Class Is the New Black
How I had to look beyond race and learn to love equality.
The Onion summed it up best: "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job." So many daunting challenges face President Obama that it's hard to know on which to offer him my unsolicited advice first. It's a crapshoot as to whether any president could heal our bedridden economy, guide us out of Iraq, end our petro dependence, save the environment, and convince the world that the last eight years were an aberration of which we are ashamed. Only Obama, however, gives us any reason to hope that we can begin to bridge the divide between the races, so I'll leave those other issues to, well, other journalists.
America's election of its first black president has to be followed by a demonstrated and pragmatic drive to improve race relations, or we'll have fallen prey to the biggest delusion in world history. For all the racial ugliness this campaign has exposed, though, and for all that will no doubt follow, it's not only whites who will imperil this process. Obama will have to lead both races in redefining blacks in the American mindset. Unless I'm much mistaken, blacks will face the greater crisis of imagination.
Now that a black man is president, and could not have been made so without the efforts of millions of whites, the temptation for them to run out of patience with blacks' continued complaints will be tremendous. Simultaneously, millions of blacks woke up on November 5 with yet another buppie made better off on their backs while they remain jobless in dangerous neighborhoods, their immediate futures no brighter for knowing that cornbread may start appearing at the White House Thanksgiving table. When we all stop weepily singing "We Are the World" and emailing each other about what Great-Aunt Bessie would say now if she weren't dead, we'll find that race is still a festering wound. A wound believed to be self-inflicted on one side, daily resalted on the other. It was distressing to hear John McCain, in his otherwise gracious concession speech, invoke "the special significance [Obama's win] has for African Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight." The pride is America's, not blacks' for finally winning one for their side. Our new president must constantly require us to work for "country first"—not for our individual factions.
Here's the minefield that Obama will be forced to navigate: making whites understand that racism didn't die the moment cnn called the election (an Oval Office Negro won't make a convicted felon any more employable) and helping blacks remain patient with the slow pace of racial progress (an Oval Office Negro won't make the Sean Hannitys of the world any more receptive to racial appeals). As always, blacks have the harder row to hoe. They have to believe, truly believe, that America finally means to do the right thing. That means accepting that what exactly "the right thing" is will be damnably difficult to sort out, and that demands have to be couched in the language of national progress and unity. However justified blacks feel in a demand for redress, read my lips: It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen. It shouldn't, because then change won't be perceived as an investment in a precious and underdeveloped resource, but as charity. Don't believe it? Take this classic reaction to blacks' traditional cries for a war on poverty from the fall 2008 City Journal, a thinking conservative's magazine:
"Do our cities need another War on Poverty? Barack Obama thinks so...The [nation's] mayors, joined by many newspaper editorial pages, have echoed Obama in calling for vast new federal spending on cities. All of this has helped rejuvenate the old argument that America's urban areas are victims of Washington's neglect and that it's up to the rest of the country (even though most Americans are now metro-dwellers) to bail them out. Nothing could be more misguided than to renew this 'tin-cup urbanism.'"
To this callous "let them eat cake" sentiment, true racial progressives must fashion a pragmatic response, one that turns the temperature down, allows white America to save face...and allows whites to benefit. Two generations of emotional appeals about the legacy of slavery have taken us only so far; pointing out that a 35 percent high school dropout rate for blacks in my town—Albany, New York—is not only bad for Albany, but bad for America, is a different kind of argument. It's a defusing and diffusing argument, one that shifts the burden to its opponents. It also forces America to deal with blacks as Americans, not as a perennial problem, like a tumor that must be constantly worried over. How many unemployed rock slingers could be teachers? How many welfare moms could be doctors? And how easily would the investments in them be repaid? For all that that argument leaves out, it's one that allows others to do the right thing for the wrong, but patriotic, reason.
Whites, meanwhile, will have to process black demands in this same vein: not as a call for handouts, but as a necessary reallocation of national resources that has the added bonus of unofficial apology. And both groups will have to reimagine the role of blacks in American life, not as losers begging to be saved, but as citizens who lack only the investment of their fellow countrymen to make America better.
The "us against them" attitude must be lovingly confronted at every turn. Blacks (forgive me for ignoring everyone else for purposes of this argument) must learn to guilelessly ask questions like, "Wouldn't it be cheaper, and a better strategy, to sentence nonviolent, first-time, low-level offenders to substantive community service in the neighborhoods they harmed with their behavior—rather than burdening our overloaded criminal justice system with knuckleheads whose futures will thus be derailed?" It will be up to Obama to parse both the demands and the responses, to separate the progressives from the unreconstructed on both sides.
To move us all ahead on the road to racial harmony, Obama will have to teach America to see blacks differently, and (here's the hardest part) blacks will have to behave differently. That doesn't mean less flamboyant names for kids, an end to purple hair extensions, or buying belts and pants that fit. It means accepting that racial progress must now, God help me for saying this, be melded into overall social progress. To my own great surprise, I'm arguing for a reorientation from race-based remedies to class- and problem-based ones.
Why "God help me"? Because reparation, in the form of a concerted program of inner-city uplift, an overhaul of the criminal justice system, a reengineering of education, and the like, is the minimum that justice requires. There's no mystery as to why the black underclass is exactly that. But the difficulty I had in writing this essay revealed something to me that I was loath to accept. I've long argued that because blacks are Americans, nothing can be good for black America that is bad for America and vice versa. Well, the logical conclusion of that argument, much as I don't want to go there, is that "black" must be taken out of that sentence and replaced with "any underperforming, underutilized segment."
