Voter Intimidation Was Just A Difference of Opinion

I feel completely chastised. Here I have been opining that the Obama/Holder Justice Department dismissed the Philadelphia New Black Panther voter intimidation judgments on racist and spurious legal grounds. There was even testimony before Congress, with evidence, that established the same mindset as mine. But now it turns out that I was wrong. It was all just a big misunderstanding.

I have it on the best authority that the dismissal of successful lawsuits against the Panthers pursuant to the Voting Rights Act was completely justified, and that the legal pleadings behind the cases were very weak at best. We really were just taking the word of some crazy, fearful white people and a DOJ professional lawyer with a private agenda aimed at rising in the department ranks. Alas, I feel so used.

Oh, you say you're wondering who that authority is? Well, it's no less than the head of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez. Now how much more authoritative could that authority be? And we all know that all the political attorneys in the Holder Justice Department are post-racial and as honest as the day is long. We do know that, don't we?

The photo accompanying this post shows a gentle young black protector of the sacred right to vote innocently standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia preparing for another peaceful and interracial game of stickball. It is not a Black Panther wielding a billy club at white voters coming to the polls. Now which of us are you going to believe? Tom Perez and me, or your lying eyes?

You see, it turns out that a bunch of fearful typical white people had merely reacted as white bigots are expected to act--irrationally and with a not-so-secret hatred of black folks. Just look at the young man. Unless you are one of those hysterical white bigots, you too will see that there is absolutely nothing intimidating about him or the perfectly innocent baton he's holding. For all you know, he's simply still wearing his Halloween costume, but because you see everything through the eyes of the dominant white class you're too quick to take the word of white racists over black choir boys. And that's all it is. The word of the white witnesses against the word of the oppressed black man.

You see, because of his reticence to be confrontational, Perez took nearly a month to stew over the testimony of professional DOJ attorney Christopher Coates before reluctantly claiming that everything Coates testified to (and produced physical evidence to support) was nothing more than "he said, she said." Expanding on the theme as it relates to the Black Panthers intimidation falsehood, Perez broadly denied the contention that Obama, Holder and Perez are hostile to race-neutral civil rights and voting rights laws. How dare you draw such a conclusion when one of their favorite confidantes is Mary Frances Berry, former member of the US Commission on Civil Rights who famously said: "Civil rights laws are designed to protect black people, not white people, and we will not investigate matters which involve white complainants."

You see, Perez sees the injustice of pursuing the Black Panthers cases as being so clear as to be worthy of no further discussion. It's time to move on to the misperception that Obama/Holder's entire concept of justice is weighted favorably toward one race and is at best best-described as benign neglect toward the others. One of Perez's deputies at DOJ explained it best: "The Obama administration was only interested in bringing traditional types of cases that would provide equality for racial and language minority voters." Now come on. How can you read anything racist into that?

Coates testified that he believed (as a typical white person) that "prior to the George W. Bush tenure, no administration--Republican or Democrat--had ever filed a voting rights case involving white victims and minority defendants, saying that a focus on minority voters had long been pattern and practice." See? Even the antagonist in this debate admits that Bush was a racist who diverged from the more racially-sensitive DOJs of the past and future by allowing white plaintiffs to have their undeserved day in court.

Another former Civil Rights Division political lawyer backs Perez. Robert Kengle called Coates's testimony "incomplete" and goes on to say: "I believe that a double standard was being applied [during the Bush/Ashcroft ascendancy] under which complaints by minority voters were subjected to excessive and unprecedentedly demanding standards, then dismissed as not being credible, while on the other hand we were being ordered to pursue the [white] Ike Brown complaints as a top priority." See? Kengle believes it, he's a lawyer, so it must be true.

And clearly Perez is right. After all, he did allow the injunction preventing one Black Panther from showing up at a polling place other than his own right through the election this coming Tuesday. But he must be allowed to repeat his performance the next time Obama's name appears on the ballot. After all, that's only fair, and it proves Perez is a zealous, non-racial prosecutor. As he himself says, "there was insufficient evidence to support stronger action against any of the defendants." It's not exactly an explanation for dismissing the cases which had already been won and judgments entered, but nobody's perfect.

And lest you doubt their sincerity, Perez and Holder both have put legal teams together in the Civil Rights Division to investigate themselves. Once again, you have drawn a typical white conclusion that this is self-serving. And besides, it explains why Holder and Perez have refused to respond to subpoenas from the Civil Rights Commission. After all, they're busy investigating themselves and don't need any outside interference.

Finally, the big boss, Eric Holder has put the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on the whole matter. Holder announced earlier this month that "the notion that we are enforcing any civil rights laws--voting or otherwise--on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender is simply false. Some people (he means you) want to go back to older days and want to have a Civil Rights Division that is not nearly as effective as it is now or has traditionally been. I am not going to allow that to happen." That, as we attorneys say, is dispositive. There is nothing left to discuss. They're right, you're wrong.

By the way, Holder would have expanded his remarks, but he had to rush back to the office to prepare some more Miranda warnings and advice on civilian procedure for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.