A Little Light Reading: Our Top Three Books on Understanding Race in America

The three of us read a lot because (1) we each enjoy it, (2) we think it essential to being informed citizens, and (3) it’s crucial to this enterprise.

Because we read as much as we do and because we spend so much time interacting with people about the things we care and write about here, friends and readers sometimes ask us what books we think will increase their understanding of the topics we discuss with them, especially race. We thought we’d offer some reading suggestions – a Top Three, if you will – recognizing our list isn’t gospel and others might present lists that would impart as much or more knowledge.

What Missed The List?

We’ll start by recognizing some great works that didn’t make our top three.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander garnered a great deal of attention during the 2016 campaign for its focus on mass incarceration.

James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man retain their places as classics, essential to understanding this issue.

Taylor Branch’s epic trilogy America in the King Years would make many such lists.

Master of the Senate, the third book in Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series presents an excellent account of early legislative efforts on civil rights.

One friend reminded us that Colored People by Henry Louis Gates offers rare insight into the culture of black America outside the South as the civil rights era dawned.

The same friend extolled the virtues of Days of Grace, Arthur Ashe’s wonderful memoir about his experience as a black athlete in a white sport and as a black man in America.     

But, we have our favorites – three books we regard as critical to understanding where we stand with race in America today and how we got here.

Our Top Three

1. We suggest starting with The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson.

Wilkerson, an African American woman, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and it shows in her compelling narrative about the twentieth-century African-American migration out of the Jim Crow South to the North and West. She gives us the story through the experiences of real people: a Florida orange picker who finds a new life in New York, yet still must cope with returning regularly to the segregated South in his job as a railroad porter; a Mississippi sharecropping family that moved to the Midwest only to confront the restrictive ethnic zoning rampant in the urban politics of Chicago and Milwaukee. A doctor from Louisiana who drove across the desert to resettle in California. The black exodus from the South makes up an important part of American history and Wilkerson tells the story with verve and compassion.

2. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist

The Half Has Never Been Told explains the role slavery played in America’s development as a commercial powerhouse in the world economy. Along the way, it explodes many myths, most significant among them the idea the United States became a significant player on the world economic stage after the civil war ended slavery.

In this exhaustively researched book, Baptist, a white son of the South, shows how slavery and the cotton-based southern economy made the United States a world commercial player well before the war. Warning: While the book is profoundly informative, it is not comfortable to read. Baptist, a Cornell University professor, comes at this topic with data and analysis. Narrative takes a back seat.

Getting through The Half Has Never Been Told requires a certain level of compassion and willingness to vicariously experience human suffering. It also requires a strong stomach. Baptist details many of slavery’s horrors. Few “benevolent” slaveholders, if any lived, made the cut in this book. We can’t overestimate the importance of The Half Has Never Been Told to understanding the real history of slavery in America. Rob saw it as significant enough to give a copy to each of his children with the admonition that they read it, “even if you don’t get to it until you’re on your death bed.”

3. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.

Anyone clinging to the notion that the economic inequality plaguing America based on race occurred by accident must confront some unpleasant, but documented, truths in this book. Relying on government documents and independent studies, Rothstein, a senior fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Haas Institute at University of California, Berkeley, details how court decisions, legislative actions, executive branch policies, and administrative actions drove blacks into segregated neighborhoods, kept white neighborhoods white, and in the process, assured that black wealth would not grow through homeownership, a major way other Americans accumulated assets. This book doesn’t make for comfortable reading either, largely because of the offensiveness of the deliberate acts of racial discrimination it describes.

As we said, there are other books. We think these three present a good starting place.

What are some of your suggestions?

An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 6

We come now to the final point in our list of six issues (read parts one, two, three, four, and five) we want congressional and presidential candidates to focus on in 2018 and 2020: an aggressive push for social justice.

America needs this, especially now, because the Trump years represent a 21st Century low point in the nation’s commitment to equality. We didn’t think, in our sunset years, fighting the civil rights battle all over would become necessary. 

That seems required now, given the ugly underbelly of America’s social fabric unearthed by Trump’s presidency. This underbelly consists of those who see America as the birthright of only white, English speaking Christians and those who do not believe the constitution’s guarantee of equal protection applies to people of other faiths (or no faith), women,  gays, transgender individuals, and people of color. The next president, with help from Congress, must reestablish the moral authority of the office on the issue of fundamental fairness to all Americans.

