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Appearance on CBS

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SPEAKING ABOUT AIME CESAIRE (Begins at 51:00)

Aime Cesaire, 1913-2008: Remembering the Life and Legacy of the Black Pride Poet and Anti-Colonial Activist

Aime Cesaire, the esteemed poet, writer, politician and anti-colonial activist from Martinique died on Thursday at the age of ninety-four. Cesaire is revered in the Francophone world as a leading figure in the movement for black consciousness and pride, which he called "Negritude." His use of culture to fight colonialism and racism influenced generations of activists and writers around the world. [includes rush transcript]

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Guest:

Robin Kelley, professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California. He is the author of several books including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. He also wrote the introduction to the new edition of Aime Cesaire’s 1955 essay, "Discourse on Colonialism."

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Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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AMY GOODMAN: We wrap up now with the death of Aime Cesaire, the esteemed poet, writer, politician and anti-colonial activist from Martinique, who died last Thursday at ninety-four years old. He is revered in the Francophone world as a leading figure in the movement of black consciousness and pride, which he called “Negritude.”

 

Cesaire was also a politician for a large part of his life. The Caribbean island of Martinique is administratively and politically a region of France, and its residents are French citizens. Cesaire served as the mayor of Martinique’s capital and the elected representative to the French Constituent Assembly for close to half a century.

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy led thousands of mourners at an official state funeral Sunday for Cesaire in Martinique. But in 2005 Cesaire had refused to meet Sarkozy because of a new law Sarkozy had proposed emphasizing the positive legacy of French colonialism.

 

Cesaire’s use of culture to fight colonialism and racism influenced generations of activists and writers around the world. Fellow Martiniquan author and revolutionary Frantz Fanon considered Cesaire to be his mentor.

 

Today, we’ll speak with Professor Robin Kelley about the life and legacy of Aime Cesaire. Kelley is a professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and the author of several books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. He also wrote the introduction to a new edition of Cesaire’s famous 1955 essay called “Discourse on Colonialism.” Professor Kelley joins us now from our firehouse studio in New York.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Kelley.

ROBIN KELLEY: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us who Aime Cesaire was.

ROBIN KELLEY: Well, Cesaire, among other things, was probably one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was an activist, a revolutionary ,who really demolished the maxim that poets make bad politicians. He’s someone who, throughout his life—of course, you mentioned he was one of the founders of, if not the founder of, the Negritude movement, beginning in 1935, when he wrote an essay coining that phrase.

On the one hand, Negritude, for him, was a recognition that Africa had value. And he had been reading Leo Frobenius’s book, History of African Civilization. But for him, you know, Africa having value and celebrating black pride wasn’t enough. He had a forward-looking vision, a post-colonial vision. And when he returned to Martinique with his wife, Suzanne Cesaire, who’s one of the greatest intellectuals of that era, as well, they edited a journal called Tropiques, which was a truly anti- colonial manifesto, in some ways, that combined surrealism, Pan-Africanism and Marxism to pretty much propose a very modernist vision of society that would transcend Europe.

And remember what happened after the end of World War II, you know, Europe was in shambles, philosophically, politically. And it was Cesaire, when he wrote “Discourse on Colonialism,” that kind of made the argument that, you know, the brutality and barbarism that defined colonialism came back to roost in some ways and can explain fascism in Europe. And if any group of people have the wherewithal or vision to recreate modern society, it is colonial peoples.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this clash he had with Sarkozy several years ago?

ROBIN KELLEY: Well, you know, it’s part of, I think, a longstanding argument that Cesaire made in particularly “Discourse on Colonialism.” There is a way in which, you know, the French colonial legacy gets defined as a civilizing mission for—particularly since you had Africans and Afro-Caribbean people serving in the National Assembly. And Cesaire himself was one, who as a member of the Communist Party was a deputy to the French National Assembly. And the argument is that, well, French colonialism is different. It’s one that wasn’t based on brutality or violence, but based on assimilation. And Cesaire rejected that.

And by the time he—you know, he’s writing in 1960s. He had completely rejected any value of that kind of colonial relationship or the metropolitan peripheral relationship that defined, again, the Francophone world. And so, in terms of his disagreements, you know, it fits within his larger, I think, political vision. And that is that there’s really nothing good about colonialism. You know, there’s nothing that you could salvage from its legacy. And in fact, on the contrary, we have to go back and revisit colonialism to understand the direction of the West and the failure of the Enlightenment, in some ways. You know, here’s Cesaire, who’s a real committed advocate of the Enlightenment, who had come to realize that racism ultimately defined modern society of the West. And that was one of his biggest, biggest issues.

And I think I have to give it to Sarkozy for even recognizing the importance of Cesaire. It’s sort of like, imagine if George Bush were to recognize the importance of an Ossie Davis, for example. That’s kind of unheard of.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about his influence on the anti-colonial struggles of the ’50s and ’60s?

