Forty
years later, people are re-examining the Kerner Commission
Report-- in an attempt to see how far we've come. The Kerner Report, you may
recall, was commissioned by LBJ to analyze the conditions that ignited the 1967
race riots. Harold
Jackson's piece sought to draw a parallel between those times, and these
times, tugging on scary statistics and scarier visions of the insidious,
creeping "quiet riot" of drug abuse, vandalism and rampant pound cake
larceny that is "disproportionately occurring in many low-income black
neighborhoods today." He concludes his piece—Tavis Smiley-stylee—laying
out a plan on how to stop the people who "haunt the nightly news"
from rioting. It read like a trailer for a horror movie.
Jesus
Christ on a Skateboard.
OK,
so there's no "quiet riot" afoot—that's just country-club code for
Black Behaving Badly. What we need is the right leadership who will
unabashedly court the Pookie Vote—those among us, black and white, who looked
at all the work it takes to achieve The Dream in America, and decided to opt
out in favor of just subsisting. Going into Ohio
and Texas,
Democrats need Pookie more than ever. Not only is The Pookie Vote vote
critical, but the only way to stop rural American and our inner-cities from
circling the toilet bowl is to address them head on, because these are the
people knocking over liquor stores, stealing copper and selling half-bottle of
anti-freeze. They need to feel invested, not desperate and alienated. Class,
not color fuels the despair that leads to crime and violence. I spent
time in Lexington, Kentucky and the nightly news was rife with
exploits of Meth Heads doing stuff that would make your favorite crack-head
balk. Poor folks of all colors need a champion. Pookie needs People.
Barack
Obama made a side-eyed reference to Pookie and Jethro some time ago, and it
may have been his ugliest misstep to date: whatever he says, the comment
clearly suggests he
has little regard for the Little People. Besides trying to harass him
off the couch and into the voting booth? We don't really know. But to get
Pookie, Poopie, Jethro, Lil Murder an'nem to the voting booth, politicians have
to offer hope to everyone, not just those already vested in the system. No one
seems to know what that kind of hope will look like, including me. But
more government talking down to poor people is never a good thing.
Going
forward, the way to prevent race riots in this country isn't to over-legislate
and inundate them with quick-fix programs and initiatives. We need leadership
who will listen, yes, but also have got to foster community, keep up with out
kin-folk and help them if we can—it's not government's job, even if they think
it is. But if they court the Pookie Vote, they've got to be willing to listen.
