banner2e top

Getting on Track: Obama's New Economic Plan by William Spriggs

July 28, 2013 

Getting on Track: Obama's New Economic Plan
By William Spriggs

News Analysis

billspriggs

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Obama has kicked off a series of talks to America's working families on the economy. He started in Galesburg, Ill., where he succinctly described a solution to our economic troubles: making the middle class the engine of American prosperity.

Obama said: I care about one thing and one thing only, and that's how to use every minute of the 1,276 days remaining in my term to make this country work for working Americans again. Several things flow from the emphasis on the middle class. The president indicated that policies in recent years have focused too heavily on what government could do to help the wealthy.

For instance, he pointed out a major switch in post-World War II economic policy when, beginning in the 1980s, "Washington doled out bigger tax cuts to the rich and smaller minimum wage increases for the working poor." And, he observed, "Even though our businesses are creating new jobs and have broken record profits, nearly all the income gains of the past 10 years have continued to flow to the top 1 percent. The average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009, but the average American earns less than he or she did in 1999." This switch in policy and the outcome of growing inequality were fueled in a belief that the engine of American prosperity lay in its wealthy entrepreneurs-not in its vibrant middle class.

The president summarized this as bad economics: "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics. When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer customers. When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy. When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther apart, it undermines the very essence of this country."

Several things flow from this analysis that aren't as clearly articulated by the president's speech at Galesburg. First, the continued emphasis in Washington on runaway government spending and deficits is really a conversation based on a belief that the engine of American prosperity is a rich and privileged class that doesn't have to pay taxes. Profits are up. American growth-the GDP measuring the size of our economy-has recovered and continues to grow. The ability of America to pay its bills is not falling, the willingness of the rich to pay their fair share is. But a conversation dominated by what the rich are willing to pay is a diversion from a conversation on what America needs to sustain its growth. And, it is that frank conversation that people want to take place; then we can judge if spending is growing too fast or deficits are out of control.

The president did mention that the middle class grew when unions could fight for workers. And that has not changed. Middle-class values go to democracy in economic activity-balancing the power of employers and employees. Unions and the right of workers to organize and raise their voices at the table when the pie is being cut are essential to a vibrant middle class. The president must have an agenda to strengthen the rights of workers to organize.

Middle class-led growth had several dimensions to it. The president touched on a few of those elements. One was education and the affordability of a college education. But he left out access to a high-quality education for middle-class children. The massive defunding of public higher education by American states means the greater challenge to middle-class children is access to a high-quality college. The president talked about cost savings that public colleges could engage in, like online course work. I know that the parents who are paying Harvard tuition would not welcome paying for online course work.

In the past, we made the likes of the Universities of California-Berkeley, Michigan and Virginia the public "Ivies," high-quality research universities with rankings that rivaled Ivy League schools but with public "endowments" to level the playing field with the vast endowments of Harvard and Yale so top faculty could be recruited to teach middle-class students. And, in part, the rise in public funding led to a rise in competition for leading professors. This is an element of rising inequality the president did not mention, but must be part of the rebuilding of a middle class-not simply cheapening middle-class educational opportunity.

Middle class-led growth means admitting that people can legitimately demand public goods-like high-quality colleges. The American middle class of the post-World War II era was very dependent on a renewed sense that people could demand public goods-high-quality primary and secondary education, libraries and public parks and quality public roads and highways. In the post-World War II era, much of that demand was met through state and local efforts. But, based on arcane local taxing schemes that often segregated high-quality public goods-like public primary and secondary education on tax sources tied to income segregation. Still, the public sector and public goods are vital to a functioning middle class.

This economic recession was the most severe of the post-war era in shrinking the revenues of state and local governments. The president must address the dying public sector. While he touts the growth of private-sector employment, this recovery has uniquely been marked for the shrinking of public-sector employment. Yet, the demand for schools has not gone down, the demand for public safety-police, firefighters and emergency health responders-remains constant. The president must show more leadership on this.

President Bush responded when the financial sector was collapsing, forcing the American people to see the essential nature of a functioning finance sector-even one that was corrupt and had speculated the nation into a recession. President Obama must make the same case for the public sector. If the financial sector is the "heart" of the economy, then the public sector is the economy's "kidneys." You won't live without a heart, but you also will not live without kidneys.

