Major Payne: The Digital Divide and the Lack of Black Officers in the Military

The hopeful face of a military officer?

It’s time to get serious about closing that racial gap in learning. After all, if the military is going to eliminate that pesky problem of being led white officers it is, then, vital that the test scores of Black recruits improve so that academic standards at The Coast Guard Academy and Naval Academy don’t have to be lowered anymore to ensure that an acceptable number of Black people can be admitted: 

The U.S. Naval Academy has agreed to a legal settlement with a dissident faculty member after a federal investigation found evidence that it had illegally denied him a merit-pay increase to punish him for his public criticism of its affirmative-action policies.

The findings and settlement, announced on Wednesday by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, represent a significant victory for Bruce E. Fleming, a tenured professor of English. He is the civilian employee who filed a complaint with the federal agency in September 2009 after being denied a merit-pay raise that year.

The office's finding also represents the latest embarrassment related to affirmative action for the Naval Academy, where the superintendent resigned last year in the wake of a scandal over excessive administrative spending related to its diversification efforts and to athletics.

Don’t get us started on who is actually enlisting in the armed forced and who is failing the entrance exam at a rate of 40 percent. Just how diverse are senior officers?:

The U.S. military is too white and too male at the top and needs to change recruiting and promotion policies and lift its ban on women in combat, an independent report for Congress said Monday.

Seventy-seven percent of senior officers in the active-duty military are white, while only 8 percent are black, 5 percent are Hispanic and 16 percent are women, the report by an independent panel said, quoting data from September 2008.

One barrier that keeps women from the highest ranks is their inability to serve in combat units. Promotion and job opportunities have favored those with battlefield leadership credentials.

The report ordered by Congress in 2009 calls for greater diversity in the military’s leadership so it will better reflect the racial, ethnic and gender mix in the armed forces and in American society.

Efforts over the years to develop a more equal opportunity military have increased the number of women and racial and ethnic minorities in the ranks of leadership. But, the report said, “despite undeniable successes ... the armed forces have not yet succeeded in developing a continuing stream of leaders who are as diverse as the nation they serve.”

 “This problem will only become more acute as the racial, ethnic and cultural makeup of the United States continues to change,” said the report from the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, whose more than two dozen members included current and former military personnel as well as businessmen and other civilians.

There’s not much we can do about the lack of Black people in special forces units that exist across the branches of the military unless we are willing to compromise what makes them special in the first place.

Demographic changes do point to the future of the Navy, Air Force, and Army being significantly darker; but, like the future of the state of Texas, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be better.

Just who is going to fly those F-16, F-22, and F-35’s in this future Air Force? We already know which group does the majority of the dying in wars in the Middle Eastern wars, but diversity is the future so this must change.  It is for this reason imperative that the so-called digital divide must be immediately sutured closed::

Researchers have noticed signs of segregation online that perpetuate divisions in the physical world. And blacks and Hispanics may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment.

Fifty-one percent of Hispanics and 46 percent of blacks use their phones to access the Internet, compared with 33 percent of whites, according to a July 2010 Pew poll. Forty-seven percent of Hispanics and 41 percent of blacks use their phones for e-mail, compared with 30 percent of whites. The figures for using social media like Facebook via phone were 36 percent for Hispanics, 33 percent for blacks and 19 percent for whites.

A greater percentage of whites than blacks and Latinos still have broadband access at home, but laptop ownership is now about even for all these groups, after black laptop ownership jumped from 34 percent in 2009 to 51 percent in 2010, according to Pew.

But wait. Black people have greater access to the internet via cell-phones and equal access to laptops? Then where’s the digital divide? The federal government has worked overtime to equip those less fortunate (yes, many will be white, but a disproportionate percentage will be Black) with tax-payer funded cell phone service:

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission took the first step Thursday toward reworking two related programs that provide telephone subsidies for low-income residents, with commissioners calling for part of the funding to support broadband service.

The FCC's Lifeline Assistance and Link-Up America programs, in place since 1985, now subsidize monthly telephone service and installation for poor U.S. residents. The FCC voted to launch a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that asks for public comments on whether to include broadband and bundled telecom services in the programs.

The NPRM also looks for ways to eliminate waste and abuse in the programs, and questions if the programs' budgets should be capped. The budget for the Lifeline and Link-Up programs, part of the larger Universal Service Fund (USF), has grown from US$162 million in 1997 to $1.3 billion in 2010.