ROBIN KELLEY: Absolutely. He was probably one of the most important intellectuals. He was a founding editor of Presence Africaine, which was a journal which advocated independence but also promoted black—not just French, but across the board—the African diasporic, you know, art, poetry, music in political essays.

He was also part of a wave of writers who in the 1940s and ’50s had argued that, you know, in order to—well, had argued that the future of the world depended on the third world. In other words, the third world was the vanguard, the third world was the modern force that could civilize Europe. And one of his central theses in "Discourse on Colonialism" was that when you look at the impact colonialism had on the modern world, we always look at the impact on the colonized, but he says, let’s look at the impact on the colonizer. Colonialism decivilized the West. It revealed its underlying barbarity.

And on the other hand, the cultures of Africa and indigenous peoples and even Asia, he argues, represented “ante-capitalism”—in other words, “ante” meaning A-N-T-E, before capitalism, and “anti” meaning opposition to capitalism—and that in fact these—

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Kelley, we’re going to have to leave it there.

ROBIN KELLEY: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: But I thank you very much for joining us.

ROBIN KELLEY: Thank you. I appreciate it.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

2010 Copperdome Poetry Chapbook Competition

Deadline: October 1, 2010
	Send 24 to 32 pages and a separate cover sheet with chapbook title, author's name, address, phone Chapbook as a whole must not have been previously published, but previous publication of individual poems in magazines or anthologies is acceptable $15 fee includes copy of winning chapbook Send SASE for notification of finalists Manuscripts will be recycled at the end of the competition unless SASE with sufficient postage is included

Accepting Submissions: Caribbean Mothering

Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an edited collection on Caribbean Mothering

Editors : Dorsía Smith Silva and Simone A. James Alexander 

Publication Date : Fall 2012

This anthology will examine the diverse and complex experiences of motherhood and mothering from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective. We welcome submissions that explore the major cultural, political, historical, and economic factors such as migration and transnationalism that influence the lives of Caribbean mothers. Further, we encourage writings that represent the relationships between Caribbean mothers and their children, perspectives of single Caribbean mothers, relationships of extended motherhood in Caribbean communities ; and colonial, post-colonial, and modern representations of Caribbean motherhood from literary, historical, biological, sociological, political, socioeconomic, ethnic, and media perspectives. This incorporation of a variety of disciplines and methodologies will give insight to the issues on mothering within the Caribbean context and provide a space that recognizes the significance of Caribbean mothering.

The aim of this volume is to foster work on mothering that integrates the disciplines of feminist ideologies, literary criticism, and cultural analysis as well as represent the diversity of the Caribbean islands and Caribbean diaspora. We hope to include a range of academic writing and some narrative essays.

Topics can include (but are not limited to) : 
gender, transgender, cultural, family, communication, and Diasporic studies ; sociology ; Caribbean Studies ; Postcolonial Studies ; feminist theories ; personal and reflective essays ; ethnographies ; mothering done by nannies, siblings, aunts, grandparents, co-parents, fathers, non-biological parents, stepmothering ; surrogate mothering ; literary representation ; mother activists and activism ; constructions of identity ; queer mothering ; childcare ; Caribbean/mothering in global and transnational contexts—i.e. migration, diaspora, citizenship, national identity, embodiment theories ; feminist philosophies of mothers and mothering ; film and media representations ; mothering issues, especially as related to gender, family, economics, sexuality, race, nation, employment, community, education, law, activism, and politics and public policy ; ideological and social debates and tensions ; mothering critiques ; health, health care, reproduction/reproductive rights ; the role of web communities and technology ; spiritual, cultural, emotional, communal, or social influences ; support services and institutions for Caribbean mothers ; ideologies in Caribbean communities

Submission guidelines: 


Papers of 4000-5000 words (15-20 pages) (includes notes and sources) will be due by September 15, 2010 and should conform to the MLA style.   Please also include a 50-word biography.


Please send the documents to Dorsía Smith Silva and Simone A. James Alexander at caribbeanmothering@yahoo.com

Miami University Press Novella Contest

About the novella and our contest

The novella form has had a long and distinguished place in American literature, and has triumphed in the hands of Herman Melville, Henry James, Katherine Anne Porter, Stanley Elkin, Cynthia Ozick, Jane Smiley, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, William Gass, John Gardner, Andrea Barrett and Tobias Wolff, to name just a few.

As commercial publishers are driven more and more by marketplace concerns, novellas, by nature of their length, often fall between the cracks of short story collections and novels and wind up being published—if at all—not as individual volumes but as part of a collection of stories. Because the form is such a pleasure for readers and writers alike—short enough to be read at a single sustained sitting, but long enough to allow the writer greater freedom in character and plot development than does the short story—we are happy to present a rare venue for publishing individual novellas as stand-alone volumes.

Manuscripts submitted for the award will be read and evaluated by our creative writing faculty, all of whom are active publishing writers. The manuscripts will be read “blind;” in other words, all identifiers will be stripped from the pages before the manuscripts are read, and the author’s history of previous publication will not be available to readers. Each year a different member of our faculty will serve as the final judge and will decide from among the list of finalists submitted by the other readers.

