The Washington Post features an article on the coming apology from the U.S. Senate (on Monday), when it will vote on a resolution to apologize for the failure to enact an anti-lynching law that was first proposed in the year 1900.
“The apology is long overdue,” said Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who is sponsoring the resolution with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). “Our history does include times when we failed to protect individual freedom and rights.”
The Senate’s action comes amid a series of conciliatory efforts nationwide that include reopening investigations and prosecutions in Mississippi. Advocates say the vote would mark the first time Congress has apologized for the nation’s treatment of African Americans.
African Americans weren’t the only ones lynched though. Consider the 1907 Anti-Hindu Riot in Bellingham, Washington:
“On September 4, 1907, a mob of about 500 men assaulted boarding houses and mills, forcefully expelling Hindus from Bellingham (Washington)in what is now known as the Anti-Hindu Riot.
It began as an attack on two East Indian workers on C Street and turned into a rock-throwing lynching, to ‘scare them so badly that they will not crowd white labour out of the mills.’ The small police force was overpowered. The next day about 300 Hindus fled Bellingham in fear.
The press, some civic leaders and churches denounced the riots. Threats were later made to other groups, though no major riots occurred.”
But why now? Why after all this time is the Senate finally acknowledging this dark chapter in U.S. History? In order to understand the Senate’s motivations let us first look at the reason that no anti-lynching legislation has thus far been passed:
Senate filibusters in the past blocked House bills and presidential requests to pass anti-lynching legislation, she [Doria Dee Johnson, an author and frequent lecturer on the subject of lynchings] said. “It will be nice to have an apology from that same body,” she said.
The Senate resolution, sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George Allen, R-Va., notes that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the first half of the 20th century and that seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to end lynching. But nothing got through the Senate.
Is this all starting to come together yet? Do you all see the Machiavellian plot being hatched here? George Allen is just as ambitious as Bill Frist in seeking the Presidency in ’08. Seasoned pundits even see him as a frontrunner, and the campaigning has long since begun. In order to get the support of the religious right (which is an absolute imperative for Republicans in this country) he needs to help get rid of the Senate filibuster and get right-wing judges on the bench. By sponsoring this anti-lynching legislation he is really just trying to build the case against the filibuster AND trying to shore up black votes for his 2008 run. Believe it.
AFAIK the Bellingham riot mainly drove Sikhs into Canada. Hindoo/Hindu was the generic term for desis back then.
Correlation between this and advani sucking up to the pakistanis and talking about jinnah being a secular man?
so lemme see if I get this straight –
Anti-lynching resolutions are Good.
But you’re a priori convinced that the entire GOP is irredeemably evil.
So the only way to “square the circle” is to accuse the GOP of hypocrisy cuz they’re NOT behaving like the big bad ogres you need them to be?
Look, I might be the David Brooks of Sepia Mutiny BUT, I’m able to give the opposition party some credit where its due….
But you’re a priori convinced that the entire GOP is irredeemably evil.
Nope, you’ve misunderstood me completely. This isn’t a knock against just the GOP. Its a knock against American politics for the last 100 years. After a 100 years an apology is issued and only now because it serves a political strategy. Maybe Zinn will include a chapter on this in the next edition of his book.
Or maybe, just maybe, they actually mean it this time rather than using it as a hypocritical tool for more power?
Um, do you actually follow politics? 😉
Or maybe, just maybe, they actually mean it this time rather than using it as a hypocritical tool for more power?
Vinod, I respect your intelligence way too much to think for even a moment that you actually believe that.
Vinod, Yes, you are indeed the David Brooke of Sepia contributors. However, unlike Brooke you actually make sense most of the time. The Republican senator George Allen co-sponsorship of the bill has everything to do with his prospective presidential run in 2008. Sentaor Allen is extreme right wing. Hes not a moderate and his support for his bill is to rehabilitate (or better give birth to) his moderate credentials. From the same article: “Allen’s involvement could help mend his rift with black Virginians who criticized him for hanging a noose outside his law office, displaying a Confederate flag in his home and proclaiming a Confederate History Month while governor”. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.
and the folks who consider the entire GOP irredeemably evil show their faces…
Look, I’m a deep political cynic (I thoroughly subscribe to Public Choice Economics, for ex) but I’m also able to credit folks (on BOTH sides of the aisle) for doing morally good things because they are good things.