So, if the lesson that Bush pushed was that there were banks too large to fail, President Obama must be leading us with actions because there are cities too big to fail. The loss of revenue for Detroit-a city straddled with a byzantine fiscal structure designed by Michigan politicians at odds with its major city, and based heavily on income taxes-is not simply the result of a shrinking population base, but a collapsed labor market. The downward spiral the city was sent in by the 2001 economic downturn and the weak recovery through 2007 is a cautionary tale of where we are in state and local finance, not a singular event tied to Detroit's political leadership.

Certainly, the banks saved by the TARP under President Bush and continued when President Obama took office were not managed in a stellar way, either. And, similarly, their failures could be explained away as the function of rotten morals and misguided incentives. But, those truths would not outweigh the calculus of the necessity of their sector to function so we can have a modern economy. Similarly, no truths about Detroit outweigh the necessity of functioning, high-quality, well-funded schools, safe streets, regular sanitation, clean water and well-maintained transportation structures-whether buses or smoothly paved streets.

The president did mention poverty, and among the key elements of the post-war middle class were programs aimed at middle-class safety nets. We don't operate an economy that guarantees success, but a middle class is dependent on an economy that prevents people from falling too far. Today, we are continuing to pull away in the quality of that safety net. Southern states, long in rebellion against a middle-class nation, are speeding up their pulling away from the fabric of America's social safety net. It is why the South is disproportionately the home of America's poor and, as we are learning from recent research, the cradle of the growing immobility of poor.

The South breeds poverty not just through its porous safety net that would prevent poverty, but that same crashing of incomes flattens the mobility of those who do become poor from climbing back. A strong middle class means a renewed commitment to a national set of standards for the adequacy of benefits for unemployment, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. And it means the president must be unequivocal that a solid middle class rests on no cuts to Social Security benefits. In fact, the post-war middle-class society was marked by expansion and increases in Social Security benefits.

The president signaled he had responded to all the Republican criticisms. His health care reform was not slowing job growth. His initial economic plan that passed with no Republican votes reversed the accelerated loss of jobs to continued and steady private-sector job growth. The deficits he inherited from massive tax cuts for the wealthy and unfunded wars were now almost half their size relative to the size of the economy. Now, he wants to have the conversation on restoring the middle class.

Let's hope the talking heads of Washington and the media consensus move with him in describing the nation's problems and change the page with the president. Let's hope the conversation that moves forward is on the real deficits that affect America's working families-the deficit of jobs for our young people, the deficits of quality school slots for our children and the deficit of security for our retirements and health. Fiscal deficit debates need to be relegated to a past vision of America that thought we could grow a country by feeding the rich. That vision failed. The president wants to reignite the American dream; a country of prosperity for all based on the engine of the middle class.

William Spriggs serves as Chief Economist to the AFL-CIO and is a professor in, and former chair of the Department of Economics at Howard University.  Bill is also former assistant secretary for the Office of Policy at the United States Department of Labor.

Mandela Improves as South Africa Celebrates His 95th Birthday

July 21, 2013

Mandela Improves as South Africa Celebrates His 95th Birthday

mandela11

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela remains hospitalized in critical condition, but has made “sustained improvement” since June 8, President Jacob Zuma’s office reports.

According to the Associated Press, “Zuma gave the update after visiting Mandela at the Pretoria hospital where he is receiving treatment. During the visit, he told the anti-apartheid leader of the love and support of all South Africans that was displayed at the leader's 95th birthday celebrations on July 18.”

Mandela has received an outpouring of prayers and well-wishes since he was hospitalized June 8 for a recurring lung infection. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient is revered around the world because of his 27-year incarceration during racial apartheid White minority rule and his rise to the presidency in 1995.

Doctors have not publicly said whether he is headed for release from the hospital. Meanwhile, on his birthday, the United Nations declared a “Nelson Mandela International Day” during which people performed community service in his honor.

Emmett and Trayvon: How Racial Prejudice Has Changed By Elijah Anderson

July 21, 2013

Article II of an 11-part Series on Race in America - Past and Present

Emmett and Trayvon: How Racial Prejudice Has Changed 
By Elijah Anderson

emmettandtrayvon

elijah anderson photo

Elijah Anderson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Separated by a thousand miles, two state borders, and nearly six decades, two young African- American boys met tragic fates that seem remarkably similar today: both walked into a small market to buy some candy; both ended up dead.

