| While Barack Obama's speech on race last Tuesday was widely hailed, even by some conservatives, it was hardly flawless, nor will it put an end to race playing a role in this election. To the contrary, it will almost certainly come to be seen as an inflection point, a place at which the nature of the racial discourse changed, not where it ended or began.
The right's continued racism has been noted this weekend by both David Neiwart and Glenn Greenwald. While Greenwald treats it more tentatively, reflecting his lawyerly background and temperament, he sticks to his guns against "balanced" tut-tutting that would characterize what he's doing as "guilt-by-association" no different than that practiced on the right. Neiwert, however, quite literarly, wrote the book (Rush, Newspeak and Fascism [PDF]) on the orchestrated transmission of hard right (typically, but not always racist or anti-semetic) memes from the fringes into the mainstream, though that isn't his focus in this weekend's post. It's just something that everyone should be thoroughly familiar with by now. Trust me, we're going to need it.
I'll have something to say about both posts on the flip, but first, there's this, from Mel Reeves at Black Agenda Report:
When did Black liberation theology and the prophetic tradition of the black church become "hate speech"? When did asserting that racism was and remains foundational to the nation's settlement, development and culture become itself "racist" and "anti-American"? When did advocacy on a wide range of fronts and issues begin to take a back seat to the advancement of political figures who build careers and multiracial electoral coalitions by convincing whites that they have repudiated what Barack Obama famously called the "excesses of the sixties and seventies."
And, indeed, if one looks at the paragraph of Obama's speech in which he distances himself from Wright, it is clearly troubling from a reality-base perspective... |
Here's what Obama said:
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
Setting aside the question of whether Obama's characterizations of Wright's remarks are accurate, are they credible on their own terms? Is it, indeed, "a profoundly distorted view of this country" to see racism as endemic?
Consider the evidence I presented last weekend in "Two Long Recessions", including this chart of black vs. white unemployment:
and the press release of the study that found employers in the New York City areas were slightly more willing to hire white convicts than blacks with similar backgrounds, but no criminal record.
How can such basic facts possibly be explained without recourse to "endemic racism"? What other explanation is there? Evil pixie dust?
Of course we're not talking about old-fashioned KKK-style racism. That's still around in some parts--as Neiwert and Greenwald help remind us. But no one is saying that sort of overt racism is the cause of continued discriminatory treatment. It's much more subtle than that, as described, for example, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. But it's still racism, and it's still endemic.
Is it "a distorted view that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America"? Or is the fact that blacks have experienced an endless recession in itself proof enough that it's not a distorted view, but a reality-base one?
And what of Obama's implicit claims about the Middle East? This, too, is what he calls "distorted":
a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
But it's a simple matter of historical fact that the emergence of political Islam came decades after Israel drove the Palestinian people off of their ancestral lands. Indeed, Israel itself promoted the growth of political Islam--specifically, Hamas--among the Palestinian people as a misguided attempt to weaken the PLO.
This is hardly an excuse for suicide bombs and other forms religiously-sanctioned terror. But it is a simple matter of historical accuracy. Israel's fearful attitude has its true historical source in Europe, and centuries of persecution there, climaxing in the Holocaust. The Muslim world had no part in that.
While it's certainly true that Obama generally struck a positive, inspiring tone in talking about race in America, it is undeniably true that he has wrongly accused Jeremiah Wright of being wrong on the above issues. This is not to say that I agree with Wright in every particular. i have not made a minute study of everything he has said. But neither has anyone else that I know of. I am only speaking of how Obama has characterized him. And that characterization simply does not hold up.
This is hardly surprising, if one truly understands the basics of black history in America. Those who speak honestly to and for the black community have always been seen as radical extremists. That is a simple and direct consequence of how terribly white America has treated black America. Have we made progress? Absolutely! Permanent recession is a definite advance over slavery. No one denies that. But is this anything close to equality? Surely, you jest!
This is the unspeakable reality that Obama's call for openness requires us to deny. In order to get the "honest" "open" dialogue going, we have to first get rid of the inconvenient truth-teller.
Then, we can get down to business.
Of course, that's not quite how the right sees things, now is it?
