I haven’t written in a long time.  You know.. life happens and stuff– and honestly, there hasn’t really been much that has galvanized me to write until this primary election.

Normally, it takes me very little time to figure out where I stand on an issue, or in an election. I always have been (and probably will be) a hard left liberal on social issues, but as I get older and yeah, richer, my economic views have drifted to center-left. In 2008, I was a Hillary Clinton supporter until the week before the Washington State Democratic Caucus, when Barack Obama won me over, and I ended up not only caucusing for him, but being elected as a delegate to King County and eventually to the state convention in Spokane that year.  I worked on the Obama national campaign and still have the swag I earned displayed in my office to this day.   In 2012, it was a no-brainer, and I worked for the Obama campaign again.

This year, however, it felt like choosing between my two favorite pairs of heels (which is a SERIOUS thing, I’ll have you know.)  I didn’t know much about Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but I did know about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and I liked her, but her campaign seemed to take too long to figure out what her message was… so I was left not quite as jazzed about my candidates as I was in 2008–but dying for more information.  So I binged on MSNBC, voraciously dined on the debates, and combed the websites for their positions.

Two things happened to start me leaning one way:

1. July 18, 2015: Phoenix, Arizona, NetRoots Nation Conference.  Black Lives Matter protesters storm the stage where candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders are discussing their candidacies.  O’Malley stammers “All Lives Matter,” which automatically disqualified him in my mind, but Bernie Sanders, who marched with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who has as many or more civil rights bonafides in his history as any white politician currently active, chose NOT to listen to those protesters, reflexively got ANGRY, and then said: “If you don’t want me to be here that’s okay,” he said. “I don’t want to out-scream you.”  Now, this was long before Killer Mike endorsed him, and long before he was interrupted by BLM protesters at his appearance here in Seattle, which in my mind, was a turning point– obviously, someone in his campaign took him aside and reminded him about how big a part of the electorate African-Americans are, and how he should connect and engage with BLM instead of being annoyed and angered by the way they got his attention.
2. August 11, 2015: Keene, New Hampshire, Clinton Campaign Stop. Black Lives Matter protesters interrupt a Clinton campaign stop, and she requests a closed-door meeting with them.  The transcript of that closed-door meeting is available for free here.  One of the things that shifted me from Clinton to Obama in 2008 was the fact that the policies that she and Bill Clinton espoused in the 80s and early 90s resulted in mass incarceration for people of color. In 2008, there wasn’t any evidence that she understood the impact of that legislation, and assumed that the African-American vote was hers for the taking– and that’s one of the reasons why I ended up going for Obama.  However, in this transcript, you can see the ability to listen for understanding, evolve her position, drive to solve the problem, ask for help and assistance, and then put together a tentative plan to address it.  She obviously wasn’t taking it for granted.

So, in that time, I lost a bit of affection for Sanders, and gained a bit of affection for Clinton.  And then, the October 22, 2015 Benghazi hearings happened.  I’m pretty sure I watched at least 6 of the 11 hours she testified, and I wanted to tear my hair out after the first 30 minutes.  I couldn’t imagine having to sit there, while Republican lawmakers made up stuff, asked unfair questions, and second-guessed every single thing that she said or thought during that time, and they still didn’t get any information that would help them crucify her, let alone ruffle one perfectly coiffed blonde hair. I don’t believe that they could investigate her the way that they have with the hatred that they have for her and the Obama administration and *not* find anything incriminating if there was actually something to be found. I don’t think that *anyone* is that good of a liar or that any kind of cover up is *that* good.

As I admired her stamina and the fact that she seemed totally unfazed by the haters desperately slinging stupid questions her way, I wondered if Bernie Sanders, sitting in the same situation, could handle himself the same way.  The way he reacted at NetRoots Nation would indicate no.  And, considering the ideas that he’s putting forth, there is no doubt in my mind that he would be targeted in the same way, particularly if he was unfortunate enough to have a tragedy like Benghazi happen during his administration.

So, I found myself tentatively in the Hillary camp, although I found myself liking a lot of what Bernie Sanders would eventually add about systemic racism, police brutality, and mass incarceration to the income inequality and Wall Street/Main Street populism in his stump speeches.  Then, I heard him go after Hillary for her speeches to Goldman Sachs and the fact that she has a superPAC and takes money from Wall Street donors.

About 8 years ago, I went to Miami on a business trip to a Six Sigma and Lean convention, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell was the keynote speaker.  Considering that my company had paid about $1200 per person for my 4-person team to go to the 4-day convention and it was sold out, I imagined that most of that registration fee went to paying his speaker fees-he couldn’t have been cheap.

Colin Powell doesn’t know anything about statistical process engineering or Design of Experiments, or in fact, anything about Six Sigma or Lean at all.  And gratefully, he didn’t talk about any of that.  He shared funny anecdotes about his time in office, his definition of leadership, and the wisdom that he’s accumulated over his esteemed career and life.  It was more or less the same speech I’d heard from Condoleezza Rice at a writer’s convention a few years before, and from Harold Ford at a National Black MBA convention years before that.

