Jonathan P. Baird

Part of the conservative counter-revolution against wokeism is un-learning lessons learned about racism in America from the civil rights movement and black liberation movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. In that era, the systemic roots of racism and the black historical experience in America were laid bare. A better understanding of American history, that included an understanding of racism, emerged.

Now we have conservatives consistently attacking things like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (or DEI) programs, the 1619 Project and critical race theory. This is an effort to turn back the clock and to restore white supremacy.

When the door plug blew out of an Alaskan Airlines plane, billionaire Elon Musk, without any proof, blamed the incident on Boeing’s diversity programs. Boeing made the plane in question. Musk said:

“Do you want to fly in an airplane when they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is really happening!”

Of course, that is not happening. No connection has been established between the door plug blowing off the Boeing 737 Max 9 and any diversity program. A far more persuasive case can be made that corporate greed, the lack of regulation and the pressure to prioritize profits over quality were behind the incident.

When a wheel came off a Boeing 757 just before take off on a Delta flight on January 20, Donald Trump Jr. said,

“I’m sure this has nothing to do with mandated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices in the airline industry!!!”

Trump Jr. has also cited no evidence. It is enough to plant the idea that diversity initiatives are compromising safety. Trump Jr. was followed by far-right leader Charlie Kirk saying, “I’m sorry. If I see a black pilot, I’m going to be like, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified”.”The racism could not be clearer: for Kirk, being black equates with incompetence.

Kirk obscures the deeper problem which is that the airlines have done a lousy job with minority hiring. According to a 2022 report on the demographics of the airline industry, only 2% of pilots are black. Over the last ten years, the number of black pilots has fluctuated between 1%-2%. The problem isn’t incompetent black pilots – it is almost no black pilots.

Blaming DEI is not some accident. As the New York Times just exposed, it is part of a plan devised by conservative activists and academics to abolish DEI which they see as part of “the leftist social justice revolution”. They are about stigmatizing any idea perceived as left wing.

The Times showed how the anti-DEI movement was centered at a think tank, the Claremont Institute in California, which has close MAGA ties. Trump coup lawyer John Eastman hails from Claremont.

An association of Republican operatives, right wing philanthropies and donors and political groups have coordinated anti-DEI advocacy in multiple states including Alabama, Maine, Florida, Tennessee and Texas. They have exchanged model legislation and have gotten more than 20 states to pursue the banning of DEI. Texas has approved such legislation, removing DEI from all public institutions of higher learning.

Their argument is that racial diversity and DEI programs corrupt public education. These folks do not wear Klan robes but their arguments encapsulate America’s societal backsliding on racism. Feeling like America is moving backwards on race is not just subjective. Claremont Institute and others of its ilk are pushing backwards. In its decision on affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court is moving in the same backwards direction.

Possibly older readers who lived through the 1960’s will remember the Kerner Commission report. I mention it because it was such a significant signpost of the 1960’s. Following riots that broke out in cities all over America, President Lyndon Johnson created a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders led by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. The report they produced became known as the Kerner Commission report.

The report examined the causes of racial unrest in urban America. It found white racism as the culprit leading to pervasive discrimination in employment, education and housing. The report famously concluded:

“Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.”

Instead of heeding the recommendations of the Kerner Commission, white backlash led to the election of supposedly law and order candidate Richard Nixon with his southern strategy. The nation never listened to the Kerner Commission. Residential segregation remains to this day an overwhelming fact of life.across America as does school segregation. While the nation is more diverse, school segregation between black and white students has returned to 1960’s levels.

The re-segregation came after both the Nixon and Reagan administrations fought school desegregation plans. The federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, failed to defend desegregation plans.

All the news is not bad, however. Black Americans are much better educated than they were in 1968. 90% of younger African-Americans have graduated high school compared to just over 50% in 1968. More than twice as many black students have college degrees as in 1968.