"This trend is unsustainable," said Robert McDowell, a Republican member of the commission.

Some critics have noted that prepaid mobile phone plans seem to be driving up the programs' budgets, which are supported by fees on traditional long-distance telephone service. But Democratic commissioners questioned a cap on the fund, saying it would be difficult for the FCC to support both phone service for low-income residents and expand the program to cover broadband with a cap in place.

The federal government pays for cell phone service for those less privileged. Like food stamps, welfare, free lunch programs, section 8 housing and virtually every government program, it can easily be surmised that those less fortunate are disproportionately Black people. Is this how the digital divide was ultimately fixed, and would this explain why Black people overwhelmingly use cell phone internet connections for entertainment purposes?

Detroit Public Schools recently unveiled a plan to give out 40,000 laptops to students as part of a stimulus plan. Half of Detroit schools are closing. And half of the students attending those schools fail or lack the ability to read. And yet somewhere someone thought it would be a great idea to pass out free laptops (paid for, of course, courtesy of the taxpayer).

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. believes the United States Constitution should be changed to give an iPad, laptop and free broadband access to every “ghetto” child. He also mentioned something about free housing for everyone to stimulate the economy.He didn’t mention Alvin Greene action figures as a plausible way to jumpstart the economy, though we here at SBPDL heartily endorse such an idea not so much because it would stimulate the economy so much as it would stimulate our funny bones.

The United States military, already overburdened with white recruits enlisting to be Real American Heroes, is taxed to the breaking point with white males representing the core of the nation’s officers in every branch of military. United States special forces units are even worse.

Only the digital divide can explain this horrific situation. Requiring lower scores for Black applicants to gain entry to The Coast Guard Academy and Naval Academy portend absolutely nothing; but they do help make our military a more diverse fighting machine. Blame that on the digital divide, along with the low scores of Black recruits and the low proficiency of Black students.

It’s time that Congress not only pass The Michael Oher Act, but it is also high time Congress enacted the Digital Act Granting and Guaranteeing Equal Representation (DAGGER) in Technology Act: Free iPads and iPhones, plus broadband access for all Black people.It will be costly, but DAGGER could cut to the root of the racial gap in learning once and for all.

Though Black people might never use this technology for educational purposes and only for entertainment, we Americans will be able to claim that we at least mightily and altruistically strove to close the racial gap in learning and thus create potential Black recruits for the military that can finally pass the entrance exams.

In Black Run America (BRA) it is an inconvenient truth that white males still have too much power.And this is why we constantly see reports such as the one recently ordered by Congress that found the US military is too white and too male at the top, in desperate need for diversity.

I call on all good Americans to support and the Congress to pass DAGGER to save America.

Down Goes Alvin: 'The Ultimate Warrior' Alvin Greene Falls in South Carolina

Alvin "Ultimate Warrior" Greene

In one of the ultimate tragedies of modern American political life, Alvin Green -  the unemployed, currently living with his parents and indicted for showing a white Clemson co-ed pornography - was defeated in his bid to become a United States Senator:

Based on AP analysis of preliminary exit poll data, the Republican rolled over unemployed military veteran Alvin Greene, a Democrat who won his party's nomination but not its support.

Greene lives with his father and faces a felony obscenity charge, accused of showing pornography to a female college student. During occasional interviews in his nominal campaign, Greene insisted that DeMint had started the recession.

Greene barely campaigned and never raised enough to break the $5,000 threshold that required him to report finances.

DeMint spent $3.5 million he raised to instead help other conservative candidates.

In defeat, Greene was able to collect an astounding 356,969 votes:

U.S. Senate: Republican Jim DeMint's win wasn't surprising, but there was real hope that third-party or write-in candidates could make a nice-sized dent in the race. For naught. DeMint's 63 percent finish makes for a solid-looking victory when you don't consider the context of a colossal mess like Alvin Greene. The Democrat did pull in 28 percent of the vote, with 356,969 people sahttp://voices.washing
tonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/11/best_comics_pitch_of_the_day_c.htmlying they'd rather have him than DeMint. So, there is that embarrassment.

