacy by a man who had served in two senior positions in President Bill Clinton’s administration, and who is one of the nation’s most prominent elected Hispanics. Mr. Richardson came back from vacation to announce his endorsement at a moment when Mrs. Clinton’s hopes of winning the Democratic nomination seem to be dimming.

But potentially more troublesome for Mrs. Clinton was what Mr. Richardson said in announcing his decision. He criticized the tenor of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. He praised Mr. Obama for the speech he gave in response to the furor over racially incendiary remarks delivered by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

And he came close to doing what Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have increasingly feared some big-name Democrat would do as the battle for the nomination drags on: Urge Mrs. Clinton to step aside in the interest of party unity.

“I’m not going to advise any other candidate when to get in and out of the race,” Mr. Richardson said after appearing in Portland with Mr. Obama. “Senator Clinton has a right to stay in the race, but eventually we don’t want to go into the Democratic convention bloodied. This was another reason for my getting in and endorsing, the need to perhaps send a message that we need unity.”

In many ways, the decision by Mr. Richardson, a longtime political ally of the Clintons, was as much a tale about his relationship with them as it was about the course of Mr. Obama’s campaign.

Mr. Clinton had told his wife’s campaign that he had received several assurances from Mr. Richardson that he would not endorse Mr. Obama. One adviser who spoke to Mr. Clinton on Friday said that the former president was surprised by the Richardson endorsement, but described Mr. Clinton as more philosophical than angry about it.

Mr. Richardson looked anguished when asked in an interview if his relationship with the Clintons would withstand endorsing Mr. Obama. In doing so, Mr. Richardson was not only taking sides in the most bitter of political fights, but rejecting the candidacy of a close friend.

“There’s something special about this guy,” Mr. Richardson said of Mr. Obama. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but it’s very good.”

Mr. Clinton helped elevate Mr. Richardson to the national stage by naming him his energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations. And Mr. Clinton left no doubt that he viewed Mr. Richardson’s support as important to his wife’s campaign: He even flew to New Mexico to watch the Super Bowl with Mr. Richardson as part of the Clintons’ high-profile courtship of him.

But Mr. Richardson stopped returning Mr. Clinton’s calls days ago, Mr. Clinton’s aides said. And as of Friday, Mr. Richardson said, he had yet to pick up the phone to tell Mr. Clinton of his decision.

The reaction of some of Mr. Clinton’s allies suggests that might have been a wise decision. “An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.

Mr. Richardson said he called Mrs. Clinton late on Thursday to inform her that he would be appearing with Mr. Obama on Friday to lend his support.

“It was cordial, but a little heated,” Mr. Richardson said in an interview.

Mrs. Clinton had no public schedule on Friday, and spent the day at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, played down the importance of the Richardson endorsement, suggesting that the time “when it could have been effective has long since passed.”

Mr. Richardson called Mr. Obama about two weeks ago to tell him that he was “99 percent with him,” Mr. Obama’s aides said. The announcement was delayed because Mr. Richardson had been scheduled to go on vacation in the Caribbean. Even though Mr. Richardson had promised Mr. Obama that his mind was made up, Mr. Obama’s aides said they grew worried that the furor over the racially inflammatory remarks made by Mr. Obama’s former pastor might lead Mr. Richardson to reconsider.

But Mr. Richardson, who had sought to become the nation’s first Hispanic president, pointed specifically to the speech that Mr. Obama gave in Philadelphia on Tuesday in explaining why he endorsed him.

“Senator Barack Obama addressed the issue of race with the eloquence and sincerity and decency and optimism we have come to expect of him,” he said. “He did not seek to evade tough issues or to soothe us with comforting half-truths. Rather, he inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility.”

He added: “Senator Obama could have given a safer speech. He is, after all, well ahead in the delegate count for our party’s nomination.”

Mr. Richardson said he was dispirited by the tone of the Democratic nominating fight, reflecting a sentiment that has been increasingly voiced by party leaders. Unlike many others, though, Mr. Richardson placed the blame on Mrs. Clinton.

“I believe the campaign has gotten too negative,” Mr. Richardson said, speaking to reporters in Portland. “I want it to be positive. I think that’s what’s been very good about Senator Obama’s campaign — it’s a positive campaign about hope and opportunity.”

