By Linda Burnham
Oakland. The Obama candidacy has provoked a torrent of observations and speculations about race in America – some grounded in reality, some approaching the realm of sheer fantasy. In the latter category are the commentaries heralding the advent of a “post-racial America” and “the end of Black politics.”
Matt Bai’s August 10th piece in The New York Times, entitled “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?,” is one of the more coherent versions of the genre. In it he argues that a newly emerging generation of Ivy-bred black elected officials, with Obama as their chief representative, are more interested in representing universal interests than in representing the black community; that therefore “black politics might now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and Italian machines long ago joined the political mainstream”; and that an Obama win would likely undermine the argument for race-based measures such as affirmative action.
The post-racial, end-of-black-politics crowd rests its case on at least five fallacies:
Fallacy #1: That the end of a racially unjust society is a declarative act.
Some commentators seem to be confused by the forms racism takes in the post-civil rights era, and prepared to declare that, since there are no laws explicitly upholding racial inequity, it must be dying out of its own accord.
Racial apartheid and the most blatant 20th century forms of discrimination are behind us, but the colorline has hardly faded away. Centuries of affirmative action for whites built up an enormous wealth gap, along with stubborn inequities along nearly every other economic and social parameter. Active discrimination persists, especially in employment and housing, as the experience of testers repeatedly confirms. (According to the New York Time’s own recent poll, “nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000.”) Millions of white people – most of them lacking control of the resources required to actively discriminate – nonetheless make daily choices about which neighborhood to move into or out of, which schools to send their kids to. Too often those choices amount to the preservation of white space, and the privileges that attach to it. And the gains of the freedom movements of the 1950s and 60s came under attack before the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act – and have been under attack ever since. Meanwhile, nominally race neutral policies, particularly those related to the social safety net, criminal justice and tax policy, have a disproportionately negative impact on people of color – hardening, if not widening the racial divide. And the globalization of the demand for labor, in the absence of the protection of the laborers themselves, has stoked a toxic mix of nativism and racism.
This is not the picture of a post-racial society
Social reality is rude. It tends to break through even the most sophisticated screens designed to mask it. The Katrina debacle, the repeated exposure of the debasement of immigrant labor, the disproportionate impact of the housing crisis and the generalized recession in communities of color – all these phenomena attest to the continuing salience of racial inequity and bring the conversation about race out of the post-racialist clouds and back to earth.
Fallacy #2: That the sum total of black politics is electoral politics.
There are many forms of political leadership among African Americans, as is true for other racially or ethnically distinct groups. Elected representatives are critical and central to moving policy, but religious leaders, community organizers, think tankers, opinion leaders, policy advocates, legal strategists, and politicized artists and cultural figures all give shape, texture and substance to the complex thing that is black politics. The complete collapse of the political into the electoral ill serves a community that has been so ill served by mainstream politics. Challenging power requires the coordination and synchronization of many different actors, some located within legitimized structures, some working well outside the mainstream. Furthermore, while the politics of protest and mass action may be in extended abeyance, a death warrant is probably premature.
Fallacy #3: That the most legitimate black leaders are those elected representatives who are most legitimated in the eyes of whites.
The promoters of the “end of black politics” draw a sharp generational divide between the confrontational protest style of the Jesse Jackson generation, who are constructed as speaking to and for “only” the interests of African Americans, and the more universalist approach of the younger generation of politicians, as exemplified by the Corey Bookers and Deval Patricks of the world. This is a problem on a few different counts.
Gary Younge, writing in The Nation, addressed the careful selectivity of this view. “The emergence of this cohort has filled the commentariat with joy--not just because of what they are: bright, polite and, where skin tone is concerned, mostly light--but because of what they are not. They have been hailed not just as a development in black American politics but as a repudiation of black American politics; not just as different from Jesse Jackson but the epitome of the anti-Jesse.
There are many problems with this. Chief among them is that this ‘new generation’ is itself a crude political construct built more on wishful thinking than on chronological fact. Patrick, born in 1956, is hailed as part of it, but hapless New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who was born the same year, and civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton, who was born just two years earlier, are not. Obama and Booker are always mentioned as members of this new club, but Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who was born between them and spent his twenty-first birthday in prison protesting apartheid, is not.
So whatever else this is about, it is not just about years. It is one thing to say there is a critical mass of black politicians of a certain age and political disposition. It is entirely another to claim that they represent the views of a generation.”
This view also rewrites and narrows the politics of Jesse Jackson, Martin King and a generation of leaders, many of whom were, and still are, clear that racial justice for African Americans is central to deepening democracy for all Americans and who, through the Civil Rights movement and the Rainbow Coalition, mobilized, inspired and transformed the political thinking not only of African Americans but of millions of whites and other people of color as well.
Finally, this view posits associations between black politics and parochialism, mainstream politics and universalism, and white politics and …? Actually, in this view there is no such thing as white politics – that is, politics that represent the interests of whites as a group – only universalist politics inclusive of all and the narrow, race-based politics of the past.