The educational gains have translated into some improvements in wages and wealth but the median white family has roughly ten times as much wealth as the typical black family. Blacks are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites. Police brutality and high levels of incarceration continue as a plague condition for black Americans.

As we approach black history month, intellectual honesty requires a recognition that, regardless of what conservatives say, white racism remains the same culprit it was in 1968. What’s different is even less willingness to face this truth. This was reflected in Nikki Haley’s statement to Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, “We’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country”.

Before he was assassinated, Dr. King called the Kerner Commission report “a physician’s warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life”.

We remain an amnesiac society. The story we want to tell about American history is not remotely close to the truth. Any progress we make on race is followed by lengthy periods of regression. That was true after Reconstruction, after the civil rights movement and the deep freeze continues now.

The political willingness to create a desegregated, multi-racial democracy is lacking. Racial gerrymandering and voter suppression schemes are the norm while the U.S. Supreme Court presides over it all, weakening the Voting Rights Act. Only by facing and engaging the racism will we ever be able to transcend it.

My sister, Lisa Baird, was an immigration attorney. Before she died in 2009, she had a very active private practice in Philadelphia where she represented people who were seeking asylum and trying to avoid deportation from the United States.

Lisa had a wide variety of clients including a Ugandan child soldier, Salvadoran asylum seekers, victims of female genital mutilation, Vietnamese boat people, Japanese and Chinese restaurant workers and an Indonesian woman of Chinese ancestry who was persecuted for being ethnically Chinese and Christian in a society that was predominantly Muslim.

Earlier in her legal career, Lisa had worked for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society also known as HIAS. Historically HIAS had focused on helping Russian Jews who were trying to emigrate to the United States. Lisa played a role in moving HIAS toward representing a far wider client base. She had met with some resistance inside HIAS about the clients she was representing.

Readers may remember that the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was obsessed with HIAS because it was Jewish and it helped refugees. Before his attack, the shooter posted on social media:

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.”

With the shooter in mind, I couldn’t help but think about my sister’s role in moving HIAS toward a goal of broader immigration representation. In his demented way, the shooter was talking about Lisa and others like her. The stories my sister told about her clients often had similar themes. Many of her clients had lived in the United States for decades without incident. Typically there was some crime or incident of bad judgment earlier in their life that came back to haunt their immigration case.

In hearing Lisa’s stories, I was always struck by the specificity and uniqueness of her clients’ situations. Her clients were often fully integrated into American life and far removed from earlier foreign residences. They were almost exactly like other Americans except for the matter of their immigration status. Who they got as a judge often made a big difference in their chance of success in their immigration case, Her clients wanted what other Americans wanted: a chance to live a good life, with their family.

Over the course of the last fifteen years, since my sister’s death, there has been a worsening in how immigration is talked about. What passes for public discussion is the opposite of the specificity that I learned from my sister. Immigrants are talked about as an undifferentiated mass. Rather than individuals with personal stories, they became a faceless horde and, without basis, they are blamed by politicians for the nation’s problems.

I would suggest the scapegoating of immigrants is rooted in racism. The MAGA narrative is the great replacement theory where black and brown immigrants are seen as replacing those Tucker Carlson calls “legacy Americans” which means white people. The false accusation is that somehow illegal immigrants will magically become eligible Democratic voters skewing the electorate away from the interests of white people.

Former President Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as “shithole nations” and he expressed a preference for immigrants from Norway. Trump baselessly disparaged Haitians saying “hundreds of thousands are fleeing in and probably have AIDS”. In December he said immigrants from South America, Africa and Asia are “poisoning the blood of the nation”. He has touted the Eisenhower-era Operation Wetback as a model he would emulate.

These racist comments are consistent with an immigration system that is institutionally racist. Its origins go back to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. More recently, black and brown immigrants face disproportionate detention and deportation. We create more and more hurdles for Central Americans seeking asylum. The conditions of confinement in ICE detention facilities remain abysmal and inhumane. Trashy treatment is considered acceptable for people who are viewed as trash.