Mr. Obama and Mr. Richardson appeared together on stage of the Memorial Coliseum in Portland on Friday morning. Mr. Richardson was still wearing the beard that he grew during what he called a period of decompression after leaving the presidential race.

On their own, endorsements in contests like this — with two such well-known candidates — do not necessarily move votes. Mr. Obama won a boost of publicity after he was endorsed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; Mrs. Clinton, however, then won the state’s primary.

But the audience now is less primary voters than superdelegates — uncommitted elected Democrats and party leaders — whose votes will be critical in helping Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama get the 2,024 delegates needed to win the nomination.

Mr. Richardson is the 62nd superdelegate to endorse Mr. Obama since Feb. 5, compared with fewer than five who have moved into Mrs. Clinton’s column since then.

The move by Mr. Richardson could give license to other superdelegates who had been holding back, at the request of the Clintons. His endorsement could prove particularly potent with this group because of the way he chastised Mrs. Clinton for the tone of the campaign, and his call for the party to unify around one candidate.

It also came at a moment of vulnerability for Mr. Obama, in which he was dealing with questions about his former pastor. Mr. Richardson’s decision to step out was a signal to primary voters and superdelegates that he did not believe Mr. Obama had been hurt politically by these events — or at least that he was willing to use whatever influence he has in the party to limit the damage.

At this point, the number of Democrats whose endorsements could shake the race is down to Al Gore, the former vice president and presidential nominee; John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who dropped out of the race last month; and Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker. Aides to Mr. Edwards and Mr. Gore said that they did not expect either man to endorse anyone in the immediate future, if at all. Aides to Ms. Pelosi said she was unlikely to endorse at all.

Adam Nagourney reported from Washington, and Jeff Zeleny from Portland, Ore. Pat Healy contributed reporting from New York

Government Spying on Obama's File =Cointelpro Redux

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/politics/21passport.html?th&emc=th

All,

Can anyone out there say COINTELPRO?*

NOTE: This latest bit of Government spying and subterfuge violating Obama's human and civil rights by the State Department takes place on Condoleeza Rice's watch (The Bushwhacker's very own windup Butterfly McQueen doll)...So much for emptyheaded 'skin analysis' boys and girls...

Kofi


*COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI used covert operations from its inception; however the formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971.[1] The FBI motivation at the time was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order." Targets included groups suspected of being subversive, such as communist and socialist organizations; people suspected of building a "coalition of militant black nationalist groups" ranging from the Black Panther Party and Republic of New Africa, to "those in the non-violent civil rights movement," such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), and other civil rights groups; a broad range of organizations lumped together under the title "New Left" groups, including Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weathermen, almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, and even individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; and a special project seeking to undermine nationalist groups such as those "Seeking Independence for Puerto Rico." The directives governing COINTELPRO were issued by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders."

A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents are entirely censored.

In the Final Report of the Select Committee COINTELPRO was castigated in no uncertain terms:

"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence."

The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI being used for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up "anarchists and revolutionaries" for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976."

The Final report of the Church Committee concluded:

"Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed -- including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.


State Dept. Finds Breaches of Obama’s File
By HELENE COOPER
New York Times

Published: March 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — The State Department has fired two employees and reprimanded a third for improperly opening electronic information from the passport file of Senator Barack Obama, State Department officials said Thursday.

On three separate occasions in January, February and March, three employees looked through Mr. Obama’s file in the department’s consular affairs section, violating department’s privacy rules, the State Department spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said. Mr. McCormack said the department’s internal controls flagged the breach, which he attributed to “imprudent curiosity.”

State Department officials said that they had no idea why the employees broke into Mr. Obama’s files. The department is continuing to investigate, Mr. McCormack said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was told of the security breach, which was first reported in The Washington Times on Thursday evening. Mr. McCormack said security measures used to monitor records of high-profile people like Mr. Obama worked properly in the three instances to alert department officials of the breaches.

“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,” said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, said that he and other top officials at the State Department found out about the breach Thursday afternoon, after Mr. McCormack received a telephone query from a reporter.

“I will fully acknowledge that this information should have been passed up the line,” Mr. Kennedy told reporters Thursday night in a hastily called teleconference. “We have a sophisticated computer tracking system that looks at this when it sees anything that’s inappropriate. But, I will admit, they failed to pass the information up the chain to a sufficiently high level.”

