Cynicism Is The True Enemy Of Progress
BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS, MANAGING EDITOR
2019 was another exhausting year. It was a year that once again had our President thrusting racism and xenophobia to the forefront of America’s conscience. 2019 was also a year that again further seemed to bury the idea (and hope) of a post racial America. But 2019 is also year that Congress (or at least the House) reasserted it’s constitutional duties and role and impeached the President of the United States. A large part of the House’s ability to finally “do the right thing” can be attributed to one part of the Democratic base that rose to the forefront because of the previous year’s election. BLACK WOMEN.
“BECOME THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE”
When I worked for the first Obama Presidential campaign in 2008 that phrase has always stayed with me. If you want to see more woman in office, donate your time and money, to support and encourage more woman in public office. The same thing goes for people of color. If you believe there should be more people of color in office, donate your time and money to support and encourage more POC in public office. But most importantly if you’re blessed with the time, resources, and experience go forward and become a force for change in your community. Run for local office, join a local planning board, volunteer for a campaign, advocate for your position a public event, donate to a local candidate, start local and become the change. But don’t let a set back or momentary defeat stop you from your goal.
Obstructionism isn’t just about stopping a movement once, it’s about breading frustration and cynicism is the very system until you stop trying. I’ve long believed cynicism is the real enemy of progress.
The national media is obsessed with the middle aged white guy at a truck stop in rural areas as the reason Democrats lost the MidWest. But as Chitown Kev wrote I’m a Midwesterner, Too… the drop off in black voter turnout also cost the Democrats the same states that these mythical persuadable Trump voters live in.
One of the many factors that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat that national pundits just keep seeming to ignore was the falloff in black voter turnout relative to 2012. The numbers are clear, as Politico reported in 2017:
The Census’ Current Population Survey, released Wednesday, shows 65 percent of white citizens cast ballots in last year’s presidential election, up from 64 percent four years earlier.
But the turnout rate among African-American citizens tumbled sharply, the survey shows. Only 59 percent of black citizens voted in 2016, down from 66 percent in 2012 and 65 percent in 2008.
Ensuring that black turnout matches white turn out in 2020 should be a goal of everyone who calls themselves a progressive. As much as the “Obama” surge get’s talked about he only got black turnout to roughly match that of white turnout (65% for blacks, 64% for white in 2012), from the pundits you would think it was some waves and waves of black voters in unprecedented numbers. Yes, I’m under no illusion that Republican voter suppression played a huge role in this and they’ll continue to do this in 2020. But as Stacey Abrams leadership on the issue has shown, voting is THE most fundamental right in a constitutional democratic republic, and every progressive needs to be part of this battle.
But the national numbers underestimate the impact reduced black turnout had in battleground states, as Politico’s Osita Nwanevu observed:
Crucially, the drop in black turnout was even sharper in states where the margin of victory was less than 10 points than it was nationally — in those battleground states, black turnout dropped 5.3 points. In two critical states that swung to Trump — Michigan and Wisconsin — black turnout dropped by just more than 12 points. Declines were less dramatic but significant in other swing states Trump carried: Ohio (down 7.5 points), Florida (4.2), and Pennsylvania (2.1). White turnout declined modestly in each of those swing states but Florida and Pennsylvania, where it increased by 3.5 points and 5.2 points respectively. Clinton lost each of those swing states but Ohio by a margin of less than 2 points.
A return to higher black turnout could be a key element in defeating Trump. In a major study from the Center for American Progress, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin project that natural demographic trends in the last four years plus a return to 2012 levels of African-American voting would flip four states — Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and give Democrats a 294-244 majority in the Electoral College. And even if black voting turnout doesn’t quite hit those levels, in many states even marginal changes in turnout and Democratic vote-share could make the difference in a close race. Cynicism that change is possible is as much of an opponent in 2020 as the corrupt leader sitting in the White House is.
Black voter turnout will not automatically rebound to 2012 levels, even after three years of an openly racist president?.There is hope after the he 2018 midterms African-American turnout rose 10.8 percent as compared to the last midterm in 2014 ( compared to an 11.7 boost in white turnout) but again if you look at the large effort Russian trolls used to target black voters in 2016 there real weapon wasn’t just playing up America’s racism, it was spreading a cynicism that we as a country can do better. More than 66% of Facebook adverts posted by the Russian troll farm contained a term related to race, and they largely targeted black voters.
