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4A EDITORIALS/ C^rlotte $ot Thursday, January 8, 2004 Cljarlotte ^osit The Voice of the Black Community A Consolidated Media Group publication 153} Camden Road Charlotte, N.C. 28203 Gerald O. Johnson Robert L. Johnson CEO/PUBLISHER PUBLISHER/GENERAL MANAGER Herbert L. White EDITOR IN CHIEF Thurmond story tells harsh truths It’s time to be honest about racial and sexual hypocrisy By Annette Gordon-Reed SPECIAL TO THE POST Thurmond Washington- Williams Carrie Butler was left to make decisions that no one her age should ever have to make. She struggled alone for six months before she left tovm to give her daughter to relatives who could provide a better life than she could. Young Strom, a teacher at the local high school, was apparently exiled to Florida for a time to sell real estate. He returned to study law with his father. Soon he began his meteoric rike in South Carolina politics, fueled in great part by catering to his constituents’ hostihty toward people such as Carrie Butler and the daughter he had with her. Who knows what Carrie Butler really thought about Strom Thurmond? The absence of her voice is poignant. Essie Mae Washington-Williams says her mother described Thurmond as "a nice man” and took her to meet him many years after what transpired in 1925. That intrigues me, and makes me think that at least the grovmup Carrie Butler had a lot of backbone. Imagine being a Southern black woman in the early 1960s and walking your half-white daughter, the veiy image of her white father, into his law office to introduce the two. By then Butler was grave ly ill and may well have wanted to leave her daughter with something positive, some connection that might make her path in life smoother than her owm had been. Mothers often do that. But we owe it to Carrie Butler not to' gloss over the harsh world she lived in and brought her daughter into. There’s noth ing left to do but tiy to tell the truth of that time. ANNETTE GORDON-REED is a professor of law at New York Law School author of ‘ 'Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy" and editor of "Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History. ” This article ww distributed by Women's e-News. Gordon-Reed is currently finishing a biography of the Hemings family. Republicans trying to ‘fool’ blacks George E. Curry In responding to the story of white supremacist Strom Thurmond having a black daughter, most commentators have keyed in on the hypocrisy of racism. It’s certainly fascinating to think about a staunch segregationist campaigning against the rights of blacks and ranting about the dangers of the ‘’mongre- lization” of the white race while he was giving money to his secret black daughter and paying her college tuition. But in addition to the heavy load of racial hypocrisy that the story unearths, it also has another important element. That is the sexual advantage that is often taken by one with more wealth and social standing than another. Essie Mae Washington-Williams’s mother, Carrie Butler, was a 16-year-old maid for the Thurmond household when she became pregnant by 22-year-old Strom. Although the age of consent in South Carolina at the time was 14, the circum stances make you wonder if this could have been a consensual relationship. Think of the Thurmond household in 1925. Here was Carrie Butler — a poor, black, female — 16 years old. In contrast, Strom was older and the scion of a prominent family. His power was in inverse proportion to her vulnerability With such a power deficit, could she have said ‘’no” to him? We all have our instinctive responses to that question, based upon our knowledge of power, race and gender relations. I am inclined to agree with those who give an immediate and emphatic ‘’no,” for reasons that I’ll explain shortly. Yet, I pause over that response because I don’t want to imply that every black woman who worked in the homes of white people in the South had to have sex and babies with the white men in the household whenever they asked them to. That is not true. There were black women who resisted the advances of white men, kept their jobs and struggled on. They must not be forgotten as we try to do jus tice to Carrie Butler. Butler’s age at the time is the major cause for suspecting it was not truly consensual. Even if Thurmond didn’t knock her down and drag her into the bedroom, teen-age girls are notoriously susceptible to abusive manipu lation by older men. Even today, men who are six years or more older than their teen-aged partners cause a disproportionate number of teen pregnancies. The age differential definitely affects the out come in these sexual encounters. This may be because the teens aren’t able to stand up to older men who demand sex without protec tion, or because they fall for promises of sup port fi:om men who are out in the workplace. Either way, they are in over their heads. The Republican Party, after receiving only 8 percent of the African American vote in the 2000 presidential elec tion, has established a goal of winning 25 percent of the black vote in this year’s con test. Instead of making that announcement when most people were preparing to make their New Year’s reso lutions, the GOP should have delayed that announce ment for three months. Then, it would be clear that this was some sort of April Fool’s joke. What has George Bush done to quadruple his black support? Let’s ignore the rhetoric and look at the record. First, Bush pledged during his 2000 campaign that he would govern as a compas sionate conservative. As has • been observed, he has been compassionate toward con servatives. For example, most of his tax cuts benefited the wealthy, the majority of whom vote Republican. Meanwhile, Bush did not seek to fully fund his No Child Left Behind education law, he has proposed changes in programs such as Head Start that will be detri mental to black children, and the president has no sig nificant domestic policy that will uplift African Americans. Bush had a chance to show some compassion by sup porting affirmative action in a pair of University of Michigan cases that came before the Supreme Court in 2003. Instead, Bush ordered his solicitor general to oppose the cases and had the insensitivity to announce his decision on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. That’s a strange way of showing compassion. A conservative Supreme Court — with seven of its nine members appointed by Republican presidents — upheld the concept of affir mative action in the case involving the University of Michigan’s Law School. And true to form. Bush praised the virtues of diversity