Lost is the fact that noncitizens are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the United States. The blame associated with immigrants is rooted in fear – not facts. Nor do we ever consider the American responsibility for why so many people are fleeing from Central America. As Douglas Massey, a professor at Princeton has written about Central American migration:

“ The migration from there is the direct result of U.S. interventions in the 1980’s. Back then, the U.S. intervened directly in El Salvador and Honduras, on the side of right-wing/military regimes, and the Reagan administration enthusiastically endorsed a similar government in Guatemala that carried out a genocide against indigenous people in the Mayan highlands.”

The awfulness of our treatment of immigrants was driven home by the recent deaths of three migrants, including two children, who drowned near Eagle Pass, Texas. The deaths were unnecessary. Texas state authorities blocked the U.S. Border Patrol from accessing 2.5 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border near Eagle Pass. They made a potential rescue impossible. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement:

“The Texas governor’s policies are cruel, dangerous and inhumane and Texas’s blatant disregard for federal authority over immigration poses grave risks.”

This is a statement from the federal government – not advocates. Under Texas Senate Bill 4, the state is trying to usurp authority from the federal government even though it is well-settled law that immigration laws can only be enforced by the federal government. The Border Patrol has sole legal authority to search for noncitizens within 25 miles of the border.

Texas has been particularly vicious in installing concertina wire fencing on private property along the Rio Grande river. It has also installed a stretch of orange spherical buoys loaded with razor wire in the Rio Grande to deter and trap migrants trying to cross the river. Texas state troopers found a dead body lodged in the buoys last August.

The federal government had to sue at the Supreme Court to stop Texas’s ultra-aggressive anti-immigration initiatives and by a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court just blocked Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, along with other Republicans is using immigration as a wedge political issue. Democrats have only weakly responded. Too often border security is demagogued for political gain.

We are in one of those periods in American life where there is a widespread reluctance and refusal to recognize both the legacy of racism and its current incarnation. Racial denialism doesn’t serve America. It is almost delusional to see Republican primary voters in places like Iowa or New Hampshire cite border security as a major concern. This is not a problem at their doorstep.

The great majority of immigrants seeking refuge and asylum in the United States have compelling personal stories. No one would make the dangerous trek to our southern border if they didn’t have very good reasons. Rather than a Fox News stereotype, progress would be looking at those seeking entry into the U.S. as individuals with complex stories who deserve due process and an individualized determination on immigration eligibility.

One news story that failed to garner much traction over the last week or two was the House Democrats’ report on how, during the Trump presidency, his businesses obtained $7.8 million from foreign governments. This includes $5.5 million China spent at Trump Tower in New York and at Trump hotels in Washington DC and Las Vegas. Another $2 million came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The report indicates twenty countries monetarily fed Trump businesses during his presidency.

Democrats have demanded that Trump return the $7.8 million foreign governments paid his companies then.

The Constitution prohibits any officeholder, including the President, from accepting money, payments or gifts “of any kind whatever” from foreign governments unless the President obtains “the consent of Congress”. It is what is called the foreign emoluments clause. It is Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution. The framers created this prophylactic rule to guard against foreign governments purchasing undue influence.

When he was asked about it on January 10, Trump responded that “it was a small amount of money” and “I was doing services for them…I don’t get eight million for doing nothing”. Trump never sought the consent of Congress. He never divested or put his businesses in a blind trust as advised by ethics experts. Although he said his sons managed his businesses, he retained ownership and control.

Trump’s violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause couldn’t be any clearer. His businesses during his presidency accepted millions from foreign governments. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) commented:

“The governments making these payments sought specific foreign policy outcomes from President Trump and his administration. Each dollar…accepted violated the Constitution’s strict prohibition on payments from foreign governments, which the founders enacted to prevent presidents from selling U.S. foreign policy to foreign leaders.”