Racial Equity

Trump’s sins on race cover symbol and policy. Symbolically, we need only recall his statements equating white supremacists denouncing Jews with those protesting confederate monuments in Charlottesville, Virginia. Before Trump, we wouldn’t have imagined a modern-day American president doing such a thing. Candidates in 2018 and 2020 must make clear during their campaigns that won’t happen while he or she holds office. No room exists for hedging, compromising, or equivocating. America needs a president, and members of Congress, with zero tolerance for bigotry who understand no equivalency exists between anti-Semitic and racist chants and protests against monuments that romanticize America’s history of chattel slavery.

  Statue of Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate States Army, in Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia (credit: CVille Dog via Wikimedia Commons)

However, Trump’s bad acts go beyond intemperate public statements. Administratively, his government has pulled back on the federal commitment to enforcing anti-discrimination laws and signaled how it disfavors civil rights enforcement. The Justice Department, for example, stopped using consent decrees as a tool for enforcing civil rights laws. Government agencies now limit the data they collect on civil rights violations and have reduced the size of their anti-discrimination staffs. For example, instead of cutting back, the Justice Department should step up its efforts in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, as there has been a spike in them since Trump’s election.

Civil rights enforcement isn’t part of Trump’s plan. He appears not to believe in it and acts as if it doesn’t serve his political interests. He thinks, probably accurately, his base doesn’t want civil rights laws enforced. The next president must make civil rights part of his or her agenda. Civil rights laws remain the law of the land and every president must vigorously enforce them.

Equity for Sexual Minorities

Racial minorities aren’t faring well in the Trump world. Sexual minorities may fare worse. Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he’d ban transgender individuals from the military demonstrated his attitude. Court rulings and the decision by military leaders to bury the plan in the Pentagon review process stopped the idea for the moment. Trump put out the suggestion for blatantly political reasons – a bone thrown to the Christian right he must feed to keep under his ever-shrinking tent. Eliminating transgender people from the armed forces, however, potentially harms national security by limiting the military’s ability to recruit individuals with particular skills and may damage units that depend on transgender troops.

 Trump's original tweet from July 26, 2017 announcing his ban on transgender individuals in the military (Twitter.com)

As with racial equity, candidates for Congress and the Presidency need to make clear their commitment to gender equality and equity for sexual minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. The force of American leadership in the world depends both on military and diplomatic strength and on moral authority as a democracy committed to equal rights for everyone. No room exists for fudging on this.  

Religious Pluralism

America, since its founding, has been a land of many religions and a land of many who profess allegiance to no religion. Our constitution assures the rights of all Americans to practice whatever religion they want or to practice no religion at all. With due respect to the principle of separation of church and state, we hope candidates for office in 2018 and 2020 will talk about and support religious pluralism. We hope they explicitly acknowledge that America recognizes no state religion and no religious test exists for holding office. We saw encouraging signs on this point in the 2017 off-year elections in which members of many religious groups won state and local races. Candidates can freely express their faith preference, as long as they recognize that every American enjoys the same right to practice their faith or to practice no faith at all.

So, there you have it – the six key issues we believe the 2018 and 2020 elections should turn on. As we commend them to you, we believe they’re worth repeating:

1. Restore the dignity of the office of President of the United States;

2. Reverse the toxic, divisive race and ethnicity baiting of the current president;

3. Address income inequality;

4. Develop a thoughtful, intelligent foreign policy that reflects American values 

and security interests and those of our allies;

5. Promote a domestic policy agenda that improves the lives of ordinary Americans; and

6. Renew the American commitment to social justice

It’s your turn – tell us what you think the focus of the 2018 and 2020 elections should be?            

G. Thomas Eisele: Judge, Mentor, Friend

Last month, an Arkansas federal judge died at 94, saddening many in and outside that state.  He had an enormous impact on our native state and on two of us personally. We’d be remiss if we didn’t pay tribute to his remarkable life.  

Garnett Thomas Eisele served as a judge in the Eastern District of Arkansas from 1970 until his 2011 retirement.  Before taking the bench, as an old-time moderate Republican, he played a major role in Winthrop Rockefeller’s gubernatorial campaigns and served as his legal advisor at $1 a year.  Richard Nixon appointed him to the bench and he swore off politics, believing judicial office required the reality and appearance of fairness.

