I feel Jesse Jackson’s pain.
He finds himself in hot water for recent comments he made, thinking they were off the record, stating he wanted to castrate Barack Obama for "talking down to black people" in addressing his plans for expanding the Bush faith-based social services initiative.
Jackson’s words were, of course, disgusting and unacceptable, and he has – rightly – apologized. I think, though, I understand from where his fury is derived, and it goes way beyond anything Obama may have said regarding faith-based initiatives.
In the face of the rise of what the national media regularly dub the "new" black leadership, generally composed of Ivy League-educated elected officials with more centrist politics or compromising approaches than the most recent generation of black leaders (people like former congressman Harold Ford Jr; Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker; former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk; and of course Obama himself), Jackson is now regularly dismissed among Beltway media/political chattering classes as a decaying relic of the now less useful civil rights era of black leaders. That alone must be a tough pill to swallow. But what causes Jackson to pop-off as he has against Obama is likely more than just wounded pride. It is likely his growing sense that Obama’s entire campaign is turning into one extended Sister Souljah moment, which is something that, were it coming from a white candidate, would stir considerably greater unease among a larger cross-section of black Americans than Obama’s actions have.
You’ll remember that Sister Souljah was an African-American hip-hop artist and activist who, discussing the Rodney King verdict riots in L.A. in an interview during the 1992 presidential campaign, asked rhetorically: "If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" (As she was describing the thought processes of black gangsters, her point – to this day little-understood, given that the quote was almost always excerpted out of context – was that no one should have expected black criminals to direct their violent acts only toward black victims.) In establishing his independence-from-black-activists-cred for the purpose of appealing to moderate white voters, candidate Bill Clinton used a subsequent appearance at a meeting of Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition to blast Souljah for her comment (again, repeating it totally out of context). Jackson was, needless to say, shocked and humiliated that his forum would be used by an invited guest, without warning, as a platform for essentially showing-off his black strawman-tackling skills.
It’s not hard to see how Jackson feels it’s happening all over again, but this time in super-slow-mo.
For, this year’s presidential campaign didn’t begin this year. Or even last year. On the Democratic side, the campaign really began July 27, 2004. That was the night a mostly-unknown black politician named Barack Obama delivered a keynote address during the Democratic National Convention. In what continues to be widely-held as one of the best political speeches in a generation, Obama declared that, "There is not a Black America and a White America... There is the United States of America." I, for one, found this declaration fascinating for two reasons.
First, as a black citizen who knows and is related to numerous black people residing in this country, I think I can safely assert that most black Americans would have had no problem whatsoever, either then or now, with the assertion that there is a Black America and there is a White America, and that often the twain do not meet.
Secondly, it is somewhat ironic that John Edwards, the then-vice Presidential candidate being nominated at that very convention, had built his earlier presidential campaign on the notion that there are, in his words, "two Americas:" The Haves, and Everybody Else. And any American who was conscious at that point knew that, by something other that chance, blacks were quite rare in the former group, and overwhelmingly disproportionately represented in the latter.
There appear to be three possible explanations for why, then, Obama would make such a statement in direct contravention to common sense on this matter:
- He was simply ignorant of the reality. This seems extremely unlikely, since, if nothing else, Obama’s life and work in black Chicago neighborhoods should have made clear to him the realness and significance of the race-based divisions in our society.
- He was speaking aspirationally – that is, he was describing the America he longs to see. This, or some version thereof, is perhaps the most commonly-expressed explanation for Obama’s remarks. I’m having a hard time accepting that explanation, though, because a man possessing as great a facility with the English language as Obama should have had no difficulty eloquently depicting the America he described as his "dream," his "vision," his "goal," or what have you. He instead chose, purposefully I’d argue, to speak in the present tense and use language designed to give certain listeners the impression that this was the actual state of affairs in America as he saw them. The reason, I believe, can be found under option number 3:
- He wanted to put centrist whites at ease. For reasons that require a separate write-up to explain, the Electoral College gives disproportionate influence in presidential elections to white Southerners. This is why ever since President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thereby aligning the interests of blacks with the fate of the Democratic Party, the only Democrats to be elected president have been white Southerners. Obama probably feels that in order to break that trend, he has to do what Democrats who are not white Southerners tend to have a hard time doing: giving "moderate" whites across the country the sense that as president he wouldn’t give Robin the keys to the Batmobile. Or, to use a more pointed metaphor, he wouldn’t let the inmates run the prison. For the metaphorically-challenged: he wouldn’t let blacks (or more specifically, their sympathies) sculpt our government’s policies. Having black skin himself, his need to satisfy the fears of many whites on this measure is magnified by perhaps a factor of 10.
