Jailbreak Press

In a remarkable interview with USA Today Clinton made it clear why she thinks she should be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008- She’s White. Obama isn’t. She can win over “hard working White Americans.” Obama can’t. Case closed. Apparently there is no road too low for the Clinton camp as long as it leads to the nomination. (more…)

Never before has empirical data counted for so little among pundits in a nominating race. Clinton’s 9 point victory in Pennsylvania has lead the political class over the deep end with coverage about Obama’s alleged problems with the party’s White working class and his inability to win crucial states in the general. Clinton’s talking points on electability have finally sunk in with the mainstream press. (more…)

An educated Black man is still a relatively rare specimen in contemporary America. Only about 8 percent of Black males have Bachelor’s Degrees. Due to this fact Black males are often in demand in circles that value diversity. I’m sure that this sometimes has lead a few institutions to lower standards and cut Black men slack that others might not be given. Occasionally this has serious repercussions. The New York Times- a Hillary Clinton endorser- got into trouble with Jason Blair, a young, Black, charismatic reporter who talked his way to the top and turned out to be fraud. It should also be pointed out that ‘Black slack’ is more than offset by the old white boys network, and the kind of favors they do for one another pale in comparison. (more…)

The specter of Black leaders like Charles Rangel, Andrew Young and BET President Robert Johnson dissing Barack Obama- while cuddling up to the Clintons was enough to make me spend a minute to take a second look at the Clinton record on race and its lasting effects on the Black community. I’m still debating whether the fact that so many African Americans to this day regard the Clintons as some sort of Black saviors is a testament to our gullibility or their political acumen. Either way the record needs to be set straight about the Clinton years and what they meant for African Americans. This is a step in that direction. (more…)

Conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and Michael Gerson have claimed in recent Washington Post columns that in his March 18th speech on race, Barack Obama tried to equate his grandmother’s fear of Black males passing on the street and Geraldine Ferraro’s comments about Obama’s political fortunes being based on his blackness with the “vitriolic and anti-American” comments of his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He didn’t do that. What he did was describe the roots and expressions of racial resentment that Americans carry with them and suggest that at least some of them stem from legitimate fears. By acknowledging and validating these sentiments he tried to open up a conversation about race that begins with a mutual concession- all Americans have felt pain, resentment, invisibility and misunderstanding connected to their race at some point and the beginning of healing is the validation of all of those emotions and reactions on all sides. (more…)

Sarah Jane Olson’s arrest at an airport and re-incarceration only a few days after being released from prison is the latest example of the failure of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to shift its culture from one based on punishment and prisoner recycling to rehabilitation and community re-integration. The old punishment culture that produced the determinate sentencing regime in the late 1970’s made it next to impossible to release inmates that no longer poised a threat to public safety. By taking away discretion in sentencing from parole boards and Judges the State has left thousands of inmates languishing in prison long after they’ve been rehabilitated. (more…)

Mitt Romney had to directly address religion during his primary run in order to assuage the concerns of a critical part of the Republican Party base. Now Obama must speak up about race in order to make clear to all Americans how he views himself in relation to this country’s racial history and contemporary race controversies. Every new week seems to bring fresh calls for Obama to denounce another prominent Black in order to prove how patriotic or politically mainstream he is. This will not stop. If he doesn’t draw a line and more importantly explain where and why he’s drawing the line, these demands are sure to become more audacious and demeaning. Obama had wished this could wait until after the nomination. Clinton’s continued presence in the race has made the issue more immediate.

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