Tributes have poured in since his death, noting his penchant for unpopular decisions in criminal, environmental, and civil rights cases.  For the two of us who knew him, his judicial record tells only part of the story.  He seemed larger than life because of his intellect, kindness, civility, and dedication to helping people realize their potential.

Henry Writes:

My mother believed everyone encounters people who enrich lives if we open ourselves to those chance meetings.  Judge Eisele confirmed her belief.  Just out of college and working for Governor Rockefeller, I met Tom Eisele.  Although incredibly busy as the Governor’s lawyer, he took the time to talk with, advise, and encourage this young college graduate.  When it came time to move on to my career, he encouraged me to attend law school.  He thought, for some reason, I’d do well in the law.

By the time I graduated from law school he’d become a federal judge. He hired me as a law clerk. The newspaper headline read:

“Negro Named as US Law Clerk.” My hiring made him the first federal judge in Arkansas to employ an African American clerk.  He let me know that though he recognized the significance of the hire, he chose me because of my record, writing ability, and the potential he saw in me to help him do the people's business.

Working with him gave me a daily opportunity to watch and engage his unparalleled attention to detail, his total belief in fairness and justice, and his complete conviction that the cases we handled belonged not to us but the litigants whose lives depended on the energy and intellectual honesty we brought to each case.
Though I’d committed to a two year clerkship with him, I got a chance to clerk for an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals judge.  He said I couldn’t pass up such an opportunity.  He believed it significant that I’d become the first African American to clerk for a judge on that court, but he thought it just as important that the experience itself would serve me well for the rest of my career.  He believed I could make a difference. 

G. Thomas Eisele (credit: Arkansas Online)

Later, I was appointed Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Arkansas. I’m sure when the district judges chose from the lawyers presented them by a recommending committee, his strong, respected voice and his belief in me made a difference.  I became the first African American Magistrate Judge in a southern state.  I found challenge and reward in my 31 and a half years on that court, serving alongside Judge Eisele.  My mentor and wise advisor became my colleague and invaluable friend.  I treasure that friendship and the memory of our conversations.  Nothing I write could demonstrate his impact on my life.

He opened his courtroom, his mind, and his heart to all people.  I miss him.

Rob writes:
I knew Judge Eisele less well than Henry, but my experiences with him produced enormous respect and admiration.   When I lived in Little Rock in the 1970s, I often ran along Rebsamen Park Road, a straight, flat stretch that parallels the Arkansas River.  Occasionally, I’d find myself catching up to a shirtless man who never stopped smiling and who always had time to talk until I pushed ahead.  That man was Judge Eisele. 

Oh, I knew who he was.  Most of the regular runners along “the river,” as we called it, knew “the Judge,” who parked his old Mercedes on the eastern end of the route, ran west for about three miles, and returned.  I wasn’t a lawyer then, but he knew me from television.  As we plodded along, we talked sports or how I was doing with life.  Despite his position, he wasn’t dour, standoffish, or self-important.  He talked to me like a human being.

Years later, after I’d become a lawyer,  on a visit to Arkansas, I mentioned to Henry that I’d worked on a case, just decided by the Texas Supreme Court, on admissibility of scientific evidence.  He said Judge Eisele had a pending case involving that issue and he might want to know what I’d learned.  The Judge invited me to his office and we spent almost an hour talking about the ins and outs of that complex topic.  When I returned to Houston, as he’d asked, I sent his law clerks the briefs in my case.   I was astounded that he cared what I thought.

Finally, when we started this project, I needed background on Henry’s life before we met.  Henry said Judge Eisele heavily influenced his decision to attend law school.  He urged me to call him about it.  I dialed the number Henry gave me, expecting I’d have to fight my way through a palace guard of gatekeepers.  Judge Eisele answered the phone himself.  We talked for an hour, just two people discussing a mutual friend.  The world needs more people who approach life like he did.                                          

An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 5

We’ve suggested four areas on which 2018 and 2020 candidates should focus for bringing America back from its current morass (Read Part 4 here).  We’ve written about restoring the dignity of the Presidency, promoting racial reconciliation, addressing income inequality, and formulating an intelligent foreign policy rooted in our values and the shared interests of the United States and its allies.

