| Before plunging into Loury's response, I'd like to look at some other views expressed, beginning with a zip through a few shorter clips.
A Broad Consensus: No Movement Here
Michael Kazin, pre-eminent historian of the Populist era sets things straight in a no-nonsense fashion:
To state the obvious: A presidential campaign is not a social movement; its objective is to elect an individual, not to win rights or power or cultural influence for a large group of people who have a set of deep-seated grievances. But Obama's campaign and the success he's achieved, so far, does depend on the size, ardor, and creativity of the progressive movement that has been growing since the 2000 election.
And a number of others echo him.
Debra Dickerson, Author, The End of Blackness:
Kudos to Obama for reaching transcendence, but no way is the undeniable excitement he's generated anything remotely resembling America's past great progressive movements.
Jennifer Baumgardner, Author, Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics:
Barack Obama is saying "Yes we can...support a biracial (Ivy-educated, male, lawyer) candidate for the highest office in the nation," which shouldn't be confused with "Yes we can...wage a social justice revolution in which everybody has health care, the death penalty is considered an abomination, and we won't bomb Pakistan."
Harold Evans, Author, The American Century:
Obama has rhetoric to match Bryan's, but while the statements are gratifying, even glorious, they are not all well-enough defined yet to constitute anything comparable to the great progressive movements that gave us our present.
John Judis, Journalist:
I think Obama has run a brilliant campaign, but not necessarily a "great progressive" one. Purely in policy terms, he is running a center-left campaign similar, say, to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and far less bold than, say, Bill Clinton in 1992. All the stuff about reforming Washington is very much in the line of Carter-John Anderson-Ross Perot.
Michael Kinsley, Columnist:
Of course he's exaggerating. That is not a crime. In fact, it's almost required in a presidential candidate. If you don't have some grandiose historical moment in your pocket, you get nailed as Ted Kennedy famously did for lacking "vision."
Chris Rabb, Blogger, Afro-Netizen:
Obama's candidacy is not a movement, no matter how historic and unique it may be. It is a fascinating and noteworthy social phenomenon, which is not the same as a movement.
Naomi Klein, Author, The Shock Doctrine:
Not a single Obama policy is unequivocal in its clarity and morality, which is the essential quality of a transformative movement.
So there you have it--from historians to bloggers, radical critics to Verailles pundits--a clear and broad consensus: not a movement. I could have told you that last year (in fact I did), but backup is always nice. And in this context, it refutes Digby's point about the respondents being ambivalent or confused.
I want to close this section with one last quote, the complete first paragraphs of Naomi Klein's respose, because I think it does such a clear job of capturing both what's inspiring and what's lacking in Obama's campaign:
What all transformative movements have in common is the quality of speaking up to an aspirational public, to our best possible selves. Transformative movements act like the world is better than it is, and-when they work-they inspire the world to live up to this partial projection. The Obama campaign, has, in moments, embodied precisely that quality: Obama conjures a better America and that better America shows up for him. But political moments do more than speak to our best selves; they harness that quasi-mystical power to make radical demands to transform the real world. The Obama campaign has not done this, not on any issue at the core of our current crisis. Not on global warming, the war in Iraq, the housing crisis, health care, underemployment, or the assaults on civil liberties. Not a single Obama policy is unequivocal in its clarity and morality, which is the essential quality of a transformative movement.
Another Take
Now, it should be noted that there are some other responses that could also be lumped together as a group, ones that make the point that electing a black man President is bound to make an historical impact. And, of course, I couldn't agree more. But Roger Wilkins wisely (bit of redundency there) recalls the impacts of Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson and taking them as a point of comparison says:
If two superb black athletes could significantly lessen the "sociocultural segregation of our society," a superb black president could significantly lessen even more the hold the past has on us, and that presidency would forever be regarded as one of the brightest lights in our national life.
That says it exactly. It's not a progressive movement, but it's not chopped liver, either. It will have a very significant impact in and of itself, which is a good thing. But that does not a movement make.
