Dr. Lester K. Spence

In today’s New York Times, they acknowledge one of the hidden realities of the current economy–the growing number of men who have dropped out of the economy totally. But because the population is largely white, there isn’t even a hint of the venom usually applied to non-working black men. No. These men–who often rely on their wives for income–are taking a new lease on life, sleeping longer, reading more, and picking up valuable new skills. This type of double standard is pretty much hard-wired into the news.

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I don’t know if the Michigan All Stars should’ve come in second, but this is low.

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I got word today that a brother I knew indirectly (he was a member of one of the black fraternities at Michigan, and I knew some of the people he pledged with) killed himself and his wife in a murder-suicide. He left behind three children (who were in the home locked in another room when it happened). Earlier in the year I found out that a brother I was in the Cub Scouts with killed himself and his long-standing girlfriend.

Trying to wrap my head around this I dug up a paper. I knew that blacks committed suicide at far lesser rates than their white counterparts–a sign for me that blacks have far more resiliency because of our history. But the rate of change for blacks is increasing significantly, particularly among black male youth.
The primary reason I am where I am in life is because of group cooperation, group initiative, and group loyalty. My parents, family friends, people at Michigan, my fraternity brothers all looked out for me at one point or another. And now my wife and children help keep me rooted. We’ve got to do a better job of reaching out, of building sustainable relationships that have meaning. We can’t be safe, we can’t be healthy, we can’t be sane, we cannot organize without them.

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In response to my post on the Voting Rights Act one of my boys asked me (rhetorically) why black people don’t vote…or at the very least why we have to have voting drives to get people to even think about voting.

The following abstract might help. I had a post relating to it in the last iteration of the blog but I didn’t port it over. Martin Gilens is not only one of the best political scientists in the business, but he also has the right politics. He published a piece entitled Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness in a 2005 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly. The abstract:

By allowing voters to choose among candidates with competing policy orientations and by providing incentives for incumbents to shape policy in the direction the public desires, elections are thought to provide the foundation that links government policy to the preferences of the governed. In this article I examine the extent to which the preference/policy link is biased toward the preferences of high-income Americans. Using an original data set of almost two thousand survey questions on proposed policy changes between 1981 and 2002, I find a moderately strong relationship between what the public wants and what the government does, albeit with a strong bias toward the status quo. But I also find that when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans. The vast discrepancy I find in government responsiveness to citizens with different incomes stands in stark contrast to the ideal of political equality that Americans hold dear. Although perfect political equality is an unrealistic goal, representational biases of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character of our society.

A majority of people (black, white, latino, asian, native american, etc.) don’t vote because they understand this and do not believe that voting will help solve this problem. I think they’re wrong…but not all that far off.

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Spencer Overton recent wrote what looks to be a powerful book on voter suppression. Folks can talk all they want about how the Democrats must “reach out” to white evangelicals, about how they must come up with a message that speaks to “red state values.” But I believe the fundamental issue for Americans is and has been minimizing vote-jacking. I haven’t read Overton’s book yet, but I plan to, and will possibly assign it to my class in the Spring semester.

With that said though, I disagree with Overton’s assertion that the re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act represents a major victory. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those all-or-nothing types. I don’t need the revolution to come to claim our successes. But it seems to me that if anything, the re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act is a minor success at best.

Because the Voting Rights Act did little or nothing to protect black voters in FLorida in 2000, in Ohio in 2004. A major victory would’ve occurred had a series of powerful amendments adding NEW protections appropriate for today’s political climate. Granting cities the resources to provide the same level of voter protection that wealthier (GOP-supporting) suburbs receive. Though there was opposition to its passage, the symbolic value of it–even to the GOP–meant that it was highly unlikely that the VRA was ever in any real danger.

Adolph Reed has been arguing that we’ve been in a war for over 100 years against the same forces. Around 40 years ago, we thought the war was over…when all that happened was that there was a temporary cease-fire.

(Given my last post about black-on-black crime it may seem like I’m picking on the blackprof folks. I’m not. I just don’t read many blogs.)

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Over at blackprof, Prof. Shavar Jeffries makes the provacative argument that perhaps black-on-black crime should be prosecuted as hate crime. To the extent that black criminals hate their racial identity, they may actually be committing crimes against other black people because of this self-hatred. (more…)

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I got a chance to read Brothers Gonna Work it Out by Charise Cheney over the past week while chilling in the northern tip of Michigan’s lower peninsula. It’s about that period between say 1987 and 1992 or so when hip-hop’s political potential was at its greatest. Or so they say anyway. Cheney’s work is sorely needed, but there are some places where she could’ve done a bit more work. (more…)

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I said that I’d start putting my own research here. One of my specialties is black political ideology. How has support for black nationalism changed over time? How might we measure it? I wrote a paper differentiating support for Pan-Africanism from support for black nationalism. (more…)

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A journal article published in the JAMA found that even though Americans spend double the resources on health care, they are still sicker than their British counterparts. Even after you take race and class into account. White executives in America are sicker than their white British counterparts. To say our health care system is broken is an understatement. Check out my recent NPR commentary for more.

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Michael Steele is getting all of the press, but in Michigan (where I’m spending summer vacation with the family), the name to remember is Keith Butler. Running for Senate on the GOP ticket, Butler’s already got some history in local government–he was on the Detroit City Council. And he’s pastor of one of the largest churches in the state of Michigan.

There are two big issues black Republican candidates have to deal with–both of them obvious. Whites don’t tend to vote for blacks as a general rule, and blacks don’t tend to vote Republican as a general rule. There are exceptions–Republican gubernatorial candidates can get as much as 30% of the black vote depending, and whites will vote for blacks if they don’t feel threatened. Butler really doesn’t have the ear of the Republican Party in Michigan for any number of reasons, but I happen to know that he’s been mildly effective at raising money.

But for me the wildcard is his policy preferences. My father-in-law got a flier from the Butler campaign, and from the flier it’s clear that Butler’s got a stealth campaign for black Democrats. According to the flier, Butler supports:

• Affirmative Action
• Cleaning up the Environment
• Staving off cuts in student loans

Of the things that I can’t get a bead on, he MAY support alternative energy policies, and he MAY support universal health care. Further, he is firmly anti-abortion, and anti-gay marriage.

This is the type of Republican candidate that can make waves. Black enough to understand that Affirmative Action is needed, and that working class folks need government assistance to pay for college. Black enough to understand the devastation laid upon our cities by environmental mis-steps. But conservative enough to support the cultural issues that drive white evangelicals.

I’ve long felt that if the GOP gave up the fight against Affirmative Action and the EEOC, they’d be able to claim the middle to upper income black vote for the next 50 years. Butler may provide the blueprint. But the real problem keeping the GOP from pursuing this blueprint aggressively is simple. Even if we take a very very conservative approach and peg the percent of active racists at ten percent of the adult population, that doubles the TOTAL black population. No way around that.

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