Methinks, somehow, that if Clinton (or lately, someone else who’s got quite a glow – Jimmy Carter) had signed this, you wouldn’t be as quick to characterize it as a naked Machiavellian power grab.
So lets see. The man used to hang a noose outside his law office and is now sponsoring a bill condemning the noose hangers. Please dont tell me that Mr Allen was not aware of what the noose signifies. The noose might have been used to hang non blacks as well, but the noose is a symbol of lynching and everybody knows that. Then he hangs a confederate flag in his home. At the top of that he proclaims a confederate history month. Seems to me Mr Allen has a longing for the good old days of the confederacy.
Mr Allen voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1991. He called the NAACCP an ‘extremist group’ and as a state senator fought against a state holiday for Martin Luther King.
*NAACP
they’re not characterizing it as a power grab, brother. they’re simply saying it has a strong component of political positioning. can you deny that it does? they are politicians after all.
to their shame, clinton and carter did not apologize for lynching (to my knowledge), but note also that they did not need to do so for any positioning purpose. in any case, we’re talking about the legislature here. it’s a fact that in both parties mofos are angling toward the primaries, and there will be plenty of candidates, thus there must be lots of positioning.
in that context allen may simply be trying to stave off a glaring problem in his record. if he doesn’t launch this apology, all his competitors will shove the noose and flag incidents in his face. show up at his rallies with nooses, like they sent people to kerry rallies with flip-flops.
don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have an apology, and if i were in the senate i’d vote for it too. but politics is politics. always has been, always will be.
peace
I think Manish’s question was very apt; seriously, do you sit around watching Mr. Smith Goes To Washington all day? 🙂
In seriousness, I rarely do anything that has consequences for me without at least considering those consequences, and I’m not in electoral politics. Sometimes I transcend that thinking and sometimes not. It’s very human, I think. If not, I guess I should run for office, because I imagine, given the nature of what politicians do, this trait is exacerbated to the point of caricature in American politicians (I use American only because it’s what I’m most familiar with).
Especially among people thinking about running for President. Especially when people have reason to invoke symbolic actions in order to affect a present-day political issue (like Abhi pointed out). And they have a track record of doing such things throughout the course of their adult lives 😉
All you have to do is think about the costs and benefits for the individual concerned and incorporate that into your analysis of the moral worth of the actions.
Desis still referred as Hindu in Spain as we saw during Madrid Bombing
A quote from it:
Sorry for that tangential comment !!! I see that the discussion has moved on to contemparary US politics…
who is maureen dowd?
Wiki it.
The highly authoritative About.com weighs in on this:
So it refers to, as it once did in English, anyone from India. Not clear if it means all desis, though. Perhaps because their colonization involved destroying indio societies instead of desi societies, they had to adapt different lingo than the Brits and the rest of the people that now speak their language. Just speculation.
In any case, it’s helpful to be able to know how to describe myself now in Spanish; it’s very frustrating to keep saying “indio, indio!” and get odd looks 🙂
the french also used to call all desis “hindus.” in the past 20 years or so the confusion has been pretty systematically cleared up, so you definitely won’t find the mistake in the french papers. but in popular parlance you might still run into it. in french-speaking africa, indian movies (which are very popular) are referred to as “films hindous.”
i think it all stems back basically to the common colonial british use of “Hindoos” and the adaptation of that exoticizing term into other european languages.
peace and semantics, siddhartha
On Filibusters:
You don’t have to think the GOP is evil to see that this is just about political positioning.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Filibuster was the GOP’s number 1 strategy. They used it on everything, all the time. The Dems ran the Congres for years and years, and tolerated it.
All politicians are genetically hypocrites, but with Republicans the trait is phenotypically expressed more often. (Someone should do a study)
What does GOP stand for?
GOP stands for Grand Old Party, and it refers to the Republican Party here in the U.S.
maybe razib can do his hardy weinberg analysis on that one, lol !
I meant if Vinod is David Brooks, who is Maureen Dowd? what abt Krugman and Friedman?
Thanks Sajit.
