Would Obama consider Ray Kelly for Homeland Security amid stop-and-frisk controversy?

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It was no surprise that during interviews with Univision and other Spanish-language stations that aired this week, immigration reform was the most discussed issue for President Obama. With the U.S. Senate and House in disagreement over provisions of an overhaul, and Democrats and Republicans vying for the votes of a growing demographic, that was expected.

But while the president was not asked, nor did he speak, about the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Fla., one that has spawned heated discussions about racial profiling across the country, he did speculate about a possible candidate for Homeland Security chief, someone who has become a lightning rod on the issue.

New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would be “well-qualified” to run the Department of Homeland Security, Obama said in an interview with Univision’s affiliate in the New York/New Jersey area. He hasn’t actually named Kelly as his choice to replace outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is leaving to head the University of California system.

Was putting such a strong endorsement out there a first step toward seeing how Kelly’s name is received, or was it a case of the president being polite when being put on the spot?

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Jul182013 TAGS: , , , , , , ,

What chance did Trayvon Martin, the ‘suspect,’ have in court?

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To George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin was never just a teenager who could possibly have belonged in the Sanford, Fla., gated community. He was always the “suspect.”

I’m not putting words into the mouth of the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Martin and was found not guilty on Saturday. That’s exactly what Zimmerman called Martin in his post-shooting statement to police, though the 17-year-old wasn’t a suspect in any crime. Martin was walking from the store to his father’s house. Zimmerman was armed with a gun and Martin with candy, and then Martin was dead, unable to tell his side of the story.

That’s when the narrative took over, the subtle but very real judgment that makes people clutch their purse closer or cross the street when young black men stroll by, that makes New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with his city’s police department stop-and-frisk policies being challenged as discriminatory in court, feel comfortable saying, as he did recently, “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.”

It’s why comments after the Zimmerman verdict mention Chicago teens killing one another and O.J. Simpson. What happened in Sanford, Fla., wasn’t about any of that. But it was, in a way, about all of that, feelings so ingrained we might not even know they are there.

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Jul152013 TAGS: , , , , ,

Shades of prejudice hurt — but can’t stop — ‘Dark Girls’

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The discussion didn’t start with “Dark Girls,” which recently aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). But the documentary has brought talk about “colorism,” discrimination on the basis of skin color, into the open, something that co-director-producer Bill Duke noted in an interview Thursday morning. He remembered an African American woman in New York, who asked him why he was, in her words, “airing our dirty laundry.” Duke’s answer: “With all due respect, because it’s stinking up the house.”

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Jul122013 TAGS: , , , , , ,

Marion Bartoli, Wimbledon champ and ‘daddy’s girl,’ wins on and off the court

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The worst part of the BBC radio announcer’s takedown of the newly crowned Wimbledon women’s champ? He put his own ugly words in her father’s mouth.

Choosing French player Marion Bartoli’s moment of triumph to attack her non-blondness, John Inverdale showed true cowardice when he said: “Do you think Bartoli’s dad told her when she was little, ‘You’re never going to be a looker? You’ll never be a [Maria] Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight.’”

He said this while Bartoli was rushing to the spectator’s box to her father, Dr. Walter Bartoli, who taught her to play. Dad later said, “I am not angry. She is my beautiful daughter. The relationship between Marion and me has always been unbelievable, so I don’t know what this reporter is talking about.”

And Marion Bartoli’s classy response? “It doesn’t matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. That is a fact. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I’m sorry,” she said. “But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes.”

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Jul092013 TAGS: , , , , , ,

Abortion restrictions in North Carolina Senate bill set up political, moral standoff

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Not to be outdone in the headlines by the Texas Wendy Davis vs. Rick Perry duel over an abortion bill or Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich signing a budget bill that includes funding cuts and restrictions to limit abortions, North Carolina is moving ahead with its own slate of abortion-related bills. Proponents say the measures would insure women’s safety, opponents insist it’s about limiting women’s rights and choices, and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory is caught in a bind.

Candidate McCrory tried to occupy a middle ground on the hot-button issue, saying he would not sign any further restrictions on abortion into law. But as governor, McCrory has been following the lead of conservative Republican veto-proof super-majorities in the state House and Senate. A wave of proposals — from voter-ID restrictions to cutbacks on unemployment payments – has resulted in push-back from protesters who continue to show up inside and outside the state capitol in Raleigh each week.