According to the Senate Intelligence report Russian trolls posts had the titles "Our Votes Don't Matter," "Don't Vote for Hillary Clinton" and "A Vote for Jill Stein is Not a Wasted Vote" were specifically targeted at black voters. Several of these post had over 100,000 likes, don’t underestimate the degree to which these post spread cynicism that people can become the change they want to see.
The 2020 primaries and caucus are almost upon us. As is our tradition at Black Kos we don’t officially endorse a candidate even if our preferences are known from other sources (Twitter, Facebook, etc) or from comments elsewhere on this site. But whom ever prevails it’s vitally important that we leave this primary season united. Leave everything on the floor and give your all to support your preferred candidate, but if they don’t prevail pledge to support the winner.
But just as importantly as it is to leave this primary season united, it’s vitally important to combat the cynicism that is the rightwing greatest weapon. Yes we can provide healthcare for all, yes we can rebuild our infrastructure, yes we fight climate change, yes we can defeat racism, sexism, xenophobia. and homophobia. YES WE CAN!
Cynicism is why the young, the poor, and people of color often do not show up to vote (and no I’m not discounting voter suppression). The belief that “both parties are the same”, that “politics don’t make a difference” , and “nothing ever changes” these are the weapons of cynicism the rightwing wields to their advantage.
In 2020 we need to not only defeat Donald Trump and his corrupt administration, but also the cynicism (and racism) that fueled his rise. Black Kos stands ready to lead the charge in 2020. Join us!
Forward, yes we can.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Barely 10 percent of doctoral degrees in the geosciences go to recipients of color. The lack of diversity limits the quality of research, many scientists say. New York Times: Earth Science Has a Whiteness Problem
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When Arianna Varuolo-Clarke was growing up, her favorite evenings were spent watching the Weather Channel with her grandfather. She wanted to “chase thunderstorms” and understand where tornadoes came from, she said. She decided to become an atmospheric scientist. In 2014, she landed an internship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research as a college sophomore, and quickly realized that her path as a woman of color would not be easy.
“You’d walk through the halls and it’s a lot of old white men,” Ms. Varuolo-Clarke said. Still, she pushed forward and began her Ph.D. in atmospheric science at Columbia University last year.
The field’s lack of diversity gained new urgency in May when her graduate student cohort was targeted with a series of racist emails. The messages, sent to affiliates of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia by a person outside the community, said that black people were genetically inferior and did not belong in academia. It was “hurtful and invalidating” to be told that she didn’t belong in the world that had drawn her in since childhood, Ms. Varuolo-Clarke said. “It was an isolated incident. But it brought to the surface what still needs to be done in the field.”
In a commentary last week in Nature Geoscience, Kuheli Dutt, Lamont-Doherty’s assistant director for academic affairs and diversity, wrote that “a lack of diversity and inclusion is the single largest cultural problem facing the geosciences today.”
The geosciences — which include the study of planet Earth, its oceans, its atmosphere and its interactions with human society — are among the least diverse across all fields of science. Nearly 90 percent of doctoral-degree recipients are white. In the country’s top 100 geoscience departments, people of color hold under 4 percent of tenured or tenure-track positions. A 2016 survey from the National Science Foundation showed that representation of people of color in geosciences has barely budged in the past four decades, although significant gains have been made in terms of gender balance.
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The call went out to gather at a grill near a cluster of brick dorms on the Georgia Southern University campus.
"Book burn party Eagle Village," a student posted on Snapchat.
The student didn’t say which book they would be burning. But to several freshmen who had just finished watching a talk by Cuban American author Jennine Capó Crucet, the answer was clear. The lecture had ended with a tense exchange between Crucet and a white student, who accused the writer of making unfair generalizations about white people.
“I don’t understand what the point of all this was,” she told Crucet.
The crowd at the author’s talk erupted in jeers — but by this point, it was unclear whom the students were targeting.
About a half-dozen students arrived at the grassy quad with their copies of Crucet’s novel, “Make Your Home Among Strangers,” a book about a Cuban American woman who becomes the first in her family to attend college. Some students ripped pages out of the thick book, piling them on the grill.