Descended from a long line of nameless slave field hands and Jim Crow sharecroppers, I'm bitter and angry at this realization, but both morality and practicality require it. In my soul I want America to take responsibility and atone for what it's done and continues to do to my people. I want to stage a one-woman race riot when I read statements like these, written within days of Obama's win: "The vast majority of Americans have nothing to apologize about when it comes to race relations" (City Journal), and "We are free at last from the tedium of the preoccupation with skin pigmentation" (Boston Herald).
But two facts make inescapable for me this new way forward. First, it's immoral to ignore the suffering of other groups languishing on the nation's margins. Second, many whites will remain unmoved by appeals for racio-social uplift unless they believe they will benefit from it. Whatever must be done to help black America can only be accomplished in the same way that Obama wove together Southern evangelicals, apolitical white college kids, and black grandmas into a grassroots tsunami—by focusing on what's best for America. You can't argue that urban zip code x needs investment without arguing that working-class white zip code y does, too, not when their problems (e.g. educational underachievement) are equally severe.
Here's another postelection Onion headline that makes this point tidily: "Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress." Given the abysmal condition we find ourselves in, the bulk of both races have more in common—utter instability—than ever before. I am, by definition, elite. Harvard Law, national talking head, successful author. I'm also self-employed, and so, after years of paying $1,000 per month for health care the only way I could—plastic—I found myself applying for poor people's health insurance. My pampered kids and I sat in a grim social services office dreading the government bureaucrats I assumed would humiliate me. With a seven-page CV, I felt powerless and terrified that I'd leave that place with no way to safeguard my children's health. Treated with nothing but kindness, I nonetheless witnessed firsthand the leveling effect of a health care system made incompetent by greed. However much blacks lack health care, the crisis affects all but the very rich. However often blacks face foreclosure, the crisis affects all but the very rich. On a sinking ship, everyone is equal except those who own all the lifeboats.
Only the twin conditions of a nation near rock bottom and a black politician who all but walks on water could have brought Americans together. All the traditional coalitions and alliances are offline. So let's refashion them from the ground up. Let's talk class, not race. Problem areas, not the pigment of those living within them. Because in the end, what hurts one hurts us all. If Obama can't make America understand that, no one can.
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Though you have a right to be bitter about slavery and Jim Crow Laws; it's good to see that you've acknowledged the fact that the past is in the past. You see; some White People - like me, with my Multi-Generational Abolitionist Family, some of whom left Ole Dixie in 1860, and never owned anyone, and my own personal history of fighting the K.K.K. (FOR YOU, as I had nothing to gain) - don;t owe you anything more than we've already given you; and we know that pretending that things are elsewise will only frighten and alienate those Whites who are still 'sketchy' about Black Folk in Power. Thus, demanding atonement that you're never going to get (Liberia and Haiti are failed States, and it isn't 'Whiteys' fault), even if you do deserve an apology from some at least White People - is foolish and will deny all of you the opportunity to take advantage of the chances for success and advancement that you now have open to you - largely due to the efforts of unapologetic anti-racists White Folks like me and my Momma.
Maybe I feel this way because I've been under attack by the KKK since their man took over the DOJ in Dec. of 2000 - which led, I believe, to my being wrongly labeled crazy by the SSA, to the Murder of two people that I know of, and to my being made Homeless right after said murders - in order to defame me enough to allow the KKK Pigs to ignore me. Or maybe I'm just al little 'Hot' because, during the Race to November, I had a Black Men tell me that they don't care about the aforementioned battle that I've been engaged in (even though one of the Murdered was a Black Retarded Girl- Child!!!) that "I don't care about the Election; I'm not gonna Vote for that N-word", or maybe it's because I had a 'Farrakhan Glasses Wearing' (with the Gold Bar) Black Man attest to me that, "The Klan never attacks White People."
He was right; The Klan had HIM and HIS TYPE label me a Racist and then DO IT FOR THEM.
It's time to stop crying in your beer, and get on with things; I'm sick and fed up with trying to help you with your 'struggle' only to be labeled a racists, and then insulted by Crack-Heads, Louis Farrakhan Disciples, Rotten Jewish Traitors - with FBI Agent Relatives, and Black Evangelicals - who don't care as much about my Right to be a Buddhist, as I do about their right to be Black.
Though I happily voted for Obama, and will continue to support him; things got so bad, by mid-2008, that my Doctor was surprised to see me wearing an Obama08 Shirt!
Sometimes your worst enewmy is right between YOUR EARS!
Jim Staples comment
Oh boy! Jim Staples is a very resentful fellow. He wants gratitude and praise for doing what's right (in his view, he has selflessly done it 'for you [black people]'!); and he feels exempt from responsibility because his family didn't own slaves. This seems a willfully ignorant position. In a system that exploits and excludes people on the basis of their 'race', privilege extends to everyone who is not in the category of the excluded. I don't mean that exploitation cannot happen to some in the otherwise privileged category; indeed the benefits may be slight, but it is ridiculous to claim that because he or his family didn't actively enslave, or kill, black people, or deny them access to education, housing, jobs, that he need not feel any responsibility for their continuing disadvantage (as a category, albeit with many notable exceptions). In the American case, the slave labour that built the country gave advantage to others, especially whites; denial of education and jobs to blacks, or their relegation to the lowest forms, privileged those not so treated. The effects, on the beneficiaries as well as the victims of such laws and policies are intergenerational and enduring, though they can be ameliorated, and sometimes have.
No amount of denial will alter the fact that black Americans have suffered directly, and indirectly; and many continue to be trapped in poverty and disadvantage, even if their condition is no longer legally imposed and enforced.
Amen, Ms. Dickerson, Amen!!!