Glenn Loury's Sober Assesment
First, for those not familiar with Loury, a biographical clip from Wikipedia:
At age 35, he was the first black tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University.[2]
In 1984, Loury created controversy with "A New American Dilemma", an article in The New Republic in which he addressed "fundamental failures in black society" such as "the lagging academic performance of black students, the disturbingly high rate of black-on-black crime, and the alarming increase in early unwed pregnancies among blacks." This article brought attention and prominence, especially in conservative circles.
In 1987, Loury's career continued its ascent when he was selected to be the next Undersecretary of Education, a position which would have made him the second-highest-ranking black person in the Reagan administration. However, that same year, Loury was discovered to be carrying on an affair with Pamela Foster. Loury was later arrested for possession of cocaine.[3] An article in The New Yorker during 1995 said that Loury "was emerging as exactly the kind of person he had warned black America to avoid".[4]
Since 1987, Loury has reemerged after reclusive self-reflection as a born-again Christian and repositioned himself as a "black progressive." Loury left Harvard in 1991 to go across town to Boston University, where he headed the Institute on Race and Social Division. In 2005, Loury left Boston University for Brown University, where he was named a professor of economics, a research associate of the Population Studies and Training Center, and given a courtesy appointment in Africana studies.
In short, he's a brilliant man who's been through the wringer in a very publicly humiliating way, and yet has managed to grow as a result. Almost alone among the coterie of those identified as "black conservatives" he clearly has a mind of his own. Although he has a more progressive outlook today, he is still idiosyncratic, which is part of what makes him worth listening to. He will speak his mind, regardless of what others may think. Right or wrong, that is an admirable quality we should all aspire to. After all, in the end, what else do we have?
So, what did he have to tell Mother Jones?
Here's the beginning:
Is Barack Hussein Obama a transformative American leader on questions of race? Not when compared to Lyndon Baines Johnson.
A shocking degree of historical amnesia/ignorance has been revealed in the gushing press commentary on Obama's "race" speech. It seems to me that people are confusing something that is akin to a cult of personality with an actual political movement that is informed by a comprehensive ideological vision and that is capable of making lasting institutional reforms. Obama's address given in Philadelphia last March-in the aftermath of the initial firestorm created by the public exposure of some of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's more controversial remarks-has been called the greatest public oration on the question of race since Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, given at the 1963 march on Washington. This claim is, I think, demonstrably false.
I offer as counterexample to this claim LBJ's speech given as a commencement address at Howard University in 1965. These two instances of public rhetoric were motivated by very different forces: Obama's was given under duress, in the midst of a primary campaign, in an effort to control the damage to his electoral prospects from his association with Rev. Wright. LBJ, by contrast, was speaking as a sitting president, articulating a guiding vision that would inform those aspects of his legislative agenda, the war on poverty, that dealt with racial themes. But this is precisely my point. Unlike Obama, LBJ staked out a political position that has had consequences: That the people of the United States were obligated to undertake a massive expansion of social investment for the disadvantaged in American society, and that this obligation rested at least in part on the historical necessity that we act so as to reduce racial inequality in our country. Obama sometimes gives the impression that the less said about our mutual obligation as Americans to act so as to reduce inequality of social outcomes between the races in the country, in the jails as well as the schools, the better.
Like I said, that's just the beginning. Loury not only reminds us how much of a difference LBJ's commitment made--something we never seem to hear Obama talk about, he also freely acknowledges that it was imperfect. He has a well-rounded grasp of things, including his own right to perceptions and opinions that in some circles might be deemed unacceptable.
Of course, nobody can expect Obama to argue for a return of the Great Society. Still, his speech-and more broadly his views about race and American social obligation, whatever their merits-are not in the same league with LBJ's, not even close.
That should be obvious, but there are places where one can get shouted down for saying it. He continues:
Will Obama's effective renegotiation of America's implicit racial contract redound to the long-term benefit of African American people? Not necessarily, especially to the extent that it lets the American mainstream off the hook in terms of their responsibilities to narrow the racial gap.
Again, it should be obvious, but...
Barack Obama, in this campaign, is engaged in a de facto renegotiation of the implicit American racial contract. What, one may ask, might that implicit racial contract be? Well, in a word, it is the broad recognition and acceptance by governing elites in this country-in the press, in the courts and legal establishment, in the academy and in the broader political culture-that structural impediments exist to the equal participation of blacks in American life, and that government-sponsored initiatives-whether race-specific or universal in character-are an appropriate vehicle for redress in this situation.