LOL….I love the crude diagram of the snake charmer on that poster
Anyway, while the United States (and other western nations) have their historical wrongs committed against others, lets be cognizant of the fact that ethnocentrism is a part fo virtually all cultures including desi culture. Also modern day anti-racism is also a western creation. I think the reason people get more hysterical about western racism is the fact that western racism was put into action with the turbo charged boost of western science to implement it. Thus a small number of westerners from the small continent of Europe could go on to repopulate North America, Australia and to some extent South America in addition to dominating civilizations like India and China. I think what annoys people is not that whites are any more racist than other peoples but that they have been more successful in getting what they have wanted due to scientific and technological superiority
Funny, but what seems to be absent in almost all the news accounts is that for almost 100 years, it was the Democratic party that was stifled anti-lynching laws. When mainstream Republcians suggest that drawing legislative districts to produce a black winner is an improper application of the Voting Rights Act, the press equates it to the return of Jim Crow. But the Democrats’ century long opposition to lynching law and voting rights for blacks is sent down the memory hole. Now, they are simply called “Southern Senators.”
KXB, they switched parties. The old Dems = the new Republicans. Just like Lincoln, party ID switches, attitudes stay the same.
Manish,
Sorry, but while that may be the initial instinct, it’s more complicated than that. (I always thought it was the Left that sought out complexity.) Formerly solid Republican states such as California and Illinois have increasingly voted Democratic. Is this a case of old Republicans simply becoming new Democrats?
For all the criticisms of white Southern Democrats simply switching party labels to preserve their hold on power – it’s not quite as strong as Republican critics (or their boosters hope). The South boasts more black mayors, more black members of their statehouses, more black judges in local circuit courts than their liberal Democratic majority neighbors to the north. The South may go Republican come election time, but at the local and state level it is a far more competitive political marketplace than Massachusetts or Illinois (where the GOP has pretty much imploded).
just to add to KXB…. I’ve always found it fascinating that historically, the anti-slavery / pro-civil rights movement was started (in large part) by a group today that would be known as the evangelical / religious right.
Another interesting wrinkle is that a good part of the axis around which southern Repubs & Dems flipped w.r.t. courting Blacks was the interplay of Civil Rights & small government Libertarianism. Southern Repubs effectively wished to extend negative rights which attempted to remove govt barriers from Black lives. Where the Dems came in & won back the southern / black vote was via positive rights (Affirmative action & its ilk being a rather dramatic examples) which reversed the course & significantly grew the role of Govt in black lives….
How many times must we have this argument before we acknowledge that for relevant political discussions today about the South (at minimum), the Republican Party should be understood in the context of post 1964, not before? While it’s certainly interesting and important that FDR opposed anti-lynching laws, that doesn’t mean it’s as relevant to understanding the Presidential election of 2004 as, say, Southern opposition to the progressive legislation of the 1960s, voodoo economics, and the rise of the Christian Right (among other things). Otherwise, I’m going to start introducing points about about Democratic Republicans, Whigs, and Free-Soilers and the election of 1860 solely to throw a tantrum.
KXB, a good illustrative figure here is Strom Thurmond. Strom Thurmond started leaving the Democrats in 1948 (and ran for President, carrying four Southern states) because of Southern White Supremacism. He later left entirely in 1964. And, as we know, he was among the most conservative of Republicans by the end of his career a few years ago.
Vinod, the relevant opposition in talking about “courting Blacks” is not big government vs. small government libertarianism–its Black people’s welfare vs. White supremacism. What you’re talking about are tactics that the parties and other interested people adopted to further their political ends. Similarly, today, if the Democrats were a little smarter, they would start talking about devolution of power to the states now because it’s in their political interests (and in the real-world interests of their constituents, if they actually give a $hit about that).
Imo, most of the time, structural issues like redistricting and federalism get subsumed to politics. e.g., (I think) the CPI(M) in India and the Republican Party of the 1970s and 1980s here both supported devolution of power from the center to the states 🙂
Off topic, why is this post called “Get a rope”?
I’m sure I’m missing something. I have an ACLU anti-death penalty t-shirt that prominently displays a noose (which is broken, but no one knows). I get a lot of looks until people see the back or ask me what it is. That’s what I’m doing here.
Stumbled across you guys by accident but find you all very interesting. NRI from South Africa and yes we too are referred to as Hindus. Anyway do you guys always get so heavy into US politics or do you actually chill and discuss stuff some of us on this end could get into?
