Michelle Obama: Race and Post-Racism

Michelle Obama had an impossible task last evening. Her job was to bridge the huge gap between modernity and its still festering wounds of racism, and post modernity where racism and race for that matter are signifiers of things no longer relevant.  Barack has the same challenge which, admit it or not, makes winning this november more difficult than we like to admit.

First, let me agree with Olbermann and suggest that Michelle was brilliant. Now, here’s the challenge.  Michelle’s objective was to 1) sell America on the possibility of having an African-American first family in the White House. This task supposes a modernist America that remains muddied in the racist waters of the not too distant past in terms of law and the very real presence in terms of every day realities. As commentators suggested last evening and this morning, Michelle needed to convince America that the Obama’s were not “the Other.” Something unsettling about having mainstream media discussing and even judging whether the Obama family (a black family) “deserves” or should be considered eligible to be treated like a “white” first family.  I don’t think Cindy McCain will be expected to give this sort of speech.

2) second, has to do with a “post racial” America,  the idea that many people associate with barack’s candidacy.  As the idea applies to Michelle’s speech, she needed to show america that the Obama’s are no different than any other American family.  As unsettling as the first task was, this one strikes a different chord: on the one hand it is such a “no-brainer” as to challenge commentators to say anything at all that is not incredibly stupid or blatantly racist. And is there not something incredibly patronizing about forcing the Obama’s into the white fantasy of a color blind country? You see, the thing about post-racism is that it plays out on two different fields: one is the field of mainstream media fixating on the faux notion that if Obama gets elected, then, fantastically, racism becomes a thing of the past.  Obama’s bio happens to represent the more complex notion of post-race and post-racism.  This is the idea that Obama is mixed race, and is only considered black or african american because of the binary categories established and maintained by mainstream culture.  It is my guess the Obama’s would rather challenge America to think about the latter category of post-race; but last, evening, Michelle was forced into the “black and white” version of the term.

Finally, as much as the Obama’s face an incredible test over the next 70 days or so, I believe the real test lies with the american voter who must answer some vital questions about american identity in the 21st century.

Obama Address Raises Two Questions

If Barack Obama had one obstacle to the presidency before the vote in November it was to appear presidential, and pass the commander in chief test. Today he crushed these obstacles. It was that good.  His speech in Berlin could have been given by John Kennedy, and was better than the one that Reagan delivered.

The speech was eloquent and fluid; it commanded respect and drew great favor with the crowd of more than 100 thousand. This is the first time I have seen live television shots of people in Europe waving american flags rather than wearing paper mache masks.

In terms of symbolism, Obama won the day on two counts: 1st, he passed the presidential threshold with aplomb; 2nd, he took substantial strides towards repairing america’s image on the world stage. if only he wins.

The speech leaves two challenges to consider:

1st has to do with the wall metaphor Obama used repeatedly, following Reagan. Reagan said to tear down the physical wall separating west and east; and the metaphorical wall of ideology separating these two hemispheres.

Obama echoed the sentiment that walls should and could come down; sounding a metaphor for race, religion and ethnic divisions around the globe. The challenge for Obama during this campaign is to propose a similar call to Boeing to take down the wall it is constructing along the US-Mexico border, with the ethnic and class divisions that coincide with construction of the virtual and physical fences to our south.

Second, is a challenge to the American people, which I think is an important subtext to the Obama speech.  Since it has become abundantly evident that Obama represents the sort of candidate that Americans say they are ready for, even crave: one who will replace the republican disaster of the past 8 years; one who can string together more than a couple half sentences that McBush passes off as a speech; one that appeals to the hopes and dreams of americans while regaining some respect in the world; one who pledges to end the war in Iraq…..  The challenge here is obvious: would americans elect a man whose father was born Kenyan.

The latest polls just released showing McCain having pulled ahead in Colorado and edging closer in minnesota and Michigan and this despite the horrendous gaffe-filled; competency questioning couple weeks McCain has had, well this speaks the challenge for americans to dig a little deeper here to see the real choices before them.

Obama’s Bill Cosby Take on Personal Responsibility

Jesse Jackson made an utter fool of himself last week with his crude comments on a hot Fox mike. He must know there is no big job waiting for him in the new Obama Administration.