Loury goes on to elaborate this point at some length, before turning to a very deep and real concern that I've heard virtually no discussion of on the blogs--the concern that Obama, in order to further prove his "post-partisan" "transformative" bona fides, may himself repudiate race-based affirmative action. This is a concern that Loury approaches with a mixture of sensibilities, historical, sociological, psychological, moral and political, that is strangely reminiscent of James Baldwin. Though, of course, Loury is nowhere near Baldwin's radical outlook, in these passages, he echoes Baldwin's textured appreciation for different imperatives struggle for our allegience:
This unfinished racial business, I would argue, is a part of what you inherit when you become an American.
While there has never been unanimity on these matters, there nevertheless has been a consensus view-a view, I might add, that was recently reaffirmed by a relatively conservative US Supreme Court in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases. This consensus has been under attack for a generation, and now it is, in effect, being renegotiated by Barack Obama in this political campaign. Look for him to throw affirmative action under the bus by advocating that we transition to a scheme based on class and not race come September. Some may object that Obama's campaign rhetoric and speeches clearly reveal his appreciation of the structural bases for racial inequality. They will say that his view is nuanced, pragmatic, and historically well informed. This all may be true, but the question that matters is not whether Barack Obama knows anything about history or sociology. The critical question is, What are the American people prepared to do next, if anything, about these matters? And how will Obama's purportedly transformative vision of American politics promote progress?
I am sure that a lot of people think they know the answers. A lot of people have been sure about a lot of things regarding Barack Obama and where he stands. A lot of people have been wrong. As noted above, Loury doesn't shrink from his own perceptions, his own sense of what is right before him, whatever it may be. This is what reminds me of James Baldwin. And so he continues:
The answers to these questions are far from clear. What we are witnessing in this campaign is, in effect, that Obama's very person has been taken by many Americans to be a site for public expiation of collective racial sin! I fully understand why many Americans would leap at the chance for such cheap grace. Still, I fail to see why serious advocates of the interests of black people must fall into the same swoon. Here's my bottom line: Obama's authenticity as a representative of the black experience before the American public, even at this late date, is not self-evident-far from it. Saying this does not make me some kind of racemongering black radical. This is not even a criticism of him. It is merely a statement of fact. Nor is it an imputation to him of any invidious motives. Sure, he is ambitious. And yes, he is a politician, doing what politicians must do to get themselves elected. But this issue-concerning what consequences will ensue from the heated discourses of this campaign, for the American civic obligation to pursue greater racial equality in the decades and generations to come-this is a vitally important matter for reflection and discussion.
So much bullshit dispensed of so quickly! It takes one's breath away.
But, of course, this immediately opens Loury up to charges of being mired in the past, in the polarized politics of yada-yada-yada. He is not impressed:
These concerns are not merely the whining of an older generation that is unwilling to accept that things have changed. If "change" in our racial sensibilities means accommodating the weariness of many Americans with our long, historic, and still unfinished pursuit of racial justice, then I have no trouble standing athwart such progress.
Even though I've quoted Loury at great length, I've left much out, in addition to constantly interrupting him. You really owe it to yourselves to go read the whole thing, because Loury is speaking the kinds of truth that we in the all-too-white progressive blogosphere pay far too little attention to, regardless of our best intentions.
A Coda From Garry Wills
Garry Wills, Author, What the Gospels Meant:
It is true that Obama is facing a task of historic scale and difficulty, but he has not sufficiently identified it. The task is to restore a Constitution shredded by secrecy, illegal detention, and torture. The real question is whether he can convince the American people that these atrocities must be wiped out-and he has not begun to do that.
Close, Garry, but no cigar. The real question--particularly after his FISA vote--is whether Obama himself is convinced that these atrocities must be wiped out... or even that they are atrocities. For here, in parallel with the point that Loury makes, it simply is not clear, in the end, what Obama's answer will be, when he's asked the age-old question: Which side are you on?
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