Charles Barkley Got It Right: Democrats Need to Respect the Black Voters Putting Them in Power

[MCP]

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/15/charles-barkley-doug-jones-democrats-black-vote/

Charles Barkley, the NBA Hall of Famer and award-winning sports commentator known for his deep Alabama roots, ditched the Republican Party and its bigoted candidate for the United States Senate, Roy Moore, to back the Democrat, Doug Jones. Jones ended up winning and Moore lost.

“They’ve taken the black vote and the poor vote for granted for a long time.”

After the announcement of the election results, Barkley had something of a moment. He was clearly elated and could be seen celebrating at Jones’s victory party — cheering, high-fiving, hugging, and taking endless selfies with anyone who asked.


It wasn’t all revelry, though. Barkley had some serious things to say — and as usual he didn’t hesitate to say them. After Jones finished his speech, Barkley started talking to every news crew that would listen. One of the most important points he offered was his folksy critique of the Democratic Party.

Barkley’s remarks about the Democrats came about in an odd way. CNN host Jake Tapper asked Barkley what his message for President Donald Trump would be. But Barkley took it in another direction:


Well, this is a wakeup call for Democrats. … They’ve taken the black vote and the poor vote for granted for a long time. It’s time for them to get off their ass and start making life better for black folks and people who are poor.


They’ve always had our votes, and they have abused our votes and this is a wakeup call. We’ve got it in a great position now, but this is a wakeup call for Democrats to do better for black people and poor white people.


While all indications are that poor white people in Alabama voted overwhelmingly for Moore in the election and show strong support for Trump in general, no voting bloc has been more faithful to the Democratic Party with less to show for it than African-Americans.


Among Alabama voters, an astounding 98 percent of black women cast their vote for Jones, according to exit polls. And 93 percent of black men who voted also cast their vote for Jones.


No other constituency or demographic came close to this type of support on either side. White men without college degrees, for instance, constituted Moore’s strongest demographic of support — but only came in at 79 percent support.


For Jones to narrowly eke out a win took near unanimous black support and turnout in black communities — support and turnout levels that appear to rival even former President Barack Obama’s landmark 2008 election.


Barkley is right that there’s an imbalance in the way black folks turn out for Democrats like Jones versus the way those Democrats then turn around and treat them. Unlike Obama’s election, the black vote is in essence used by Democrats to advance white politicians’ power.


Consider these facts: The United States does not have a single black governor of the 50 states; only one of the 50 states currently has an African-American attorney general; just two African-American Democrats serve in the United States Senate — two!


And it’s not just the politicians themselves, these imbalances are built into the power structures politicians have built around themselves, too. Every United States senator has a chief of staff. Guess how many of those are black? Two! And both of them are Republicans! Each U.S. senator has a communications director; only one is black, and he also works for a Republican. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez recently posted a photo of the last crop of interns to work for the party — and almost all the faces were white.

It is abusive for the Democratic Party to require a level of support from African-Americans normally only seen in dictatorships, then proceed to put black folk at the back of every line in terms of leadership and policy.


The problem runs from the rank and file all the way to the top of the national Democratic Party. The House minority leader is white and so is the Senate minority leader.


The disparity between the loyalty of black voters and Democrats’ efforts to bring them into the circles of political and financial power extends to the way the party spends its money. Of the $759 million the Democratic Party spent on contractors back in 2010, a dismal 1.5 percent was spent on African-American groups.


So yes, Charles Barkley was right: “They have abused our votes.” It is abusive for the Democratic Party to require a level of support from African-Americans normally only seen in dictatorships, then proceed to put black folk at the back of every line in terms of leadership and policy.


The Democratic Party is clearly expecting a wave of support to carry them into power in 2018. There are already rumors that the political classes want to call it a “blue wave.” But there’s a better name: the black wave. The reason is simple: The wave won’t come at all without black votes. But like all large waves in the ocean, the Democrats better learn to respect the black wave that keeps their political hopes afloat: The days of black votes without black power need to come to an end.


Correction: Dec. 15, 2017
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that there are no black attorneys general. Indiana’s attorney general, Curtis T. Hill Jr., a Republican, is an African-American.


Top photo: NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley looks on as Democratic senatorial candidate Doug Jones speaks during a get-out-the-vote campaign rally on Dec. 11, 2017, in Birmingham, Ala.

 

[QueEx]

What Can Charles Barkley Teach Us About Race? As Little as You Would Expect



Michael Arceneaux
5/05/17 1:40pm
Filed to:CULTURE

Host and Executive Producer Charles Barkley and Executive Producer Dan Partland at the American Race Press Luncheon on May 4, 2017, at the Paley Center for Media in New York City (Theo Wargo/Getty Images)


Charles Barkley is like that black uncle you find amusing but limit conversations with at family gatherings to select topics such as sports, Gap Band songs and brown liquor. When it comes to more serious matters like politics and, specifically, racial politics, the phrase “Stop, drop and roll” is an immediate survival guide to sparing your last nerve from a fatal end. If, however, you find yourself cornered, you grit your teeth and try to remain respectful of your elder before you end up screaming, “Nigga, what the hell are you saying?” in an effort not to upset your mother.

I recently found myself engulfed in the press equivalent of that situation as I attended a luncheon and panel discussion in support of Sir Charles’ new TNT series on race, aptly titled American Race.