But he raises an important point about the government’s responsibility to end racism, and end the conditions for poverty in urban areas that fuel the sort of despair that Obama then focuses on at the level of individual responsibility.

This debate is perhaps the next chapter following the battle between Bill Cosby and Eric Michael Dyson a couple years ago. This debate is not going away, and it is an important one to have.

I saw Cosby speak in Baltimore a couple years ago; it was in a black church in West Baltimore.  Nearly everyone there (but me) was black, and over 90% of the crowd was male.  The gist of Cosby’s talk was that  black men have to take personal responsibility; they need to be dads and they need to be present in the household. He received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response.

Obama’s message is roughly the same.

At the same time, just this morning NPR had a story about driving while black “dwb,” where about 70% of the stops on Rte 95 are of black drivers. This is not an issue of personal responsibility; it is an issue of government responsibiity.

In Baltimore, young black boys are street fodder, particularly during summer. The main reason? nothing to do. The lack of jobs, summer enrichment programs or summer school is not the result of personal responsibility; it is the result of a lack of government responsibility

The lack of jobs for black males in Baltimore and the poverty of Baltimore City’s public education system create the conditions for the sort of lack of personal responsibility that Cosby and Obama preach against. 

Personal responsibility is important. I don’t think that Dyson or Jackson would disagree.   But when conditions beyond the control of any single individual diminish the quality of one’s social existence, it is simply unjust to harp on the issue of personal responsibility without also giving equal time to address these policy problems.

So, Obama is partly right; Now he needs to present his urban agenda; his agenda for public education– beyond saying NCLB needs to be fixed (quite frankly it needs to be replaced); and he needs to present an agenda to getting real, well paying jobs (sustainable wages), with health insurance, into Batimore’s east and west sides.

‘08 Results Foretold by Racial Demographics?

Chuck Todd from MSNBC made the most telling remark last evening about the 2008 primary season. Todd, really a numbers guru, made the comment that all the histrionics aside, all you really need to do to assess which states have been going to Clinton and Which to Obama is to look at a census report and apply freshman level statistics.

Basically the claim, as David Sirota has written, is that Obama wins states with under 6% African-Americans and states with over about 18% African-Americans. Clinton wins states that have an African American population of between 6-18%.

My question for this post is: Is it likely that this model will apply this NOvember?

This thesis explains Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, and pretty much all the states Obama lost. I say Obama lost, rather than states that Clinton won because Obama is going to be the nominee.

Question: Are there sufficinet states fitting the Sirota thesis to give Obama an electoral college lock?

If they do, then Obama is likely to  win the election in November. If they don’t, then something pretty substantial will need to change for Obama to win in NOvember.

I recognize that there is little to no correlation between states that a candidate wins in a primary and the subsequent voting in the general election. But, there might well be some legitimate connection between voters that won’t vote for Obama because he is black in the primary and those same voters voting in the general election.

The thesis behind Todd’s comments, and Sirota’s model is that states that have between 6-18% african american populations, have had the collective experience of racial tension since the 1960s.  As racial tensions harden over the decades since the 60s and 70s,and are hardnede still by economically troubled times like we are in now, they can approximate voting patterns regarding the racial makeup of the candidate.  very sad, but apparently true.

Todd and Sirota suggest that neither Obama nor Clinton needs to have raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars this primary seasons. In a sense, the conclusion was foretold by this one demographic statistic. 

some serious analsyis is needs posulating how this thesis applies to the general election this fall.

 

Did Supreme Court “Gin” System for McCain?

Justice Scalia is on record saying he doesn’t want folks to dwell much on the Florida recount and 2000 Bush v Gore decision. Quite the originalist,  and disregard for precedent notwithstanding, the decisions is dead as a doornail just like, Scalia suggests, the constitution itself.

Sure, it unconstitutionally imposed George W Bush on the country for the last 7 1/2 years, framing a presidency upon extralegal and unconstitutional moorings. And in this regard, the administration did not disappoint.