Then, they started a fire.
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Years had passed since her husband had crossed the sea to look for work in Europe. Left behind, Khadijah Diagouraga trudged to the couple’s peanut fields alone every day, struggling to earn enough to provide for an extended family of 13.
When the town’s water pump broke and her faucet went dry, she tied a donkey to a cart to haul water from a nearby well, cursing her absent husband the whole way. Her action shocked this small, conservative village in rural Senegal. Guiding animals was men’s work, village leaders said.
“It’s not a sight I ever wanted to see,” said Baba Diallo, 70, sitting in the shade of a dried cornstalk canopy, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the memory.
Across West Africa, villages have been emptied of husbands and sons in their prime who set out for Europe to look for work and never returned. Women, realizing they might never see the money their men promised to send home, have gradually taken on what are seen as men’s roles, earning money and running large households of in-laws and other extended family members.
“There are a couple men who look down on me,” Ms. Diagouraga said. “I ignore them. What matters to me is hard work.”
Senegal is among the countries most affected by the phenomenon of missing men. Senegalese were among the top 10 nationalities to land in Italy during a spike in migration in the middle of the decade. Although migration to Europe has dropped sharply as nationalism has led some European countries to impose tighter controls, West African communities are still reeling, with many of their men gone now for years.
Some will never return, perishing while crossing the desert or drowning at sea.
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“The IMF [will be giving] them the imprimatur of reform and that signals something to investors,” Saadoun says. “In a country where rule of law and corruption are perennial issues for investors, that signal is very, very valuable for them.”
The IMF declined to comment. In October, it said the program would help promote financial stability, economic diversification, good governance and transparency.
Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with absolute power since 1979, when he overthrew his uncle in a violent coup. His regime has outlawed most opposition parties, and arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings and torture are all common.
American oil groups discovered giant crude deposits in the country’s maritime waters in the mid-1990s. Oil production has since generated billions of dollars in annual revenue for Obiang’s administration but failed to improve the lives of most Equatoguineans.
GDP per capita in the country of 1 million people is among the best in Africa and higher than Turkey, Brazil and China, and yet its social indicators are some of the worst in the world.
The oil windfall funded a huge infrastructure building spree that has given the country some of Africa’s finest roads but also seen money misspent on boondoggles such as new luxury cities. The building bonanza collapsed, along with the economy, after the 2014 crash in the price of crude, which provides nearly all government revenue.
Still, the government says it does not need the bailout.
“Equatorial Guinea is not a country that needs $200 million,” says Gabriel Obiang Lima, the minister of mines and hydrocarbons and one of the president’s sons. “We make that in two months.”
Lima says the government has agreed to the IMF program as an act of “solidarity” with the five other countries in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, which share a currency. Most were hit hard by the oil price crash and began talks with the IMF for a regional program in 2015. Chad, Cameroon and Central African Republic have also received support in the past four years.
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It’s not hard to completely miss something that exists in plain sight. To see is itself a process of precognition—matching up an anticipated picture of reality to what you observe in real time. If there is no precognition, no placeholder mental picture that deems the matter significant, then perception can be delayed—and indeed, in many cases, entirely denied.
This is especially true as it pertains to social problems. For instance, when it comes to recognizing state violence against Black women and girls as a social problem, the sense is that “there is no there there,” even as evidence surrounds us in plain sight. It takes no great effort to unearth video proof and other firsthand accounts of incidents in which police officers attack and even kill Black women and girls. In one stream of footage, law enforcement officers are shown punching, handcuffing, or straddling Black girls in bikinis and school uniforms. Some are preteens; indeed, some are as young as seven. In other footage, there are montage-style shots of a highway patrolman pummeling a Black woman in the face with his fists as motorists speed by. You can also easily track down videos in which Black mothers sought police intervention in disputes with their neighbors, only to be thrown to the ground and handcuffed themselves, or in which a Black woman is placed in a choke hold for barbecuing on a sidewalk. Scores of other shots show police officers yanking Black women out of cars in routine traffic stops, or body-slamming or abusing them in response to a mental health crisis or after a woman demanded service in a restaurant. Then there are the ritual humiliations and abuses of Black women under police detention being paraded half-nude into booking offices, or hog-tied and dragged out of a police cruiser, or tased while handcuffed in a restraining chair. Most Black women who experience these painful and humiliating encounters with police survive. We know, unfortunately, that some, like Tanisha Anderson, Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna, and all too many others, do not.