Hence Obama’s long-running Watch-How-Many-Times-I-Can-Subtly-Distance-Myself-From-The-Plight-Of-(the non-existent) Black America show. Key stopovers on the tour have included:
The Candidacy Announcement. John Edwards wanted to make clear what his presidency would be about when he went down to New Orleans, put on a pair of jeans, pitched-in with post-Katrina clean-up and rebuilding efforts, and simultaneously announced his candidacy. Edwards was unabashedly associating his would-be presidency with repairing the damage from what is widely-recognized as an extraordinary example of America’s neglect of so many of her African-American citizens.
Barack Obama also wanted to use his announcement to send a message about his would-be presidency. But rather than do something like going to New Orleans – which would have been warmly received by blacks as a powerful sign of what a black president could mean to the poverty-stricken corridors of (non-existent) Black America – or even to announce from his home base in Chicago – which could have been an unofficial call for national psychological investment in America’s disproportionately black isolated urban communities – he went to superlatively white Springfield, Illinois – birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, who held the country together at its most divided moment – to position himself as the Great Uniter (not to be confused with the Uniter, Not a Divider of 8 years earlier) who would transcend, perhaps even erase, the borders that separate us. A noble positioning, to be sure, and an event that, on its own, is hard to argue with. In retrospect, though, it’s clear that this was also just the first stop on the Black People? What Black People? Express. Here’s why that’s clear:
I Gotta Wash My Hair That Night. In February of this year, the annual State of the Black Union gathering convened in New Orleans, without Obama. The gathering regularly collects many of the more prominent thinkers, activists, and elected officials in, and working on, issues affecting (non-existent) Black America. Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates for nomination by the party heavily-aligned with the black voting populace, were invited to participate. Clinton agreed to attend, even though she knew she was likely in for a cool reception resulting from her husband’s inappropriate race-based comments before the South Carolina primary just weeks earlier. Obama, on the other hand, decided he had more important things to do, and so offered to send his wife Michelle in his place. Though Mrs. Obama is well-known as a very smart and thoughtful lawyer, she was not an appropriate policy surrogate for her husband, an actual elected official and an actual presidential candidate.
A month earlier, Obama had been a no-show at the meeting of the (largely black) National Baptist Conventions in Atlanta. This, despite the fact that he was planning just a few months later to reveal a plan to expand on George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative, and this audience would have clearly made for a welcoming forum to announce said plans. He did deliver an address via internet, in which he asked the pastors in attendance to help him drive the "Movement." Hillary Clinton appeared in-person, and pledged to double government funding to historically black colleges and universities (of which Atlanta has quite a few).
On April 4, Memphis played host to a 40th anniversary commemoration of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Hillary Clinton visited the Lorraine Motel, site of the assassination, and gave a speech at the church where King had given his "Mountaintop" speech the night before his death. Even John McCain, who had earlier in his senate career voted against a federal King Day holiday and who has essentially no chance of collecting more than a single-digit percent of the black vote come November, showed up at the Lorraine, and then addressed King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Obama? He chose to address King’s legacy at a town hall meeting in Fort Wayne, Indiana (a city whiter than Minneapolis) before heading off to the North Dakota Democratic Party convention. Why those locations rather than the place where the event being remembered actually took place? Obama said it was because he felt it was important to discuss Dr. King’s efforts "in places where his work has not come to fruition." That happens to describe basically every city in the US with a black composition greater than 25%. Cities like...Memphis. Clinton, by the way, managed to make the two appearances in Memphis and travel to North Dakota later that day.