Now, we turn to the domestic agenda candidates for Congress and the White House should press if they want to improve the lives Americans lead.  We could propose an endless list of policies and programs, but we’ll limit the discussion to six areas the next few Congresses and the next President have to get right to make America truly great.

Public Education   
The three of us grew up and into the middle class through public education.  A strong America depends on a strong public education system.  Private schools, which not everyone can afford, have their place in American education, but a vibrant economy and a society in which people believe they can improve their lives depends on continuing investment in and a commitment to public education.  For America to remain a world leader the nation must produce a broadly educated citizenry. Public education remains the most proven vehicle for achieving that.  

Infrastructure   
Democrats and Republicans sort of agree on this.  At least both seem to understand the need for rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges and investing in navigation projects, airports, and other transportation facilities.  The disagreement lies in paying for it.  Candidate Trump claimed he would propose an infrastructure package.  His administration floated, but hasn’t pushed in Congress, a tax credit scheme that would mostly benefit Trump’s rich friends.  A meaningful infrastructure program requires putting significant federal dollars into the kinds of projects America once specialized in building.  Trump and Republicans often claim business tax cuts will pay for themselves by spurring economic growth. Historically, tax cut have not had that result.  They just increase the deficit.  Prior experience suggests Infrastructure spending, however, will pay for itself in jobs, lower public and private maintenance costs, and improvements in everyday life.  It’s time to quit talking about this and do something about it.

Affordable Housing   
Recent books like Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law have emphasized the connection between housing policy and the country’s seemingly intractable economic and racial problems.  It seems important now to develop policies and programs that insure Americans of all races and ethnicities access to quality, affordable public and private housing.  This area of federal policy has stagnated in recent years under Democratic and Republican presidents.  The next group of people in charge, in Congress and in the White House, must renew the conversation about what programs and policies will give more Americans access to affordable housing while stimulating the construction industry.  The next Housing Secretary should understand and appreciate the nation’s history of socioeconomic and racial discrimination in housing and how local, state, and federal government policy, with the help of the building trades, contributed to the problem. Perhaps the next President can involve people like Professor Rothstein in selecting a HUD Secretary.

Immigration Reform   
Perhaps nothing causes as much emotional upset among Americans today as immigration policy. The issue brings to the surface the culture war over who determines domestic policy, illustrating the difference in a world in which people of color have a say in such decisions and the way the world once worked.  This issue divides the country in to red and blue.  Red America, generally, wants to punish undocumented immigrants and favors drastic measures, like a wall, to keep out immigrants from certain countries. Blue America, generally, wants a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants here and opposes draconian border security measures.  The challenge lies in finding a sensible middle ground between those poles.  We favor a more welcoming policy toward immigrants.  Any comprehensive immigration reform proposal must provide a path to citizenship and border security that controls the flow of illegal immigrants.

Energy and Emissions Policy   
They go hand-in-hand.  We need more, not less, public investment in solar, wind, and other forms of clean, renewable energy.  These industries will produce more good jobs than we can save in the coal fields.  The global movement toward such energy sources won’t stop because of the Trump administration’s obsession with coal.  The clean energy train is pulling out of the station and the United States needs to get on board.     

Tax Policy   
The “tax reform” proposals now being rushed through Congress by Republicans come nowhere near the kind of tax policy we need to move our economy forward, give relief to those who really need it, and insure everyone pays his or her fair share. The “loopholes” being closed – deductions for state and local taxes, reduced ability to deduct interest on student loans, etc. – hurt middle class people, not the wealthy.  Meantime, too many ways still exist for corporations and wealthy individuals to hide taxable income offshore and in other ways that keep the tax system unfair.  The next Congress and the next President need to correct that situation.  Involving scholars and observers like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and journalists Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum in the process wouldn’t hurt either.   

We could talk about lots of other things.  But, we think we’ve offered a good starting point.  

What do you think?                              

An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 4

In putting forth an agenda for the 2018 and 2020 elections (read Part 3 here), we’ve focused on domestic matters – restoring the dignity of the Presidency, ending Trump’s harsh, divisive race and ethnicity baiting, and addressing income inequality.  We’ll get back to domestic concerns but, for now, we turn to foreign policy, Trump’s failing that potentially poses the gravest danger.  His shortcomings in this arena could get the country into a war. 

