| With any other demographic group in American history, the notion that increased power within the electoral arena would not just diminish, but virtually erase the importance of political activists would be regarded with great skepticism, to say the least. Yet, with blacks it seems almost natural, because whites in general, and conservatives in particular have been playing the "divide and conquer" game with the black community ever since the first slave was dragged off the first ship from Africa. Because whites have been playing the game for so long, because it is so deeply ingrained in white American culture, it may even turn out to be the case. But that doesn't necessarily make Will and Bennet's reasoning sound. They are, after all, offering rationalizations for a dynamic of tokenism-you can have a black President, but not if it results in an all-around empowerment of black people, and the black community.
Bill Bennett and the Issue of "Issues"
Let's take Bennett first. According to him, Jackson and Sharpton don't talk about issues, Barack Obama does. There are many, many progressive activists who would strongly disagree with such a claim. But why argue opinions? Let's try a simple reality test, shall we? Google all three and the top issue for black America for the last 3 months: subprime mortagatges, which threaten a massive loss of black assets.
Results 1 - 30 of about 68,300 over the past 3 months for "Jesse Jackson".
Results 1 - 30 of about 19,800 over the past 3 months for "Jesse Jackson" subprime
Percentage of name mentions with "subprime": 29.0%
Results 1 - 30 of about 64,100 over the past 3 months for "Al Sharpton".
Results 1 - 30 of about 6,530 over the past 3 months for "Al Sharpton" Suprime
Percentage of name mentions with "subprime": 10.2%
Results 1 - 30 of about 1,880,000 over the past 3 months for "Barack Obama"
Results 1 - 30 of about 83,100 over the past 3 months for "Barack Obama" Suprime.
Percentage of name mentions with "subprime": 4.4%
So, it looks like Jackson and Sharpton both have focused more attention, relatively, on the subprime mortgage problem than Obama has. Of course, they're not running for President--this time--so that shouldn't be construed as a slam against Obama. There's bound to be tons of process-oriented items about Obama, and he can't be held responsible for that. Still, it is unmistakably true that both Sharpton and Jackson have paid significant attention to the number one issue confronting black America, the subprime mortgage crisis-significantly more than George Will or William Bennet, in fact:
Results 1 - 30 of about 36,300 over the past 3 months for "George Will"
Results 1 - 30 of about 960 over the past 3 months for "George Will" subprime
Percentage of name mentions with "subprime": 2.6%
Bennett requires us to combine two searches-For "William Bennett" and "Bill Bennett:
Results 1 - 30 of about 13,400 over the past 3 months for "Bill Bennett"
Results 1 - 30 of about 13,400 over the past 3 months for "William Bennett"
Total: about 26,800
Results 1 - 30 of about 224 over the past 3 months for "Bill Bennett" subprime
Results 1 - 18 of 18 over the past 3 months for "William Bennett" subprime
Total: about 242
Percentage of name mentions with "subprime": 0.9%
Fancy that! Look who's not talking about issues! Bill Bennett, a hypocrite! Who would have ever imagined? I'm all like Claude Raines, you know? At least George Will, at 2.6% is above 50% of Obama's total, and almost 10% of Jesse Jackson's. Pretty good for white guy, don'cha think?
One more thing.
Looking at the first 30 items returned for Jesse Jackson, the "News results" section was headed by an item "Obama Surge Creates Problems for Jesse and Al", with the following text displayed:
Jesse Jackson, too, criticized Obama, during the so-called Jena Six matter. ... Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson's soul mate, also sounded alarms against Obama, ...
"133 related articles" were indicated.
But among the first 30 items, seven had to do with the subprime crisis, while he also spoke out in support of the Writers Guild Strike, in support of striking cafeteria workers, and in opposition to the XM/Sirius merger. In short, Jesse Jackson is, as he long has been, one of the most issue-oriented and class-oriented figures in the American political scene; and while his primary concern is the well-being of black community, because that community is on the bottom of every heap in our country, the actions he engages in to lift it up lift up all Americans.