The first boy is Emmett Till, who was 14 years old in the summer of 1955 when he walked into a local grocery store in Money, Miss., to buy gum. He was later roused from bed, beaten brutally, and possibly shot by a group of White men who later dumped his body in a nearby river. They claimed he had stepped out of his place by flirting with a young White woman, the wife of the store's owner. The second boy is Trayvon Martin, who was 17 years old late last winter when he walked into a 7-Eleven near a gated community in Sanford, Fla., to buy Skittles and an iced tea.

He was later shot to death at close range by a mixed-race man, who claimed Martin had behaved suspiciously and seemed out of place. The deaths of both boys galvanized the nation, drew sympathy and disbelief across racial lines, and, through the popular media, prompted a reexamination of race relations.

In the aftermath of Martin's death last February, a handful of reporters and columnists, and many members of the general public, made the obvious comparison: Trayvon Martin, it seemed, was the Emmett Till of our times. And, while that comparison has some merit-the boys' deaths are similar both in some of their details and in their tragic outcome-these killings must also be understood as the result of very different strains of racial tension in America.

The racism that led to Till's death was embedded in a virulent ideology of White racial superiority born out of slavery and the Jim Crow codes, particularly in the Deep South. That sort of racism hinges on the idea that Blacks are an inherently inferior race, a morally null group that deserves both the subjugation and poverty it gets.

The racial prejudice that led to Trayvon Martin's death is different. While it, too, was born of America's painful legacy of slavery and segregation, and informed by those old concepts of racial order-that Blacks have their "place" in  society-it in addition reflects the urban iconography of today's racial inequality, namely the Black ghetto, a uniquely urban American creation. Strikingly, this segregation of the Black community coexists with an ongoing racial incorporation process that has produced the largest Black middle class in history, and that reflects the extraordinary social progress this country has made since the 1960s. The civil rights movement paved the way for Blacks and other people of color to access public and professional opportunities and spaces that would have been unimaginable in Till's time.

While the sort of racism that led to Till's death still exists in society today, Americans in general have a much more nuanced, more textured attitude toward race than anything we've seen before, and usually that attitude does not manifest in overtly hateful, exclusionary, or violent acts. Instead, it manifests in pervasive mindsets and stereotypes that all Black people start from the inner-city ghetto and are therefore stigmatized by their association with its putative amorality, danger, crime, and poverty. Hence, in public, a Black person is burdened with a negative presumption that he or she must disprove before being able to establish mutually trusting relationships with others.

Most consequentially, Black skin when seen in public, and its association with the ghetto, translates into a deficit of credibility as Black skin is conflated with lower-class status. Such attitudes impact poor Blacks of the ghetto one way and middle-class Black people in another way.

While middle-class Blacks may be able to successfully overcome the negative presumptions of others, lower-class Blacks may not. For instance, all Blacks, particularly "ghetto-looking" young men, are at risk of enduring yet another "stop and frisk" from the police as well as discrimination from potential employers shopkeepers, and strangers on the street. Members of the Black middle class and Black professionals may ultimately pass inspection and withstand such scrutiny; many poorer blacks cannot.

And many Blacks who have never stepped foot in a ghetto must repeatedly prove themselves as non-ghetto, often operating in a provisional status (with something more to prove), in the workplace or, say, a fancy restaurant, until they can convince others-either by speaking "White" English or by demonstrating intelligence, poise, or manners-that they are to be trusted, that they are not "one of those" Blacks from the ghetto, and that they deserve respect. In other words, a middle-class Black man who is, for instance, waiting in line for an ATM at night will in many cases be treated with a level of suspicion that a middle-class White man simply does not experience.

But this pervasive cultural association-Black skin equals the ghetto-does not come out of the blue. After all, as a result of historical, political, and economic factors, Blacks have been contained in the ghetto. Today, with persistent housing discrimination and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, America's ghettos face structural poverty. In addition, crime and homicide rates within those communities are high, young Black men are typically the ones killing one another, and ghetto culture - made iconic by artists like Tupac Shakur, 50 Cent, and the Notorious B.I.G. - is inextricably intertwined with blackness.

