Martin Luther King Day

Happy 57th Presidential Inauguration!
 

It continues to be a paradox for me that with a black President the advancement of people with color who are not the president has been at a virtual standstill.  Why?  The Atlantic’s article ‘Fear of a Black President (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/fear-of-a-black-president/309064/) puts forward ideas about why this might be, and some very specific examples of how when President Obama has publicly talked about his race, the fact that his children look like Trayvon Martin, for example, that the conversation is completely and effectively shut down.

Well, the fact of the matter is that race is still a very big issue in America.  Our president is more of an exceptional man than a black man, the article asserts, and I think that is indeed the case.  On the day that we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in America we need to reflect on the work that is yet to be done, and how to maintain the gains that have been made.  I think the right to vote is a great place to start—what happened in the 2012 Presidential election with voter suppression had got to be squashed.  Early voting should be an option in all state, and for everybody.  Voter identification needs to be off the table everywhere.  There should be laws against lying about voting.  People who put up intimidating advertisements with misinformation about voting should be prosecuted.  

Lying and intimidation took a big step forward in the 2012 election, and the press, perhaps in an effort to not appear biased toward one side or the other, did a miserable job of fact checking.  So as a consequence, things that were untrue passed as at least unquestioned, and that is harmful.  It is particularly harmful when the distortion of reality disproportionately affects one group—like immigrants, or people of color, or women, or gay people.  Those things happened, and in the spirit of equal protection for all people, I hope we can move away from those lies in 2013—although so far Congress does not seem eager to do so.  Accountability for your actions is the key to the success or failure of our current government.