Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Barack Obama, both substantively and symbolically, ran in
2008 as a much-needed healer. He was to bring the nation together as never
before — a vow taken to heart by millions of voters of all backgrounds who
ensured Obama’s 2008 victory. His biracial background and his uncanny ability
to navigate through both Harvard Law School and the politics of Chicago
community organizing seemed to make him ideally suited to usher in a postracial
era — as was acknowledged, albeit quite crudely and insensitively, by both
Harry Reid and Joe Biden in the 2008 campaign.
Yet quite the opposite development tragically has
followed from Obama’s election. From the beginning of the 2008 campaign —
evident in the exasperation of Bill Clinton (“they played the race card on me”)
during the Democratic primaries — racial tensions have heightened, rather than
lessened. We get a glimpse of the new strains in popular culture from the
widely different reactions to the Trayvon Martin case: Black leaders point to
racism in the treatment of “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman; whites cite
rush-to-judgment bias against Zimmerman, as, in comparison, the wholesale
carnage among black youth in Chicago is hardly discussed.
When the president announced that the son he never had
might have resembled Trayvon, one wondered what would have been the reaction
had Bill Clinton weighed in right in the midst of the O. J. trial, lamenting
that the second daughter he never had might have looked like the slain Nicole.
Are the daily accounts of black-on-white violence and flash-mobbing that splash
across, say, the Drudge Report racist in their emphases, or are the mainstream
media’s efforts to ignore the incidents completely more likely to be racially
illiberal?
Again, these apparently rising tensions should be
unlikely. Obama’s cabinet — like Bush’s and Clinton’s — is multiracial. The
country at large has never been more intermarried, assimilated, and integrated.
Popular culture is truly meritocratic, as the minority status of cultural icons
has become irrelevant or perhaps even advantageous. Oprah Winfrey, Sean Combs,
and Michael Jordan are among the wealthiest celebrities in the world. We have
not had a white male secretary of state — the world’s second-most-influential
position — in more than 15 years, since the tenure of the late Warren
Christopher. Herman Cain — until media disclosures about his allegedly
problematic past — once led all conservative presidential candidates in primary
polls. Condoleezza Rice is mentioned prominently among possible Republican VP
choices. Representative Allen West is a rock star of the Tea Party. Michael
Steele headed the Republican National Committee.
Yet in these supposedly postracial times, racial
divisiveness is detectable in matters both trivial and fundamental. To take
three examples at random, popular entertainers such as Morgan Freeman (“they
just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white — very
white, American, Kansas, middle of America. There was no argument about who he
is or what he is. . . . America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet”),
James Earl Jones (“I think I have figured out the Tea Party. I think I do
understand racism because I was taught to be one by my grandmother”), and Chris
Rock (“Happy white people’s day”) are not just racially inflammatory, but
utterly incoherent as well.
At the NAACP national convention, Mitt Romney was met
with boos for pitching lower taxes, smaller government, and less regulation as
a way to jump-start the economy and create more jobs for the hard-hit
African-American community. In response, Representative Emanuel Cleaver
reportedly explained the boos by saying, “Romney should not have criticized
Obama in front of black audience.” Should Obama cease his attacks on Romney
among predominantly white audiences? Would he ever address the NRA, and if so
would he honestly try to explain his support for gun control?
The Congressional Black Caucus has never been larger, at
42 members — making blacks’ representation in Congress now roughly commensurate
with their percentage in the general population — but in recent years members
seem almost daily to offer divisive racial commentary, as if the caucus needs a
daily dose of anti-white racism to survive. A random few examples: “bunch of
white men” (Representative Corrine Brown); “Some of them in Congress right now
of this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me . . . hanging on a
tree” (Representative AndrĂ© Carson); “the president’s problems are in large
measure because of his skin color” (Representative James Clyburn); “the middle
class, it’s slipping away from our hands. And it has a lot to do with many
issues. Racism, shipping jobs overseas, access — no access to technology”
(Representative Frederica Wilson); “I saw pictures of Boehner and Cantor on our
screens [at the California state Democratic convention]. Don’t ever let me see
again, in life, those Republicans in our hall, on our screens, talking about
anything. These are demons” (Representative Maxine Waters).
Hanging on a tree? Because of his skin color? Demons?
Without the demagoguery, would the members of the Black Caucus be evaluated on
the effects of their voting records upon the black community, and would their
own privilege be juxtaposed to the living conditions of those whom they
represent?
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the president’s former
pastor for some 20 years, was again in the news last week. In a speech to a
congregation in Washington, D.C., he reportedly trumped his usual racist fare
by venturing into Hitlerian genetic territory, speaking of African-American
children who are raised among whites: “Let them get that alien DNA all up
inside their brain and they will turn on their own people in defense of the
ones who are keeping their own people under oppression. Sheep dogs. There’s
white racist DNA running through the synapses of his or her brain tissue. They
will kill their own kind, defend the enemies of their kind or anyone who is
perceived to be the enemy of the milky white way of life.”
White racist DNA?
Wright seems intent on proving to the world that his past
racist outbursts, which became an issue in the 2008 campaign, were not atypical
(as the president himself had implied), but simply windows into a disturbed
soul — secure that no one will speak the truth that he is a hateful racist and
one who for two decades had a great deal of influence over the mind and soul of
the man who would become president.