As a result, in America's collective imagination the ghetto is a dangerous, scary part of the city. It's where rap comes from, where drugs are sold, where hoodlums rule, and where The Wire might have been filmed. Above all, to many White Americans the ghetto is where "the Black people live," and thus, as the misguided logic follows, all Black people live in the ghetto. It's that pervasive, if accidental, fallacy that's at the root of the wider society's perceptions of Black people today. While it may be true that everyone who lives in a certain ghetto is Black, it is patently untrue that everyone who is Black lives in a ghetto. Regardless, Black people of all classes, including those born and raised far from the inner cities and those who've never been in a ghetto, are by virtue of skin color alone stigmatized by the place.

I call this idea the "iconic ghetto," and it has become a powerful source of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination in our society, negatively defining the Black person in public. In some ways, the iconic ghetto reflects the old version of racism that led to Till's death. In Till's day, a Black person's "place" was in the field, in the maid's quarters, or in the back of the bus. If a Black man was found "out of his place," he could be punished, jailed, or lynched. In Martin's day-in our day-a Black person's "place" is in the ghetto. If he is found "out of his place," like in a fancy hotel lobby, on a golf course, or, say, in an upscale community, he may easily be mistaken, treated with suspicion, avoided, pulled over, frisked, arrested-or worse.

Trayvon Martin's death is an example of how this more current type of racial stereotyping works. While the facts of the case are still under investigation, from what is known it seems fair to say that George Zimmerman, Martin's killer, saw a young Black man wearing a hoodie and assumed he was from the ghetto and therefore "out of place" in the Retreat at Twin Lakes, Zimmerman's gated community. Until recently, Twin Lakes was a relatively safe, largely middle-class neighborhood. But as a result of collapsing housing prices, it has been witnessing an influx of renters and a rash of burglaries. Some of the burglaries have been committed by Black men. Zimmerman, who is himself of mixed race (of Latino, Black, and White descent), did not have a history of racism, and his family has claimed that he had previously volunteered handing out leaflets at Black churches protesting the assault of a homeless Black man.

The point is, it appears unlikely that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin simply because he hates Black people as a race. It seems that he put a gun in his pocket and followed Martin after making the assumption that Martin's Black skin and choice of dress meant that he was from the ghetto, and therefore up to no good; he was considered to be a threat. And that's an important distinction.

Zimmerman acted brashly and was almost certainly motivated by assumptions about young black men, but it is not clear that he acted brutally out of hatred for Martin's race. That certainly does not make Zimmerman's actions excusable, Till's murderers acted out of racial hatred.

The complex racially charged drama that led to Martin's death is indicative of both our history and our rapid and uneven racial progress as a society. While there continue to be clear demarcations separating Blacks and Whites in social strata, major racial changes have been made for the better. It's no longer uncommon to see Black people in positions of power, privilege, and prestige, in top positions in boardrooms, universities, hospitals, and judges' chambers, but we must also face the reality that poverty, unemployment, and incarceration still break down largely along racial lines.

This situation fuels the iconic ghetto, including a prevalent assumption among many White Americans, even among some progressive Whites who are not by any measure traditionally racist, that there are two types of Blacks: those residing in the ghetto, and those who appear to have played by the rules and become successful. In situations in which Black people encounter strangers, many often feel they have to prove as quickly as possible that they belong in the latter category in order to be accepted and treated with respect.

As a result of this pervasive dichotomy-that there are "ghetto" and "non-ghetto" Blacks-many middle-class Blacks actively work to separate and distance themselves from the popular association of their race with the ghetto by deliberately dressing well or by spurning hip-hop, rap, and ghetto styles of dress. Similarly, some Blacks, when interacting with Whites, may cultivate an overt, sometimes unnaturally formal way of speaking to distance themselves from "those" black people from the ghetto.

But it's also not that simple. Strikingly, many middle class Black young people, most of whom have no personal connection with the ghetto, go out of their way in the other direction, claiming the ghetto by adopting its symbols, including styles of dress, patterns of speech, or choice of music, as a means of establishing their authenticity as "still Black" in the largely White middle class they feel does not fully accept them; they want to demonstrate they have not "sold out." Thus, the iconic ghetto is, paradoxically, both a stigma and a sign of authenticity for some American Blacks-a kind of double bind that beleaguers many middle-class Black parents.