This has sooo much potential to balloon way off topic so I’m going to leave it with a simple statement –
For many folks, particularly of a socialist bend, and obviously including yourself, the failure to provision positive rights is intrinsicly racist.
For others, particularly of a libertarian bend, positive rights possess their own a priori issues and are a question completely independent of racism. To oppose many types of positive rights is not axiomatically racist.
Saurav,
Considering how frequently you blame colonialism for many modern day ills in the developing world, I have to smile to myself when you ask me to keep my focus to events in the here and now.
nesa,
well, for what it’s worth you are getting a good glimpse of the politican debate in the US, and the very interesting, contradictory ways in which desis are caught up in it. i would attempt to characterize those ways here, but really the dialogue speaks for itself. i would imagine that there are some faint echoes and reverberations over there in south africa.
as for people being fixated on us politics, well, most of the people here are in the us (especially the bloggers themselves), and the political climate here is so tense that it can almost not be helped. however what is great about this medium is that anyone and everyone can help move it. if you and others in south africa or elsewhere manifest yourselves frequently and with interesting ideas, i for one — and surely many others — will happily follow you!
peace siddhartha
I’m happy anytime I make some smile, but my argument has never been that you need to always look at the causes that are furthest back in time in order to understand the present day; it’s to try and understand to the best of your ability which ones are being overemphasized or underemphasized in the analysis. More pertinently, the appropriate analogy to the system we call colonialism would be the system of U.S. White supremacism (in the broadest sense) that’s ingrained in the culture and law of the United States (and further back).
If you want to go there, that’s fine, but as Manish pointed out, that goes well beyond party identification in contemporary politics and is a fairly damning indictment of some of the sectional interests that are now in the Republican party. There’s a pretty direct line between the 3/5 and Connecticut compromise to slaveholder defenses resting on nullification to Calhoun’s call for two Presidents to the end of Reconstruction to the Democratic Party’s failure to address Black civil rights to the Republican party’s turn towards states rights, “the new federalism” and other means. Look into it.
You call that a simple statement? It’s so loaded with assumptions that I could write a thesis deconstructing it. But I have a meeting.
I don’t have the courage to be a socialist. I’m not sure I would be one even if I did. I’m more of a humanistic, somewhat individualist social democrat but I think your beliefs (which shift as well) are more important than the label you apply to yourself.
I don’t have much patience for arbitrary disctinctions between positive rights and negative rights which are rooted in a particular ideology and devoid of any social context. The only thing I was trying to point out is that opposition at play was not one of ideological views on structure (which are a political tool of convenience) as much as social forces, sectional interests, group disempowerment (i.e. civil rights), etc. It has had to do with both positive (providing health care) and negative (freedom to vote, not get kiklled, etc.) rights in the course of American history (although I agree that the destruction of American Apartheid has shifted the focus more towards the provision of thigns rather than keeping individuals and groups from undermining Black people.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/06/senate-offices-intentionally-lying.html
Link
Here’s the list of the only Senators that haven’t cosponsored this resolution (now almost a week later), from AMERICAblog, the same site that sluggo pointed out:
Lamar Alexander (R-TN) – (202) 224-4944 Robert Bennett (R-UT) – (202) 224-5444 Thad Cochran (R-MS) – (202) 224-5054 John Cornyn (R-TX) – (202) 224-2934 Michael Crapo (R-ID) – (202) 224-6142 Michael Enzi (R-WY) – (202) 224-3424 Chuck Grassley (R-IA) – (202) 224-3744 Judd Gregg (R-NH) – (202) 224-3324 Orrin Hatch (R-UT) – (202) 224-5251 Kay Hutchison (R-TX) – (202) 224-5922 Jon Kyl (R-AZ) – (202) 224-4521 Trent Lott (R-MS) – (202) 224-6253 Richard Shelby (R-AL) – (202) 224-5744 John Sununu (R-NH) – (202) 224-2841 Craig Thomas (R-WY) – (202) 224-6441
14 Republican Senators refuse to condemn federal inaction to stop lynchings, even though they could have done so at any point in the past week??? I’m actually suprised by this, because this either means these 14 people are really dumb or they think their constituents and funders are more f@#ked up than I thought they were. 🙁
This is really depressing.
Just look at the states they represent. Starting with good ole Lamar Alexander, from Tennessee, birthplace of the KKK.