I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination indeed, everything except me.
- Invisible Man (prologue), Ralph Ellison
More than 50 years after Ralph Ellison's classic Invisible Man appeared, a black man may well be poised to become President, and yet, Black America as a whole still remains virtually invisible, describable in exactly the same terms that Ellison used:
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination indeed, everything except me.
You make think this is an exaggeration. If so, this diary is a challenge to think again.
Let's cut right to the chase: This year, we can expect anti-affirmative action initiatives to placed on the ballot in certain key swing states with the intention of generating white backlash to defeat the Democratic candidate-particularly if that candidate is Barack Obama. Yet, at the same time, it's been shown that employers, on average, will hire white ex-felons more readily than they will hire similarly-qualified blacks with no prison record. The notion of hordes of Black workers taking jobs from more qualified Whites is sheer fantasy-the exact opposite of what happens every day of the week, all across America.
Black conservative Shelby Steele appeared on Bill Moyers Journal last night. Moyers, though demonized by the right like everyone to the left of Attila the Hun, has a long history of engaging with various conservatives, and treating them with far more dignity and intellectual respect then they deserve. It's one of the ways in which liberals repeatedly get themselves into trouble, and last night was no exception.
Steele's main conceit of the night was his schema of bargainers vs. challengers-a schema that makes perfect sense within the limited schema of conservative thought, in which there is no such thing as social responsibility, only "personal responsibility," which always seems to be deployed downward: like Leona Helmsly famously said about taxes, it's for "little people." All of this is to say that there's some truth in what Steele has to say-but it's not quite the truth he imagines it to be.
SHELBY STEELE: .... I think that the black community in general has been very conflicted about Barack Obama. Precisely because he's been so successful among whites. And that makes black people nervous.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah. You say in here, white people like Barack Obama a little too much for the comfort of many blacks.
SHELBY STEELE: Yes. Yes.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
SHELBY STEELE: Well, the black American identity, certainly black American politics are grounded in what I call challenging. It's basically, they look at white America and say we're going to presume that you're a racist until you prove otherwise. The whole concept is you keep whites on the hook. You keep the leverage. You keep the pressure. Here's a guy who's what I call a bargainer who's giving whites the benefit of the doubt.
I work with a young black man. He's our managing editor. Like all young black men, he knows what you do when the police pull you over. "Assume the position." It's so routine, most blacks don't even bother talking to whites about it. But, it does give folks a good reason to presume that white America as a whole is still racist. Steele, like all conservatives, engages in a blurring strategy between the individual and the group. The purpose of the post is to engage in a bit of strategic unblurring.
The interview continues:
BILL MOYERS: Give me a simple definition of what you call a bargainer. And a simple definition of what you call a challenger.
SHELBY STEELE: A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Whites then respond with enormous gratitude. And bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the Sixties and so forth. Because they give whites this benefit of the doubt. That you can be with these people and not feel that you're going to be charged with racism at any instant. And so they tend to be very successful, very popular.
Challengers on the other hand say, I presume that you, this institution, this society, is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference.
BILL MOYERS: Affirmative action.
SHELBY STEELE: Affirmative action. Diversity programs. Opportunities of one kind or another. And so, there is a much more concrete bargaining on the case of challengers. And you go into any American institution today and they're all used to dealing with challengers. They all have a whole system of things that they can give to challengers, who then will offer absolution.
[Snarky aside: Ay, there's the rub: "there is a much more concrete bargaining on the case of challengers." Challegers aren't cheap! They want some quid with their pro quo. There's gotta be a cheaper way. America loves them some cheap. No new taxes! Let the children pay!]
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