Nader angers CBC with demand for apology
The Hill
By Hans Nichols and Peter Savodnik
Tensions between Ralph Nader and the Congressional Black Caucus flared again yesterday, after a letter from the independent presidential candidate to the caucus chairman, Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), demanded an apology for an “obscene racial epitaph” at a tense meeting last month.
Black lawmakers reacted to Nader’s letter with a combination of anger and disdain, questioning his mental health and accusing him of acute and advanced egomania.
You’ve got to sympathize with Nader here. We’ve all been labeled insane for daring to disagree with so-called “black leaders” and their supporters.
Below is my letter to Ralph Nader that I posted on his VoteNader.org feedback page at .
I wonder if Ward Connerly knows Ralph Nader, or if there is any way we might use Nader’s run-in with the “vituperative” CBC for introducing him to our multiracial movement?
Am I too optimistic thinking Mr. Nader might be willing to hear us say that government classifying individuals into “different races” is not necessary or worthwhile for meeting his campaign promise to “Enforce Civil Rights and Economic Rights for Minorities: discrimination is not the American way”? (Ralph_on_the_issues.pdf.)
Posted:
Re: your encountering the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and our multiracial movement
Dear Mr. Nader,
I am a lawyer who assisted Mr. Ward Connerly’s fall 2003 California ballot initiative to end state classification of individuals in “races.” (Our Prop. 24 fell to well-organized opposition in the carnival atmosphere of the surprise gubernatorial recall election.) We think we are part of a multiracial movement to end institutional classification of individuals in “races” whose only purpose is alleging spurious “group difference.” “Different” human “races” cannot connote individual racial equality under our U.S. Constitution, or secure anyone’s “group equality.” We challenge existence of any “minorities” such as the CBC inserts itself representing (via census “race” data). We recognize the “different” (e.g. “non-white”) “minority races” (distinct from individuals making up minority ethnic communities) are overblown social constructs. “Races” are non-essential legal fictions, unnecessary in any way to our one human race. Arbitrary “biological races” are meaningless to our inter-fertile species.
We recognize the truth of one human race. We support racial equality, enforcement of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. However, some legislation needs refinement to not label people “different.”
Our multiracial movement includes (with no CBC-style racist exclusivity) interracially married people and multiracial persons (some are our children) self-liberated from the uniquely American “one-drop rule” — its all-or-nothing attempted classification of individuals in “minority races.” (“Just black,” especially.) I, for one, support your campaigning for president. Anyway, we have our own acquaintance with the crude manners of the CBC. Not surprisingly it casts a baleful eye our way, since our multiracial movement challenges the CBC’s very existence, its raison d’ˆtre.
We would enjoy having you drop in at Frank Sweet’s OneDropRule
Sincerely,
George Winkel
Thu 7/15/2004 8:50 PM
Great piece of generalisation, Powell.