This is appalling and very disturbing. If site traffic was some sort of qualifier, then there is absolutley no reason that Steve Gilliard is not in that group. I have had my disagreements with Steve, and yes he is somewhat of a bomb thrower, but this grouping may has well been put together by the DLC or some other mainstream group. Sad to see that many of the popular bloggers out there have the same mentality as the hacks in DC. Use people of color for our votes and then forget about us.

Bill Clinton is not president anymore, nor does he hold any political office. His wife does but she's not in this pic is she? What Bill Clinton does on his own time, and who he invites or does not invite to lunch is his own business.

Maybe he just doesn't want to be in the same room with people who wanted to hang his wife in effigy over her vote on Iraq? Maybe he's saying that, "hey my wife's running for President soon, so I'm going to buy lunch for a few bloggers that support her cause" He can do that, he's a private citizen and he can have his own personal agendas. Clinton is not required to, every time he has a lunch, make sure that every single demographic is represented. Does being "politically correct" suddenly mean he has to invite a person of every ethnicity and race to any lunch he has?

Its further ridiculous because everyone knows that Bill Clinton was the LEAST racist or sexist president we've ever had. African Americans LOVE him. If he ran for congress up in harlem against Charlie Rangel, he'd probably win. So this is an overreaction. The kind of overreaction that hurts our causes, because Bill Clinton is not the enemy, the REPUBLICANS are the enemy. We keep villifying our own and its no wonder we keep losing.

Huh?
Yassky happened b/c of personal ambition.
Kavanagh's is a white Assembly District.

Not making sense, there-- but the point of blogger monoculture is a valid one, and a mirror of journalist/lawfirm/wallstreet/banker/mckinsey/ad agency monoculture. And, shoot, be glad there were three competitive of color candidates for the 11th.

get him to fix it, now.

Isn't it possible Clinton didn't know the races of these individuals when he invited them. They could have just been names on a blog. It is not like he has time to read all these blogs. If all he knew was the name "Liza Sabater", what race is he supposed to assume you are? I think its probably just a fluke of bad planning, not putting faces with names, and thats all. No big deal.

It's kind of disturbing that none of the bloggers who did attend--at least none of the ones I've read--seems to have noticed the lack of nonwhite faces in the room.

And to rwallnerny again: if you go to culturekitchen, every one of Liza's comments has her freaking picture next to it.

let's fix the omission whether it was intended or whether the issues of race in America just slipped the minds of all those involved.

Clinton's office phone: 212-348-8882
55 West 125th Street
New York, NY

www.clintonfoundation.org

the press office email is:

press@clintonfoundation.org.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (aka DailyKos) probably didn't mention it because he is Latino.

His mom is Salvadoran, and he grew up in El Salvador.

Are you sure? The guy on the left looks a little dark? Maybe they are so cool and liberal they have reached the state of being colorless? or persons of non-color?

Does this make my case that many liberals are clueless about the reality of race in America? Or what?

Two years ago I wrote a book called The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics (Nation Books). There, I outlined the cynical politics that the Clintons engage in with blacks. But blacks also participate in this.

Why do you need black bloggers when the "black president" is already there: Bill Clinton. And remember, folks, Toni Morrison was the person, a black woman, who coined Clinton as the first "black president." Read the latest issue of the New Yorker. Blacks are taken for granted and are expendable, and this is a relationship that is a two-way street. In my opinion, blacks have developed a "massa complex"—the neeed to be recoginized by whites—and whites, not all, know how to play this game.

If you remember some of Clinton antics (see pp. 12-14): he fired Lani Guinier & Jocelyn Elders; wouldn't support parity in crack & cocaone sentencing; blinded Jesse Jackson by attacking Sista Souljah; supported the death penalty—and he never really dealth with AIDS in Africa and sat on his hand during the Rawnada genocide. Now he does, but...

Yet when he was on the ropes during the Le Affaire Lewinsky, who did he come crawling to for forgiveness? Blacks!