Pointing out Trump’s foreign policy flaws isn’t difficult.  His Secretary of State did, after all, reportedly call him a “moron.”  Trump has estranged the United States from many of its European and Asian allies with bellicose rhetoric, threats to withdraw American support from those allies, and general uncertainty about our intentions on long settled questions.  Many countries now doubt they can count on American military and economic assistance.  Trump has sent mixed signals about his support for U.S. treaty commitments and whether he adheres to basic premises undergirding American policy since World War II.  Most of all, Trump’s flirtation with Vladimir Putin’s Russia gives European countries heartburn and needlessly raises international tensions.  That flirtation encourages these nations to doubt where we stand in the battle of ideas between authoritarian Russia and Western democratic ideals.  We hope any candidate seeking office in 2018 or 2020 will advance a foreign policy agenda that includes three basic policy imperatives and commits to addressing foreign affairs in a language recognizing the complexity of the enterprise and that eschews simplistic nationalism.  We didn’t even mention North Korea.   

Allied Commitments   
No doubt should ever exist about the American commitment to NATO, our other treaty obligations, and bilateral mutual defense pacts we have with various nations.  If the country wants to debate continuing those agreements as matters of policy or economic imperative, fine.  That’s why we have a Congress.  But as long as those obligations remain in place, the American President must support them.  Throwing out threats to eliminate or reduce U.S. support for this or that country or this or that treaty serves no one except our enemies.  Already, nations like Japan and South Korea have started thinking they should acquire nuclear weapons because they doubt the United States will protect them.  Those agreements helped stem nuclear proliferation.  Backing off from them makes such proliferation more likely and further destabilizes an already dangerous world.

Restore the State Department   
In the post war era, American foreign policy has depended on a strong military consisting of conventional and nuclear arsenals and an expertise-based diplomatic corps.  Our State Department has served the nation well, staffed as it has been by distinguished secretaries (from General George C. Marshall, through Henry Kissinger and James Baker, to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry) and their deputies, as well as career foreign policy professionals who understand the cultural, political, and economic terrain of the countries to which they’re assigned.  Trump and his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, are in the process of tearing that down.  They’ve left countless political positions unfilled and demoralized many career people, some of whom have left.

Revitalizing American foreign policy requires restoring the State Department.  First, the White House must rebuild trust with career foreign service professionals and candidates should make an explicit promise to do so as part of a foreign policy reset.  Second, we urge anyone running for President to pledge to scour the think tanks, international law firms, universities, and the journalistic community to fill the political slots with smart, thoughtful, competent deputy secretaries and under secretaries who can resume the American diplomatic role in the world.  This may seem like “inside baseball” no one except political junkies cares about, but the Trump-Tillerson strip down of the State Department has done America serious harm by robbing the nation of an experienced, expert diplomatic corps that can talk to the rest of the world in its cultural, political, and economic languages.  The voters need to know the next President will tackle this problem. 

Repair our Relationship with Mexico   
Mexico is our third largest trading partner, behind only China and Canada.  It accounts for about 16% of our exports and over 13% of our imports.  With his ridiculous proposal to build a border wall – and suggest Mexico pay for it – Trump alienated the Mexican government and damaged the U.S. relationship with the Mexican people.  The next President and the next Congress need a different approach to Mexico.  Despite the immigration issue that so agitates Trump’s base, Mexico stands as a critical trading partner we should cultivate and with which we should maintain a respectful relationship based on mutual and shared interests, not hostility stemming from biases and ethnic distrust.

We could talk about a lot more – a saner approach to North Korea, assigning someone to work on mid-east peace with more foreign policy gravitas than the President’s 36-year old son-in-law, climate change as part of the foreign policy-national security matrix – the list extends on and on.  We’ve focused on things that go to the root causes of our foreign policy challenges – language, relationships, alliances, and governmental infrastructure.  Solve some of these problems and many of the others will take care of themselves.  Isn’t that the task we really face?               

