Lou Ureneck Reads from BACKCAST on Boston.com

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Richard Ford's RACE CARD reviewed in San Francisco Chronicle

'The Race Card': Ford deplores the blame game
Reyhan Harmanci
The San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, February 7, 2008

You want to pick a fight? Call someone a racist. Few labels hit so hard or bring up so many deep feelings. It's a dark stain on someone's character. Then-Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman was accused at the O.J. Simpson trial of using racial epithets, and after Hurricane Katrina, rapper Kanye West said President Bush "hates black people."

According to Stanford law Professor Richard Thompson Ford of San Francisco, the national dialogue on race needs to change. In his recently published book "The Race Card," he argues that when people talk about race relations, they too quickly try to ferret out racism without looking at the larger issues. In doing so, they leave open the possibility that opportunists will unfairly paint someone as a racist to further their political ends, while de-legitimizing some very real problems.

"I decided to write the book out of dismay and frustration with the way questions of racial injustice are typically taken up," Ford says. "Right now, we tend to deal with questions of race and race relations in the context of scandal. There's not much conversation about the day-to-day issues with racial tensions and injustices."

Ford takes apart some of the more prominent recent scandals, such as the treatment of Hurricane Katrina victims and the dispute between hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and the makers of Cristal Champagne. He also digs into older ones, like the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the O.J. Simpson trial, to show how complicated events got reduced to screaming headlines.

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Richard Ford's THE RACE CARD Reviewed in NYT

Books of The Times
Colorblind Conclusions on Racism
By WILLIAM GRIMES
New York Times: February 6, 2008

THE RACE CARD
How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse
By Richard Thompson Ford
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 388 pages. $26.

A black man stands on a street corner in Manhattan and waves for a taxi, and the driver speeds by. Is this racism? The actor Danny Glover thought so, and he took his case to the public and city regulators, resulting in a citywide crackdown on wary cabbies in the late 1990s. But what if he got it wrong?

In “The Race Card” Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School, offers the cabdriver problem as a classic illustration of why racial prejudice is so hard to identify and address in an era he defines as postracist, when the social and legal meaning of racism, he writes, “is in a state of crisis.”

Racism, Mr. Ford argues, has not disappeared, but the civil rights movement has made it contemptible in the eyes of most Americans. Changes in the law have introduced penalties for overt discrimination. Consequently, current racial conflicts tend to involve “ambiguous facts and inscrutable motives.” They also encourage playing the race card to achieve emotional satisfaction or tactical advantage.

In the cabdriver phenomenon, for example, many drivers who refuse to stop for black passengers are themselves black, Mr. Ford points out, and others are Asian or Middle Eastern. Some are motivated not by antipathy toward blacks but by a fear of being asked to drive into a dangerous neighborhood. Some are rushing to return their cabs to the depot.

Richard Ford, pictured left.

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For the first chapter, click here.

Richard Ford's THE RACE CARD Reviewed by Associated Press

Book shows problems with the 'race card'

By THERESA BRADLEY,
Associated Press, Tue Feb 5, 2:53 PM ET

"The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 388 pages, $26), by Richard Thompson Ford: The fight against racism is nearing a crossroads, a "crisis of success" that's blurring definitions of discrimination and allowing insidious injustices to persist unaddressed.
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As the clearest cases of bigotry have faded with civil rights' progress, our old ways of fighting bias are dangerously outdated but inspiring a host of impostors to co-opt their methods nonetheless.

In his book "The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse," Stanford University law professor Richard Thompson Ford outlines this new ambiguity and one of its most unfortunate results: the race card.

Drawing irrelevant references to race, the race card magnifies minority status or seeks to blame problems on bias, oversimplifying serious social issues to advance self-interest in the name of justice, Ford says.

An example: O.J. Simpson cast the cops as racist and was cleared.

"The race card is symptomatic of a real crisis in the way we currently think and talk about race: a crisis born of our failure to keep up with a changing social world," Ford writes. Because we assume racial wrongs are the work of individual bigots, "when there's no one to blame, we find ourselves without relevant ideas."



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Michael Kodas HIGH CRIMES in Mother Jones

Go Sell It on the Mountain
Arts: On Mt. Everest, climbers have more to worry about than the weather.

Book Review By Elizabeth Gettelman
Mother Jones, February 1, 2008

High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed, By Michael Kodas

That Everest is a dangerous place should surprise no one. Whisper-thin air, skyscraper-deep crevasses, and deadly storms that build in minutes have given Everest and its "Death Zone" an infamous reputation. But that the world's tallest mountain is host to thieves, frauds, and extortionists who wreak more mayhem than the elements is a less-trodden story. Enter High Crimes, Michael Kodas' new book, in which the writer and sometimes mountaineer (he's a reporter for the Hartford Courant who has attempted twice to summit Everest) whisks through dozens of horror stories; of hoodwinked climbers abandoned by inexperienced guides, desperate summiters whose lifesaving gear was stolen, and dying climbers stepped over and abandoned by dozens of peakbaggers. "Everest," explains one guide, "makes people grow horns."