Though he won't represent South Carolina, Alvin Greene is making a bid to resurrect the memory of one of professional wrestling's most popular, charismatic, and enigmatic stars, the Ultimate Warrior. Legally, of course, this is a specious claim because wrestler - the real Ultimate Warrior - owns the trademark to the name. This isn't stopping Alvin Greene, a man who once said that manufacturing superhero toys of himself could bring South Carolina out of the economic abyss.

Losing is only the first part of the journey for Alvin Greene, as he plans to create a comic book based on his concept (already trademarked and legally owned by the wrestler the Ultimate Warrior) of being the Ultimate Warrior:

Faster than an incumbent politician, stronger than the Hulk, able to leap both Michael Jordan and the ballot box in a single leap from logic. Alvin Greene may have lost his offbeat bid for the Senate, but no one, apparently, defeats his alter ego: the "Ultimate Warrior."

Greene's candidacy ended as quirkily as it began Tuesday night, with the Democratic challenger posing no threat to South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint -- yet in the alternate universe of comics, Greene remained unbowed.

Speaking to a handful of reporters on Election Night, Greene paused to pitch his comic book featuring a do-gooder superhero helping families in foreclosure, reports WBTV.com -- the vanquished surreally touting the superpowers of the ever-victorious "Ultimate Warrior."
 
Of his superheroic "alter ego," Greene tells reporters, citing a couple of retired athletes: "He can see into the future. He is faster than [Olympic medalist] Maurice Greene and he can outleap [Michael] Jordan."
If only, for Greene's sake, Ultimate Warrior could outpoll a sitting senator. With great power, it seems, comes great eccentricity.

For more "Ultimate Warrior" images, you can click here.

The Alvin Greene comic can be found here. The real Ultimate Warrior's comic can be found here.

The WWF wrestler, The Ultimate Warrior, was billed as being from Parts Unknown. Alvin Greene is an individual who is truly from Parts Unknown, and we at SBPDL wish him a successful post-election career.

Based on some of the characters that have appeared in WWF/WWE before, Alvin Greene might just fit right in Vince McMahon's cartoonish and racially insensitive world. 

Still though, how did he get that many votes? That should go without saying.

The new US Senate will have no Black people and that is a travesty. The faux Ultimate Warrior Alvin Greene would have undoubtedly made some inspiring speeches on the floor of the Senate, and we are all poorer for his losing.

More election coverage will be coming up later tonight.

UPDATE:

From Exit Polls, Alvin Greene got 80 percent of the Black vote in South Carolina:

Nationwide, 90 percent of Black people voted Democratic.

Fifty-three percent of Black college graduates voted for Greene, while 82 percent of Black people without degrees voted for Mr. Greene.

Is that Bubba from Forrest Gump? Alvin Greene: The Last Action Hero

Alvin Greene. Just the name alone should strike fear into the heart of all those who hear it uttered. The perfect representation of where Democracy is leading America, Greene is a veritable hero reminding anyone willing to pay attention what the Amendment allowing the direct election of senators wrought.

Though Black action figures are a rare find at the toy shelf (and commonly available at a steep discount), Greene has come up with a novel way to stand athwart the vocation crisis in South Carolina and yell, “Stop”:

Alvin Greene knows exactly how to create jobs in this struggling economy. “Make toys of me,” he says.

In an interview with The Guardian, the reliably eccentric South Carolina Senate candidate pitches his jobs plan, which involves creating a tiny army of Alvin Greene action figures.

“Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an Army uniform, Air Force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids,” the Palmetto State's accidental Democratic nominee says. “That's something that would create jobs.”

And really, Greene insists, he’s not kidding. “I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up,” he tells The Guardian. “That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke."

Greene, who has a remarkable resemblance to Pvt. Benjamin Buford “Bubba” Blue from the film Forrest Gump, might just be the last action hero. It is our earnest hope that a Alvin Greene line of action figures becomes available, for in his first interview he uttered these lines:

"Let's reclaim our country from the terrorists and the communists," said Alvin Greene.

On Sunday night, Greene, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in South Carolina did something no one had ever seen before - he actually appeared in front of voters at an NAACP event on his hometown of Manning.

Terrorists and communists run our country, in the mind of Alvin Greene though he failed to elaborate on who these villains are and why their intentions must be stopped.