George Will and The Exhausted Narrative of "Exhausted Narratives"
Now back to George Will. He thinks that Sharpton and Jackson "have a sort of investment in the traditional and, I believe, utterly exhausted narrative about race relations in the United States."
And what narrative would that be? That blacks have been enslaved, segregated, and discriminated against throuhgout American history, and still suffer both ongoing discrimination and inherited disadvantages? And that they need legal remedies to secure their rights? Certainly, the likes of George Will have done everything within their power to exhaust that narrative-and nothing substantial to remedy the truths it points to.
The subprime mortgage crisis has disproportionately affected Blacks and Latinos, and the reason for that is simple: they have previously been locked out of homeownership, when the nation had aggressive policies of creating a large homeowning middle class. Now, instead of government help in building equity, they have been left to the tender mercies of high-interest lenders-the exact opposite of the post WWII VHA/FHA system that allowed tens of millions of white Americans to join the homeowning middle class in the generation after World War II. And the government did nothing to protect these people.
This Tuesday, United for a Fair Economy will be releasing its annual "State of the Dream Report"--" Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008":
This presentation of our new report will detail how the subprime mortgage crisis will impact African-Americans and other people of color. We found that it will be the greatest loss of wealth for African-Americans in the modern US history. The report also estimates and compares the costs that will accrue to different racial groups, due to the racial bias in the way these loans were marketed and delivered.
But even before the subprime scam was perpertuated, the racial wealth gap severely impeded black progress, as a 2001 article in The Nation magazine, "The Black-White Wealth Gap" by Dalton Conley, explained:
Overall, the typical white family enjoys a net worth that is more than seven times that of its black counterpart. (Latinos--a very diverse group--overall fare slightly better than African-Americans but still fall far short of whites.)
This "equity inequity," which has grown in the decades since the civil rights triumphs of the sixties, cannot be explained by income differences alone. That is, while African-Americans do earn less than whites, asset gaps remain large even when we compare black and white families at the same income levels. For instance, at the lower end of the economic spectrum (incomes less than $15,000 per year), the median African-American family has a net worth of zero, while the equivalent white family's net worth is $10,000. Likewise, among the often-heralded new black middle class, the typical white family earning $40,000 per year enjoys a nest egg of around $80,000; its African-American counterpart has less than half that amount. Among the wealthiest Americans, the story is much the same: Oprah Winfrey and Robert L. Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television) are the only African-Americans on the Forbes annual list of the 400 richest people in the United States, and they are both on the lower end of the list.
This racial wealth gap accounts for many of the racial differences in socioeconomic achievement that have persisted in the post-civil rights era. When we compare black and white families who have the same income and net worth, we find that African-American kids are more likely to graduate from high school than whites and are just as likely to complete college. And when we compare individuals who grew up in families with the same economic resources--income and wealth--we find that the wage gap between blacks and whites disappears and that African-Americans are just as likely as Anglos to be working full time. But among the poor, a lack of assets makes blacks more likely to rely on welfare.
Stacey Jones, an African-American woman with a graduate degree and a solidly middle-class job, describes a common bind for minority parents: "I am, in effect, priced out of homebuying in good school districts," she says. "This, in turn, makes it difficult for me to pay more for housing, since I am spending a good deal of my income on education for my children." For much of the growing black middle class, a lack of assets means living from paycheck to paycheck, being trapped in a job or a neighborhood that is less beneficial in the long run, or not being able to send one's kids to top colleges. Income provides for day-to-day, week-to-week expenses; wealth is the stuff that upward mobility is made of. Equality of opportunity cannot be achieved under unequal conditions (such as differential access to wealth). Indeed, whether the parents enjoy the American dream of the house, the car and the 401(k) is one of the best predictors of whether a child will have a chance to achieve the same.