Students, former students, faculty, former faculty, or anyone connected to Miami University will not be considered for the award. Though we believe strongly in the talent of those we have worked with and taught, we will do everything we can to assure that this prize is administered impartially, fairly, and without regard to association.

Miami University Press is a non-profit organization. Though we are requiring a reading fee (currently $25), we wish to make it clear that this money will be used to pay for the administrative costs of the contest, to help with the costs of publishing a book of high quality, and to allow each entrant to receive a copy of the winning volume. We want that book to be a pleasure to hold in the hands and to read. The winning volume will be distributed nationwide.

Submission rules and guidelines

Note: Due to staffing limitations, entries received after May 27 will not be processed until August 2.

• Entries must be accompanied by (1) a completed Entry Form, (2) a title page with only the entry title and word count (do not include your name on the title page), and (3) the required reading fee of $25 U.S. Dollars (check or money order made payable to Miami University Press). We are unable to accept credit cards or cash.
• Winning entry receives book publication and a $750 advance against royalties.
• Entries must be postmarked by October 1, 2010.
• If you are entering more than one manuscript, you may mail all entries in the same package and include one check or money order for the total reading fee; however, each manuscript must be accompanied by a separate entry form and title page.
• The reading fee is non-refundable.
• Our contest is open to residents of any country, but please note that the reading fee must be paid in U.S. dollars.
• Manuscripts must be 18,000–40,000 words—exceptions cannot be made. Include the exact word count (counting every single word, except the title and contact information) on the cover page.
• Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, in a legible font on white 8½" x 11" or A4 paper. Loose pages, held together with a binder clip or rubber band, are acceptable.
• Previously published works are not eligible.
• Simultaneous submissions are welcomed; please notify us if your submission is accepted for publication elsewhere; your entry will be pulled from our pool. We regret that we cannot refund the entry fee.
• We cannot return submitted manuscripts.
• To receive notification of receipt of your manuscript, send a self-addressed stamped postcard along with your entry.
• All entrants receive a copy of the winning book.
• Results will be announced on our website by early February 2011.

Mail to:
MU Press Novella Prize
English Department
356 Bachelor Hall
Miami University,
Oxford, OH 45056

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Xenophobia and The Day that I Die

 

There is no strange car with tinted windows tailing my red Toyota. No tall and burly Mafioso wearing dark glasses are tracking my movements. My telephone has not been bugged (I hope). None of my three dogs has been slain and hung by my gate. No one save my few friends and small family know who I am and where I live. Like most people, I am famous among my friends. I have not arranged with anyone for assistance with my own death. To the best of my knowledge, nothing of significance stands to be gained or inherited from my premature death. My last physical fight – on occasion of which I was so thoroughly panel-beaten I had to withdraw from society for a week – was when I was at primary school. Since then, the organs most useful for the fights I have been drawn into have all been located above my shoulders. A few times, I have, owing to my very argumentative nature, been threatened with physical harm by people who would be so upset with me they would not care to listen to anymore of my explanations. At such times I have always chosen the tried and tested survival strategy of the weak – which is to run. You should see me sprint!

And yet in recent times I have had more reason to be worried about physical harm to the point of fearing for my life. I read a recent newspaper column on xenophobia by Jacob Dlamini whose fame include the authorship of the book titled ‘Native Nostalgia’. That article titiled ‘ANC fiddles while Xenophobic Sentiment Swirls’ made me realize, once again, how vulnerable I and my offspring are to death by any of the killing methods used to eliminate non-South African Africans. Before you suspect me of strange job-stealing habits, mysterious muti-inspired enterpreneuship abilities as well as unpalatable bodily odours; let me hasten to say that I am as South African as anyone born in SOWETO of parents and great grandparents whose parents hail from no country other than the beloved South Africa.

And yet I have a serious handicap, a grave disadvantage and a ‘dark secret’. I am Tsonga – a so-called ‘Shangaan’. I speak Xitsonga also called ‘Shangaan’ -Shangaan having become a dangerous, pejorative term of stigma. In the aforementioned article by Dlamini he tells of how he recently witnessed two South Africans verbally abusing a Mozambican and telling him to go back home. Dlamini then warned that these South Africans could face arrest. But his interlocutors assured Dlamini not to worry since the police were themselves – and I quote him – ‘just as fed up with the Shangaans which is an omnibus term for a foreigner in Katlehong regardless of whether a foreigner speaks Shangaan or not’ – end of quote.