Put fallacies # 2 and #3 together and you get the absurd notion that the undeniably significant expression of politics represented by Obama, Booker, Patrick, et al. is the sum total of black politics – a claim not even they would make – and that the future of black politics depends, first and foremost, upon its appeal to white voters.
Fallacy #4: That African American political expression is the black equivalent of white ethnic voting, and will soon fade as a distinct trend.
The most focused reflection of black political consensus is the 90% of black votes that regularly go to Democratic candidates in presidential elections. No other demographic votes in such a consistently and dramatically lopsided fashion. Whites split their votes, ranging between 55 and 60% Republican and 40 to 45% Democratic. Latino and Asian American votes split much more evenly than those of African Americans, and vary more from one election to the next. So if, as Bai maintains, black politics are “disappearing into American politics” somebody better tell the Democrats who, in presidential elections, are completely reliant on the consistency of that vote. As Amiri Baraka notes in a recent piece, “the foundation of Obama’s successful candidacy is the 90% support by the Afro-American people.” Even though “90% of 12% is not enough to win the presidency,” it’s something to build a campaign around, a stable factor in political strategizing, when you can count on it every time. African Americans widely view the Republican Party as the chief protector of white interests. Until that changes, that is until the Republican Party changes its core platform, African Americans are unlikely to follow the course of Irish and Italian politics and disappear as a remarkably cohesive voting block, at least in presidential elections.
Fallacy #5: That the progress of middle class African Americans is a stand in for the progress of African Americans in general.
Bai notes that “when millions of black Americans are catapulting themselves to success” it’s hard to make a case for the ongoing significance of race and racism. And nearly every election commentator has observed that the changed class configuration of black America has given rise to a new political cohort: those who walked through the doors swung open by the gains of the civil rights movement, and who are now themselves opening new doors in U.S. politics.
But in an era in which significant numbers of African Americans have substantially improved their social and economic standing, there are major countervailing trends: the black poverty rate still hovers between 20 and 25% and remains more than twice that of whites; the class profile of African Americans is still weighted toward the bottom; while median income rose dramatically for African American women in the 30 years between 1974 and 2004, it fell for African American men; and those African Americans who do achieve middles class status face much greater difficulty than whites in passing that status along to their children.
It may be that the biggest problem a segment of African Americans faces is whether they can hail a cab successfully in New York City. This is not the case for the black majority.
And so the issue is not whether Black politicians who aspire to represent a broader constituency can do so effectively. Undoubtedly they can. More to the point is whether they also have the orientation and the capacity to represent the interests of those who are disadvantaged on the basis of both race and class.
This will take more than lessons in uplift, finger wagging at black fathers and lectures on how to turn off the TV and help the kids with their homework.
* * *
Apart from these five fallacies, the other thing that seems to confuse the post-racialists is that no one in the political mainstream makes overtly racist appeals to the white majority. So maybe racism is over with.
We can count it as a victory, only recently won in terms of the long arc of white supremacy, that blatant racism is widely viewed as morally repugnant. While it is the role of the activist right to preserve the prerogatives of racial hierarchy, they’d prefer to do so without being tagged as the guardians of white power. Happy to claim their allegiance to unregulated markets, regressive tax policies, “family values,” small government, and robust militarism, the frank embrace of white supremacy is a bit beyond the pale.
And so they’ve become masterful shape shifters, skilled at promulgating policies that protect white privilege while insisting that race is the furthest thing from their minds and skilled at framing and controlling the national dialogue about race. Racist expression has taken new, coded and perverse form. And the presidential campaign itself provides more than enough evidence that some white politicians recognize the power of race-based appeals.
We now have:
Double-bind racism, in which those who make reference to the actually existing racial regime or advocate on behalf of anti-racist practices and policies are themselves accused of being racist, of “playing the race card.” (The whose-face-is-on-the-dollar-bill flap.)
Dog-whistle racism, in which racist messages are conveyed on a separate frequency, through racially coded words and phrases, reaching ears that have been primed and are highly attuned. (Clinton’s “hard working Americans” appeal to white working class voters in Pennsylvania. Yep, the Dems do it too.)
Color-blind racism, in which the racial status quo is sustained and defended by those who pledge allegiance to purportedly race-neutral policies. (Perfected by opponents of affirmative action.)
Visually evocative racism, in which imagery is purposefully deployed to surface deeply engrained racial stereotypes. (The Paris Hilton/Brittney Spears/McCain ad fandango.)
All these stratagems and more have been skillfully manipulated to stoke fear and resentment, undermine black candidates, confuse potential allies, undercut the efficacy of racial justice organizing and advocacy, and silence the anti-racist voice. It is our job to learn to decode and expose these forms of expression for what they are – maneuvers to obstruct racial equity.