For the minority poor, the situation is even more precarious.
But, of course, we already knew it was worse for the minority poor. What folks like Will and Bennett don't want anyone to realize is just how unequal things remain when blacks work their way into the middle class. Because that goes to the very heart of why Jackson and Sharpton and countless other activists like them are not about to become obsolete just because one black family might make it to the most exclusive address in the country.
Coda: It's Not Just The Subprime Crisis
Just because the subprime crisis is the biggest issue affecting Black America doesn't mean it's the only one. Let's consider a pair of terms, "crime" and "hate crime." As tireless agitators, according to the conservative stereotype, Jackson and Sharpton should never tire of talking about hate crimes, but be strangely silent about crime in general, which is-according to them-a self-inflicted plague of the black community. As it turns out, however, Jackson and Sharpton both appear in entries that mention "crime" far more often than those that mention "hate crime". As above, all the totals below are for the past 3 months:
Jesse Jackson:
68,300 for "Jesse Jackson".
14,000 for "Jesse Jackson" crime
1,670 for "Jesse Jackson" "hate crime"% of name mentions with "crime": 20.5%
% of name mentions with "hate crime": 2.4%
% of "crime" mentions with "hate crime": 11.9%
Al Sharpton:
64,100 for "Al Sharpton".
14,900 for "Al Sharpton" crime
2,570 for "Al Sharpton" "hate crime"% of name mentions with "crime": 23.2%
% of name mentions with "hate crime": 4.0%
% of "crime" mentions with "hate crime": 17.2%
Barack Obama:
1,880,000 for "Barack Obama"
115,000 for "Barack Obama" crime.
4,920 for "Barack Obama" "hate crime".% of name mentions with "crime": 6.1%
% of name mentions with "hate crime": 0.3%
% of "crime" mentions with "hate crime": 4.3%
We can also compare Obama to the other two leading Democratic candidates over the past 3 months:
Barack Obama:
1,880,000 for "Barack Obama"
83,100 for "Barack Obama" Suprime.
% of name mentions with "subprime": 4.4%
John Edwards:
218,000 for "John Edwards".
14,900 for "John Edwards" subprime
% of name mentions with "subprime": 6.8%
Hillary Clinton:
2,090,000 for "Hillary Clinton"
39,600 for "Hillary Clinton" subprime.
% of name mentions with "subprime": 1.9%
From these figures, Edwards' populism trumps Obama's race, but none of the candidates has brought the degree of focus of attention to the subprime mortgage crisis that Jackson or Sharpton would bring in their places. It's just that simple. When it comes to issues, these are your guys.
And for crime/hate crime:
Barack Obama:
1,880,000 for "Barack Obama"
115,000 for "Barack Obama" crime.
4,920 for "Barack Obama" "hate crime".% of name mentions with "crime": 6.1%
% of name mentions with "hate crime": 0.3%
% of "crime" mentions with "hate crime": 4.3%
John Edwards:
80,600 for "John Edwards" crime.
3,070 for "John Edwards" "hate crime"% of name mentions with "crime": 37.0%
% of name mentions with "hate crime": 1.4%
% of "crime" mentions with "hate crime": 3.8%
Hillary Clinton:
120,000 for "Hillary Clinton" crime.
5,470 for "Hillary Clinton" "hate crime".% of name mentions with "crime": 5.7%
% of name mentions with "hate crime": 0.3%
% of "crime" mentions with "hate crime": 4.6%
Considering that crime in general is overwhelmingly a state and local matter, but that hate crimes are national and a moral concern, it appears that the relative neglect of hate crimes by all three leading Democratic contenders is indicative of how conservative agenda-setting still dominates their thinking. The same is not true of Jackson and Sharpton. Whatever your opinions of them, they are autonomous agents who challenge conservative agenda-setting, which is, of course, the real bottom-line reason that Will and Bennet and so many others are rooting for Obama to put them in their place. |
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