An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 3

In the first two parts of our series of six suggestions for a political message for the coming election cycles—restoring the dignity of the Presidency compromised by Trump’s bad behavior and healing the racial and cultural fractures Trump created or exacerbated.  Our third suggestion – addressing income inequality and economic dislocation caused by globalization, inequitable tax policy, and other factors – requires more detailed policy exploration and development than we could ever do in a thousand words (the usual length of our posts).  But we can lay out a skeleton, to which we and others can attach meat in the coming months.

First, we must explode a myth. Trump’s campaign didn’t address income inequality. His government, staffed as it is by millionaires from business, hasn’t attacked the structurally created problem of the top one per cent of income earners getting 40% more in one week than the bottom fifth gets in a year.  His tax plan will likely give wealthy Americans most of the breaks.  Trump made a lot of noise about bringing back manufacturing and coal mining jobs.  The media spun the fact working class people attracted to that message also suffered the effects of income inequality into a narrative that made Trump appear the income inequality candidate.  That wasn’t true in the campaign and it’s not true now.

Income inequality results from a myriad of factors, including failures of the educational system, the inability of some groups to adapt to globalization, government tax and wage policies, and what economists call “rent seeking” by individuals at the top.  Rent seeking occurs when those at the top use their wealth and influence to promote governmental policies that keep the largest share of economic assets in their hands and prevent others from getting a bigger slice, in part by keeping the overall pie smaller.  Attacking income inequality requires action on at least three broad fronts.

Education   
America needs a vibrant, effective public school system.  Trump’s Education Department promotes so-called charter schools to the detriment of public schools, a shortsighted and immoral policy.  Promoting charter schools drains student and faculty talent from public schools, leaving low-income communities most dependent on a robust public education system with fewer educational resources when they need more.  Improved economic opportunity and, therefore, less income inequality, also requires strong technical schools and community colleges that prepare people for jobs that exist now and will exist in coming years.  Finally, the federal government must address student debt for traditional college students.  Americans will still need college educations; the difference in income over time for college and non-college graduates remains undeniable.  Reasonable minds can differ about the wisdom of free college, as Bernie Sanders proposed in 2016, but we can’t differ about needing to make college affordable for low income and middle class families.   

Tax and Wage Policies   
Trump’s tax reform proposal remains murky.  The details that have emerged suggest wealthy tax payers will benefit unfairly.  Republicans spin the proposal as a cut in corporate taxes that will spur business creation and, therefore, job growth.  Early indications, however, suggest tax payers in higher brackets and business owners will get large breaks.  We don’t think that will reduce income inequality and amounts to no more than the trickledown theory discredited by our experiences in the Reagan and George W. Bush years.  A tax plan aimed at alleviating income inequality would raise taxes in upper income brackets and reduce or eliminate taxes on middle and low-income individuals.

Attacking income inequality also requires a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour in the quest for a “livable wage” that helps working people get off public assistance.  The current system subsidizes corporate interests by forcing tax payers to make up wages corporations won’t pay in the form of public assistance for which low wage earners remain eligible.

Rent-Seeking   
We’ve heard stories about how, following the 2007-08 recession, Wall Street bankers, hedge fund managers, and other corporate executives continued raking in huge bonuses, even after banks got government bailouts.  This happened for a reason. Economists call it “rent-seeking” – rigging the system for a favored few. Rent-seeking, for example, includes making large campaign contributions so lobbyists employed to influence legislators will find a receptive audience.  Why isn’t the tax system fairer?  In part because special interests have so much influence in writing tax laws.  Campaign contributions from rent seekers eager to keep tax laws in their favor grease the skids for lobbyists.  Why does the federal minimum wage remain at $7.25?  In part because rent seeking business executives successfully advance their argument that raising it will cost jobs.  Despite flimsy evidence for that proposition, legislators – especially Republicans – accept it, in part, because of campaign contributions from individuals and corporations wanting to keep their incomes and profits up.

We’ve only scratched the surface of what it will take to fix income inequality in America.  It won’t happen by promising to bring back jobs to sectors of the economy that saw their peak in the 1950s and may never reach such heights again.  Eradicating income inequality requires rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty on policy questions many don’t want to face.  We have to face them.  If we don’t, those at the bottom, as in other countries, will take their complaints to the streets.  It won’t be pleasant.  We don’t really want that, do we?       