Former White South African Praises Obama's Speech on Race

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/opinion/20cohen.html?em&ex=1206244800&en=7d2405922b33235e&ei=5087

All,

Here's a white man who grew up in a wealthy family with black servants under highly privileged circumstances in Apartheid South Africa (which outside of Nazi Germany was the most oppressive and racist society in the world for over a century), and even HE fully understands and acknowledges what millions of white, Latino, and Asian Americans in this country fail or simply refuse to grasp: That what Barack Obama said in his speech three days ago is the most clear-eyed, profound, and honest public meditation by an American politician on racism and its ongoing impact on American life in half a century.

It is a measure of just how appallingly ignorant and full of fear, hatred, jealousy, and cruelty far too many 'other' Americans are with respect to their fellow African American citizens that Mr. Roger Cohen can come to this country with a self admittedly 'shameful' historical background as a wealthy white South African and eventual compassionate witness to the horrors, stupidities, and severely oppressive consequences of Apartheid on his fellow South Africans--both black and white--and yet testify so intelligently and eloquently on precisely WHY Obama's already legendary speech of March 17, 2008 was so important, accurate, and necessary to any realistic and HONEST appraisal of what America actually happens to be both historically and in contemporary terms as opposed to the endless self-serving, fantasy ridden, and egomaniacal myths and lies that it habitually tells itself it is.

It just goes to show once again that Truth and Justice in society is only acquired, found useful, and made an integral part of our daily lives when one is consciously willing and able to recognize, defend, and honor the humanity of 'all others' no matter what the price (the late, great James Baldwin called it "the price of the ticket") because one's own human existence is not worth anything at all if it fails to acknowledge and embrace this fundamental reality. The following iconic figures from the endless pantheon of African Americans's highly complex political, cultural, and intellectual legacy have spent CENTURIES telling this truth out loud in public and demanding that ALL Americans take complete and immediate moral, ethical, and ideological responsibility for it. Their (last) names are legion throughout the world: DuBois, King, X, Baldwin, Tubman, Douglass, Wells-Barnett, Truth, Hamer, Baker, Baraka, Morrison, Reed, Powell, Williams, Himes, Hurston, Moses, Newton, A. Davis, Monroe Trotter, Hughes, Brooks, Wideman, Wilson, Coltrane, Hendrix, Dolphy, Ayler, Gaye, Holiday, Young, Wright, Fitzgerald, Ellington, Strayhorn, Basie, Monk, M.Davis, Parker, Mingus, Roach, Jones, F. Hampton, Cherry, Henderson, Cole, and too many others to mention.

What Mr. Cohen hasn't forgotten--like these African American icons--is that genuine freedom and self determination is the result of an often agonizing process that courageously insists on struggling with, and painfully acting on, what one knows and subsequently embraces as truth whether one is "understood", "accepted" or considered "popular" or not. What matters is whether one is mentally and spiritually prepared to pay the price of consciousness with engaged commitment and a dedication to purposeful action. Then and only then can one truly be free and thus a real member of the human community. Clearly, Cohen and Obama really do 'get it'. It's completely up to the rest of us to do the same.


Kofi


OP-ED COLUMNIST

Beyond America’s Original Sin
By ROGER COHEN
New York Times

Published: March 20, 2008

There are things you come to believe and things you carry in your blood. In my case, having spent part of my childhood in apartheid South Africa, I bear my measure of shame.


Roger Cohen

As a child, experience is wordless but no less powerful for that. How vast, how shimmering, was Muizenberg beach, near Cape Town, with all that glistening white skin spread across the golden sand!

The scrawny blacks were elsewhere, swimming off the rocks in a filthy harbor, and I watched from my grandfather’s house and I wondered.

Once, a black nanny took me out across the road to a parapet above a rail track beside that harbor. “You wouldn’t want me to drop you,” she said.

The fear I felt lingered. I returned recently to measure how far I would have fallen. In memory, the abyss plunged 100 feet. Reality revealed a drop of 10. That discrepancy measures a child’s panic.

A “For Sale” sign was up on what had been the family house. I inquired if I might visit and received a surly rebuff. But not before I glimpsed the mountain behind where my father hiked and where I feared the snakes among the thorn bushes.