You have hit the nail squarely on the head. In fact, the race/economics nail has never been hit this squarely on the head!
Thank you for your insight and . . . dare I say it?! . . . eloquence!
The article has many good points, but I have to say that the author needs to not only take "black" out of the equation when speaking about America, but also "African American". This term creates more diversity than anything else. I do not call myself a Syrian American, or do I here my friends call themselves Greek Americans, or Italian Americans. Only do I hear blacks call themselves African Americans. Please stop putting yourself in a class, and then asking for America to look upon you as American. This would be the first step to breakdown the word race.
I don't know what the vast majority of Americans have to apologize about when it comes to race relations, but I do agree in general with the newspapers' tone about race. The these-are-my-people-for-whom-I-want-to-start-a-race-riot bit demonstrates yet again, yes, tediously, that racial unity is in fact racism. By white people in the Klan, yes. But by black people none the less for being too few in number to lynch anyone. And no prettier. The rest of the country is pretty tired of this double standard, I think. It's flat-out impossible to fight racism by committing racism, which affirmative action, for example, clearly is. There's no such thing as racism made good or bad by the relative numbers of the group in question. Racial unity by any group, black people no less than any, is divisive, and it can't be promoted without inadvertently strengthening other racial unities, which are further divisive in turn.
On poverty, we agree. There are almost more poor white Americans than black Americans of every condition, which means that the black component of the poverty problem is pretty small, if prominent. What we need to focus on and destroy is the notion that absolute wealth, the kind created by the human energies capitalism unleashes, is the kind that counts. Because rich and poor compete for the common resources, like fuel, food, shelter, public services, et cetera, relative wealth is what matters. That is the great secret largely ignored by the media and public policymakers. That and the fact that financial ignorance by most is the same as money in the bank for the financially wise.
I'm a Caucasian-Hyphenated-American, and I live in a Bad Neighborhood, work 2 jobs, and it sucks, and I want to know when I get MY Free Money From The Government. I've done a quarter-century worth of thankless jobs at not-so-great pay, and I'm kind of starting to wonder how this is all going to work out for me, here. Bush borrowed the Social Security trust fund, bet it on the stock market, and apparently lost, commodity prices have finally fallen to the point where I can put gas in the car without sweating so bad, but the Nation advances deeper into global debt at about a billion a day, and I question whether we'll still be a truly independent country in the world by 2050 with all this evident fiscal expertise at work, here. Class? I think there's going to be a lot of people finding themselves On The Bottom next year, some for the first time in their lives, other as same stuff, different day, I don't think that any person should be expecting any kind of special advantage anymore based on ethnicity, if you're not smart enough to understand that ethnicity basically amounts to a paint job, well, maybe you need to put down the pot pipe, and pick up a biology book or something, there.
It's all very crass politics, there's more people than there are jobs, and I doubt we've seen the end of the stock market drop. Maybe it'll dive all the way to 100, and stay there, and people will wake up to the need to support themselves instead of relying on 'the government' or stock dividend payments etc. Just a thought.
Class has always been it. It's just that it hurts our sense of having unique identities to acknowledge it. As a proponent of addressing class, I'm glad you came to the realization and am absolutely overjoyed that you acknowledge the moral necessity of addressing the disparities everywhere regardless of whether or not a group shares your personal identity/ethnicity/history etc.
Dr. King understood this quite well when he said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
"It was distressing to hear John McCain, in his otherwise gracious concession speech, invoke "the special significance [Obama's win] has for African Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight." The pride is America's, not blacks' for finally winning one for their side. Our new president must constantly require us to work for 'country first'—not for our individual factions."
You know, it's all well and good to talk about how this country needs to move beyond racism, but the way to do that isn't to erase blackness and pretend that everyone is white. There is nothing wrong with people having racial and ethnic differences in the United States. That was supposed to be the whole POINT of anti-racism activism. The entire premise of racism to begin with is that being other-than-white makes one other-than-human. Don't ask African-Americans, even if you are one, to put aside who they are in the name of national unity. In case you forgot, our national motto is E Pluribus Unum, not England Made Over Into A Democracy.
And to Jim Staples: If you can't think of any black-majority nations that are not "failed states" then you fail at world history. South Africa springs immediately to mind. And it IS the fault of whites that Haiti and Liberia exist as states at all. Whites brought blacks to Haiti and whites shipped blacks from the U.S. to Africa to found Liberia. I should wonder they're having problems when their entire existence stems from white interference in the lives of their ancestors. If you want a look at how this works without injecting race into the discussion, look at Appalachia.
"the crisis affects all but the very rich"
There you have it! That is the challenge. The 'people' must work hard to understand how the rich have been the causal force behind everything that is wrong with America. Figuring out what we have been herded into, how our culture has been shaped, how the structures and systems created by the élites have determined our ambitions and preferences, and how we have unwittingly slaved on their treadmill and had the blood sucked out of us; that is the challenge. A challenge that may require a brutal honesty of ourselves! A challenge that will require a radical reshaping of the life styles our individual selves, our communities, and our institutions.
No wonder we are in such deep crap! This person was an "Intelligence" Officer! Intelligence??? None showing here.
Mr. Staples, what have YOU given her? I think asking for apologies is a bit silly also. If you have to ask, you are NOT getting an apology even if you get the words.
I am sorry for both of you . . . and your bitterness.
In South Africa, where I'm from, this is a crucial distinction. Mandela talked class, the Apartheid regime talked race.
The battle between class and race analyses still rages here, with racists on both sides of the 'race divide', as well as within the former Freedom Movement. If one opts for the race analysis, one is left with the baggage of 'race', a history of ideas and their awful implementations.