                     

An American Political Agenda for 2018 and 2020: Six Suggestions for the Upcoming Election Cycles: Part 2

We recently fleshed out our proposals for a preferred message for candidates in the 2018 and 2020 elections.  This post concerns our second suggestion – that those seeking office offer ideas and a demeanor that can begin healing the racial and cultural fractures of the Trump era.  We know many believe campaigns should focus on economic issues and we agree.  We’ll get to economics in due course, but anyone who wants to serve as President (or in Congress) must offer the nation moral leadership that can bring us together as a people.  Jesus’s reported statement to Satan comes to mind. “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Writing on a Dirty Slate   
Reciting Trump’s parade of horribles doesn’t take long.  He has picked a fight with professional football players, most of them African- American.  We believe he did so largely to provoke racial animosity toward them, and by extension African-Americans generally, by his base supporters.  He equated people protesting discrimination with white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  Trump’s attitude toward African-American protesters borders on contempt. Before a national television audience that undoubtedly included many children, he called the players “sons of bitches,” though he’d earlier excused white supremacist protesters as “fine people.”  He targeted Muslim countries with a travel ban several lower federal courts found unconstitutional.  He disrespected Gold Star Families.  The list seems endless and grows daily.

Trump’s conduct goes far beyond possible illegality and crassness.  His behavior has inflamed racial passions in the nation and the body politic.  His followers now find free reign to act immorally and irresponsibly on racial matters.  White evangelicals remain loyal to him, despite his public vulgarity and racial dog whistling, perhaps because of it.  No political restraint exists on Trump and nothing compels him to hide his racism.  Trump shows no sign of a moral compass on racial division, making him either immoral or the ultimate cynic.  Regardless, the country suffers from having a man in the White House who further divides an already fractured nation.

Doing Better   
Nothing ordains this circumstance.  American political leaders have exhibited leadership that heals racial divisions.  On the tense night of April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy stood on a flatbed truck in the heart of the ghetto in Indianapolis and announced Martin Luther King’s murder.  In what some see as one of the great political speeches ever, Kennedy asked blacks who might seek revenge against whites for King‘s murder to remember that his brother also had been killed “by a white man.”  Kennedy ended his six minute speech by telling the crowd that what America needed at the time was “love and understanding and compassion toward one another.”  Significantly, while many cities burned that night, Indianapolis remained calm.

During the 2008 general election, a woman at a town hall meeting in Minnesota said to Republican Presidential nominee John McCain she couldn’t trust Democratic nominee Barak Obama because he was “an Arab.”  McCain took the microphone and told the woman Obama wasn’t an “Arab,” but “a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”  Trump didn’t take his cue from the nominee of his party.  He instead embarked on a shameful, multi-year campaign questioning Obama’s legitimacy as a native born American citizen eligible to serve as President.

As Kennedy and McCain demonstrated, American politicians do not always live in a cesspool fouled by the stench of racial and cultural bigotry and grievance.  They can rise to the occasion. Some get it right, at least some of the time.  We see this as another time for national statesmanship.

A Blueprint   Men and women seeking office in 2018, in response to the bankrupt racial and cultural politics of the Trump era, should at least pledge the following:

1.   Never equate any group or individual claiming racial supremacy with those protesting injustice and discrimination. That distinguishes America from so many other countries and truly would make America great.

2.   Recognize that peaceful protest represents the highest form of patriotism.  After all, unlike many other rights Americans exercise, the constitution specifically and unequivocally spells out that one.

3.   Express and exhibit a willingness to confront racial, ethnic, and religious differences with frank, respectful dialogue that neither patronizes people nor sugarcoats differences.

4.   Understand that civility and respect for people demonstrate strength and character, not weakness or timidity (and not what’s derisively called “political correctness”). 

5.   Study the history of racism and racial discord in America for enlightenment, recognizing that such inquiry need not breed guilt or resentment.

6.   Treat anyone who has lost a loved one, especially in service to the nation, with the utmost respect and dignity and not as a political weapon.

7.   Remember that what’s past is prologue and those who fail to learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

We could (and perhaps should) put other things on this list.  The comprehensiveness of the list, however, is not the point.  If the next President and other national leaders work at the items on this list, or one like it, America will become a better place and wake up from its current nightmare. 

Don’t you think so?