NPR provided excellent coverage of Greene’s speech here, showing that Disingenuous White Liberals are enthralled with a senatorial race that epitomizes the world they have created:

While singing and speeches by others slowly unfolded before Greene took the podium, the candidate occasionally fidgeted, wiped his brow and intently studied a black spiral notebook where he apparently wrote his remarks. The speech by the 32-year-old unemployed military veteran had very few of the long pauses that have marked his unprepared conversations with reporters.

He opened by joking that he was not only the best candidate for Senate, but also the best choice for one of next year's NAACP Image Awards. After that, he turned serious. Greene rattled off national job loss statistics, and he said the state needs to put more people to work adding more lanes to hurricane evacuation routes.

On education, he mentioned South Carolina's dismal rankings in standardized tests.

Indeed, watching the video of Greene’s speech grants the viewer an opportunity to view a car accident as it unfolds. The metaphorical accident takes place in the opening joke and subsequently, it just gets worse and worse for the Democratic nominee for South Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat.

If an Alvin Greene action figure doll is produced, we at SBPDL have the feeling it would be received with the enthusiasm reserved for Turbo-Man’s faithful sidekick Booster in the Jingle All the Way film.

You have to feel bad for Alvin Greene, a gentleman who probably belongs on a shrimping boat with Forrest Gump, but instead is representing the fine people of South Carolina as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. And he is a man who believes an action figure of his likeness would spur economic activity in a state.

The prospects for the state of South Carolina are not good, based on the test scores of its students and the individual Democrats have decided should represent their state in Congress:

DeMint leads among male voters by better than four-to-one and among women by a two-to-one margin. Yet while 90% of Republican voters back DeMint, Greene earns just 50% support in his own party. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of voters not affiliated with either party prefer the incumbent.

Greene, an African-American, captures 51% of the black vote, while 74% of whites favor DeMint.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of conservatives in the state like DeMint, while moderate and liberal voters are more closely divided over the race.

In the June 8 Democratic Primary, Greene defeated retired judge Vic Rawl with nearly 60 percent of the vote in a contest in which it appears both men did little campaigning. Now some state Democrats are complaining about Greene’s victory, even charging that it may be a Republican dirty trick, and Rawl has asked the state party to investigate.

South Carolina consistently ranks last in scholastic achievement, as the test-takers in schools across the state routinely produce mediocre results on standardized test that even kids in 3^rd world countries outpace:

The results from this year’s “End of Course Examination” come as a hard blow to parents across South Carolina.

Instead of bolstering confidence after a year of low SAT scores, widening achievement gap, and increasing dropout rate; results from this latest round of testing only confirm to parents the desperate need for real education reform.

Even with improvements reported in English and Physical Science testing, overall scores indicate that huge numbers of students are not learning even the most basic skills in key subjects.

In English, nearly 49% of all students taking the test scored either a D or an F. Physical science scores are even more disheartening, with 63% of students scoring a D or an F.
Mathematics results are equally dismal. Over 45% of all students who tested received either a D or an F.

In fact, Algebra scores for black and white students have dropped since Rex took office in 2006.

Sadly, scores that are already shockingly low look even worse in light of the significant achievement gap between black and white students.

In Algebra testing, over 66% of white students scored a C or above, nearly double the percentage of black students who scored as well.
English test scores indicate that only 31.8% of black test takers scored a C or better, while over 65% of white test takers received a C or above.

For a state that already spends $11,000 per student, you have to ask yourself if the taxpayer is seeing any tangible benefit or return on investment from the speculation in providing free education to children who drop out of schools there to the tune of 158 a day.

Public education has always been a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would be hard-pressed to replicate, but in South Carolina the failed venture continues to receive funding despite the poor rate of return:

Here are some facts to wrap your head around: Just 55 percent of high schools students in South Carolina graduate on time. Statewide there were 167 public school students “lost” each day of the school year. Only 45 percent of African American students and 39 percent of Hispanic students earn a state diploma in four years. South Carolina continues to lag behind the national average of a 69 percent graduation rate - the state ranks 48th in the nation, ahead of just New Mexico and Nevada.

Alvin Greene is no action hero, just the culmination of Democracy in its inspiring finality. Demographically, South Carolina is a state in utter disrepair. One writer believes desegregation brought about the famed white-Black gap in education, and that this caused the term Acting White to gain popularity among Black high achievers.