If you opt for class, you can get a look at whatever is actually going on, on the ground.
The history and its legacy of violence, inequity, damage, resentment and revenge most definitely needs to be taken into account, because it affects people's circumstances and perceptions at all times. Only compassion can help us here – the ability to see the point of view of the 'other', and to take such actions as will help to correct the imbalance. But this must be done without reference to 'race', for every reference to this elusive but pervasive idea strengthens and reinforces it in the common ideology, and provides channels for fascists to focus hatred, and for exploiters to sanction exploitation. Mandela was big on this, often using terms like 'common humanity' and 'rainbow nation'.
The rubbishing of any generalised notion of 'race' in favour of an appreciation of the nuances of individual history and circumstances is long overdue. A part of the way out of the mess might be for people to tell their stories, and those of their families – perhaps the internet is providing the seeds of this with things like social networking?
But without a clear analysis of conditions on the ground, which would have to be constructed in terms of class, conditions can't be understood, so they can't be improved. Once one constructs the social world in terms of class, the relations between the classes start to become clear. And once these relations and relationships become clear, the levers of change might also emerge. Often only the smalest of nudges can set off a cascade of more equitable distribution of resources. Or the reverse, as the Bush years have shown. The cost of freedom is vigilance.
But finally, one must have both heart and clarity – class without compassion is Lenin. Race without compassion is Hitler.
Class only takes you so far. When Poor blacks are worst off than Poor Whites; Middle Class Blacks are worst off than Middle Class Whites - A class based analysis won't remove race based disparities. It is not an either or. It is not class or race - but both.
Your article fails tp recognize that.
But if Obama accepted your proposal would he ever tell both sides the truth? I have witnessed his copious affair with piecemealing the truth. Telling the truth as you have done is not something he is going to do. He has never showed that much courage and conviction. He has shown us that he has heightened integrity in comparison to most but until it comes to wanting to clean American's dirty hands, he is shy. He refuses the heat. Obama wants to dream the ugliness away with magical marketing concepts of both sides, Blacks and Whites, simply forgiving without remuneration.
He realy wants everyone to shut up and just trust in him which really is a scheme to wait and wait and wait. He wants us to believe in the grace of his good intentions that they will produce outcomes we can see as results of progress that outweigh grievances of consistent inequality still. And if that means becoming a religious act in waiting for divine intervention or divine revelation, Obama thinks the result can only conspire from patience in believing in him. It's cultish. We repeat his mantras and the media tells us it sticks. We then believe it although the results like that shown so far is an idea without tangible results that ever changed anything--unless the euphoria of feelings is what is gauged in metrics and benchmarked achievements. For as much as I see in my gentrified nieghborhood and at the elite organization I work at, nothing has changed except Whites think they are good people now eventhough they have yet to offer any of the pre-existing Black staff any introduction to anything creative as in which Debra has proposed in social policy. The Yuppies in my neighborhood are still talking about how great they are since they are moving race forward yet they still are striving in their elite circles or trying themselves to broker elite admission for grace.
Whereas people believe that the race speech he gave in the spring, they are still stuck on the media-driven marketing with the campaign team's schemes that he was the first real emanicipator and validator and apologist. He never spoke for Blacks' multi-dimensional angst. He spoke for his kind that are elite who may be Black whose social status is not affected by race as much as it affects me, who is not elite but is too Black. He spoke for those who may be Black and may have felt the stigma in being Black, but he did not speak for all Blacks. There was more to be said. He did not speak for those that are stuck at the bottom because they have no gateway passes in spite of all the right things they attempted with the legacy of being Black and knowing their families had it worse than what he knows in his lucky life. He made us seem like we, Blacks, simply had a long-term grievance that was equalled to Whites who were having a hard time because of the stresses in public and private sectors trying to remediate injustice through balancing the distribution of opportunity shares.
Our existence in this country--whether it was our women who were victims of forced evolutions of procreation (rape for to increase the slave count), was never absolved. Our families were broken in slavery. Our families were not organized with visionary, contingency plans. We had no steering committees. Most families were built out of stress for survival eventhough we tried to give meaning of normality to our lives by mimicking those whose lives we envied that were free without constraints to be and grow.
Whites had choices. Whites built their families in places where there was no slavery and that was a luxury at the expense of the wealth of the nation built upon fortunes of slavery that could appropriate the increasingly modernized comforts of our then rapidly growing country. Whites could procreate small armies of children in the Mid-West or West without worry of how to take care of their offspring because of the liberties of citizenship in a rich country that was reaping rates on investments at the expense of a people who were at the bottom doing the gruntwork and yet paying taxes for their bad luck of being born Black in America. Naw, Obama does not like to talk about that. He does not want to make Whites understand the fortunance of their anthropological luck. That is the part of him that he is trying to reconcile as the new great experiment--not capitalism. While Blacks were at the bottom paving that way in paying that evolutionary tax to make America a great escape for immigrants, Blacks were also trapped at the bottom not knowing how to ever get out from the bottom.
Our people procreated as an identified group less educated and forced themselves to resist natural aspirations to educate out of fear. There were so many fears that we processed to own and they attached to us intervals as systems started to change. We actually became confused of why we were systematic failures when we knew our limitations could only be levied by White Rescuers who would admit and share fair opportunity. For over a century Blacks and even a few Whites have tried to make that argument but the sheer reality of making good on that proposal would shift the evolutionary strength of a family of Whites and the group--ruling Whites.