For obvious reasons, I have been trying hard to understand the logic of South African anti-Shangaanism in particular and South African xenophobia in general. The warped and dangerous logic works like this. If you are ‘Shangaan’ it is assumed that you are a Mozambican. If you are originally from Mozambique, it is assumed that you are ‘Shangaan’. And yet not all Mozambicans are ‘shangaans’ and not all ‘’shangaans’ are Mozambican. Yet, if you are Shangaan you join the swelling lower ranks of humanity - the ugly, the bad, the dull, the dirty and the suspect - alongside ‘your like’, the Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Somalis and others’. For these ‘lower ranked humans’ there are several collective terms. Sometimes they are all called ‘Shangaans’ collectively. At other times they are called ‘makwerekwere’ of ‘grigambas’ – terms probably meant to depict the ‘noises’ these people make instead of speaking ‘normal’ languages.

But how has it come about that being a so-called ‘Shangaan’, a person of Mozambican, Zimbabwean or Malawian origins (whether you are naturalized South Africans or not) rendered one less than human? As a youngster growing up in SOWETO I have suffered grave verbal and physical abuse for no other reason than that I was ‘Shangaan’. These I have suffered even from some of my best and presumably enlightened friends!

To see these sentiments returning with deadly consequences after 1994 has been one of the most depressing and frightful things for me. Of the more than sixty recorded deaths in the 2008 xenophobic attacks up to a third were South Africans and many of those were so-called Shangaans. Clearly this phenomenon is one of the legacies of Apartheid racial and ethnic classification. For this reason the ‘Shangaans’ and the ‘kwerekweres’ are identifiable not only by their inability to ‘speak’ but by their ‘looks’ as well – very dark, ‘primitive’ and most unkempt. These sentiments are of course a load of nonsense. But these have become more than nonsensical sentiments. They are dangerous. And the police - as Dlamini warns in his article – are not always helpful. How many times have we heard of police turning a blind eye when a Grigamba is attacked? How many times have we heard of the police arresting South Africans and sending them back to Zimbabwe or Mozambique just because they looked too black to be South African?

And so having escaped death in the SOWETO unrest of 1976; having survived a particularly bad and brutal beating by Apartheid Police; having worked long and hard with the banned, the wanted and the ‘terrorists’ of yesteryear at grave personal risk in Namakgale (Phalaborwa; and having led and survived the rough ungovernability politics of Tembisa (in the East Rand) in the 1980s, I could finally meet my death soon.

I will be walking down a street in Zone 4 Meadowlands SOWETO – place of my birth and youth. Or will it be in Ivory Park where my brother lives? It could be in Tembisa where I have many friends and family. It will start with a small group of youngsters standing at a street corner. When they see me coming, they will start chanting. Shangaan! Shangaan! Shangaan! That code word will be enough to summon other xenophobes to emerge. And how will they know that I am ‘Shangaan’? Because of the way I walk? The way I run? The way I smell? The shape of my nose and the tone of my skin? My inability to speak Zulu and Afrikaans properly? But I speak all eleven of South Africa’s languages, I will shout . I will tell them of my wonderful contributions to the academia to the communities. The kids I have put through school and the school, schools I have helped found and school governing bodies I have chaired. Who will listen to me?

I see the growing crowd encircling me, baying for my blood, buoyed by the chilling soundtrack of ‘Shangaan’ chants in the background. Will I kneel before my killers? Will I plead for my life like the necklace victims of the 1980s? Will I feel the thud of the first brick bumping off my thick ‘Shangaan’ skull? Will I sneeze when the smell of petrol rises up my ‘Shangaan’ nostrils as they pour it over me in preparation for the inevitable? Will I make a last ditch effort to escape – dashing through the crowd like a mad bull - only to invite a rain of kicks, stabs and beatings? Eventually, engulfed in a flaming fire, I will do the Ernesto dance – the death dance.

Xenophobia is not a threat against foreigners. It is a threat against me. And you. It is threatens the very foundations of our country and our shared humanity.

 

Posted by Tinyiko Sam Maluleke at 11:15 AM

__________________

I am an academic with interests in Politics, Sport, Culture, Religion, Media, Music, African America, Africa,and South Africa

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/WAKE-UP-AMERICA-The-EPA--by-Press-Release-10...