Saudi Arabia immediately comes to mind. The Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, had to try and overcome the vicious and disgraceful crime of assassinating the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. What better way to curry favor with Trump than to throw money at his properties.

To date, there has been a failure of accountability around violation of the emoluments clause. This fits in with the more general failure of courts over the last 50 years to hold Trump accountable. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed two emoluments cases and declined to rule on them. In the next year we will see if this general failure of accountability continues or not.

The House Democrats had great difficulty even getting the information that was the basis for their report. They had to litigate to gain access to only a portion of Trump’s business records. Their report was not based on complete information so it is highly likely the amount of money Trump obtained from foreign governments during his presidency was higher. The House Committee did not receive documents regarding at least 80% of Trump business entities.

After the Democrats won the court battle for release of records, Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, cut ties with Trump and his businesses. Mazars said it would no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it had prepared. Then, when the Republicans won control of the House, they dropped the effort to force Mazars to produce documents about Trump’s business activities.

You could look at this history as an accounting firm not wanting to be part of a fraud followed by an effort by Republicans to cover up.

I think it is fair to say that Trump’s disregard for the emoluments clause showcases his utter contempt for the rule of law. His actions demonstrate that he doesn’t believe law applies to him. I believe he sees law as a nuisance to be circumvented.

The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written that “the essence of authoritarianism is getting away with crimes”. Trump may have been the first president to conceive of the presidency as primarily a money-making opportunity for himself and his family. Because of his multiple court cases, he is constantly asking his followers for money and he is literally running to stay out of jail.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have reported that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump made between $172 million and $640 million in outside money during Trump’s White House years. The information comes from the couple’s financial disclosures. In addition, Kushner received $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund six months after leaving the White House.

In her book, Strongmen, Ben-Ghiat argues “the core of the contract between the ruler and his enablers is the offer of power and economic gain in exchange for supporting his violent actions and his suppression of civil rights”. It seems undeniable that a significant chunk of Trump followers buy into his Big Lie of election fraud and his January 6 defense.

About strongmen like Trump, Ben-Ghiat goes on to say:

“They turn the economy into an instrument of leader wealth creation but also encourage changes in ethical and behavioral norms to make things that were illegal or immoral appear acceptable, whether election fraud, torture or sexual assault.”

That fits our former president to a T. Trump follows the ethically sleazy example of his former (now deceased) disbarred attorney, Roy Cohn. When attacked, always counter-attack immediately. Charge your opponent with whatever you have done. No matter how bad things get, always claim victory and never admit defeat.

Ethics is not a word that exists in the Trump vocabulary. He uses lawyers to run out the clock to avoid accountability. Emoluments was just something that got in the way of the money making. If Trump wins the presidency again, expect an ethical free-fall as he will undoubtedly try to cash in to the max.

Part of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in America is the failure to recognize and acknowledge key black leaders in the black freedom struggle. Paul Robeson is one such leader. In my own informal poll of friends, I have found many people have not heard of him.

A powerful singer, an accomplished actor, an extremely versatile athlete and a hardcore activist, Robeson was all of those. In the 1930’s-1940’s he was a central figure standing up for multi-racial democracy and opposing fascism. His story is very well told in a new graphic biography, Ballad of an American. The superb artwork and text are done by Sharon Rudahl and Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware did editing.

Robeson was a lion of the left, defending the interests of working people nationally and internationally. His activism spanned diverse causes. He was intensely committed to civil rights at home. He supported Spanish Republicans in the Spanish civil war as well as Welsh miners in England. He spoke at innumerable benefits and rallies.

From the very beginning his story was remarkable. He was born in 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey. His father William was a slave and fled north on the Underground Railroad. He later became pastor of a black Presbyterian church in Princeton. William Robeson lost his job for speaking out about lynching and the family had to move to Somerville New Jersey, then a less prosperous, more working class community.