To bring the stories of Black women killed by police into the center of public debate, I founded SayHerName, a campaign that celebrated its fifth anniversary in December. Throughout that time, SayHerName has insisted that we begin to treat state violence against Black women as a fully legible social problem; its mission is as acute today as it was on the day that the demand arose during the massive protests against the non-indictment of Eric Garner’s killer in New York. In my own experience moving through activist circles in the years since the SayHerName campaign began, the names of women like Anderson, Bland, and McKenna have growing resonance. In late November, Senator Elizabeth Warren referenced SayHerName’s impact in a tweet calling for criminal justice reform and acknowledging Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Rekia Boyd, Korryn Gaines, Atatiana Jefferson, and Bland. It’s still regrettably the norm, however, for the media to overlook the root causes of this kind of violence. As a result, the debates we now conduct over race and police accountability still tend to crowd out the experience of Black women—and most dangerously, we also have contributed to the marginalization of the risks Black women confront within the very communities and families tasked, unfairly, with facing up to such risks. This crushing conspiracy of silence is itself a condition of Black women’s intersectional erasure and subordination.
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As word of each NFL head-coaching hire landed this week, a sprawling network of black coaches and their advocates traded messages bemoaning what they saw as the latest in a long string of insults to their fraternity. One coach summed it up in a text to his agent: “I’m sad for all of us.”
Four of the league’s five coaching vacancies have been filled: Joe Judge, in New York to the Giants; Mike McCarthy, in Dallas; Matt Rhule, in Carolina; and Ron Rivera, in Washington. The reported front-runners for the fifth opening, in Cleveland, are both white. If the Browns job goes to one of them, it would leave the NFL, in which roughly 70 percent of the players are black, with just three black head coaches. That’s as many as there were in 2003, when the NFL instituted the Rooney Rule, requiring teams to interview at least one minority candidate when they had a vacancy.
This season has been especially frustrating, several coaches said. That’s because there was one candidate who was not just the best black coach available but, they said, the best coach on the market: Eric Bieniemy, offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs. Bieniemy has interviewed with seven teams over the past two years, including the Browns, Panthers and Giants this hiring season. If he’s hired by the Browns, he would be the latest in a string of former offensive coordinators under Andy Reid to land top jobs, after the Philadelphia Eagles’ Doug Pederson and the Chicago Bears’ Matt Nagy. If not, it will be viewed by many black coaches as the most prominent snub in recent years.
“People have gotten jobs because of Brett Favre, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and, recently, Patrick Mahomes. But Eric Bieniemy doesn’t, and he followed the same path,” Redskins assistant coach Ray Horton told The Washington Post. “There’s the frustrating part.”
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According to a certain type of Republican, the party has lost its way under President Trump. This is the foundational premise of the self-styled Never Trump Republican but also reliable fodder for high-profile op-eds in national publications. Last week, longtime Republican political strategist Stuart Stevens wrote exactly this kind of piece for The Washington Post, arguing that the Republican Party has lost its moral compass under this administration and “stands for all the wrong things now.”
“[I]t’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted,” Stevens wrote. “A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized, coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power.”
The op-ed was well received by the liberal press: Stevens appeared on left-leaning media outlets, and notable Democrats like David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, called the piece “searing.”
But for marginalized people who have been on the receiving end of the long-standing Republican racism and fury, Stevens’s claims about a party set tragically adrift by a racist opportunist was a gross oversimplification of political reality. Trump’s particular style of white grievance may be different in presentation from what came before him, but the party Stevens is mourning spent decades building the scaffolding he used to climb to the presidency. Republicans like Stevens aren’t sounding the alarm on an emerging moral crisis—they’re fighting back a public relations nightmare.
In her book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation’s Divide, Dr. Carol Anderson wrote that white rage is not only about visible violence, “but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly, almost imperceptibly.” Ever since the Dixiecrats switched allegiances, white grievance and anger have formed both the base and the primary political motivation of the Republican Party. Trump has decades of examples to draw from—and he has.
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