For us, the fears of commitment to find a way out consistently changed and formed into another form of fear. And Blacks who were adaptive speciated for survival--but at a cost. The cost caused division among Blacks and from that, more problems were created. Whites saw that Blacks could prove themselves redemptive citizens but they never wanted to admit that their was primary and secondary costs that creative class warfare in the Black Community because of White's failures to allow everyone a chance through the gateways only a few Blacks would find.
Some Blacks (The Obamas and the likes) adapted and more easily picked up the proxies of what was popular American ideology even if it was not really in the best interest of all Black Americans. They told themselves that it was the only way because, it was for the only way for the existing set-up. Deborah knows. She just has more integrity to be honest. (Debra you are rare!)
Blacks who wanted to survive learned to adapt while others who were too constructed by variables could not or resisted because they realized it was not equilateral justice for all. They knew that for the wager they were not guaranteed still reparations that ever simply acknowledge their lives were justified and wanted in this country.
A White Person may think that is such an emotional, frivolous want but they know they are wanted. They never had to ever think they were not essential. Blacks have to deal with that haunt everyday of their lives when realizing they are not cutting it no matter how hard they try to do every thing right.
As a result my people assume(d )intellectual laziness for survival or coping skills against systematic depression. After social systems evolved, no federally mandated address was made to ever admit to the country still does not want us because if the country did--meaning people--this would have been rectified centuries ago.
Where Obama is is not in a space to "go there" and Whites know it. They like the little of the whole lot (to them) that he offers in penance and redemption. What Debra proposed, America is not ready for yet. Obama could however broker it if he wanted too. I don't think he likes being that type of Black though that much. He likes being conditionally Black and conditionally White...when it gets too tough or it deems advantageous of the chosen identity for whatever proxy he is wagering. Me...I'm stuck being loathesomely Black...female...and not an appeasing Black Elite.
Debra,
So you finally cracked the code. Some things only God can rectify. "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord." How do you think white america feels having invested so much emotional energy the last few years hating on barry bonds, kobe bryant, isaiah thomas, terrell owens, michael vick, and donovan mcnabb, only to have God make his Obama move on the down low? True progress for blacks in this country has never and will never happen through the sons and daughters of slavemasters. They have a permenant birth defect. They should be praising God that the first Black President channels Abraham Lincoln and is one of the truest Americans to ever hold the office. All because of the manifold grace of God!
The first African-American president in US! This is an exited moment. President-elect Barack Obama has used all his forces to make sure that the color of men and women in the United States is not a factor counteracting his message to the American people. He used the racial diversity as an asset in the United States, not as a disability. He managed to put that diversity in a momentum that embraces all hopes seemed lost.
His famous rhetoric “there is not a bleu America, there is not a red America. There is the United States of America” covers widely his conception of a unified America, from to the step one to the political sphere. This is the rebirth of America initiated through the efforts of previous generations but completed by the brave men and women of today. This is a new day, new America. The dream of Martin Luther King became a reality. The dream of the founders of America is still alive. The two phrases ‘Change we can believe in! Yes we can’ have been central in his message during the campaign and they did make sense.
We expect the swearing to be placed in the economic and social dimension in correlations with the great challenges associated to the current financial crisis. He is coming at a difficult time.
There are big challenges ahead at the domestic and international levels. But I personally believe that Barack Obama will make a difference and he will be a leading figure in the history of the United States of America and the rest of the world as well. America has opened a new page in its history. It comes to show and convince the rest of the world that this beautiful country does not believe in fate, which manifests the “determinism” of social expectations.
America gives the same opportunities and the same chances to all. That is why the American people have brought Barack Obama to the highest position of the US administration. The expectations are enormous and we wish good luck to president and vice-president elects Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I have a deep conviction that makes me believe they will succeed despite the severe financial and international crises, because they have tried to reach out all the skills of the United States of America including Republicans to work with them in the new administration. That is a very significant political maturity.
God bless America
As cogent and resonant as your essay is, it would seem (if the comments attendant upon it are any indication) that America is not yet ready for this kind of truth. White folks still wonder "where's mine." Black folks still want to talk about grievance and entitlement.
I, for one, was amazed to find myself in almost total agreement with a self-identified ex-military, black feminist. I approached this article looking for trouble and came away with a heady sense of genuine optimism.
I still fret about the usual, conspicuous suspects, who regard progress as a threat to their gigs. But I look at the new president and truly believe that he is a sincere man who has breached the barriers of cynicism and self-interest that have so assiduously segregated classes and races and religions and ethnicities and lifestyles to the detriment of us all for so long.
I also worry about creeping pollyanism... But I take solace in the notion of hope.
This article is dead-on. There's only one question I have, and it's about Albany's Drop-out Rate.
I went to Albany High in the middle of the last decade, and I was told that we had a 77% "attrition rate." This is reinforced by the fact that I started high school as one of a class of 1,000+, and we graduated with only 371 students.
I believe Albany High's student body was around 67% black at the time. So, have things actually gotten better? Or do white folks have a much higher dropout rate than black folks in Albany? Or are parochial schools performing markedly better than the one public high school we had?
In any case, I want to reiterate that it IS indeed bad for America in two ways: Those of us who DID graduate from Albany High and go on to college didn't make it a habit to come back. Instead we moved to New York, Boston, Chicago and LA, fueling the gentrification in those areas while siphoning off Albany's best home-grown talent.
This wasn't a choice many of us made to spite our home town. It's just that 18 years of a rust-belt town offering no better future than managing a strip-mall or stifling oneself to become a state bureaucrat isn't very appealing to the intelligent and creative personalities that I graduated with.
This is happening everywhere in America, and it leaves the nation with a handful of swollen megalopolises where all of our best talent is diverted into finding the most narcissistic excuses to force poor people out of their neighborhoods and further into the margins; while the heart and soul of productive America is left to rot.