---

July 21, 2010 WAKE UP AMERICA! The EPA, OSHA, NOAA are Compromised in the Gulf Oil Disaster! By Press Release BP leaves its signature by MacMcKinney (from Photobucket commons) An aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, 06 May 2010 by Mac McKinney (from Photobucket commons) Democracy Now allows free dissemination of their daily videos, audios and transcripts. On Tuesday July 20, 2010 they held a shocking interview about the extent of BP-created toxicity and the resulting cover-up in the Gulf oil disaster that should be listened to by every man, woman and child in America, and beyond! I am providing the videos and transcript as a public health service and alert. Amy Goodman interviewed an actual EPA official, and very courageous individual, Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. He charges that "the government--both EPA, NOAA, etc.--have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up." Amy also interviewed one of America's most honored independent investigative journalists, Dahr Jamail, about his recent investigations along the Gulf Coast: Following are the YouTube videos of the interview with Jack Kaufman, which then dovetail into a third video with Dahr Jamail. Below the videos is the original transcript. Go to Democracy Now here and here to see the original videos directly from there if you prefer: July 20, 2010 ******** Rush Transcript: This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, More... SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: The Obama administration has given BP the go-ahead to keep its ruptured well sealed for another day despite worries about the well leaking some oil and methane gas. National Incident Commander Thad Allen said the seep was not cause for alarm. Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has released its analysis of BP's data on the exposure of cleanup workers to the chemical dispersants being used in the Gulf. OSHA chief David Michaels told the environmental website Greenwire that, quote, "I think you can say exposures are low for workers. Exposures of workers on shore are virtually nonexistent. There are significant exposures near the source, and that's to be expected given the work being done there. Those workers are given respiratory protection," he said. But with BP having poured nearly two million gallons of the dispersant known as Corexit into the Gulf, many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants. At a Senate subcommittee hearing last week, Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski grilled administrators from the EPA about Corexit and said she didn't want dispersants to be the Agent Orange of this oil spill. SEN. BARBARA MIKULSKI: I'm concerned because I feel and I believe, and my reading verifies, that we don't know enough about the impact of dispersants and dispersed oil on people, marine life and water quality. I'm very concerned. And my question is, should we ban them? Should we take a time out from using them? What are the short- and long-term consequences of using them? I don't want dispersants to be the Agent Orange of this oil spill. And I want to be assured, in behalf of the American people, that this is OK to use and OK to use in the amounts that we're talking about. AMY GOODMAN: Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. While concerns over the impact of chemical dispersants continue to grow, Gulf Coast residents are outraged by a recent announcement that the $20 billion government-administered claim fund will subtract money cleanup workers earn by working for the cleanup effort from any future claims. Fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg says the ruling will apply to anyone who participates in the Vessels of Opportunity program, which has employed hundreds of Gulf Coast residents left out of work because of the spill. It's seen as an effort to limit the number of lawsuits against BP. We're joined now by two guests on these two issues, on Corexit and the workers. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail is joining us from Tampa, Florida. He's been reporting from the Gulf Coast for three weeks. His latest article at Truthout is called "BP's Scheme to Swindle the 'Small People.'" And from Washington, DC, we're joined by Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. He's been a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let's begin with Hugh Kaufman. First of all, explain what Corexit is, the company that makes it, what's in it, and your concerns. HUGH KAUFMAN: Well, Corexit is one of a number of dispersants, that are toxic, that are used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it's invisible to the eye. In this case, these dispersants were used in massive quantities, almost two million gallons so far, to hide the magnitude of the spill and save BP money. And the government--both EPA, NOAA, etc.--have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up. Now, by hiding the amount of spill, BP is saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines, and so, from day one, there was tremendous economic incentive to use these dispersants to hide the magnitude of the gusher that's been going on for almost three months. Congressman Markey and Nadler, as well as Senator Mikulski, have been heroes in this respect. Congressman Markey made the BP and government put a camera down there to show the public the gusher. And when they did that, experts saw that the amount of material, oil being released, is orders of magnitudes greater than what BP and NOAA and EPA were saying. And the cover-up started to evaporate. But the use of dispersants has not. Consequently, we have people, wildlife--we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that's what dispersants are supposed to do. EPA now is taking the position that they really don't know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It's very dangerous, and it's an economic--it's an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public. Now, the one thing that I did want to mention to you, Amy, that's occurred in most investigations, back even in the Watergate days, people said, "follow the money." And that's correct. In this case, you've got to follow the money. Who saves money by using these toxic dispersants? Well, it's BP. But then the next question--I've only seen one article that describes it--who owns BP? And I think when you look and see who owns BP, you find that it's the majority ownership, a billion shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned and run by a gentleman named Larry Fink. And Vanity Fair just did recently an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Summers and others in the administration. So I think what's needed, we now know that there's a cover-up. Dispersants are being used. Congress, at least