If this writer is to be believed perhaps Alvin Greene – if elected – can enact a last ditch effort to permanently fill the gaping aperture between white and Black students by instituting a restoration of segregation.

To believe the living standards we currently enjoy can perpetuate into the future with high drop-out rates and an expanding population of individuals incapable of succeeding because they might be deemed traitors, personages who aspire to Act White, is to entertain absurdities of the highest folly.

Through it all, one can only smile when they hear that Alvin Greene wants to take the country back from “terrorists and communists” because he never elaborates on just who these enemies might be or what they represent.

In the vein of Mein Obama, Alvin Green represents a shining example of the vaunted Obama Effect in action. Unlike Forrest Gump’s ill-fated, shrimp boating best friend, Bubba, Alvin Greene is deluded with visions of grandeur that just might come to fruition.

He is the ultimate representative of the best and brightest of a rising generation of Americans that will be entrusted with maintaining the nation.

We do need a hero to combat the “terrorists and communists” and reclaim our nation as Mr. Greene so astutely pointed out. Alas, he is not that hero.

Instead, Alvin Greene is nothing more than a Bubba Blue look-a-like from Forrest Gump. As the era of American exceptionalism comes to a crashing end, can a better representative be found who personifies this breakdown?

Well, besides Hank Johnson that is?

Indeed, Alvin Greene is the last action hero.

Alvin Greene? Black Run America in Action or a Fluke?

In 2008, Black people in South Carolina went to the polls and cast 96 percent of their ballots in favor of Mein Obama, joining the vast multitude of Black people across the nation who voted in similar fashion.

Now, news of a relative unknown - how this could be in politics is never answered - winning the Democratic nomination for senate in the state of South Carolina is sending shock waves throughout the nation:

Take someone unheard-of by the majority of the public—your dentist, your 7th-grade teacher, your creepy cat-lady neighbor—and multiply their level of anonymity by 10. Alvin Green, the surprise victor of yesterday's South Carolina Democratic Senate primary, is still less famous. “I wasn’t surprised, but not really. I mean, just a little, but not much,” Greene told Mother Jones. He was the only one.

Greene earned 59 percent of the 191,336 Democratic votes cast yesterday. After his shocking win, the Huffington Post had to solicit its readers for any tidbits about Greene, pleading: “Do YOU know anything about Alvin Greene? Do you have any photos of him?” The unemployed 32-year-old Army veteran lives with his parents and barely campaigned at all: he had no yard sign and no Web site, and he paid the $10,400 filing fee and all other campaign expenses out of his own pocket. According to Mother Jones, he didn’t show up to the South Carolina Democratic Party convention in April or file any of the mandatory paperwork for candidates with the state or the Federal Election Commission. The kicker? Charleston’s Live5news.com reported today that Greene is actually facing a pending felony charge for showing lewd Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student and suggesting they go to her dorm room.

So how the heck did this man beat out 64-year-old former four-term state lawmaker Vic Rawl, who ran a $186,000 campaign? State Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler offered an uber-scientific reason, speculating that voters unfamiliar with either candidate may have voted for Greene because his name appeared first alphabetically. (Note: This theory may also account for how Bush won twice.)

Greene will face off, and inevitably be crushed by Republican incumbent Jim DeMint in November. If the primary was any indication, it is likely that many more Republicans will show up to the polls. Republicans doubled the Democratic turnout in yesterdays race, with 413,699 Republican votes versus the Democrats’ meager 191,336. Perhaps an even more important factor favoring DeMint: D comes before G in the alphabet.

Alvin Greene has become the new hero of Stuff Black People Don't Like, a man not to be trifled with nor bothered by the machinations of politics and the normal channels of fundraising, campaigning nor even creating a simple website to announce his candidacy (here is the challengers website, a rube who spent $185,000 in his failed attempt at defeating a virtual unknown for the chance to represent the Democrats come November).

You have to feel bad for Vic Rawl, a mild-mannered Southern gentlemen who has played by the rules his entire life only have them ripped apart by his unknown challenger

Race obviously mattered in the 2008 Presidential election, but did it matter in South Carolina in 2010? Greene, the victor, is Black. Rawl, the loser, is white. A hilarious interview with Mother Jones can be found here where Greene stumbles through various questions about his ambitions.