I'm not a big Bill Clinton fan. I do recognize him as a master politician, but he is merely respresentive of the hollowing out of any real democratic politics in this country. And Hilliary isn't that much different from him. She bogarted capable New York politicos from running for her senate seat. I didn't vote for her then, won't for this year, and probably won't vote for her if she runs for the WH.

So, I'm not surprised that they are no black or latino bloggers. They don't matter. That's why they are Not there. That's the whole point.

Black people are not respected politically in this country because they have pretty much forgotten how to mobilize themselves for political influence. When a hack like Al Sharpton represents black politics, it is the dead end.

The picture is not surprising. The fact is, online activism is a whiter arena than offline activism because. Anyone who promotes blogging as a form of political engagement without addressing that is promoting a policy of jim crow.

"Yes, Steve Gilliard, Pam Spaulding, and me have been vocal about Hillary's run for the presidency."

If you want to be recognized for your blogging and be invited places because of it, shouldn't you, at the very least, have a grasp of the English language? Just a thought...

I know of at least two black bloggers in New York and they both have large followings on Room 8 and on Footnotes. Maurice Gumbs and Rock Hackshaw. in my estimation they are up there with any other in the city.

"What does it mean though that there are 20 bloggers invited to this lunch and not one is black or latino? What does it mean for this group of bloggers to be patting themselves on the backs for being with Clinton when they are all in Harlem and not one of them is a person of color? What does it mean for these people to be there and have not one of themn raise this issue in their blogs?"

Just to play devil's advocate here, perhaps it means that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's dream has come true. That the color of one's (blogger's) skin does not matter. That people (bloggers) are judged by the content of their character (ideas) instead of on the color of their skins.

Do liberals or blacks or latinos really want a color blind society?

not surprised at all. downtrodden blacks (convicts, single mothers on welfare with 3 or more children) or opportunistic pimps like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are the favorite blacks of most white liberals.

blacks who can read, type and think critically are like kryptonite to these people.

thank you for this article -- good reading as hilary and others like her gear up for the next phase of their political careers.

in the meantime, keep calling this
hypocrisy and myopia out.

i love it.

If I put up a link to the two posts I've written about this? One of them is the comment to Hamsher that they deleted right before closing off the comments section on their post. I think it's important (for those who visit here via Ferguson's post) to see that you are not the only blogger who found this issue important and that, unlike them, we are capable of showing what true solidarity looks like.

I belong to several progressive groups, such as dfnyc, ndm, moveon, .etc and one thing that you see typically when you attend their meetings is that there are few minority participants. DFNYC is almost all white. NDM is almost all white. Moveon is mostly white. People wonder why is this? Somebody asked Chris Owens at one of these meetings why don't more blacks show up. His answer, and I don't know if he was being serious, was that maybe they would if there was more food and music. I thought, "we have to hire a band and offer free pizza to get more blacks to join dfnyc?" Surely he was joking right?

I think one reason blacks may prefer their own political groups to progressive groups like ours, is possibly that they might see white progressives who go out of their way to be overly sympathetic to the "black cause" as being as condescending in their own way as racists are. Why would a black person want to come to a progressive meeting and sit in a room full of white people trying to act SO sensitive and SO considerate of their needs, when those very actions imply that they are still being seen as the "different" one in the group. There are ways of making people feel uncomfortable in a group setting that have nothing to do with hate, such as demonstrating once too often that you see this person as different than you are, even if you like this person. One reason there is still so much segregation in our cities, IMO, is minorities hesitate in moving into white neighborhoods not just out of fear of racism, but also because of fear of seeing the stares and looks of those who like, and pleasantly deal with them, but still-- in words and actions-- make it clear they still see them as different.

It reminds of the civil rights movement in the sixties when it hit its height, and the black leaders of the movement finally kicked out the well meaning white progressives (like abbie hoffman) who had come down south to fight the fight. The white progressives hearts were in the right place, but the reasoning for kicking them out of the leadership was that they were too visible, and that their presence had come to be seen as condescending to some black community leaders, who took it as them implying, "you guys can't fight your own fights"

I think there were some blacks in the 11th CD who felt the same anger towards the Yassky campaign as white progressives did, but did not necessarily think the white progressives needed to be the ones acting the most high and mighty about it. They might see people who spend so much time bending way over backwards to prove they are not racists to be as annoying as those who actually ARE racists. Condescension is a two way street!