three Congress folks--Congressman Markey, Congressman Nadler and Senator Mikulski--are on the case. And I think the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who's getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Hugh Kaufman, who works at the Environmental Protection Agency. This is an issue we've brought up before, but it's an absolutely critical one, the issue of proprietary information of these companies, in particular, the ingredients of Corexit, even though 1.8 million pounds of it have been dumped into the Gulf. What's in Corexit? Do you know? What is EPA allowed to know, and what is the company allowed to keep private? HUGH KAUFMAN: EPA has all the information on what's in--the ingredients are. The largest ingredient in Corexit is oil. But there are other materials. And when the ingredients are mixed with oil, the combination of Corexit or any dispersant and oil is more toxic than the oil itself. But EPA has all that information. That's a red herring issue being raised, that we have to somehow know more information. When you look at the label and you look at the toxicity sheets that come with it, the public knows enough to know that it's very dangerous. The National Academy of Science has done work on it. Toxicologists from Exxon that developed it have published on it. So, we know enough to know that it's very dangerous, and to say that we just have to know more about it is a red herring issue. We know plenty. It's very dangerous. And in fact, Congressman Nadler and Senator Lautenberg are working on legislation to ban it. AMY GOODMAN: And I should correct myself: 1.8 million gallons, I think it is, of Corexit that's been dumped. Sharif? SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: And Hugh Kaufman-- HUGH KAUFMAN: Tha's correct, almost two million gallons of--yes, sir. SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: So the-- HUGH KAUFMAN: I'm sorry, I'm not-- SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: No, no, go ahead. The dispersant is-- HUGH KAUFMAN: I'm not hearing you, sir. SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: These nearly two million gallons have been dispersed not only on the surface of the water, but also 5,000 feet below the water, as well. Can you talk about that? HUGH KAUFMAN: Well, not only do you have airplanes flying and dropping them on the Gulf region, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, but a large amount of it is being shot into the water column at 5,000 feet to disperse the oil as it gushers out. And so, you have spread, according to the Associated Press, over perhaps over 44,000 square miles, an oil and dispersant mix. And what's happened is, that makes it impossible to skim the oil out of the water. One of the things that happened is they brought this big boat, Whale, in from Japan to get rid of the oil, and it didn't work because the majority of the oil is spread throughout the water column over thousands of square miles in the Gulf. And so--and there's been a lot of work to show the dispersants, which is true, make it more difficult to clean up the mess than if you didn't use them. The sole purpose in the Gulf for dispersants is to keep a cover-up going for BP to try to hide the volume of oil that has been released and save them hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of fines. That's the purpose of using the dispersants, not to protect the public health or environment. Quite the opposite. AMY GOODMAN: You've made comparisons between Corexit, the use of Corexit and hiding BP's liability, and what happened at Ground Zero after the attacks of September 11th, Hugh Kaufman. HUGH KAUFMAN: Yeah, I was one of the people who--well, I did. I did the ombudsman investigation on Ground Zero, where EPA made false statements about the safety of the air, which has since, of course, been proven to be false. Consequently, you have the heroes, the workers there, a large percentage of them are sick right now, not even ten years later, and most of them will die early because of respitory problems, cancer, etc., because of EPA's false statements. And you've got the same thing going on in the Gulf, EPA administrators saying the same thing, that the air is safe and the water is safe. And the administrator misled Senator Mikulski on that issue in the hearings you talked about. And basically, the problem is dispersants mixed with oil and air pollution. EPA, like in 9/11--I did that investigation nine years ago--was not doing adequate and proper testing. Same thing with OSHA with the workers, they're using mostly BP's contractor. And BP's contractor for doing air testing is the company that's used by companies to prove they don't have a problem. If you remember the wallboard pollution problem from China, the wallboard from China, this company does that environmental monitoring. It's a massive cover-up. And so far, luckily, we have two members of Congress and one member of the Senate on the case. Hopefully more will join in. SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: Let's go to a clip that's been circulating on the internet. It's from an investigation from WKRG News 5 into the toxicity levels of water and sand on public beaches around Mobile, Alabamba. One of the water samples collected near a boom at Dauphin Island Marina just exploded when mixed with an organic solvent separating the oil from the water. This is Bob Naman, the chemist who analyzed the sample, explaining why it might have exploded. BOB NAMAN: We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of either methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant Corexit. SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: Hugh Kaufman, can you talk about this video clip? HUGH KAUFMAN: Well, yes. I saw that when it first came out, I think on Sunday. And what they documented was that the water--you know, when you're on the sand with your children and they dig, and there's a little water?