OBAMARAMA
BARACK OBAMA'S PLATFORM ON CIVIL RIGHTS

Taking my buddy Matt's challenge to find out what Obama's all about. From Obama's campaign website:

Barack Obama's Plan

Strengthen Civil Rights Enforcement

Obama will reverse the politicization that has occurred in the Bush Administration's Department of Justice. He will put an end to the ideological litmus tests used to fill positions within the Civil Rights Division.

Combat Employment Discrimination

Obama will work to overturn the Supreme Court's recent ruling that curtails racial minorities' and women's ability to challenge pay discrimination. Obama will also pass the Fair Pay Act to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work.

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes

Obama will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice's Criminal Section.

End Deceptive Voting Practices

Obama will sign into law his legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who have engaged in voter fraud and provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote.

End Racial Profiling

Obama will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.

Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support

Obama will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.

Eliminate Sentencing Disparities

Obama believes the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.

Expand Use of Drug Courts

Obama will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.

See the rest of Obama's policy positions here.

Well, none of this is bad stuff. However, generally speaking, I wonder how he's going to pull off most of this without addressing the central issue with civil rights in America, lingering racial attitudes, or without mandating multicultural education in some way for everybody.

Specifics:

Bush has indeed gone a long way toward turning Department of Justice civil rights enforcement into the exact opposite of what one might understand the term "civil rights" to be, stacking the department with lawyers who want to help out white people who believe they've faced discrimination, and supporting the recent Supreme Court decision that makes it virtually impossible for women who have been paid less than men for the same work to win lawsuits against their employers. But reversing Bush policies simply takes us back eight years to 2000.

What is he going to do to move enforcement forward? How is he going to deal with problems that Clinton wasn't addressing?

Also along these lines, I'm curious as to how, exactly he's going to get the far right-wing of the Supreme Court to allow a reversal of the above mentioned decision. Conservatives have been trying for almost forty years to reverse Roe v Wade, and have failed spectacularly: why does Obama think he can do what they cannot, reverse a high court decision?

The Fair Pay Act sounds fantastic, if it actually means what its name suggests.

As for hate crimes enforcement, I continue to wonder if such laws actually do anything other than make people feel good about the universe, but I have no problem with stepping enforcement up in this area.

Going after vote fraud is great and desperately needed. However, this is one wickedly tangled knot, as the Florida 2000 debacle, and other cases illustrate. Is Obama, who has very strategically stayed away from racial rhetoric, up to the task of publicly embracing the fact that Bush won the White House by illegally disenfranchising tens of thousands of black voters in Florida? This has been a poison subject for virtually all Democrats in public office. In order to really do something about these hardcore dirty electoral tricks, Obama's going to have to say some things very loudly that a lot of Americans don't want to hear.

To make such reform effective, Obama stands the chance of losing his whole "unity" vibe.

Ending racial profiling is great. But facing the entrenched cop cultural attitudes I've written about repeatedly in my QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES posts is going to be extraordinarily difficult when you get right down to it. How will this be enforced if cops don't admit that they're doing it, and other cops refuse to spill the beans about their racist brethren?

Good luck on this, Barack.

Ex-offender support is definitely a step in the right direction. But it is very interesting to note that Obama says nothing about the medieval conditions inside our prisons that play an even bigger factor in creating repeat offenders, not to mention the fact that the rapes, murders, and other chronic violence in prison constitute gross civil rights violations in and of themselves.

Why won't Obama clean up our prisons and make them more reform oriented?

On sentencing disparities, I think we're already moving in that direction. But it's a good thought, to be sure.

More drug courts are good, too. I know a couple of guys here in the Big Easy who would be in prison right now, being primed for a life of crime and waste, if not for a similar program. But why not take the plunge and push for decriminalization, or even, gasp, legalization? Yeah yeah, I know, it's politically "impossible." But that's what we need strong leadership for, right?

Overall, as I wrote above, this is good stuff. But for the most part, I see them as band-aids over the proverbial gaping wound. That is, if Obama doesn't couple all these proposals with a strong dose of straight up propaganda, fiery and continued usage of the "bully pulpit," we'll have some new laws and approaches to enforcement that may not really count for much in the long run. We've been in the anti-civil rights Dirty Harry era since the early 70s, and those attitudes are still strong in many parts of the country. If Obama doesn't challenge this cultural strain directly, he will fail to truly get the "change" he's promising everybody.

In short, my criticism of Barack Obama in this area is typical of my criticism of most Democrats in most areas: too weak, not enough, mostly talk, probably ineffective. Prove me wrong, Obama.

More to come.

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