Wright's error, Obama tells us, is that Wright's view of Amer is static, ignoring how things have changed -- so much so that one of his own parishioners now stands on the threshold of being elected to the highest office in the land. ..I know, just as Wright surely knows, th things have changed a great deal. I also know that, as I write this, 1 million young black men are under th physical control of th state; a third of black children live in poverty, and, the Southside of Chicago, w more than one-half million black residents, is one of most massive, racially segregated urban enclaves ever to hv bn created in hist of modern world. These things reflect social, cultural, economic, political forces enmeshed in structure of Amer society; not merely conseq of attitudes wh can be thrown-off if only we were to, under the inspiring & inspired leadership of the junior senator fr Illinois, work togthr to solve our common problems, etc.
Obama, a self-identifying black man running for the most powerful office on earth, does threaten some aspects of the conventional 'white' narrative. But, he also threatens the 'black' narrative -- and powerfully so. In effect, he wants to put an end to (transcend, move beyond, overcome...) the anger, the disappointment and the subversive critique of America that arises from the painful experience of black people in this country. Yet, the forces behind his rise are NOT grassroots-black-American in origin; they are elite-white-liberal-academic in origin. If he succeeds, there will be far fewer public megaphones for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons and Cornel Wests of this world, for sure.
But a great deal more may also be lost including, just to take one example, the notion that the moral legacy for today’s America of the black freedom struggle that played-out in this country during the century after emancipation from slavery – I speak here of Martin Luther King's (and Fannie Lou Hamer's, and W.E.B. DuBois's, and Ida B. Wells’s and Frederick Douglass's ...) moral legacy – should find present-day expression in, among other ways, agitation on behalf of and public expression of sympathy for the dispossessed Palestinians – who are, arguably, among the 'niggers' of today's world, if ever there were any. (We all know that Rev. Wright’s publicly and vociferously expressed sympathies in this regard – his condemnation of America’s support for what he called ‘state terrorism’ in the Middle East – are a central aspect of the political difficulty that Obama now finds himself having to deal with.) Speaking for myself, and as a black American man, if forced to choose, I'd rather be "on the right side of history" about such matters, melding the historical narratives of my people with those of the 'niggers' in today's world, than to make solidarity with elites who, for the sake of political expediency, would sweep such matters under the rug. My fear is that, should Obama succeed with his effort to renegotiate the implicit American racial contract, then the prophetic African American voice – which is occasionally strident and necessarily a dissident, outsider's voice – could be lost to us forever.
Finally, one could argue, with good reason, that the purportedly post-racial Obama candidacy has been hypocritical in its exploitation of a simple-minded racial voting reflex among black Americans. This central fact of the current campaign is only spoken of guardedly, and often goes unnoticed altogether. (This, by the way, is the same reflex that installed Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court a decade and a half ago. These are very different cases, to be sure; but, it’s the same reflex.) Here we have the ‘post-racial’ candidate who is favored to win the crucial North Carolina primary because he can confidently rely on drawing 90% of the black vote. Can I be the only observer who sees a profound irony in that?
George W. Bush has managed to profoundly damage conservatism's brand. "Liberalism" was long ago discredited -- Bill Clinton himself drove a stake through its heart ("the era of big government is over.") Obama's post-ideological campaign, by eschewing explicit identification with the great tradition of Democratic progressivism, by trumpeting the 'transformative leadership' of Ronald Reagan, etc., only reinforces this tendency. And so, Obama and his followers speak of transcending ideology: no more "red states vs. blue states" or left wing vs. right -- that's the old way of thinking, it is said. We need to transcend those categories, to move-on from those old arguments, to seek a new direction, to inaugurate a new generation of leadership, etc. etc.
-What a great post by Glenn Loury. I think it gets to the crux of the issue in asking what Obama's candidacy and his race speech mean for the important Black oppositional narrative. But I still think this is a fair question, and I'll note I'm white: Is it Obama's ambition to be a post-racial candidate, or a post-race-exploitation candidate? I'm not sure, but I read Obama's ambitions as the latter. I agree that racism is as racism does: it's functional, not attitudinal. Or as Glenn Loury says, racism is structural, not personal.
One of the main structural functions of racism in the U.S., arising from the elite interest in fragmenting working & middle-class electoral power (and sustaining the exploitability of Black Americans economically), has been to divide working & middle class voters against their own interests by driving white voters to vote "White." It's been a very successful strategy for conservative Republicans since Nixon. And it's a strategy that has produced public policy that's been lousy for most Americans and disastrous for Black Americans--look at the crack cocaine laws largely responsible for the obscene prison numbers Loury mentions. Broadly, Republican race politics have deepened the geographic, educational and economic segregation of African American.
I'm not sure how to parse those two social dynamics--the importance of the oppositional Black narrative, apparent in that enduring structural segregation, and the devastatingly effective anti-progressive use of race-division by Republicans (and sometimes conservative Democrats).
But it does seem to me that if the Obama campaign can undermine electoral racial polarization, he will have achieved a huge advance for progressivism for all Americans. And I think that that at least possibly opens up more, not less, space for a respectful, serious discussion of structural racism in America --s pace for the oppositional Black narrative to be better heard. In fact, that's one way of reading Obama's statement in his speech that we can't afford to ignore the subject of race at this point in our history -- to investigate and understand the roots of Rev. Wright's anger in the realities of Chicago's Southside, and also (my framing) to understand that working class whites, struggling to make lives for themselves within a structural racist frame they didn't create and don't fully understand, also need to have at least their perceptions of racial realities respectfully engaged. Can we have both an electoral politics that moves past racial polarization in the progressive interests of all Americans, and a new and honest engagement with the realities of structural racism as well? I'd like to think that the former might facilitate the latter. Is that naive? Posted by jcd.
-"he can only succeed by abandoning the critical, skeptical, dissident's voice which is the truest political expression of the lessons learned by black people over the long centuries of being America's 'niggers." This is an important point to make, and one which I agree with, but which is also inevitable if a person of any minority group comes into power. A dissident who moves to the center of power is no longer a dissident. The dissident and skeptic are always looking on from the sidelines--this allows them their unique perspective--because they are not active participants in the creation of something. ~?criticism can create, redefine
This is a very similar argument to what many activist in the gay rights movement have been making for years as the "gay lifestyle" has become more incorporated into mainstream culture. There are many gay activists who are actually against the idea of gay marriage because they fear that their struggle to redefine sexuality in American society is co-opted by the attempt to confine queer relationships to the heteronormative institution of marriage. In the face of gay marriage they fear that the essentially radical nature of being queer will be lost, even though the battle for true equality and acceptance in society is far from over.
Racial politics might lose some of its edge if Obama comes into power. And we certianly risk being complacent and naive if we see Obama as the beginning of the end to racism in this country. But I think there is also a lot to be gained by being in the center.
-One of the points of Loury's post seems to be making is that Obama is trading in a connection with black dissent for mellower, please-everyone politically expedient philosophy on race. But I'm thinking that what Obama's shown (might be politically expedient, might also be his honest view) is a view that isn't ignoring the past nor the anger, but one that's including everyone -- something any president would have to do.
-I second beve83's comment on your bloggingheads appearances with John McWhorter. They're great, easily the best on the site (amongst plenty of other good duos). asllvn linked to a blogginheads btw these two today, that's how I came to be looking up Glenn Loury.
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