--they documented there was over 200 parts per million of oil waste in the water, and it's not noticeable to the human eye, that the children were playing with on the beach. On top of it, the contamination in one of the samples was so high that when they put the solvent in, as a first step in identifying how much oil may be in the water, the thing blew up, just as he said, probably because there was too much Corexit in that particular sample. But what's funny about that is, on Thursday, the administrator of EPA, in answering Senator Mikulski's question at the hearing that you played the clip on, said that EPA has tested the water up to three miles out and onshore and found that it's safe. And then, a few days later, the television station in Pensacola and in Mobile document with their own limited testing that that statement was false, misleading and/or inaccurate by the administrator, under oath, to Senator Mikulski in that hearing. SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We want to also bring in Dahr Jamail. He's an independent journalist who's been reporting from the Gulf Coast for the past three weeks. Dahr, you're joining us from Tampa, Florida, right now. You just drove along the Gulf Coast. But talk about this dispersant, as well. You wrote in article about the effect it had on you personally. DAHR JAMAIL: Right. About a week and a half ago, my partner and I were down in Barataria talking with shrimpers and fishermen and people affected by the oil disaster. And literally within minutes of driving down there, the air was so chemically laden, you could smell and taste chemicals in the air. And immediately, our eyes began to burn. And everyone that we were talking with there, Tracy Kuhns with the shrimpers' union, Clint Guidry on the board of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, and their spouses and everyone else that we spoke with down there, everyone was complaining of different kinds of health problems--headaches, which, actually, again, within minutes, I personally was starting to experience that; shortness of breath; nausea--all kinds of different symptoms, which I then went home and started to educate myself on the immediate and then longer-term effects of the two Corexit dispersants being used and realized that myself and everyone that we spoke with down there were basically having onset of these symptoms, and people were suffering from it very much. And another very disturbing thing that I saw down there was I met a charter fisherman named Gene Hickman, who showed me a video he had taken two days prior to my arrival there. He was outside of his house at night, and he had a video of, literally, crabs crawling out of the water at night onto his bulkhead to escape the water. And Tracy Kuhns, who I was also speaking with, said, "Look, we've been watching regularly these huge plumes of dispersant under the surface of the water coming into our canals, sometimes bubbling up to the surface. We've seen marine life fleeing from these." And there have been some reports of this happening throughout the Gulf. But then, I went down to Gene Hickman's house and then saw, just minutes after watching this video of crabs literally crawling out of the water trying to escape from the water, to see basically crabs floating belly up in the water, dead, all in his canal. There was sheen over the top of it, dead fish. And again, the stench of the chemicals was so intense that our eyes were watering. AMY GOODMAN: Dahr Jamail, your piece in Truthout is called "BP's Scheme to Swindle the 'Small People.'" What is that scheme? DAHR JAMAIL: Right. Well, the scheme is--let's be really clear, Amy. We all know that context for news reporting is key. And Kenneth Feinberg, who is the Obama-appointed individual in charge of this $20 billion compensation fund for victims of the BP oil disaster, who is he being paid by? He is being paid by BP to do this job. When he was asked recently, just in the last forty-eight hours, how much he's being paid, he said, "That's between me and British Petroleum." So let's be--let's start right there. And then, to move forward, this story came up because I was talking with Clint Guidry, who I just mentioned, and he was, like all the other fishermen, outraged by how this fund is being handled. And how it's being handled is that these people who join this so-called Vessels of Opportunity program, which are basically fishermen who are now completely put out of work, the shrimping and the fishing industry in Louisiana--and this is spreading across the coast along with the oil, as it travels across the coast--is completely shut down, so these people are forced in to do this work, going out skimming, putting out oil boom, other types of recovery efforts for BP, because it's literally the only way they can make a living now. And so, Feinberg then recently announces, last Friday, as you reported, that, "No, actually now all the money that you're earning, you folks in the Vessels for Opportunity program, any future compensation claims that you make, this money will be deducted from that claim." And so, upon further investigation, it turns out there's a lawyer in Louisiana named Stephen Herman, and his firm, back on May 2nd, had an email correspondence with a law firm representing BP. And he questioned this very thing, because it had first come up way back at the beginning of this disaster when people were going and looking into joining the Vessels for Opportunity program, but before they could join, they were going to be asked to sign a waiver. Well, this was of course then brought--Stephen Herman brought this to the attention of the BP lawyer, questioned it, challenged it. And then the BP lawyer wrote back and said, "That is not going to happen. We're going to tear up those claims. We're not going to do that." Stephen Herman also questioned BP's lawyer as to this very thing that we just saw Feinberg do, which was, "I want to make very clear," said Herman, "that any of this work, any of the payment for the work these folks do, will not later be taken out of claims that they may make for future compensation for loss of livelihood, etc." And he was told at that time in a response on May 3rd by BP's lawyer, "Absolutely, that will not happen. That is BP's stated position." And so, then we have Feinberg come out Monday, and every day since then, acting as basically a BP salesman trying to push this new agenda that you have to file your claim within a year, and then, once you do that, you'll get paid, and you will not file any further claims. And then, of course, any work that you've done in this Vessels for Opportunity program, any of that money will be deducted from any future claims. So this directly contradicts what BP said to Stephen Herman's law firm in New Orleans back on May 3rd. And again, we have Kenneth Feinberg running around, clearly accountable to BP, clearly working in the interests of BP, and as he's being accused by Clint Guidry and basically fishermen up and down the Gulf Coast at this point in the Vessels for Opportunity program, is that this a guy who's doing nothing but working to try to limit BP's long-term liability for this disaster. AMY GOODMAN: Dahr Jamail, we want to thank you very much for being with us, independent journalist. His latest piece in Truthout is called "BP's Scheme to Swindle the 'Small People.'" Special thanks to WEDU, PBS in Tampa. Florida, where he is speaking to us from. And Hugh Kaufman, senior policy analyst at the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, for joining us from Washington, DC. Of course, we will continue to cover the fallout of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.