To: iwallnerny

You know the best way to understand what "blacks" think is a two-step process:

1. Ask them, but I assume that most people on this site don't find themselves in "black circles" too often.

2. Realize that "blacks" are not a monolith and you cannot determine (pizza notwithstanding) what the entire group of them will do.

3. Realize that you and most folks on this site have a lot of learning to do about the "other" that you claim to so vehemently (underscoring an imbalance of power) support, as evidenced by your belitting (albeit ostensibly well-meaning)commentary.

My two cents.

Sincerely,

Me.

Amen! Just the fact that they call themselves "progressives" as if one that was black could not be "progressive" is loaded with nonsense. Progressive about what?

In my experience the "stares" and the "looks" come with equal frequency from white righties AND white lefties. The chasm between theory and practice among the liberals is precisely the reason that they continue to lose ground.

They are not our friends, don't be fooled.

This "Harlem" meeting is really just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

Time to wake up and smell the corporate-sponsored coffee.

Best,

Just another Black girl on the B train.

good points! I remember Bill Clinton's first primary campaign. I volunteered during the primary season, attended numerous events and saw many others on cspan. Clinton was far from the most liberal candidate, and there were other candidates (like Tom Harkin and Jerry Brown) who had more "progressive credentials". He was a pro-death penalty governor from a conservative southern state. Yet african americans loved him. Why? I believe it was because out of all the candidates who would come to a black church to speak, and they all did, he was the only one who didn't speak down to them OR up to them. He spoke right at them. This had to mean more than any particular political stand, the simple fact that he saw himself as one of them and they could sense that and feel comfortable in a room with him in a way they could rarely feel with the others. These other candidates were in that church speaking because they had to be, because it was expected. Clinton was there because he wanted to be. He was the only one of the white candidates who would have gone to a black church on his own time, even if he wasn't campaigning and didn't need their votes, and the congregations I'm sure could sense that pretty quickly. He was raised by a black woman, his mother's housekeeper, and grew up going to black churches. His was the rare case where the condescenion was never there, even unintentionally, and it helped get him elected.

An african american asked about attending a progressive meeting would have every right to ask, "do they want me to go to a dfnyc meeting and join because I'm black or because they want ME (myself, personally) to join?" and "would these people want to go out and have a beer with me on their own time, when there is no political agenda attached to my appearing in public with them"? Similarly, they could easily ask of those white progressives who were so outspoken against Yassky's candidacy, "are they just saying this to come across a certain way, to fit an agenda and look good to black voters...would they be saying these things behind closed doors when its not campaign season and nobody's listening?"

Bill Clinton is the best republican president we've had. He looks ok in retrospect only because we've had a 5 year long train wreck that's even worse. It's really scary to see these 20 white bloggers huddling with him. It means to me that the dems are once again going to be republicans lite and that we're all screwed, black, brown, red and white, if we're not buying their stuff.

Democrats have been screwing us since the Civil War.
Maybe this is their way of being honest.

After all, Howard Dean is well-known for having a lot of Blacks on board. Oh wait...
Still, Al Franken hires a lot...hmmmm.
More research needed. Hold on.

From above:

"If you're going to attempt to discern someone's grasp of the English language from one sample of their work, shouldn't you at least make sure that your own sample is free from errors?"

Actually, I did find the grammatical and typographical errors distracting, and I think that is a common enough reaction that big publications have editors and the rest of us have SpellCheck. Normally I'll overlook one or two speedbumps on the highway to enlightenment, but after a sufficient accumulation of errors one wonders how much thought and care have really gone into the post.

That said, I am certainly sympathetic to the notion that sometimes errors escape; it happens all the time on my blog. But I never feel like it is OK, and I certainly don't try to defend it.