This is not to say that Obama never appears before gatherings of African-Americans. He addressed the NAACP convention last July, and addressed multiple MLK Day events in January, including a speech at King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. But it is worth noting that MLK Day is a national holiday. To fail to show up then would be to beg for a lambasting in the court of public opinion. And the NAACP convention is a ritual event for Democratic Party candidates. Obama’s absence there would have been unforgivable.
The State of the Black Union, the Baptist Convention, MLK assassination day – those are more "discretionary" events, from which absence will be easily given a free pass by the vast majority of white voters. And he decided to take that pass.
Say What? Now, Obama has done some "discretionary" events, too. But in at least a couple of noteworthy examples of such events, he has said some, well, fascinating things:
- In a Selma, Alabama speech at a commemoration of the anniversary of the bloody 1965 voting rights march across that city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge last year, Obama tried to connect with both the Camelot Era Kennedy mystique and with the civil rights movement by claiming that his father was brought over to the US from Kenya by a Kennedy Administration-sponsored air lift that had been inspired by the actions of the Selma marchers.
In fact, Obama’s father had come to the US in a separate airlift two years before the Kennedy Administration even existed. And Barack Obama was born four years before the Selma march.
The revelation of this fabrication demonstrates the risks attached to Obama’s reluctance to embrace (the non-existent) Black America without reservations or qualifications during his campaign. Had he merely stuck with attributing his political existence to the gains of the civil rights movement, he would have been on solid ground. But his overriding need to anesthetize whites before injecting the sharp needle of race led him to muse out loud about his fantasy relationship with one of American presidential history’s greatest heroes. First Lincoln, then Kennedy.
- In the same speech, Obama offered that African-Americans were "90% of the way" toward the goal of racial equality, a calculation that flies in the face of just about any relevant statistic on black-white disparities that you can find. Again, Obama’s experience on the South Side of Chicago must have informed him that his "90%" statistic is wildly off, and later in the very same speech he himself rattles off a string of examples where the racial gap far exceeds the remaining "10%", so the only explanation for such an utterance is some sort of quasi-catatonic trance he must force himself into with each attempt to apply a rhetorical balm to the still open sore that is black-white inequality in America. Telling the naked truth, while certainly more discomfiting to white audiences, would have carried the benefit of keeping such absurdities as these from escaping Obama's mouth.
- In February, Obama spoke before a black audience in Beaumont, Texas. Assuming the role of nutritionist-in-chief, Obama criticized the parenting skills of some black parents: "Y'all have Popeye’s [fried chicken] out in Beaumont? I know some of y'all you got that cold Popeyes out for breakfast. I know. That's why y'all laughing ... You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school."
While proper nutrition is obviously key for optimum development for children and adults, so is having the funds and the time to provide something other than the previous night’s leftovers for breakfast. For the chance to make his point – to have his own Pound Cake speech – Obama conveniently ignored that many black parents do not find themselves in that category.
This was but one in a string of admonitions toward black people to shape up that Obama has been dishing out over the past year or so, from suggesting to black businessmen in Chicago that a good economic development program for the black community would be getting people to "stop throwing garbage out of their cars" to his Father’s Day tongue-lashing for absentee fathers. The nuggets he dishes out in these diatribes have the dual benefit of being (mostly) true and of being endearing to those whites who like to deny the impact of racial discrimination on African-Americans. And it is that latter role that all the finger-wagging is meant to serve. For, as charismatic as he is, even a President Obama will have little more luck browbeating folks into changing their personal habits than Nancy Reagan did in getting kids to Just Say No. That’s just not his role. But he makes for great copy to those looking for someone to whip those aberrant black folks back into line – people whose votes Obama feels he needs in order to get elected.