The question is simply this: Did Black voters in South Carolina vote exclusively for Greene based on the fact that he is a Black person, as they did with such joy in 2008 for Obama?:

South Carolina is about 30 percent black, but in the Democratic primary held here in 2004, around 50 percent of the voters were black and a big turnout of blacks this time could provide a landslide win for Obama.

Writing at The Root, one individual has this to say:

Alvin Greene, a 32-year-old, unfunded, unemployed veteran who is black and lives with his mother in Manning, S.C., ran away with the Democratic nomination for the Senate in the Palmetto State last night. In the November general election, he will face first-term GOP incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint, who many expect to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

If elected, Greene will become only the fourth black person elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction and the first from the South. But let's pause here for an important question: What the hell is going on in South Carolina?

Greene, who is completely unknown to Democratic officials in South Carolina or anywhere, put his win in dramatic historical perspective: ''I want to thank all my supporters for making history in South Carolina,'' he told the Greenville News. ''It's been over 100 years since a black has won the nomination of a major party to the U.S. Senate from this state.''

No kidding. South Carolina, which is almost 29 percent black and ranks fourth among states with the largest percentage of black citizens, has elected only one African American to Congress in the last 100 years, and that is the current Democratic Majority Whip in the House, James Clyburn.

Democrats don't win statewide races in South Carolina anymore, so there is almost no scenario that plausibly explains a Greene victory over DeMint in November. On the other hand, there is no plausible explanation of how he won the Democratic nomination in the first place. The possibilities are intriguing.

Is this guy some kind of political genius? Some kind of stealth savant who has retooled and remastered the art of grassroots campaigning so that he could win 59 percent of the vote without breaking a sweat, that he could demolish a better-known, better-funded, well-credentialed candidate, while escaping the notice of his opponent, his party and the media? Greene defeated Charleston lawyer Vic Rawl, a former prosecutor, circuit judge and state representative, who graciously conceded: ''The people have chosen,'' said Rawl, 64. ''There's no question that Mr. Greene is the candidate they selected and I wish him the best.''

This one, undoubtedly, will get more interesting. I'm betting on a case of mistaken identity; South Carolina Democrats thought they were voting for someone else when they voted for Alvin Greene. But just to be clear, this is a guess, pure speculation, with nothing factual to back it up. Still, it is as good an explanation as I've heard. The other speculation floating around in the political ether is that Greene is a Republican plant. The support for that theory is that it took $10,400 to file for the primary, and Greene initially tried to do it with a personal check.

The Columbia Free Times, an alternative weekly in the state capital, described the odd sequence leading up to Greene's filing: ''The candidate ... walked into the state Democratic Party headquarters in March with a personal check for $10,400. He said he wanted to become South Carolina's U.S. senator. Needless to say, Democratic Party chairwoman Carol Fowler was a bit surprised. Fowler had never met Greene before, she says, and the party isn't in the habit of taking personal checks from candidates filing for office.''

According to the Times story by Cory Hutchins, Fowler informed Greene he needed to establish a campaign organization and open a campaign account. And she got personal, asking Green, ''if he thought it was the best way to invest more than $10,000 if he was unemployed.'' Greene left, came back several hours later with a campaign check, which the party happily accepted. But that was the last anyone heard of Greene until last night, when he won in a walk.

The biographical sketch of Mr. Greene isn't flattering, but then again where he elected to the Senate to represent the fine people of South Carolina, he would immediately join fellow Black lawmakers who also are defined as ethically challenged.

Here is a breakdown of how South Carolina Democratic voters voted in the 2008 Democratic primary. Granted, in 2008 the brand of Barack Obama was well-known, but are we to believe that in a state as racial divided as South Carolina that no-one knew the race of Alvin Greene and magically 59 percent of the citizens voted for him?

If that is the case, what does that say about 59 percent of the voters in South Carolina who cast their ballot for a man they knew nothing about?

Is this a case of Black Run America (BRA) flexing its collective power, or is it a case of mass stupidity by an electorate unfettered by conventional methods of campaigning who uniformly decided that the mysterious candidate was a more seductive choice than Mr. Rawl?

The State, a major newspapers in South Carolina, attempts to answer this very question:

day after an unemployed veteran shocked South Carolina's Democratic establishment by winning the U.S. Senate primary, party officials were still scratching their heads: What happened?