So, yeah, the fact that Albany and towns like it are under-performing fuels racial tensions in gentrifying big cities and totally mis-allocates American's resources, and fixing Albany (especially black Albany) would be good for all of America in more ways than one.
The imperialist have a image problem in addition to the chickens coming home to roost in the exploititive,oppressive , racist and class stratified system.The capitalist class needs obamas' face and image because they can no longer hide behind all of the empty rhetoric of championing democracy and bringing prosperity to the have -nots of the world.After the capitalist class has pimped out and continue to do pimp the worlds' resources they are now ready to hand over powerless visibility to obama.Of course he is ready to accept,his ego could not resist.Then again he had to be in on the conspirency.Not all of us are fooled.Ironically for the capitalist the use of obama has a double edged use with one end working in the interest of saving the image of imperialist docterine and policy and the other end that gives young boys hope and dreams that one day that they can become president.This is something that the capitalist class wanted to avoid but had to roll the dice on when they decided that obama s' face had the highist probability of saving the image of a satanic empire.In the end it will all backfire,because you cannot keep giving people false hope.One day the people will attempt to cash in on the empty promises and all of HELL will break loose.nevertheless,we do have a creator that is in control of all of our shameless anti-human and spiritual pursuits.
I've had Miss Dickerson as my professor at UAlbany and I find it funny that the same person who wrote an essay on why Obama isn't black just wrote this. She brings up slavery...which is exactly why she said Obama isn't black - because he isn't a descendent of slaves. Tell me please Debra, what I, a 21 year old white college student, had to do with slavery and what I have to apoligize for? Do you really think that skin-pigmentation is the root of racism today? There is a new racism that is prevalent today and that is the racism on judging people for their actions. I don't care that your skin is dark, I care that I feel threatened when I see a bunch of you walking towards me on the way home. I care about Richard Bailey, and what I and everyone else knows happened to him. I care that a nine year old black girl got shot in the head by a sixteen year old black boy who thought it was a good idea to pop off a few rounds in an urban (Albany) area because he wanted to play junior gangster. Now, the conditions that made that boy feel like he should do that do, in my opinion, have a lot to do with class, and class certainly has a lot to do with the way the government handles the disadvantaged. I do believe in sentencing reform and an overhaul of social programs etc... I do think blacks are at a disadvantage. However, the word reparations has no business being in your essay and you have no right to expect it. Are you going to blame the generations of Hutu kids who's fathers killed almost a million Tutsi's? Did the Egyptians provide reparations to the Israelites? Did us white folks ask Great Britian to pay us back for all the damage caused when we seceded for rightous reasons? I am fully behind you on calling for urban reform, and I'll pay whatever taxes to prove it. We are all Americans and it is on all of us to fix this problem. But don't you tell me for one second I have anything to apoligize for. Your essay calls McCain out for saying the election has special signifigance for blacks and then proceeds to talk about how blacks are at are the underclass, so why wouldn't it be a special day for you guys? Are you looking for racism and finding it? I believe so. You say America should pay for what they did to your people. You speak of unity...I am not your people? I'm American... Plenty of non-blacks are going to find themselves in just as dire straits as blacks. I believe that a class based reform is the way to go, but not because we owe you something, we don't. But because thats the only way to do it. Practice what you preach Debra and please eat the chip on your shoulder.
Affirmative action has been in place for decades. Some hard working, high achievement individuals have used it to get an education at some of the world's best schools, and some have even gone on to become world leaders. Of course, some people have lost what others gained - that's what redistribution means. And the redistribution wasn't equal; the WASPs who are responsible for slavery weren't the ones who paid - Ellis Island America has been the group that loses the opportunities, the job openings and the financial aid that is rerouted away from their white skin. But Ellis Island America has largely been proud to be American, and if that means paying for America's past mistakes, so be it. But I'm starting to wonder, when does that sacrifice get acknowledged and put into the accounting books, when we're tallying up how much whites owe blacks?
Never, apparently. Whites are supposed to keep paying the bill, without ever daring to ask, at what point do we call it paid? When does it end? When every single black person is upper middle class, and there are no more black felons? Because that is never going to happen as long as black "leaders" are teaching them to hate "middleclassness" (that is, mainstream American values) and to eschew our "work ethic" (that is, what American employers expect from potential employees as a precondition of employment) in favor of outrage and unrealistic expectations and a sense of entitlement. And meanwhile sacrifices and concessions are just ignored as if they'd never happened.
And how can anyone seriously believe that whites are responsible for blacks choosing to become felons? Blacks are human beings with brains and free will and potential, not stupid little children, and if blacks cannot be held responsible for their choices, then no amount of opportunity will be enough.
Equality entails responsibility as well as privilege, and that's what some people just don't seem to get.
Congrats, Ms. Dickerson, on seeing the way forward. A class perspective unites the underdogs - and will achieve gains for the black poor and working class. This doesn't mean that purely ethnic issues are not going to be germaine.
The first thing people want to know is, what do you do for a living? The answer pigeonholes you into what class you are in. Americans want to pretend class doesn't exist. But it does, so much so, they are afraid to talk about it. So thanks for talking.
I find myself wanting to respond to each of these posts. Class is important - most of why we're in the mess we're in is because we've allowed a super-rich class to develop which has siphoned off the resources we need to develop and support all of our communities. But you can't just ignore race either. The drop-out rate, the felon rate, the un&under-employment rate -- all are higher in the black community. And that is due to systematic, built-in racism that goes WAY back. We have to work on it all. We need to all have opportunities and resources. As Paul Wellstone said, "we all do well when we ALL do well." (or something close to that...) I'm not a rich person, but I know that I have always had a better chance than "black" or "brown" or "red" or "yellow" people because I'm white. Deal with it white people. And people of color - don't assume we're racist because of our skin either. We all have to confront the crap that keeps us apart so that we can move forward together to reclaim our cities and communities.