Stay calm, black people! In November of 2006, Sean Bell, an African-American resident of New York City, was gunned down by NYPD officers in a hail of 50 bullets as he tried to drive away from a nightclub he had been visiting with his friends – despite the fact that was unarmed and was not engaging in any criminal activity at the time. In April of this year, the officers involved were acquitted at trial of all criminal charges stemming from the shooting. It was the latest in a string of incidents in which unarmed African-Americans – almost always, they are African-Americans – have been shot by police officers in New York and around the country.
Asked about the verdict by a reporter at a press conference, Obama warned that,
"Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive."
Senator Clinton, meanwhile, released a statement expressing sympathy for the family of the victim.
Obama’s response here was perhaps the single most offensive utterance of his candidacy. It smacks of an effort to assume the role of zookeeper for the tamed animals that black New Yorkers are meant to represent. There had never been even a hint that violence might follow the verdict. The last such case of comparable notoriety in New York, the Amadou Diallo shooting of 1999, resulted in impassioned protest, but no violence. It had been more than a decade-and-a-half since a notable violent response to such a verdict had been seen, and that was following the Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles. That Obama’s mind would even go there – to the exclusion of any acknowledgement of the victim – is a disturbing sign of the extent to which he has embraced what he sees as his mission to reflect the mindset of anxious whites whenever he speaks to African-Amercan-themed issues.
I Pray He Goes Away. Then there’s the Reverend Wright fiasco. Much has been written about this, so I’ll simply point out that the majority of (non-existent) Black America – including forward-thinking younger adults – agrees with the sentiment, if not the exact facts, of most of the Reverend’s "YouTube" statements that (non-existent) White America found so shocking. That is all.
Georgia on My Mind. Finally we have the revealing case of Georgia's 12th congressional district. The district, 40% African-American, is represented by Democrat John Barrow, who is white (NOTE: there is NOTHING wrong with having whites represent African-Americans. That is not the point here). Barrow is a textbook "Blue Dog" Democrat, or "Democrat In Name Only" (DINO), who supports, among other things, the war in Iraq and Bush's tax cuts.
So how fascinating was it to learn that last month Obama took the unusual step of involving himself in the Democratic primary for that district's congressional race to endorse Barrow? Especially when you consider that Barrow's opponent, a woman named Regina Thomas, is a popular state legislator and a genuine progressive who is against the war, against Bush's FISA revisions, and generally for the things that the progressive/netroots wing of the party is for. Also, she is black.
Why did Obama take the step? Plain old-school quid-pro-quo: Barrow endorsed Obama earlier than Thomas in his bid for the nomination, so now it's payback time, regardless of bad Barrow's politics may be. Remarkably reminiscent of the bad old way of politics that so many of Obama's supporters were led to believe would be banished with Obama's rise. Oh well.
As for black Americans, they have made it clear that they will go all the way with Obama, no matter how much he dumps on them in public. It seems that the allure of a first black president is too great for many black folks to actually hold him accountable for how he becomes such. Even if that sense of racial solidarity is not returned on Obama's part.
In a comedy performance more than a decade ago, Chris Rock – Obama supporter, and very intelligent man – made fun of black folks who reacted to the OJ Simpson verdict as if they had personally won something.
"I’m still checkin’ my mailbox, waiting for my OJ prize!"
I can’t help thinking of that routine when I hear black folks talk in near-orgasmic tones about Obama’s victory in the Democratic nomination. For, while his ascension has been historic, it could very well be debated how great it has been for black Americans. Yet it seems that for a huge chunk of (non-existent) Black America, racial affiliation is enough for them to lustily support Obama, even as his approach to capturing the White House involves legitimizing some of the most destructive stereotypes of us as a people. As Rock himself put it introducing Obama at a Harlem appearance during the campaign, "You [black folks would] be real embarrassed if he won and you wasn’t down with it. ‘I can’t call him now! I had that white lady. What was I thinking? What was I thinking?’"
I’ll tell you what I’m thinking: there was only one Democrat in the entire field who I heard using "Sister Souljah moments" throughout the 2008 campaign. And it wasn’t Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Kucinich, Richardson, or Dodd. It was Senator Obama.
And even though I may be an Ivy League business school-educated post-civil rights era African-American, I don’t think that’s cool. Not at all.