And now, scanning the horizon to see how it might affect yet another presidential election, the Court recently focused its attention on the state of Indiana (Crawford v Marion City Election Bd.).  In the wake of this decision, as the NYT reports, Missouri lawmakers are seeking a constitutional amendment that would mandate proof of citizenship to vote.

If a referendum on this matter is held in Missouri in August as currently planned, and it passes, the vote could swing this key swing state to McCain.  If other nativist state legislature get wind of it, the Court’s Indiana Case will then open the door for other states to similarly disenfranchise racial minorities under the auspices of excluding non-citizens.  

At issue is the desire to exclude noncitizens from the polls. Apparently, the fear of an immigrant casting a vote for president is mobilizing nativists and xenophobes to plan a constitutional amendment mandating proof of citizenship to vote. A passport, birth certificate… many folks don’t possess either.  Once again, immigration is being used as the wedge to exclude minorities from the political system.

If McBush wins Missouri this November, chances are it won’t be because of his compelling policy positions. Rather, it is likely to be because 240,000 mostly African American voters will be denied their vote.  

 

Supreme Court Hearts Big Brother

Perhaps John Paul Stevens, 88 years old, just signaled that perhaps he is ready to retire, providing yet another reason why this is an incredibly important presidential election.

The Supreme Court just announced its decision (6-3) on Tuesday in the Voter ID case in Indiana, which promises to create some confusion in next Tuesday’s primary voting there. The Case focused on the state’s right to impose voter ID requirements on a voter’s constitutional right to vote. Unlike the literacy test and poll tax, which the Court has deemed to be unconstitutional, the Court this time sanctioned the states to suppress voting (disenfranchising voters) by requiring a government issue photo ID before casting a vote.

Problem here is that 18% do not have such photo identifications; 16% elderly voters do not have the required photo ID and 16% of voters without a college education do not have such a photo ID. Related problems include cost of the ID and cost of the secondary documents needed to get the ID.

In addition to suppressing votes, the photo ID requirement plays into a larger condition exacerbated by Bush’s America: namely a national ID narrative, and Orwellian surveillance state. The Real ID Act, enacted in 2005, requires a “national” drivers’ license that private corporations– like Accenture, Unysis– input personal biographical information into a national database, sells the data to other companies and advertisers as well as shares it with insurance companies and potential employers.

Important firewalls protecting private data are circumvented as individual voters and drivers lose control over their own personal info. In addition, persons and groups of people (like the poor, black and elderly) who are not included in the data base, even more insidiously become the excluded other in society.

The bottom line is that you ain’t nobody in this new world, if Acenture or Unisyss don’t know your bio and medical condition, and if they don’t have your information, you can’t vote, and are not considered a citizen. Is this what Jefferson wanted?

Jeremiah Wright doing Obama a Favor

By acting like the cartoon he has accused YouTubers of making him, Jeremiah Wright may have done Barack Obama a huge favor, if the Obama campaign plays it right.

Before this week, Obama knew that the Jeremiah Wright issue, right or wrong, was going to plague him all the way to the presidency. Wright appeared on Bill Moyers Friday and sounded thoughtful, insightful and reassuring. he underplayed his relationship with Obama and this appearance made it difficult for Obama and others to discount some of Wright’s more outrageous snippets about AIDS. Quite the opposite, Wright’s comments on Moyers challenged America to have the sort of race dialogue that Obama proposed last month in his Philadelphia race speech. Problem is, while Wright sounded pastoral and philosophical, the sniping against Obama for having a relationship with Wright continued.

Well, no more.

The mainstream media does not do well with subtleties. Nor does it do well with meta narratives that fail to play well in sound bites.

It couldn’t handle the possibility that Wright and Obama for that matter were making truth claims that might really challenge the hegemonic master race narrative in 2008 America. This is the narrative that has little institutional memory and almost no recognition of racism as an institutional or structural concept. Since race in america is more prevalently represented as an individualistic concept, the idea of the renogade Wright is something more manageable. The press can deal with Obama shunning his former pastor. Just look at this mornings headlines. Okay, thank you Mr. Wright, you have helped Obama to brush off some some increasingly heavy and distracting baggage.