This is an excellent article. Really. As a white reader I kept wanting to make two replies, though:
First, the one thing I kept wanting to say to it is: please believe that most white Americans are not like the obnoxious loudmouth racists who seem to dominate certain media outlets. They don't express what the rest of us secretly believe. They're just whack jobs with microphones.
Second, I would note that Martin Luther King, toward the end of his life, began focusing on these same kinds of ideas about economic equality. I think one of the biggest tragedies of his assassination is that it robbed him of the chance to move forward with what he believed was the next vital component of the Civil Rights Movement. And it left America stuck in a paradigm that ultimately proved too brittle to address the real complexity of race in our society.
One of the things that makes me most excited about Obama's presidency is that he GETS this. He gets that it's going to take a radical shift in mindset to roll back the centuries of rich elites using race as a wedge to divide working class blacks and whites and keep them from seeing their common interest. And he has the intellectual subtlety and eloquence to focus on 'How do we ALL move forward from here?' without denying the very real sins and crimes of the past.
I've taught in inner city schools, and that experience left me with a profound conviction that the liberal 60s approach to addressing racial inequality was NOT good for poor children, white or black. I watched poor black kids get bussed across town to bad schools while white kids got bussed in from equally poor districts on the other side of town. Net effect: lots of poor kids spend hours on the bus swapping places with other poor kids and not getting a better education; rich suburban liberals get to feel like they're 'doing something' to fight racism; talkshow racists have another talking point.
One of the reasons I supported Obama in the first place is that he really gets that it's about the kids. Yes, the past matters. Yes, race matters. But what we do right now for those kids matters more. And the best thing we can do for them right now is make this country a more just, more equal society across the board.
Obama was raised by whites- his back father took a powder early in the boy's life. His culture is white. He is one of those people that ghetto blacks use to discourage their fellows from imitating when they say, "studying is white." A thoroughly black man like Jeremiah Wright or Jesse Jackson still could not be elected dog-catcher and that's all to the good.
Thank you, Ms. Dickerson, for writing such an in-depth and thought-provoking essay.
But I must say--I'm bored and disappointed with the 'White America doesn't owe Blacks anything anymore' talk. These same individuals who subscribe to this notion are the same ones who are now saying, 'You all have got your African-American President--now stop asking for stuff'. I'm not saying this is the mindset for most White Americans. But it seems more and more don't mind agreeing with this sentiment.
It's disturbing to thing that a lot of people--White and Black Americans alike--seem to think that President Obama is the answer to a thousand prayers, and he can cure all our societial ills.
Not so. And he never said so either. What he keeps saying--and this is something I've always believed in--is that it's a matter of personal responsibility and accountability. It's about what all of us need and should be required to do to make this country greater. Unless we all speak on changing and evolving ourselves, we cannot begin to speak on changing the country as a whole. Period.
I'm glad to see the comments included here, but saddened by the fact that a lot of them seem to be self-serving. Some people still want to focus on the notion that Mr. Obama is an elitest, and that he had some kind of gifted, easy upbringing. Get it right. To me, growing up in the circumstances he did, he has a better idea of identity and class than most of us. He is multi-ethnic, multi-national, and does not make apologies, excuses, or place blame for any of that. Unfortunately, some of the responses here do just that, as though the man we're talking about is just using everyone to make a point.
Please. It's an insult to assume that the masses were brain-washed, and didn't know any better when we went to the polls last November.
Am I proud that our new President is an African-American man? Yes. I'm prouder still that the majority of Americans were brave enough to take that first step.
Debra's rant is what I expect from a colored woman wannabe elitist who has a white husband to relate to...
Debra's rant incorporates the tired themes of race and class and then a long winded narrative that rewinds the same logic done better in other forums by better thinkers and writers..
I am one of those and I will ignore her paradigms..I will invoke new analysis based upon "emperical inferences' aka metrics of reality outside of the paradigms created by academic thinkers and the chatter class ( mother jones, salon, slate types)
My take for whites it is obvious Obama frees them from thier white guilt and liberates them to now get that negro monkey off thier back..Yet Obama's victory now exposes whites to not having Black folks as the usual DNA scapegoat.. Whites now have to measure up and document thier merit , they are liberated and subject to the reality of talented Black folks up close and personal...
With regard to the notion that whites got the best end of this deal that jury is still out..
For Blacks the victory of Obama is also full of mixed nuts..Yes white folks now have a Black boss and Blacks have a role model and of course Obama is a magic negro who will kick US under the bus to appease white folks and keep his magic status alive...
Black folks also now can distance themselves from the usual white liberals who are as lethal for Blacks folks as any redneck or right wing conservative yoyo..
Aisans and Hispanics also have a stick in this mud these impotent freeloaders and racial grouppies now also have to step up ..they are now vulnerable, they must now prove if they are next to step up...
America now is raw and open ...the landscape is open for wonderful darwin possibilities not impacted by class , race, culture..
Hi Debra -
I heard your interview on Wisconsin Public Radio yesterday, and thought the entire interview was lovely and insiteful! Thank you so much for all of your good work!
I also liked the caller's idea about using our ability to boycott companies that adversize on shows that they don't like (his example was Rush Limbaugh). If you know of anyone who tracks advertisers, I'd love it if you'd post it -
Thanks so much!
