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The January prelude to Black History Month certainly reflected the nation’s pervading racial discordance. January 6 marked the one-year anniversary of the white supremacist-Republican attempt to violently overthrow our democracy. Only one sitting Republican lawmaker, Liz Cheney, attended the somber commemorative ceremony held at the U.S. Capitol Building, the site of the failed coup.
We also learned more about the intricacies of the Jan. 6 coup when it was found that Republicans in seven states (including 10 from Wisconsin apparently with the complicity of Trumpnik Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald) had illegally submitted a forged slate of electors as part of the plot to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Just as the U.S. Senate vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was looming, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day followed as another reminder of our seemingly unsolvable problem of equality and rights and their dependence on the vote. The reality is that the Black, Asian and Hispanic vote is in great part responsible for the 2020 Biden victory. In response, 19 states have passed nearly 400 pieces of legislation that have been specifically crafted to suppress election participation of voters of color. Even celebrity Stevie Wonder saw through Republican hypocrisy, publicly rebuking the senators who oppose the Voting Rights Act. When the vote came, every Republican senator voted against it.
Season Liberally
Meanwhile, on the weekend prior to MLK Jr. Day, the Wauwatosa based Penzey’s Spices newsletter announced a sale under the banner “Republicans are Racists.” Penzeys, a local purveyor of fine spices since the latter part of the last century, has become well known for its progressive social justice activism. Over a decade ago, in 2010, a troupe of Penzey’s staff founded Theatrical Tendencies, the city’s only LGBTQ dedicated theater group. The company also supported the women’s march on Washington, DC in 2017, the BLM movement and, in 2019, spent almost $100,000 for pro-impeachment advertising on social media. Logically, its company slogan is “season liberally.”
As did most, I reacted to the “Republicans are Racists” pitch with a shrug of “what else is new?” Others, apparently feeling addressed, responded with indignant pique. Some, in Boston Tea Party manner, ceremoniously tossed out their stash of Penzey’s spices, posting photos of the act on social media. Others went off in a huff declaring their intention to buy their cardamom elsewhere. Some didn’t particularly like the idea of a business expressing a political opinion. For all their ire, however, none offered a rebuttal to Penzey’s basic premise that Republicans are inherently racist.
In fact, the Republicans relentlessly do racist things that confirm Penzey’s assertion. In Indiana, a Republican state lawmaker insisted schools need to be “impartial” when teaching about Nazism. As is the classic MO for such outrages, he apologized after the ensuing furor. The base, however, got the message. In recent days, a Tennessee county school board banned Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust book, Maus. In other conservative states, school library book banning is rampant with those targeted tomes usually being about sexuality (read LGBTQ affirming) and racism or written by authors of color. Virginia’s Republican governor has set up hotline for parents of school kids to denounce teachers suspected of teaching Critical Race Theory.
Locally, we have an annual exercise in Madison in which the Wisconsin State Legislature’s Black Caucus offers a list of Black personalities to be feted and recognized as part of Black History Month. The white Republicans then remove those they find unacceptable. Such was the case a few years ago when NFL’s Colin Kaepernick was purged from the list.
Meanwhile, as Black History Month began on Feb. 1, we learned of a campaign of bomb threats against Historic Black Colleges and Universities and that 14 states have laws restricting the subject matter allowed to be taught in commemoration of Black History Month.
African Shantytown?
In Milwaukee County Board candidate Peter Tase campaigned on the platform of saving Glendale from becoming an “African shantytown.” At Greenfield High School, athletic director Trent Lower is under fire for repeatedly calling a Black student the racially charged slur, “boy,” disregarding the student’s request that he desist. Meanwhile, NFL coach Brian Flores is suing the league the discrimination.
February will, however, mark a positive moment in Black history, the nomination of a Black woman as Supreme Court justice. A commitment made by President Joe Biden during the 2019 presidential campaign, the mere thought of it coming to pass has already incurred wrathful Republican backlash. Not surprisingly, Republican U.S. Senator Roger Wicker from former Confederate state Mississippi (that only a year ago removed the Confederate battle standard from its state flag) immediately objected, saying such a Black nominee would merely be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action.
Understandably, Penzey’s idea that every Republican is actively racist may be a tad extreme. Closer to the truth may be a popular social media meme that puts it this way: “All Republicans are not racist, but all racists are Republican.” Of course, as long as other Republicans do not oppose the racists among them, they become complicit.
So, I guess that means Penzey’s is right after all.