When I first got word of this show, my immediate response was that I would rather watch my own cremation than subject myself to Barkley’s musings on race and racism. After all, this is the same man who, only a year ago, claimed, in the wake of the sniper shootings in Dallas that left five police officers dead, that black people have “got to do better.” Yes, in that ESPN radio interview, Barkley explained to Dan Le Batard that police “have made some mistakes; that don’t give us the right to riot and shoot cops.”

No, it doesn’t, but Barkley then went on to claim that we “never get mad when black people kill each other,” before adding that “there’s a lot of blame to go around.” Sure, but aim it at the institution that has consistently abused black women, men and children since its inception, not “black-on-black crime.” Anyone who still cites intraracial violence to deflect from the issue of state-sanctioned violence that targets black folks is a person who by and large needs to shut the fuck up and go read a bit more.

Toward the end of the panel, Barkley mentioned how he would always rally behind the cops and proceeded to offer anecdotal evidence of something that data has long supported: Yes, there are plenty of great law-enforcement officials. Indeed, we can have fruitful conversations with individual police officers. However, that will not stop the problem. See any police-union statement wildly defying calls to end racial profiling and various patterns of abuse.


Combine this with Barkley’s other previous comments—a lot of black people are full of shit, his condemnation of “unintelligent” and “brainwashed” black people, and purported “dark secrets” within the black community about “acting white”—and one wonders what, exactly, is Barkley’s aim with American Race?

According to Michael Bloom, who is senior vice president of unscripted series and specials at TNT, Barkley came to him a year ago in earnest, wanting to use his platform to explore why so little has changed in terms of race in America. Of course, this is a black man who has routinely used the platform he already has to speak of his own in such false, dehumanizing and totally unhelpful ways. Did Barkley need a promotion?

Barkley himself said that he wanted to present “positive programming” and that he had been “bothered by negative stereotypes about people of color, especially blacks on television.” In 2017, there is a wide array of depictions of black folks on television. The situation is not perfect, but certainly it is much better in terms of fictitious portrayals of black people. In unscripted programming, well, we have a ways to go. This is a case in point.

As attendees were presented with various clips from the series, along with a screener of the first episode, the biggest takeaway from American Racewas that Barkley had an inquiry and created a television show around it. Whether or not you take anything from it depends on how little you know about the world around you.

It was repeatedly stressed throughout the event that the intent was to engage in “thought-provoking conversation.” This is a line that is so often repeated by those serving us the same old cyclical bullshit that has long bored us. The same goes for the line about how the show features “real people,” as opposed to those in a “New York studio.”

New York is a real place, although, as a Southerner, I am constantly amused by how advanced New Yorkers and their coastal cousins in Los Angeles continue to believe that they are far more progressive than they actually are. The 45th president of the United States—more or less George Wallace on steroids and with far greater political success—is a New York native.


Likewise, we just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, which were rooted in the fact that the police officers who beat Rodney King managed to get off by virtue of nothing more than their lily-whiteness and the power of their badges. The types who order these shows can’t even see the prejudices surrounding them, but we’re supposed to entrust them with the cameras going to “real America.”

What the fuck ever.

In these very clips, we witness Barkley once again advocating for police officers, noting how they make split-second decisions, and 95 percent of the time those decisions are good, but, as Barkley argues, “we focus on the 5 percent.” Thankfully, a black woman in the panel audience immediately corrected him, making it very plain that she doesn’t like him and what he represents. An easily expressed sentiment by the black folks in, say, Baltimore who are far more aware of what it’s like living in terror at the hands of a police state than an NBA legend and big-time sports broadcaster who gets patted on the back more often than not.


To Barkley’s credit, he took the audience criticism, which apparently alarmed the rest of the crew looking on for two hours. Barkley admitted during the panel that he hadn’t met someone who lost a son to state violence. He went on to argue that most folks don’t know Muslims or undocumented workers. Barkley even conducted an informal poll of the audience; most of us passed the test. Someone next to me muttered, “It’s New York.” Yeah, but I knew Muslims and undocumented workers when I lived in Texas. People are everywhere, but whether or not you know that depends on whether you’re bearing witness to the reality before you or staying cozy in your bubble.

So American Race is more about Barkley’s education than about informing many of us. It is a lot of surface-level conversation in the tone of an after-school special. American Race also makes the mistake of speaking to people who needn’t be spoken to. Enter Richard Spencer, who makes an appearance on the show and whom Barkley acknowledges during the panel discussion was unreachable. Yet, here he is, and his presence is there in the name of balance. Yes, I rolled my eyes.

There was a comment made during the panel that Spencer’s ilk will ultimately have to succumb to the reality of the country becoming browner. Barkley underestimates whiteness, which is exactly why this show is the status quo served up for entertainment purposes.


Seeing a Muslim family in one episode that owns a hamburger restaurant in Plano, Texas, who will stop what they are doing to pray probably might have an impact on some buffoon somewhere who thinks negatively about Muslims, but it isn’t that shocking to the rest of us.

I will admit that it was something to see one clip from the show, of a white gay man from Louisiana who saw the Islamophobia around him and decided to speak out against it. But as nice as it was to see a white man protest Islamophobia, which is largely perpetuated by white men, what mattered most was the sentiment he expressed explaining why he took action.

“The white male Christian voice is missing. That loud voice is noticeably silent. We must raise our voices,” he explained. Evangelical white Christians never get called on their hypocrisies enough, so the more, the merrier.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...-teach-us-about-race-as-little-1794958000/amp


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