There has not been a real effort from this administration
to lessen the growing racial tensions. If Obama’s 2008 campaign remarks
(“typical white person,” “I can no more disown [Wright] than . . . ,” the
clingers of Pennsylvania, etc.) were chalked up to the normal excesses of any
hard-fought campaign, it is more difficult to explain away his polarizing
editorializing as president — the blanket condemnation of police in the Skip
Gates affair, the “punish our enemies” appeal to the Latino community, the
unnecessary sermonizing in the still-pending Trayvon Martin case. Attorney
General Holder at times seems deliberately desirous of exacerbating racial
tensions rather than diminishing them. His abrupt dismissal of the New Black
Panther Party case raised the question of what exactly might one have to do at
a polling place to earn a charge of voter intimidation. His blanket
condemnation of Americans as “cowards” for not discussing racial relations on
his terms was unfortunate — as was the phrase “my people.” On two occasions,
Holder alleged that congressional inquiries into his handling of the Fast and
Furious matter were racially motivated. And most recently, he charged that
state laws requiring driver’s-license identification at polls was not only
racially based, but reminiscent of the southern poll tax — a charge that
Holder, as a legal scholar, cannot really believe is accurate. His accusation
that the Arizona immigration statute was probably predicated on racial
profiling proved an immediate embarrassment when he confessed that he had not
actually read the bill.
Why then the exacerbation of racial tensions? There are
dozens of exegeses, spanning the political spectrum. We are in a deep recession
that is hurting African-Americans more than others, and their leadership
remains committed to Great Society solutions, even as the nation faces
insolvency and is disengaging from the redistributive blue-state model —
creating a new apprehension that cutbacks are tantamount to racist
indifference. Or: Blacks, like all racial groups, naturally identify with their
own kind, in the same manner as, for example, Greek-Americans or
Armenian-Americans who will cross party lines out of understandable ethnic
pride — and thus are especially protective of the public image of their fellow
African-American Barack Obama. Or: White resentment at the prominence of elite
African-Americans is doing its part to widen the divide and earn a pushback.
Or: A worried Barack Obama understands that for his reelection he must create
an improbable logic: Tens of millions of supportive whites in 2008 were lauded
for their liberality, and yet they will face accusations of racism if they dare
vote otherwise in 2012.
What is clear is that the blue-state model is failing
worldwide. Greece is to Germany as California is to Texas or Illinois is to
Indiana. The Obama statist paradigm is now bankrupt, whereas the Reagan and
even the Clinton paradigm led to spectacular prosperity. And I do not speak
just in an economic sense. The therapeutic school curriculum leads only to
dismal test scores and poorly educated students. The logical dividend of a
Byzantine system of racial politics is the self-constructed “Cherokee”
Elizabeth Warren. The radical green model predictably results in billions of
dollars in failed Solyndras, as trillions of cubic feet of new, clean-burning
natural gas go neglected. Detroit and Houston are no longer just different
cities, but emblematic of two different economic choices. In other words, the
contradictions in these models are apparent even to their adherents, as they
lose the public’s trust and support and turn ever more desperate.
In the case of race relations, the public — of all races
— is moving beyond race and, in an increasingly multiracial, intermarried
society, with a half-century of affirmative action and the Great Society behind
it, transcending racial awareness. That evolution terrifies a race-based elite
that cannot survive in its present privilege if there are no white dragons to
slay. Without Trayvon Martin gunned down like “a dog,” there can be no more
associate vice provosts for diversity affairs. Those who warn us about blacks
hanging from trees, of a new poll tax, of white clinging yokels clutching their
Bibles, have to warn us of these “demons” to ensure the survival of their
lucrative old system of big government programs and set-asides, which often
enriches themselves while leaving their constituents impoverished. Without a
supposed Klan everywhere on the march,
Al Sharpton would be left to his self-explained role as community activist
dealing with the Afghanistan-like daily carnage in Chicago, far away from both
cameras and lucre. Without dastardly “cowards,” there can be no more “my
people,” as the race of African-Americans, as of other racial groups, becomes
incidental, not essential, to Americans’ identity — and Eric Holder becomes
notable not, as he boasts, for being the first African-American attorney
general, but for being the first to be held in contempt for withholding
documents and stonewalling congressional inquiries.
Crying wolf about white evil-doing is predicated on the
ossified notion that, given the history of slavery and racism in this country,
there always must be two standards of public comportment, in which
African-American public figures are given a pass for what would end the careers
of others. Yet I think that pass is ending amid a growing cynicism and
weariness among the multiracial public at large. When a pampered
multimillionaire like Morgan Freeman or Chris Rock goes off the deep end, we
yawn; when the insular Black Caucus resorts to yet more racially inflammatory accusations,
we sleep; when the Washington careerist Eric Holder labels yet another of his
critics a racist, we snore. Even Al Sharpton’s liberal supporters are
embarrassed by his charade. In short, no one believes any more; the currency of
racist accusation has become so inflated that it has lost its purchasing power.
Barack Obama promised to make race itself incidental in
our lives; so far all he has succeeding in doing is making charges of racism
irrelevant.
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