Alvin Greene, 32, didn't raise any money. He didn't have a website. And his opponent was a relatively better-known former legislator, Vic Rawl, who had already planned fundraisers for the fall general election.

Greene was considered such a long shot that his opponent and media didn't even bother to check his background. If they had, they would have discovered he faces a felony obscenity charge after an alleged encounter with a college student last fall.

After The Associated Press reported Greene's charge Wednesday, the leader of the state Democratic party said she asked Greene to withdraw from the race.

"I did not do this lightly, as I believe strongly that the Democratic voters of this state have the right to select our nominee," chairwoman Carol Fowler said. "But this new information about Mr. Greene ... would certainly have affected the decisions of many of those voters."

But Greene said he will not step aside.

"The Democratic Party has chosen their nominee, and we have to stand behind their choice," Greene told the AP at his home in Manning. "The people have spoken. We need to be pro-South Carolina, not anti-Greene."

Court records show Greene was arrested in November and charged with showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student, then talking about going to her room at a university dorm.

Charged with disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity, Greene could face up to five years in prison. He has yet to enter a plea or be indicted, and neither Greene's attorney nor a woman listed as the victim immediately returned messages.

South Carolina state law prohibits convicted felons from serving in state office. Felons can serve in federal office, although the U.S. House or Senate could vote to expel any member deemed unfit to serve.

Rawl said he didn't know about Greene's arrest until reading media reports about it.

"It's an absolute surprise," said Rawl, who scrapped a late-week fundraiser after the loss. "I can't really make any comments, because I don't know what's going on."

His prior arrest aside, questions abounded in the day-after deconstruction of Greene's win.

Had Rawl been a victim of the anti-incumbent sentiment that swept the state's primaries? He only carried four counties, but one was Charleston, where he currently serves on county council.

Did Greene capitalize on some sort of a movement among either black voters or the unemployed? A subset of the Machinists' union ran cable ads in South Carolina encouraging the state's jobless to vote, but the group says it never promoted directly Greene or mentioned his name. The director of the state's NAACP chapter says he knew nothing about Greene, who is black, before the win.

There was so little known about Greene's race, background or employment history that it would be hard to believe any of those factors played a role.

It certainly was not his communication skills: Greene spent the better part of an hour Wednesday morning repeatedly putting a reporter on hold before hanging up after the mention of his arrest.

Greene's win may come down the simple fact that his name was listed before Rawl's on the alphabetized ballot, a possibility Fowler said she pondered Tuesday night. Now, Fowler is trying to rework general election schematics that had assumed Rawl would ultimately face off with DeMint.

Even if Rawl had been successful, one analyst expressed skepticism it would have made a difference against the juggernaut of DeMint, a tea party darling who has marshaled a $3.5 million war chest already in the pursuit of his second term.

"A lot of it speaks to the lack of depth of the bench for the Democratic Party in South Carolina right now," said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Winthrop University. "Their best shot in November, really, is the Governor's Mansion."

We might never know why Greene won in such incredulous fashion, as he is being asked to withdraw from the race over his felony charge that includes pornographic photos displayed in a lewd manner. What a shame.

Remember that voting by those dispossessed is something not tolerated in America any longer, so imagine the outcry if Greene is forced to resign and Rawl then represents the Democrats to the displeasure of those who voted either exclusively for his race or in a monolithic fashion based on stupidity.

Also, it is going to be increasingly difficult to find Black candidates worthy of running who don't have a prior record as we move into the future.

Regardless of why Greene was elected, Black people in South Carolina either cast their votes for him based on their racial similarities or because they found the racial dissimilarities between themselves and Rawl to difficult to overcome that even voting for the mysterious candidate was a worthier choice then the white dude.

Stuff Black People Don't Like can only laugh, as this entire episode showcases both the horrendous power of BRA and simultaneously its obvious weakness.

Strange though, this who ordeal reminds us of the final scene from the film Last of the Mohicans...

Alvin Greene will remain the poster child of SBDPL even if he is forced to remove his name from contention for the Senate seat he so richly deserves.

South Carolina is a state where Black people are unified in ways few can imagine, even demanding Black football players boycott the University of South Carolina for the lack of Black people on that university's Board of Trustees.

Democracy is a harsh mistress and no better physical representative of this political ideology can be found than Alvin Greene.