Despite the significant racial progress our society has made since Till's childhood, from the civil rights movement to the re-election of President Obama, the pervasive association of Black people with the ghetto, and therefore with a certain social station, betrays a persistent cultural lag. After all, it has only been two generations since schools were legally desegregated and five decades since Blacks and Whites in many parts of the country started drinking from the same water fountains.

If Till were alive today, he'd remember when restaurants had "White Only" entrances and when stories of lynchings peppered The New York Times. He'd also remember the Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Million Man March. He'd remember when his peers became generals and justices, and when a Black man, just 20 years his junior, became president of the United States. As I am writing, he would have been 73 - had he lived.

Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His latest book is The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. This article, the second of an 11-part series on race, is sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and was originally published by the Washington Monthly Magazine.

Obama Applauded for Remarks on Zimmerman Verdict by Hazel Trice Edney

July 21, 2013

Obama Applauded for  Remarks on Zimmerman Verdict
President Suggests Next Steps

By Hazel Trice Edney

officialpresidentialphoto-2013

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Barack Obama's surprise address to the nation identifying with the anger and hurt over the Trayvon Martin not-guilty verdict, has won praise from supporters and detractors alike.

As the nation anticipated Saturday’s protests in cities across the nation in response to the not-guilty verdict in the shooting of the unarmed teenager, President Obama walked into the Brady Press Room at the White House around 1:30 on Friday and gave unscripted remarks on racial strife in America that were uniquely personal.

“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” he said in the 20-minute statement, televised live on some stations.

“There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me - at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African-Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.”

He continued, “And I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.  And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.  The African-merican community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws - everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws.  And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.”

His comments were met with praise from Black leaders, who welcomed his candid remarks.

“That our president has been profiled should encourage all Americans to think deeply about both the depth of this problem and how our country moves beyond it,” said NAACP President/CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.  “The President’s call to examine the role state laws, including Stand Your Ground, play in compounding racial profiling is especially welcome. Let us move forward to bring justice for Trayvon Martin and toward a more united nation that is truly safe for all Americans.”

A statement from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law also applauded the President:

“As the President eloquently stated - drawing from his own personal experience – African-Americans in this country have experienced a long history of prejudice that led to strong emotional reactions about the Zimmerman verdict, about the jury and about an American justice system that convicts Blacks in significantly larger numbers than whites and other racial groups.”

President Obama’s remarks took some of the sting off of the stunning verdict; especially since he has rarely spoken to race issues and had never used such personal examples. But, not everyone was pleased.

The Zimmerman defense team released a response statement saying the verdict was released “fairly and justly.” The defense’s statement continued that they “acknowledge and understand the racial context of this case,” but added, “We challenge people to look closely and dispassionately at the facts…We believe those who look at the facts of the case without prejudice will see that it is a clear case of self-defense, and we are certain that those who take a closer look at the kind of person George Zimmerman is.” 

Actually, President Obama was careful not to speak negatively of the jury’s verdict.

“The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner.  The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The jurors were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury has spoken, that's how our system works,” he said.

He said he only intended to put into context the pain of African-Americans in response to the verdict. This strategy drew compliments from at least one of his biggest critics.

Republican Sen. John McCain told CNN’s State of the Union that Obama’s remarks were "very impressive.” McCain added, “I think we continue to make progress…We still have a long way to go."

The NAACP and other civil rights advocates have pressed for federal intervention in the Zimmerman case, including the possibility of a federal civil rights prosecution.  The president was careful not to assert his involvement in Holder’s investigation and announced no upcoming policy proposals to reverse some of the ways that Black are treated. But, he clearly listed what he perceives as some of the answers.

  • Speaking of racial profiling, he said it “would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.
  • In reference to the “stand your ground” self-defense laws, he said it “would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if … they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.”
  • As a “long term project” he said, “we need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys.  And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about.  There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement.  And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?”
  • He was clear that he was not speaking of a new federal program,but hinted that he may call on aspects of the community to discuss next steps.  “I do recognize that as President, I've got some convening power, and there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front.  And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African-American men feel that they're a full part of this society and that they've got pathways and avenues to succeed -  I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation."
  • The President suggested that open conversations be had about race.  “I think it's going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching.  There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race.  I haven't seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations.  They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.  On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there's the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?  Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character?  That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.”