My point is this: politicians that are out of office and between jobs take speaking engagements like this so that they can pay the bills, similar to the way that movie stars do stupid movies for the paycheck when they are between blockbusters.  I don’t think that Hillary Clinton speaking at Goldman Sachs indicates that she is one of their political partners any more than Colin Powell speaking to a bunch of stats nerds at a Six Sigma conference indicates that he’s pushing the methodology on the US government.

As for the Super PAC controversy– it didn’t really strike me as a controversy either– particularly since Barack Obama had his own Super PAC– and used it for BOTH of his elections, and still managed to be as tough as he could be on Wall Street in both terms. Did he want to?  No.  Did he agree with the Citizens United decision and sitting campaign finance law?  No.  Did he want to win those elections?  Um, yeah. Did he accept money from Wall Street to do that?  Yup.  And that’s why he used a Super PAC, and I’m pretty sure that’s why Hillary uses one too. So, assuming that the simple existence of a Super PAC isn’t evil on its face, let’s look at the money that goes into it. Zachary Leven in the Huffington Post Blog of February 10, 2016:

“The amount of money coming from the institutions themselves is limited. For example, between 1999 and present day, Clinton received a total of $824,402 from Citigroup, which makes that her top contributor. But $816,402 of that came from individuals who work for Citigroup. One of those individuals probably includes my friend Julie, a Unitarian feminist who also just happens to work for that company (I don’t know if she actually contributed to Hillary, but she is a supporter). Only $8,000 was actually contributed by Citigroup itself (and that’s over a seventeen year period — far less than what they could have contributed).”

So, if the money that comes from “Wall Street” actually comes from the employees who work for Wall Street firms, can you really say that Clinton is married to doing their bidding? And then again, why would Wall Street firms contribute to Democratic candidates, who, regardless of how moderate they are, *always* plan to close tax loopholes and raise rates for corporate taxes?  They are much more likely to donate to Republican politicians, who would actually espouse policies that are more advantageous to corporate profit-making.  And oh, by the way– Bernie is not doing public campaign financing because that too, would put a cap on how much he could accept from donors, and he couldn’t “make it to California on that.”  So, essentially, instead of taking money from rich folks without limits, he can take money from regular people without limits.  This is neither bad nor good; it’s just the same as what Obama did and what Clinton is doing.  

Now, what bothers me about all of this is that Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for a very long time.  It doesn’t take a whole lot of Googling or even a whole lot of living to learn these things about speaking to corporations or the nature of Wall Street contributions to political campaigns.  I’m not an expert on these things, and I figured this out, and I haven’t spent decades in Congress– so I can’t imagine that these are things that Bernie Sanders doesn’t know.  His supporters, maybe.  But surely Bernie knows these things.  So, why are these his attack points?

I’ll cover that in my next post. 🙂

Mia

It’s Tuesday morning, the day after the announcement by District Attorney Bob McCullough that the grand jury in Ferguson, MO, found “no probable cause” for an indictment against Officer Darren Wilson.  My Facebook and Twitter feeds are blowing up with different perspectives, ranging from the idea that Darren Wilson went into the neighborhood “looking for black people to kill”, to the idea that Michael Brown “bulked up like Hulk Hogan” even after he was shot twice.

My heart is full of many different emotions, anger and sadness the strongest out of all of them, but when I really dig deeper to find the root of what I’m feeling, what I find is fear.  This terrifies me, as a person, as a woman, and as a black American.  I fear for my father, my black male relatives, and my black male friends.  And although a lower level of this fear accompanies me all the time as I go about my life, this is a level that I haven’t felt before.

I am very close with my father– he is my heart, and I am as protective of him as he is of me.  When he asked me what I thought of Darren Wilson and this whole situation, I told him that I didn’t believe that Wilson went into a predominantly Black American neighborhood in Ferguson looking for someone to kill.  I also don’t believe that when Wilson initially encountered Michael Brown, that he planned to kill him.  I still don’t believe that, even after this. What I do believe happened is that Wilson succumbed to his fear–a fear that is not dissimilar to the fear that I feel today.

How we react to, respond to, and act on our fear, in my mind, is at the heart of this case and this turning point in American society.  When I am fearful, I often retreat, and withdraw to a place of safety, whether it’s a physical one like my home, a mental one, like meditation, or an emotional one, like to my family.  Others lash out and use force, whether physical or verbal, to defend themselves.  Regardless of how it manifests, your reaction to fear often has the largest impact on those around you.

In my response to Dr. Micheal Kane’s Ferguson piece, I talked about the concept of “blaming the victim” when it comes to the idea that the Black community in Ferguson didn’t vote enough to make sure that the police department and the political establishment were more racially representative of the community.  When I think back to that post, I think of a conversation I had with my sister about precautions that we as women, have to take to reduce the likelihood that we will be raped.  Despite the fact that rape, in any form or situation is a crime, and is never the fault of the victim, there are certain things that women must want to do to reduce their chances of being raped, like not being drunk at fraternity parties, or carrying pepper spray.