Hundreds more made their way to Raleigh to shout “shame” at the state Senate’s actions this week. The GOP majority attached new abortion restrictions to a bill that would ban North Carolina family courts from considering foreign laws and passed it by a 29-12 vote.

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Jul052013 TAGS: , , , ,

How America’s original affirmative action is still going strong

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George W. Bush used to joke about it, his mediocre record at Yale, his less-than-diligent efforts throughout his educational career. So many laughed along at every bit of the persona he played into – the incurious certainty, the attempts to pronounce “nuclear” and the confident attitude throughout it all. But few questioned his right to take that place at Yale, another at Harvard and the privileged path that led to the White House.

That is how America has always worked, with the rich and the ones with the last names that matter usually stepping to the front of the line. It’s a system that has overwhelmingly benefited whites and males and, to look at the boards of Fortune 500 companies, still does.

Yet, you don’t see the righteous indignation or a spate of lawsuits to rid higher education of the curse of legacies. Voices are rarely raised to demand that elite colleges and universities take the thumb off the scale for families with a fat checkbook or a name on a campus building. There is not a suggestion that “they” don’t belong.

When Abigail Fisher was refused admittance at the University of Texas, she didn’t think that because she didn’t earn her way into the top 10 percent of her high school class — a bar that in Texas would have gained her automatic admission – that just maybe she should have studied harder.

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Jul012013 TAGS: , , , , , , ,

The Supreme Court’s post-racial fantasy

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That was then, this is now. The reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s ruling this week striking down key parts of the Voting Rights Act uses considerably more words, but that simple phrase pretty much says it all. To accept that conclusion, though, one has to accept that America is as post-racial as some have insisted since the election of President Obama.

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Jun272013 TAGS: , , , , , , , , , ,

Bill Clinton makes headlines. Oh, and Hillary, too

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Bill Clinton has never been shy about making headlines. This week, he’s had plenty of opportunities, with his Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago. There he gets the chance to share a stage with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, no wallflower himself. Before that, at a private event hosted by another Republican, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the former president broke with the current one and pushed for a more aggressive U.S. posture toward Syria.

It added another chapter to the Barack Obama-Bill Clinton drama and, coincidentally, intruded a bit on Hillary Clinton’s own moment in the spotlight. The former secretary of state, said to be considering a 2016 White House run, debuted a Twitter account and made her own policy speech, where she played a little nicer with her former boss. Her speech emphasized educational and economic empowerment, though, of course, she had carved out foreign policy expertise in her former cabinet post.

That can’t trump the experience of a former president, though. Plus, when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama interact, all eyes will always turn to them, whether it’s a buddy-buddy embrace, as at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, or this latest tussle.

It was a reminder that the quote 1992 presidential candidate Bill Clinton often used in reference to his wife — “you get two for the price of one” — will always be true and will always be both blessing and curse for one or the other.

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Jun142013 TAGS: , , , , , , , ,

North Carolina protesters look forward and reach back to faith

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If the scene looks familiar, well, it is.

A minister leading the way as a multi-hued crowd of demonstrators speaks of justice and equality, even while being peacefully led away by police. Speeches laced with words of scripture on caring for “the least of these.” A governor who calls a growing numbers of protesters “outsiders.”

It’s the South, in 2013, not 1963. But surprisingly to some, it’s North Carolina, long hailed as a moderate to progressive Southern state that is now making national headlines for Moral Mondays, named that by those who object to a stream of conservative proposals put forth by a Republican-controlled legislature and Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

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Jun122013 TAGS: , , , , , , , ,

J.C. Watts on GOP minority outreach: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’

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J.C. Watts, one of the stars the North Carolina Republican Party convention crowd in Charlotte, N.C., came to hear and take pictures with on Friday night, talked about his own dissatisfaction with the general GOP minority outreach effort. “The key is to put teeth in it and to be real about it,” he told me. “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Watts, a former Republican U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma and now a columnist and consultant based in Washington, D.C., continues to be a symbol and ambassador for African-American GOP success.

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Jun102013 TAGS: , , ,
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