In conclusion, the President urged Americans to become “better angels of our nature” by using the negative episodes to gain greater understanding rather than “heighten divisions.” He said: “We’re becoming a more perfect union; not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.”

Son of Racist Leader Renounces White Nationalism by Mark Potok

July 22, 2013

Son of Klan Leader Renounces White Nationalism
By Mark Potok

derek-black-wpbr-hatewatch

Derek Black, 24, has renounced the racist views of his Klansman father.

black as youth

Already, at the tender age of 9, Derek Black was attending racist events like this Nov. 7, 1998, gathering in Jackson, Miss., of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” He is pictured here with then-Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice, one of few politicians who was then still willing to be seen at CCC events.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Southern Poverty Law Center

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Derek Black, son of the former Alabama Klan leader who now runs the largest racist Web forum in the world, has renounced white nationalism, saying that he had been through “a gradual awakening process” and apologizing for his past activism.

In an E-mail to the blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch, Black, 24, wrote that he had come to see the arguments of white nationalism as “principally flawed,” adding that he had realized that American society is marked by an “overwhelming disparity between white power and that of everyone else” and that white nationalism was really about “an entrenched desire to preserve white power at the expense of others.”

“Advocating for white nationalism means that we are opposed to minority attempts to elevate themselves to a position equal to our own,” wrote Black, who recently finished his third year at the elite New College of Florida. “It is an advocacy that I cannot support, having grown past my bubble, talked to the people I affected, read more widely, and realized the necessary impact my actions had on people I never wanted to harm.”

It was a remarkable statement for Black, whose father, Don Black, once served time in prison for plotting a racist invasion of a small Caribbean nation and founded and still runs Stormfront, a white supremacist Web forum. The younger Black was raised in the racist movement, had by age 12 created a racist children’s page on his father’s website, and until recently hosted a radio show featuring racist guests.

But it was also the latest step in a fairly clear evolution.

Last November, Derek Black posted a statement on a students-only forum at his college in which he explicitly said he was not a white supremacist, a neo-Nazi or a Klansman, and revealing that he had some unexpected views, such as support for same-sex marriage, environmental regulation, and legal abortion. But he also said in the statement, which was made public on this blog in December, that he was not renouncing white nationalism and did not see it as incompatible with his other views.

In his E-mail, Black said that he was already moving away from White nationalism at the time, but that “I was not prepared to risk driving any wedge” into his relationship with his family, “whom I respect greatly, particularly my father.” But, he added, “After a great deal of thought since then, I have resolved that it is in the best interests of everyone involved, directly or indirectly, to be honest about my slow but steady disaffiliation from white nationalism.” He described himself as having spent “the past few years … disentangling myself from white nationalism,” and added that he had closed down his radio show permanently this January. He said that he had not posted at all on Stormfront this year, and only once in 2012. He said he did attend a Stormfront conference in 2012, but would not do so again this year.

Black also directly confronted some of the main arguments of white nationalism, such as the idea that Whites are being victimized by non-White immigration, mixed-race marriages and affirmative action — what amounts, in the arguments of White nationalists, to “genocide” aimed at destroying the white race. He also ridiculed many white nationalists’ “particularly bizarre” hatred of Jews.

“I now consider this belief system principally flawed,” he said. “Most arguments that racial equity programs disadvantage whites who would otherwise be hired or accepted to academic programs mask underlying anxieties about the growth of non-white social status. It is impossible to argue rationally that in our society, with its overwhelming disparity between white power and that of everyone else, racial equity programs intended to affect the deep-rooted situation represent oppression of whites.” Indeed, Black added, “The advancement of minorities in the US is not insignificant, but has not ended (let alone reversed) their circumstances.”

Black was explicitly apologetic. “I acknowledge that things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all, and others affected.”

“I can’t support a movement that tells me I can’t be a friend to whomever I wish or that other people’s races requires me to think about them in a certain way or be suspicious of their advancements,” Black wrote toward the end of his four-page statement. “Minorities must have the ability to rise to positions of power, and many supposed ‘race’ issues are in fact issues of structural oppression, poor educational prospects, and limited opportunity. The differences I thought I observed didn’t go nearly as deeply as I imagined. I believe we can move beyond the sort of mind-boggling emphasis white nationalism puts on maintaining an oppressive, exclusive sense of identity — oppressive for others and stifling for our society.”

X