I am an American although I did not grow up in this country.I have only lived here for 5 years. I grew up in Canada and am a Canadian citizen as well. Interestingly, we do not have any African Americans in Canada. (Many people think that means that we do not have any black people.) Most importantly, we do not have any African Canadians. They are just Canadians. Like the rest of us. I wonder if the black populaton of the US is on the right track by choosing to seperate themselves from the rest of the population which seems to include so many colors and cultures other than white, all of which have found a large measure of acceptance, have joined the concept of 'America' and have moved on.
Maybe the endless victimhood of black Americans is counter-productive. I wonder if you would disagree with that? I am something of an outsider, true, but I'm just saying.
I have a great idea. Why don't we spend our lives talking about race. Everyone can claim that the other races are oppressors. Then we don't have to actually accomplish anything.
Who's in?
I agree with Prof. Randall's post. The analysis of race and class is not an "either/or" supposition, but one of "and" Race will continue to be a problem in this country, indeed the world. Class is also problematic, but I don't think the onus to rephrase the argument lies solely or squarely on the backs of African-Americans. Whites need to acknowledge and understand how they benefit from systemic and systematic racism. Whites need to deconstruct and confront the many privileges that they have simply because of the color of their skin. I'll give you an example. A few weeks back I watched a program where the cops were chasing someone for speeding. It cought my attention because of the response of the person who was stopped. The cops pulled the driver over, the dirver attempted to come out of his car and the cop yelled at him to stay in his car. The driver proceeded to come out of the car anyway and berated the cops calling them names and expletives, pointing his fingers in the cops' faces and threatning them. He told that he pays his taxes and they work for him and that they should never yell at him again or he'llhave theru jobs. The cops' response? They continued to calmly tell the man to calm down. They lowered their voices and never once pulled their weapons. Do I have to tell the reader the color of the driver's skin? The cops did not say to themsleves what class did this man belong to? Indeed he appeared to be a "regular Joe" They saw a white man and that was enough to temper and tailor their behavior.
I agreed with the author's point that talikng about social issues and how confronting and changing them is easier if it can be shown to benefit whites. That indeed is a long standing argument of Prof. Derick Bell
If you want to end racism, and sexism, specifically as they relate to the jobsite, which is where we spend a third of our adult lives, then abolish so-called 'equal opportunity'. Get rid of it. No one should be hired/not hired based on race, gender, religion, marital status, and so forth. But, that's the kind of stuff you see on job apps. Why? If an employer is looking for someone with skills and qualifications, then they should canvass for that, and only that. But, that would never happen, because work has become VERY political. SO political, even, that the cumulative effect is probably measurable in terms of lost GDP, nationally.
If you're a professional, a good employee, consistent, reliable, and so forth, then you should be a preferred pick at the employment office, and moreso if you've got skillsets specific to the job you're applying for. But, competition for jobs these days is nothing short of fierce, and that's where the knives come out, and the back-stabbing and political maneuvering begins. Lawyers make a LOT of money off of discrimination cases, and their clients clean up. Lockheed-Martin, a major 'defense' contractor, paid out something like 2.5 MIL-lion dollars to an employee(non-caucasian) to settle a discrimination lawsuit. Like I said, the working world has become very political, a veritable minefield for both employers and employees, where a mis-spoken word could be misconstrued or used against you in civil court, even.
But, in the midst of all this equality-oriented litigious flimflammery, have people kind of forgotten how to get the basic job done? Isn't that why the outsourcing happened, because in the United States, if you work/work your people at anything close to a similar production rate or level found overseas, suddenly you're running a 'sweatshop' etc., and OSHA and a laundry list of other state and federal job-meddlers will be after you to ensure the proper level of bureaucratic and political correctness AND expenditure is being observed in your workplace. I'm for de-OSHAfication, myself, and the de-nannystatification of the workplace overall. Less is more, when it comes to government garbage, and if you're over the age of 14, and you don't 'get' that ethnicity amounts to a paint job, well then as far as I'm concerned, both your parents and your teachers have failed you, and your boss should be able to shot-can you for being ignorant on-the-spot. I've worked with a lot of different people over the last 25 years, and regardless of gender or background or ethnicity, there's pros, and there's schmoes, there's people that are trying to scam the situation, and there's people that just bring their 'A' game to work with them and do their best and are civil and professional etc.
All of that having been said, people have different levels of ability, whether it be driven by motivation, experience/knowledge, or by other factors, no two people are alike, and employers should be able to select their best performers to be retained/advanced and so forth. With more and more businesses teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, if managers and employers aren't permitted to have that latitude, or are afraid to fire someone because they might be taken to court, then their companies are in dire straits to begin with, and the future holds dark promises for companies that are over-governed to the point of stupidity. Yes, there is discrimination. It's a fact of life. But, should people be able to sue the life out of a company because they did not recieve what they feel that they are due, in terms of compensation, job retention, and so forth? Maybe Obama will do some vetting-stuff with these lawyers that tend to rake it in doing this kind of 'business' to american businesses, just to prevent any 'funnybusiness'. A job you can't be fired from is a welfare check where you go through the motions of working, without actually doing a lot to promote your continued retention, there.
The vast majority of parents whose teen-age child develops schizophrenia uses the public funded health care system. Another leveler. We're all in this together sister !
always more hard work
this sentiment was expressed in 1997 after a local church arson here in NE Oklahoma that class was the issue and not race. doler whites lament the depression era when older indigenous americans, who "became" citizens in 1924, had already been living in the most depressed economy, and remained there until the 1970's. the next psych-battle can be the front against familial ridicule and the thick skin demanded hardshell american social climbers. let the children play (Santana)
msn indir
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