FWIW - errors that struck me at first reading:

- "...when he decided to not invite neither of us"

- "...Steve Gilliard, Pam Spaulding, and me have been vocal "

- "...and have not one of themn raise this issue in their blogs".

Also, the link to "Jane Hamsher is an idiot" did not work (try here), and the link to Barbara O'Brien was simply to her current front page and not to the post in question.

Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a few minutes re-reading this post would be time well spent.

As to your actual point - no kidding.

But I thought that Clinton was the first "black President". Maybe that's what Daou was thinking, that Clinton himself represented the African-American community.

I don't have an answer for why no other persons of color weren't in the picture however.

Oh, yeah, I do, but it's not my place to throw bombs here.

--Jason

As Democrats, one danger we face is the presumption that we can take the black vote, or any minority's vote, for granted. Smart republican strategists will look at african american communities, and see voters who are often devoutly religious, far more church going than the average white voter, supportive of traditional marriage, and conservative moral values. If the GOP was more progressive on social issues, and things like abortion and the death penalty, they could pick off black votes in large numbers, and the Democrats deny this at their own peril.

I believe that Democrats have taken the black vote for granted for many years, because arrogant party leaders assume that "our party is less racist than theirs is, so we don't have to worry about them" Why do we assume that all or most blacks are "progressive"/liberal in the first place? The Democratic party needs to dispense with these assumptions and look to what the real issues are, or someday the GOP is going to nominate someone acceptably moderate (Guiliani anyone?) and we'll lose voters that we've simply taken for granted way too long.

You forgot Hiphop Republican

morkfrombrooklynn, no, no, no! Recipe for disaster! Money is nice in politics, but trying to jigger the system so that black folks benefit is exactly what keeps them out of power. There is no system; thinking in system terms will generate repeated solutions that should work but don't. Breaking up AT&T didn't change the phone "system," but cell phones did. As long as black politicians are just dark liberals, all they'll get are a coupla sandwiches each time. Risk the loss of the sandwiches.

What bint alshamsa said. One of my favorite cliches is when "everyone knows" something, it's long out of date and no longer true.

Full disclosure: I'm a conservative and the Republicans, who I grudgingly support, would benefit from black defections from the Democratic Party. So it's fine to be suspicious of my motives. But I really can't figure why there isn't a massive move for African-Americans to register as Independents, even if they intend to vote for Democrats 90% of the time. You need to stop appealling to their better natures and fire a warning shot across the bow.

It's interesting that no African Americans or Latinos were in the meeting. With black folks voting in big numbers as democrats I don't get it.Did no one look around while in "Harlem" and say why are there no black and latinos in this meeting? A big thanks to Peter Daou for that?

This is a question worth asking. Some years back, early 90's, I attended an abortion rights rally and march in Washington D.C. It was a huge event on the Mall with hundreds of thousands of people marching. NOW, Naral, and others sponsored it. As we marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, it was a sea of white. You had to look long and hard in that huge crowd to find any blacks or latinos. Which made little sense because not only is D.C. a majority minority city, but statistics will tell you that blacks and latinos make up a good portion of those who request and need abortion/family services. So why weren't they demonstrating, helping the rest of us protest to keep abortion safe and legal? Whoopie Goldberg was one of the speakers, and one of the first things she said when she got to the podium and looked around, was to angrily shout, "where are my people?!

Then some weeks or months later, there was another big march on the Mall in D.C., it was the Million Man March, organized by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Hundreds of thousands of black and latino men marched. At least as many as the abortion rights march. So you had to wonder why they would march in one rally and not the other, particularly when safe abortion rights is a far more urgent need than pushing Farrakhan's radical politics.

The only answer I got from those attending the latter march was that since that march was organized by a black group, and not a white group, they were far more comfortable that they weren't being used by the organizers. Farrakhan, a hard core anti semite and racist, somehow has more credibility as a march organizer to blacks than NOW or NARAL or the unions that helped organize the other march? Its hard to understand...