When he was six, his mother died tragically in a house fire. After working as a coachman and an ash hauler, William secured a new parish. Paul received much help growing up from friends connected to his father’s church. He grew up in the church, assisting his father and even giving sermons when his father was away.

Paul was an outstanding student in high school. He excelled in everything he tried. He was a soloist in his high school glee club. He played Othello in a class parody of Shakespeare’s play. He played baseball, basketball and football. He was especially talented at football, playing fullback.

Robeson won a four year full scholarship to Rutgers University. He was able to win the scholarship because he achieved the highest score on a competitive state wide exam. He went on to become valedictorian at Rutgers and he made Phi Beta Kappa. He was one of two black students on campus.

He played college football at Rutgers. He faced intense racism from fans and opposing players who frequently tried to hurt him. Some Southern colleges refused to play a team with a black athlete. When Rutgers played in the South, he had to house and eat apart from the rest of the team because of segregation. Paul played four sports in college, winning 15 varsity letters.

Paul wrote his senior thesis on the unrealized promise of the Fourteenth Amendment. He wrote:

“We of the less favored race realize that our future lies chiefly in our own hands..Virtues of self-reliance, self-respect, perseverance and industry…Black and white shall clasp friendly hands in consciousness of the fact that we are brethren and that God is the father of us all.”

After college, Paul attended Columbia Law School. To earn money, he played pro football in the newly formed National Football League. Both his football career and his law career were cut short because he started acting and singing.

He got a stage opportunity performing in two Eugene O’Neill plays for the Provincetown Players. He got rave reviews for his roles in All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones. He also started performing solo concerts singing spirituals. For anyone who has never heard Robeson sing, his songs are easily accessible on the internet. I would recommend Swing Low Sweet Chariot and Ole Man River.

Robeson also performed in Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern’s Showboat. He had a beautiful voice. Showboat was such a success that it led to other opportunities. He again played Othello. He started recording songs and he played in movies.

In that era, black performers’ opportunities were narrowly circumscribed because of racism. Blackface minstrel shows were the norm and had been the norm for a long time. Robeson broke out of that racist framework to become widely popular. In that endeavor he got great support from his wife Eslanda and his accompanist for four decades, Lawrence Brown.

It was during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt that Robeson achieved his greatest popularity. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the world faced the threat of looming fascism. Americans of almost all political stripes formed a Popular Front to oppose fascism. Many people came to recognize the danger fascism represented. Robeson performed a song, Ballad for Americans, that became an anthem for these Americans.

The song was written for the government’s Works Progress Administration. Robeson sang it in November 1939 on a national radio broadcast. It was listened to widely. Robeson toured the country, finishing with a performance at the Hollywood Bowl. His performance garnered the largest crowd ever at that venue.

I think Robeson’s example is directly relevant to our time. We now face a fascist threat from the candidacy of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. All Americans, whether conservative, moderate, liberal or progressive, need to unite to protect our democracy and the rule of law. The example of the Popular Front that existed during FDR’s time is a good model to emulate.

After World War 2, Robeson met with President Harry Truman and urged Truman to pass anti-lynching legislation. Truman told Robeson it was not the time. The racism in America was so deep-seated that Truman could not break with Southern Democrats who remained segregationist.

After that, Robeson experienced reversals of fortune, During the McCarthy period, Robeson was redbaited, blacklisted and the government revoked his passport. He remained widely popular in Europe but he was not allowed to leave the United States. The House Un-American Activities Committee or HUAC called Robeson and his wife to testify. In May 1956, Robeson told HUAC:

“Because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part in it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?

In June 1958, the Supreme Court restored Robeson’s passport. Justice William O. Douglas wrote, “the right to travel is one of a citizen’s inalienable rights”.

Paul Robeson opened the door for later generations of African American artists. He boldly and bravely opposed racism in a time before there was a mass civil rights movement. Robeson was a symbol of hope and a bulwark for the ideal of racial egalitarianism.