after the ruling while neglecting to point out that his position would have made that goal more difficult to achieve. In a move that wiU mal^e courts of the future more likely to reflect his politics. Bush has packed the federal courts with right-wing judges. One of them, Janice Rogers Brown, is so far out of the mainstream that she is a frequent dissenter on the Republican-controlled California Supreme Court. Bush wants to elevate her to a seat on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The black conser vative is so extreme that the white chief judge in California, also a Republican, says she mini mizes the harm of racial dis crimination in order to make political points. Bush has displayed his dis dain for black America by meeting only once with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, despite repeated requests for meetings. Like them or not, black members of Congress were fairly elect ed by voters - and that’s more than we can say about Bush. When Bush thumbs his nose at them, he thxunbs his nose at all African Americans. By disrespecting authentic black leaders, Bush seems to be subscribing to the think ing of Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. In 1983, Gingrich said, “It is in the interest of the Republican Party and Ronald Reagan to invent new black leaders, so to speak...” The GOP has “invented” several black front organiza tions that they are propping up with money. But money can’t buy credibility and these groups that oppose affirmative action and favor school vouchers have fittle, if any, influence on African American thought. In one sense, Bush’s prob lem is a GOP problem. Republicans have estab lished a clear record of hos tility toward the interests of African Americans, yet they want to dupe us into believ ing that they are our fidends. That’s an insult to our intel ligence. One of the best barometers of legislative support for issues important to black America is the NAACP’s annual report card on civil rights. Year after year, it is difficult to find Republicans in the House or Senate who earn a C-grade or higher on civil rights. Most earn Ds and Fs. But Bush and the GOP don’t want us to get confused by the facts. So they are tar geting young black voters they feel are more likely to be receptive to their mes sage, they are planning a barrage of commercials on black radio, ads in black newspapers and parading their black Cabinet mem bers before us - all of whom except Cohn Powell opposed the University of Michigan affirmative action programs - to say why we should vote for George Bush in 2004. It won’t work. George Bush began his administration by putting on a minstrel show in Philadelphia. He should realize that no amount of buck dancing by black enter tainers or trying to replace legitimate black leaders with his hand-picked black appointees will blind African Americans to his sorry record on civil rights. GEORGE E. CURRY is editor- in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. His most recent book is “The Best of Emerge Magazine, ” an antholo gy published by Ballantine Books. He can be reached through his Web site, georgecur- ry.com. Oppose Bush’s judicial nominees By Sheldon Richman SPECIAL TO THE POST Senate Democrats were right to block several of President Bush’s judicial nominees for the federal courts. In the last few weeks, two African-Americans have appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in hopes of gaining seats on some of the country’s most important federal courts. One nominee was blocked, and the other is still pending confirmation. I’m an African American lawyer, so you might think I’d be rooting for them to become members of the fed eral bench. I’m not. Both of Bush’s recent African American nominees are hard-line conservatives, and Bush was wrong to select them in the first place. Janice Rogers Brown, a justice on California Supreme Court, was the first of Bush’s nominees to seek Senate confirmation. Fortunately, her nomination was one of the few blocked by Democrats on Nov. 14. Bush nominated Brown to the important U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. She not only has a well-documented ultraconservative judicial record but she has also given numerous speeches where she has expressed her hard- right views openly Brown Allen At the recent Senate hear ing, it was reported that Brown compared President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation to a “social ist revolution,” and that she has stated that government causes the disintegration of society and the promotion of “moral depravity.” Many African American organizations opposed her nomination.' Hillary Shelton, director of the NAACPs Washington, D.C., bureau, said that Brown “has a record of hos tility to fundamental civil and constitutional-rights principles.” The Congressional Black Caucus opposed her nomination, as well. Another African-American judicial nominee, Claude Allen, is still awaiting confir- m a t i 0 n . Bush nomi nated him to serve on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Allen is cur- r e n t 1 y deputy sec retary at the Department of Health and Human Services. The 4th Circuit is one of the nation’s most con servative courts, and AUen would make it even more so. Senate Democrats would be wise to block his nomina tion, too. Allen has no judi cial experience. He served faithfully on the staff of arch conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., back in the 1980s. The NAACP board of direc tors opposes Allen’s nomina tion. It cites his refusal to distance himself from Helms’ filibuster of the 1983 bill that created a national holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The National Organization of Women (NOW), the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) and Americans for Democratic Action all oppose Allen’s nomination for his views. These include ques tionable stances on AIDS prevention, right-to-die issues and, especially, repro ductive rights of women. By nominating Claude Allen and Janice Rogers Brown, Bush has attempted to use race as a cover to place ultraconservative, reac tionary judges in the federal courts. It has been done before with Clarence Thom'as, but this time it must fail. Do not judge Bush’s nomi nees by the color of their skin. Judge them by what they have said, written and done while serving as public officials. BRIAN GILMORE is a lawyer and poet with two collections of poetry, including “Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington" (Karibu Books, 2000). He can be reached at pmproJ@progressive.org. mm
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