Fear, shadowy as the sharks beyond the nets at Muizenberg, was never quite absent from our sunlit African sojourns. My own was formed of disorientation: I was not quite of the system because my parents had emigrated from Johannesburg to London. So, on return visits, I wandered into blacks-only public toilet or sat on a blacks-only bench.

Blacks only — and I was white. Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable.

Only later did a cruel system come into focus. I see white men, gin and tonics on their breath, red meat on their plates, beneath the jacarandas of Johannesburg, sneering at the impossibility of desiring a black woman.

A racial divide, once lived, dwells in the deepest parts of the psyche. This is what was captured by Barack Obama’s pitch-perfect speech on race. Slavery was indeed America’s “original sin.” Of course, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” lives on in forms of African-American humiliation and anger that smolder in ways incommunicable to whites.

Segregation placed American blacks in the U.S. equivalent of that filthy African harbor.

It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

Progress, since the Civil Rights Movement, or since apartheid, has assuaged the wounds of race but not closed them. To carry my part of shame is also to carry a clue to the vortexes of rancor for which Obama has uncovered words.

I understand the rage of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, however abhorrent its expression at times. I admire Obama for saying: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?

Yes. It. Can.

The unimaginable South African transition that Nelson Mandela made possible is a reminder that leadership matters. Words matter. The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years.

Hillary Clinton said in January that: “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Wrong. America’s had its fill of the prosaic.

The unthinkable can come to pass. When I was a teenager, my relatives advised me to enjoy the swimming pools of Johannesburg because “next year they will be red with blood.”

But the inevitable bloodbath never came. Mandela walked out of prison and sought reconciliation, not revenge. Later Mandela would say: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Like countless others, I came to America because possibility is broader here than in Europe’s narrower confines. Perhaps it’s my African “original sin,” but when Obama says he “will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible,” I feel fear slipping away, like a shadow receding before the still riveting idea that “out of many we are truly one.”

The Iraq War - Five Years Later

It's hard to believe that five years have passed since the U.S. invaded Iraq. I was reminded of this fact by the protests I encountered on my way into work this morning and around lunchtime. In San Francisco's Financial District, various people were holding signs saying this was a nonviolent direct action marking the fifth year (anniversary seems such an inappropriate term) of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Buses were rerouted this morning to avoid protesters. Around 1 pm I ventured out to the intersection of Market and Montgomery Street and saw a phalanx of police wearing riot helmets and holding long wood batons on Market St. This San Francisco Chronicle photo is taken looking west on Market St. Montgomery St. is to the left of the police.

From what I could see peering over the shoulders of onlookers on the sidewalk there were two groups of protesters in the street -- one group (just west of Montgomery St.) was wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods -- à la Guantanamo -- and people in the other group (some were holding flowers), were completely surrounded by police and were sitting/laying down on Market St. about 30 feet away from the protesters in orange. A Muni bus (the public transportation system in SF) was parked on Market St. and it said POLICE instead of the usual bus route and number on the front. I guess this was transportation for eventual arrests.

What I saw seemed quite polite and rather low energy. The protesters on the sidewalks were the ones with the microphones and bullhorns. The people sitting/laying in the street were quiet and the police were standing around looking bored. I don't know what the protestors intended to accomplish but if they wanted to end the war, this so-called direct action seemed ineffective and lackluster. I went back to work and by mid-afternoon, the protesters were gone, and traffic was once again going down Montgomery St. Here's the SF Chronicle's take on the protest.

To date more than 3,990 Americans have been killed in Iraq and more than 29,000 have been injured. To see the names and faces of those killed, you can visit this CNN page. It's quite sobering to scroll down and see the names, faces, and ages of all those men and women who have been killed by roadside bombs, helicopter crashes, grenades, ambushes, "friendly" fire, and so on.

But let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died since 2003. According to a 2006 Washington Post article, American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimated that "655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred." These are deaths by violence, disease, and other causes. According to Iraq Body Count, which is often quoted by the media, there have been more than 89,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths from violence from 2003 to 2007. IBC's figures are low because they only include documented deaths and many deaths go unreported by the media, government, etc.

How long will this war continue and how many more thousands will die before it's over?

Chuleenan