In preparation for the Olympic Games this summer, China has paved a more than 65-mile stretch of road leading climbers straight to the mountain's door. This ease of access (reaching the Nepalese base camp, in contrast, involves a 35-mile, several day hike) coupled with Chinese climbing permits that cost a fraction of what they do in Nepal ($10,000 vs. up to $30,000) has given rise to a largely lawless mountain outpost. Kodas describes scores of mountaineers carrying large wads of cash spending weeks of idle time at base camp, spilling cash and killing time in makeshift brothels, bars, and gambling outfits. While the wait is often part of the mountaineering equation—the weather is only prime for summit bids on a handful of days each year—the atmosphere at base camp is less preparatory and more "Wild Wild East."

The mayhem continues on the mountain itself, where tents are regularly looted of basic yet vital equipment—stoves, tents, ropes, and once a high-end battery that powered a Discovery Channel production—leaving climbers stranded and vulnerable. Some of the most lethal scams involve the very technological advance that allows the hundreds of relatively novice climbers to attempt the mountain each year: bottled oxygen. That industry is cottage and largely unregulated, and at up to $600 per, Kodas explains, there are millions to be made. Sellers may promise top-quality systems fortified with dry Russian air, while instead selling recycled bottles filled with local (humid) air, so that the moisture causes the apparatuses to fail at high altitudes.

Other scams involve hucksters who claim to be making environmental summits to clean trash from Everest—the paths leading to the peak are notoriously littered with empty oxygen containers, discarded gear, and even frozen corpses—but are merely running cons in order earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships. Kodas tells of one 1998 team that boasted of removing 157 oxygen bottles, only to admit later that they had brought 136 of the bottles for their own personal use. Even Sherpas—the unsung heroes of most every ascent on Everest since Hillary's summit in 1953—have become part of the corruption equation, demanding more money of strapped climbers mid-climb, stealing equipment or money at base camp, and essentially capitalizing on what has become a high-stakes, high-end gamble of an industry.

Kodas doesn't shy from citing specific bad actors, including an irresponsible (and under-skilled) guide who duped a wealthy American into a trip to the summit, only to abandon him in the end for his own summit bid. He also relates in intrepid detail the very personal story of his own second summit attempt, one wrought with its own guide shenanigans and hi-jinx. The book is as juicy as a gossip tabloid, and certainly the guides who are named by name will have a thing or two to say about it. But the work is philosophical at root, revealing how an endeavor as seemingly straightforward as a climb to the top of a mountain can devolve into a series of grueling human battles not unlike those one might encounter on the most harrowing of city streets.

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Client Warren Goldstein on Huffington Post

Bucking the Conventional Wisdom: Why I Am Voting for Barack Obama, and Why I Bet on the New York Giants
Huffington Post, February 4, 2008

Forty-eight years ago, on the playground of Crown Elementary School, in Coronado, California, I knew that Richard Nixon should be the next President of the United States, and campaigned vigorously for him among my classmates. He'd been Vice-President for eight years, for goodness' sake, and John F. Kennedy hadn't run anything. I was nine years old, but I'd absorbed the conventional wisdom surrounding me in that Republican town, and, as it turned out, the state as well. Nixon took California in 1960. When I learned that my parents had voted for Kennedy, and as Democrats from Democratic families had never considered doing anything else, I felt betrayed.

The conventional wisdom is powerful stuff, based in experience, and it always assumes that the future will look much like yesterday and today. It's a useful guide to all kinds of things, from whom your parents are going to vote for, what your spouse would like for a birthday present, and what it takes to be a credible candidate for President. (Lots of experience, a substantial track record, and anointing by the party insiders.)

But every now and then the political calculus changes, and the conventional wisdom suddenly becomes as relevant as yesterday's stock closing prices. That's what happened during the civil rights movement beginning in Montgomery Alabama in 1955. Instead of the "slow, steady progress" on civil rights urged by proponents of the conventional wisdom, the movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. upended normal political life. Ordinary working African-Americans boycotted the Montgomery buses for 13 months, ultimately forcing a Supreme Court decision outlawing the city's segregated bus seating. While Hillary Clinton was right in pointing out the importance of Lyndon Johnson to passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, it's also true that any Democratic president, including John F. Kennedy, had he lived, could have signed them. The deeper truth is that no such bills would ever have gotten close to the President's desk without the movement sparked and led by Martin Luther King.

For 35 years, as she's fond of pointing out, Hillary Clinton has worked to improve the lot of American families. I believe her, and think she might even make a pretty good president--but only that. What's wrong with her campaign, in my view, and what hangs like an albatross around the neck of a potential Clinton presidency, is that it is almost entirely immersed in and nourished by conventional political wisdom: "experience matters most;" "she's paid her dues--she deserves it;" "Hispanics won't support a black candidate;" "incremental change is the most we can hope for;" "a female candidate has to look even more hawkish than male candidates on war and peace;" "moderation in all things."

Here's a true story. My wife, the Rev. Donna Schaper, Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City, went to Washington DC to lobby for immigration reform last year. When she got a chance to ask Senator Clinton why even the Senate bill was so punitive and meager rather than truly comprehensive immigration reform, the Senator replied, with great condescending energy, emphasizing each word. "Politics is the art of the possible."--the all-purpose cliché defense for legislative failure--as though Donna, who has worked in the public arena as long as Hillary has, needed any reminding.

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Strothman Agency Client Walter Lewin on Al Jazeera English's Riz Khan Show