David Neiwart writes:
Take, for example, Pat Buchanan's column on the Obama flap, titled "A Brief for Whitey":
It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."
Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
Ah yes. Anyone who's been around racial politics for any length has heard all about how black civil-rights advocates are in fact "race hustlers." And it isn't just Buchanan making this kind of remark about Obama: So, for that matter, have those sensitive folks at Powerline. A Townhall blogger even called Michelle Obama a "race pimp."
But really, the richest line in Buchanan's column -- the one that no doubt resonates most with black voters -- was this one:
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Damn, I'm sure most black people forgot to be grateful for segregation, the lynching era, sundown towns, and the continuing discrimination they face both in employment and in residence. Because the institutional conditions created by those decades of bigotry have in fact gone largely unchanged, though to white guys like Buchanan, that simply isn't a factor:
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
Well, I'm sure black voters are convinced by that argument. After all, it's obvious that the matter of continuing discrimination is just an illusion in their heads.
And, of course, I also pointed out last week that more white youth smoke marijuana than black youth, but the arrest statistics are wildly skewed in the opposite direction.
Neiwert goes on to quote from Limbaugh as well, before concluding:
What you'll notice in all this, of course, is that all these folks really aren't concerned about black people at all. They're talking to white people, and basically reinforcing the stereotypical view that there's just something wrong with those black people. Why else can't they see that conservatism is really about their greater good?
Folks like Limbaugh and Buchanan and Bridget Johnson like to complain that when blacks vote for liberals en masse, they're engaging in "identity politics". As always, they forget that "identity politics" in America was in fact created, and deeply institutionalized, by white people.
And there's no small irony when the efforts of the historical victims of identity politics to break down those institutions is denounced as merely members of a racial identity group defending their own narrow interests. That's what we call the "projection strategy."
As always, this means that Republicans are giving us a warning about their own upcoming strategy. So when they begin accusing Democrats of indulging racism, we can be quite certain that the forthcoming election season will be nothing less than a full-on onslaught of Republican racism -- excused, of course, by the claim that "they do it too."
Greenwald strikes a related chord when he writes:
When the Right uses dishonest tactics to demonize a Democratic candidate -- as they just spent the last two weeks doing with Barack Obama -- one has two options and only two options:
(1) Turn one's nose up and declare oneself to be far above such tactics, way too noble to get anywhere near them, so that one can pat oneself on the back for one's purity and goodness ("I didn't use Paisley and Hagee against McCain because that's not right to do") while spending the next four years complaining about the John McCain administration; or,
(2) Take whatever standards the Right uses -- no matter how depraved and dishonest those standards are -- and demand that they be applied equally, not only by them, but also to them, to ensure that these distortive tactics are either applied to both sides or not at all.
Both Neiwert and Greenwald are 100% correct. But what I said above about Obama compromising the discussion of race from the get-go is also correct. Consider what else Mel Reeves said at Black Agenda Report:
Obama is no longer prepared to be associated with a clergyman who preaches from a very political and unashamedly "Black" perspective - a liberation-motivated worldview that requires criticism of white American political culture and encourages resistance to white supremacy. Rev. Wright's church covenant celebrates positive values and the uplift of the black community - both of which require pro-Black advocacy and support for activism - positions that are generally seen as suspect by tens of millions of white Americans. Obama used to believe - or pretended to believe - that a religion that focuses on "your own house" is not exclusionary, its good common sense.
He and his church have the right to focus on the needs of black folk first and foremost, since blacks are still victimized and oppressed in this country. And they should not have to apologize for a church covenant that celebrates positive values and the uplift of the black community. To focus on your own house is not exclusionary, its good common sense. All religions are based on specific, historical points of origin: Palestine for the Jews, Mecca and Medina for Muslims, Rome for Roman Catholics, the United States for those Protestant denominations that were begun or transformed in America, Salt Lake City for Mormons, India for Hindus, etc. Black American Protestantism is derived from U.S, racist exclusion of Blacks in all arenas of life, including white churches. There is a "liberation" component in all Black-created denominations, not just the Nation of Islam. Yet whites reserve the right to decide what Black faith is "kosher," i.e., acceptable to them.
We still have a very long way to go. |