Bio | All Posts | Email Coates | Books

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore, not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

On Lacking All Conviction

Jul 21 2010, 11:00 AM ET | Comment

Let's take a moment to understand what we've seen over the past several days. As of last week, the Tea Party was a movement whose leadership included a man who once called the first black president of the United States, "a welfare thug," and who attempted to satirize the NAACP in the following fashion:

 

Dear Mr. Lincoln,

We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

It was also a coalition that hosted a speaker at its national convention who once argued for reinstatement of some of the vilest implements of segregation and charged that Obama was a "socialist ideologue" elected by people "who could not spell the word vote or say it in English. It was a movement that hosted politicians who charged that Barack Obama "favors the black person," The NAACP, responding to this history, requested that the Tea Party denounce the elements of racism in its midst.

With that as a backdrop, Joe Biden offered a limited defense of the group:

 

"I wouldn't characterize the Tea Party as racist," he said on Sunday's "This Week." But "there are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of their things, their -- their protests -- that have expressed really unfortunate comments."

It's important to note the shift in argument from "elements of racism" to "a racist group." Perhaps Biden just answering a question. In any case, he was not at pains to take up the NAACP's more nuanced point. Nor was he much interested in the question--the notion that Tea Party racism is reducible to people "on the periphery" who have "expressed really unfortunate comments" is a woeful understatement directly at odds with the facts. But that is the administration's position.

Yesterday, that same administration forced out, Shirley Sherrod, a longtime Civil Rights worker and black USDA appointee, evidently, because she dared confess that she'd once been motivated by racial prejudice but had since seen the error of her ways. Sherrod details how, as a child, her family was essentially terrorized by the Klan and white vigilantes. Her father was murdered 45 years ago. Her widowed mother, at one point, had to stand on the porch with a rifle to fight off the Klan. "I know who you are!" she yelled at them.

Sherrod's personal story is about redemption, and the case she highlights took place 20 years ago, long before she was working for the federal government.:

 

Young people I want you to know that when you're true to what God wants you to do the path just opens up and things come to you. God is good I can tell you that. When I made that commitment, I was making it to black people and to black people only. But you know God will show you things and put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.

It's worth watching the entire tape. Sherrod's message is strikingly Obamaesque. After detailing her own awakening, she pushes a message of personal responsibility arguing that many of the worst ills in the black community are perpetrated by the people living in that community, and that much of the struggle now comes down to young people working harder. There is even that standard black riff about how we once took care of our own, and spanked each other's children, the same riff Obama offered last year before the same NAACP, which Sherrod was addressing.

There's a lot in the speech that you could quibble with. Perhaps you don't buy that it's actually rich vs. poor. Perhaps you don't believe that many of the ills in black communities are brought on by people that live there. Maybe you don't think that its a good idea that you can't get fired from a government job. You can even debate her Edmund Morgan-like interpretation of racism. You can dispute that black people were once more communal. All fair points. But that isn't the argument that got Shirley Sherrod fired. Instead it's, as Andrew Breitbart has said, that this is an instance of Obama appointee preaching racism at an NAACP function.

Taking it all in, it must be said that the landscape is as follows: We have an administration that will contort itself to defend a movement whose convention speakers call for the reinstatement of the tools of segregation. That same administration will swiftly jettison an appointee, herself the victim of homegrown terrorism, for echoing the kind of message of redemption and personal responsibility that has become the president's hallmark on race. Andrew Breitbart says that Sherrod's speech, not the Tea Party's rhetoric, is the real racism. It is an argument that is as old as American white supremacy, and one that this administration, through its actions over the past week, has tacitly endorsed.

The argument has been made that this isn't Obama, just the people working under him. That theory elides the responsibility of leaders to set a tone. The tone that Obama has set, in regards to race, is to retreat with great velocity in the face of anything that can be defined as "racial." Granted, this has been politically smart. Also granted, Obama has done it with nuance. But it can not be expected that the president's subordinates will share that nuance.

More disturbingly, this is what happens when you treat the arrest of a black man, in his home, as something that can be fixed over beers. This is what happens when you silently assent to the notion that racism and its victims are somehow equally wrong. The ground, itself, is rigged with a narrative of inversion that goes back centuries. When you treat the two side as equals, expect not just more of the same. Expect worse.

In the short-run, it's easy to see the way out: apologize. Offer Shirley Sherrod her job back, whether she wants it or not. The long-run is much more fraught. I have long backed Obama's mixture of soft words and hard deeds on race. The point is that by targeting the broader demographic areas where black people are troubled, you can, at once, settle old business for black people while helping many more white people. Health care is the obvious model.

But words, too, have power and a strategy of falling back from the rhetoric of racists, while sometimes correct, is not definitive. There has to be some amount of courage, some understanding of the moment, to accompany the quiet strategy. I do not expect Barack Obama to condemn the Tea Party's racist elements, any more than I expect Ben Jealous to lead the war in Afghanistan. But I do not expect him, or his administration, to make the work of the NAACP harder, to contradict them for doing that which the administration can not. I do not expect them to minimize those elements, thus minimizing the NAACP's fight, and then accede, to people who are pulling from the darkest, vilest reaches of the American psyche.

On the great American scourge of racism, this administration must stand, sometimes publicly, for something. Failing that it will fall--indeed, already has fallen--for anything.