“Meeting David Wilson” in Baltimore

Last evening, I watched the documentary “Meeting David Wilson,” which was about the film maker David A. Wilson exploring his own ancestry, tracing it back, from Newark New Jersey, to North Carolina, to Ghana. The film’s dramatic tension had to do with David A. Wilson meeting David B. Wilson in North Carolina, where B’s great great grandfather enslaved A’s great great grandfather.  The tenor of the film was reconciliation, and I found it to be quite poignant and as a teacher I think every school should make full use of this documentary and accompanying teaching materials.  If nothing else, David A would like the documentary to be used to start a conversation, and schools, regardless of their racial demographic should create curriculum to facilitate this endeavor.

For me, a NYC born white, jewish academic who does a lot of work in Baltimore communities, the 90 minute discussion after the documentary was as important as the film itself.  It was important for the unspoken tension (even tho it spoke of racial tensions quite a bit). I experienced a divide on the panels, not so much based on race, but on ways of speaking (discourse).

I saw the split in two ways. First, is the divide that David A commented on at the end of the discussion. He said he was bothered by the academese of the discussion and was concerned that most americans who ought to be engaging in this discussion would be put off by the jargon and theories being tossed around by such panelists as Michael Eric Dyson, Tim Wise, and from the audience Greg Carr.

The second divide overlaps the first and has to do with the ways in which the panelists talked passed each other, with some focusing on systems (macro), and others focusing on individuals/people (micro).  In this dialogue, the system’s speakers assume a more critical posture, and the “people” speakers assume a less critical and more conservative stance.  The most famous example of this is the Cosby–Dyson debate about which books (Dyson’s own) literally have been written. 

I happen to think that the term racism is a “systems” concept.  I adhere to the view that systems and institutions are racist not individuals. Individuals  may be bigoted and prejudiced, and can say racists things, but they are not racist, per se.  In Baltimore, it is difficult to talk about race without framing the discussion in the context of quite visible and obvious inner city blight. The blight covers a range of topics and statistics.  Fewer than 40% of Baltimore City HS students graduate; 1 in 3 young black males will be incarcerated; the incarceration rate is 2,420 per 100,000, one of the highest rates of any city in the country.  The city has about 300 murders a year, much of which is black on black, one of the nation’s highest heroin addiction rates which kills about as many Baltimore residents as are murdered each year. In all, Baltimore is the 2nd most dangerous city in the US of any city with a population of at least 500,000 residents.  We are talking about a racist system. 

I have done a great deal of work at the dallas Nicholas Elementary School in the Barclay neighborhood. The school is an almost 100% title one school. Right across the street from the school is the state parole and probation building.  The message for many dallas Nicholas Students when they leave school for home is clear: this is where you might end up. Last summer the neighborhood  experienced the city’s largest percentage of murders of many neighborhood in the city. 

This racist system needs to be overhauled. Period. 

At the same time, the Barclay neighborhood shows several signs of (re)vitalization, which focuses on life within the structures and institutions; it goes to the micro- issue because it is based on community building, individuals principals, teachers and residents who simply refuse to accept the sometimes over-determining feelings of powerlessness associated with how the system constructs and defines this neighborhood. 

I have worked with the “Barclay Boys” summer program, the BOOST after school program, the growing community school headquartered inside the elementary school, and the local neighborhood associations.  These programs and projects would not thrive were it not for the commitments of named individuals.

Still, they would not survive were it not for the threadbare financial support they receive from the city, state and local funders.

The politics of race in Baltimore’s barclay neighborhood integrates the macro and the micro, and concrete next steps have to do with increasing the numbers of committed individuals,  securing the political support of the local city government; going beyond individuals to mobilize political support that is capable of securing city, state and national funds for the schools, after school and community school programs, and so forth.

There is nothing about working on the micro level that excludes thinking and communicating on the macro level. Nothing about personal responsibility on the micro level and critical race theory theory on the macro level.  this leaves David A’s question about too much academese, and the challenge to people who are helping to frame the debate to lessen the jargon; it is quite possible and beneficial to communicate complex ideas, which we all have, in everyday language which makes the dialogue democratically accessible.

In sum, the dialogue needs to find a narrative that is capable of holding macro and micro issues within the same conversation. Only then will conversants really be able to hear and respond to each other.