The same is true for people of color.  One night, I spent happy hour with two white female friends of mine at a bar that we’d walked to before sunset, 8 blocks away from where I’d parked my car.  It was after dark in downtown Seattle, so I told them quite candidly, that after Ferguson, I was afraid to walk the 8 blocks to my car, and I asked for a ride to where my car was parked.  My friends were shocked that I’d said that– I normally don’t share these things with my white friends, but I felt that it was the right thing to do at the time.  This is just one of the many things that I, as a Black American woman, do or do not do to make sure that I am not shot by police officers, raped when I am most vulnerable, or lynched in the woods.

I don’t go camping with anyone.  In fact, I don’t go camping. I have been hiking once in my life, with a group of black people.  I don’t walk on the street at night.  I don’t ever drink or smoke enough to be out of control.  In fact, I have never been drunk in my life, and I don’t intend to be.  I try not to be the only minority in a large group of white people.  I don’t catch rides with others unless it’s to take me to my car– otherwise, I always drive myself.  And, there are many others that I won’t bore you with here. When I shared this with my friends, they were horrified, and one of them said to me, “That’s not living, that’s a prison.”

I own my 3000 square foot, $500K house in a fairly affluent part of Renton, a middle class suburb of Seattle.  I live on a cul-de-sac with similar homes, and in the last few weeks, I have seen contingents of the Renton Police just hanging out in the cul-de-sac where I live.  One day, I had a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts that I’d been given after a meeting, and I thought to offer them some, but based on some of the looks they gave me, I opted to simply pull my car into my garage and close the door– I could see myself approaching them with the donuts, and at best, being given the 3rd degree about my identity, and my right to be in the home that I work so damn hard to pay for and maintain, and at worst, being shot on the spot, donuts in hand, because I was “threatening” in some way.

I have no knowledge of any wrongdoing by the Renton police, so this isn’t an indictment of them. They have never bothered me, and I have never bothered them. And, who knows– had I offered them donuts, they might have taken them.  It’s the uncertainty, the fear that I might be killed in my front yard, and even if I was killed unjustly, my family would never see justice for me, and would only be insulted with stories of how I threatened police officers– that’s enough to keep me in my “prison,” safe and sound, and able to return to my family and friends.

Darren Wilson, in his grand jury testimony, said that in his tussle with Michael Brown, he felt like “a 5-year old trying to struggle with Hulk Hogan,”  despite the fact that he, at 6’4″ and 230 pounds, was not much smaller in size than the 6’6″, 292 pound Brown. He described Brown as looking like a “demon,” and that after Wilson shot him in the car, Brown ran away, then stopped, and ran at him, “full charge,”  prompting Wilson to shoot him 10 more times.

This sounds like fear to me.  I have a hard time believing that someone who had already been shot twice and ran away would then charge back in the direction where the original two bullets came from, but that’s not what I want to focus on here.  What struck me was the way in which Wilson described Brown, who, for all of his size, was still a teenager.  Demon?  Hulk Hogan?

I read on Gawker.com a few weeks ago about a study published in the journal Social, Psychological, and Personality Science about the superhumanization bias that whites have towards blacks.  It made me chase down the study, and when I read it, it really started me thinking on a number of tracks.

It’s been reported in several news outlets that the study says that white people think that blacks are “magical,” which is not what the study says.  The study points out, in general, that “whites attribute superhuman physical qualities to black people” (Waitz, Hoffman, and Trawalter, 2014), such as the concept that black people have thicker skin, and thus, feel less pain than other humans.  This also extends to the idea that since black people feel less pain, then the pain that black people do feel and express is subject to diminished recognition– that is, “why are you bitching about being in pain, when we all know that pain doesn’t really hurt you?”  This speaks to the “simultaneous super-humanization and sub-humanization of black people”  (Waitz, Hoffman and Trawalter, 2014)– that is, “we treat you worse because we know that you can take it.”

My intention here is not to paint a broad brush of White Americans– as much as I hate to attribute the word “good” versus “bad” to a group of people who are more multi-faceted than that, I do have some white friends of both genders whom I feel that I can trust, and whom I feel see me as a human being more like them, who can feel pain the same way they do. However, it does explain why Darren Wilson may have thought he was fighting a “demon,” or may have perceived, in the heat of the moment, that Michael Brown would have had superpowers, and would have felt that he needed to shoot him 10 more times (12 in all) to put him down.  Justifiable?  NOT IN THE LEAST. Understandable?  With the help of this study, perhaps.

What this study represents to me is a potential root cause for a number of things– from why the Ferguson police immediately went to military status to deal with the protests in August, to why black men are shot down everyday, to why black women are vilified for needing welfare and government assistance, to why black executives are shuffled out if they don’t immediately produce results that were not expected of their white counterparts.

But it also raises a question– why is all of this coming simply from the color of our skin?

More on this in another post. I want to take some time to mourn.

Mia