 

John McCain’s Tiger Woods Problem

If John McCain were running for president against Tiger Woods, he’d likely get crushed. So when McCain supporter, Former Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia introduced McCain by misrepresenting his likely opponent, Barack Obama as Tiger Woods, chances are he wasn’t alluding to Woods’ incomparability.

And perhaps, it wouldn’t matter if he were. Here is what Bellavia said,

“Rest assured,” he told the crowd, “that men like Senator McCain will be the goal and the men that my two young boys will emulate and admire. You can have your Tiger Woods, we’ve got Senator McCain.”

Michael Eric Dyson, appearing on Keith Olbermann, suggested, accurately I think, that this kind of comment raises a problem for McCain’s campaign because it represents a habit of racism (as opposed to racist intent,) with McCain chortling in the background, that reduces people of color to interchangeable and inferior parts– Tiger, Barack, no difference– in society. Such demonization and dehumanization is ugly and McCain should be held to account.

In the alternative, suppose Bellavia was actually trying to complement Obama by comparing him to Tiger Woods. No real diference here because the comment still would have reduced men of mixed race to being a Tiger/ Barack/…. Even while elevating Barack to the invincible stature of Tiger– which is unlikely– Bellavia would be guilty of having dehumanized and homogenized the likely democratic nominee. one mixed race celeb= any other. As Edward Said suggested a couple decades ago, romanticizing of the other is just as dehumanizing and demoralizing.

So McCain supporters probably shouldn’t even bother rationalizing this one. it’ll deepen the hole. just fess up. Tell America McCain’s laugh was the same laugh as when he reacted to the comment that Hilary is a b*tch. Tell America that McCain welcomes the support of habitual racists and other fear mongering phobes (his real base); that he thinks he benefits by drawing such race-based and gender based comparisons with his democratic opponents; that he enjoys having supporters make such comments; finds such degrading remarks to be funny, and will continue to laugh at the labeling of others. Pull back the curtain on this old style politics. Let us in on the joke. McCain owes voters as much.

MLK Jr.’s Dream Deferred in Baltimore

If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive and living in Baltimore he would be amazed and horrified. He’d be amazed that the city has a black woman mayor, and that women of color hold most of the major positions in city government. He’d be pleased with the leading candidate for president is a person of color, but i think, he would reject the media’s preoccupation with Carlyle’s “great man” theory of change, as it pertains to Sheila Dixon, Barack Obama or himself for that matter.   He would put more credence on the legacy of social and economic conditions that continue to impede the quality of life for society’s more impoverished people.

 King would look around at the marginalization and displacement of poor people of color and would be horrified. he’d be horrified at the amount of violence, the murder rate, the pervasiveness of drugs, the poverty of public schools; the paucity of black males graduating high school, and the overabundance in prison, the high unemployment rate, and the broken economics of a community whose visual facade is of boarded up row homes, block after block.

 The King who spoke about economic justice (the three evils of racism, materialism and militarism) in the year before he died, would demand of our presidential candidates– regardless of race- that they speak to these ills, and speak substantively and programmatically about them.  he’d demand no less.  He would shame the country into forcing an end to the war in Iraq, and would demand of the federal, state and local governments, a marshall plan effort to rebuild urban infrastructure around the country.

For King, the problem, and the solutions rested in mobilizing the country, to force leaders to do things they otherwise would not have the courage to do.    Back in the 1950s and early 60,s the mobilizing cry was desegregation. In 1967-8 the issue expanded to include poverty/ class and the war.  

 King’s speech april 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in NYC was about the Vietnam and the crisis of militarism.  For King, racism and classism were intricately connected, and poverty was not just a race issue but an issue that plagues people of all races and ethnicities. Likewise, the crisis of militarism replaced social spending with military spending and put the poor of all races on the war’s front lines.  Not much has changed.

 In King’s honor, Baltimore is justified in having a 3 day multi media symposium on the effects of the riot that followed King’s death.  Fine, as far as it goes.  But King would have been pleased only if this included next-steps for a poor people’s campaign in Baltimore, and elsewhere, to force leaders to heed the people’s growing demands for social change.