We will not reach a post-racialist U.S. by announcement or decree. The only way to get there from here is by way of racial justice. We can already identify some of the markers on that route: substantially diminishing disparities in health, education, housing, income distribution, wealth, police practices, sentencing and incarceration, political participation and representation. Whether we steadily approach these markers or they recede into a murky, unapproachably distant future depends, in large part, on the continuation and renewal of black politics in diverse, increasingly effective forms.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Zimbabwe's Election
Atlanta, Georgia. The failure to release the results of the March 29th polls by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is shocking and disgraceful, especially when one considers all the accusations made by western governments against the Mugabe Administration over the past few years that have been tossed aside as imperialist propaganda. Certainly the Bush Administration should be cautious in demanding the release of presidential election results when it took 40 days and the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention to determine who won the 2000 elections in the United States. The same can be said of U.S. Secretary of State Rice calling anyone’s recent rule an “abomination,” given what U.S. foreign policy has been in the past eight years.
Nevertheless, what needs to be focused on is ZANU-PF’s shameful disregard for the revolutionary sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who fought for the liberation of their country from Ian Smith’s racist minority settler regime. Their struggle was also for the establishment of a sustainable democratic society. The leaders of the National Liberation Movement and the fundamental changes in the social arrangement they sought to achieve appear to have lost their way.
Mr. Mugabe’s resentment of being lectured to by the British when he decided to retake lands originally violently stolen from the Africans by the colonial settlers or his settling scores with the British over the non-deliver of funds promised during the Lancaster House Agreement talks to buy back the land from the white farmers is understandable. That agreement was put in place to halt the outright military victory of ZANU and to protect the property rights of the minority white settler community.
The Rhodesian system of apartheid was just as ruthless and effective as that established by the Afrikaners in South Africa. That system was supported by the United States, the United Kingdom (officially until the Universal Declaration of Independence was issued by Smith in 1965) and other western government, formally and informally. The burden of history is clear and the actions taken in that regard can be explained to reasonable people not oblivious to their own arrogant or racist views that might lead to them furiously saying, “How dare he treat white people like that, he has to be stopped.”
The recent crackdown against human rights activists and civil society organizers, the arrest of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders, and the deployment of the military to prevent what was to be at best a symbolic general strike in a country with 80% unemployment, and the recent raids against white farmer, that has received widespread coverage in western media, has been decried, rightfully so, as a distraction and a ploy to take the focus off the real issue in Harare, i.e., the ability of the government dominated Election Commission to deliver a credible declaration regarding who won the presidential election in Zimbabwe.
This would be the case whether the Commission declared Mugabe the winner or the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai the victor. While we are certain that some would be extremely happy with Tsvangirai being declared the winner by the Commission, others would be equally disturbed if Mugabe were declared the winner by the Commission. What is necessary is to find another solution for dealing with the problematic results. A run-off, engineered or not, may not be the best solution to the crisis because if that were to happen and ZANU-PF wins, the country is in crisis. If the opposition does not participate in a run-off, as they have said, the country is in crisis.
The opposition has claimed victory. They were declared the victors in the parliamentary contest. Therefore, one could reasonably conclude that they probably also won the presidential vote. While it is also possible that Mugabe won or that the election was so close that a run-off is necessary, the reality now is that few would believe anything the Commission says, given the way this entire process has been handled so far. This is the case despite a significant accomplishment, that should be acknowledged and was stated by the Zimbabwe government representatives at the recently held South African Development Community’s (SADC) extraordinary meeting on Zimbabwe, i.e., the Mugabe government was able to successfully hold elections without any violence in a free and fair political environment.
Certainly Zimbabwe is under siege by the western media and western governments, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom and the western dominated International Financial Institutions. The 100,000 percent inflation did not materialize out of thin air. The “invisible hand” had a lot to do with it.
However, the government’s blatant disregard for the rules of the democracy game is hurting even those who would want to continue offering “critical support” or practice “quite diplomacy” such as South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki knows that what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe would never be tolerated in South Africa and this explains the recent call by the South African government for the results to be released.
From a diaspora perspective the situation looks terrible and volatile, just as Kenya did a few months ago following its December elections before the massive waves of violence broke out. How long does verification of ballots and investigation of irregularities take? The human rights violations cannot be ignored or easily dismissed. Accusations of government sponsored “torture camps” have been made by Human Rights Watch. If true, then this has to be condemned just like the U.S. run torture camp at Guantanamo Bay should be condemned and those running it held accountable.
Everyone opposing the government is not a “sellout uncle tom” or “a lapdog of the imperialists.” The contradictions between the government and the people are antagonistic and cry out for a resolution. The lack of a ZANU-PF succession plan is a critical shortcoming that perhaps could have helped avoid much of what is being played out today.
The silence on the continent by most governments, especially those in the SADC region, should not be read as support. The idea of non-interference in the internal affairs of a country still resonates with many leaders, as well as with some big powers such as China and India. Moreover, the land question exists in other countries in the region, in some cases it is as bad as or worse than in Zimbabwe. However, what they all know from their own liberation movement experiences is that the clock is ticking in Zimbabwe and that oppressed people will not remain oppressed forever.
Perhaps as oppose to threatening to take Mugabe to the Hague, as the opposition is currently doing, they might consider another approach of suggesting (along with other influential voices on the continent, especially, The African Union, and in the diaspora) to Mr. Mugabe,-- you can have all your money and you can even stay in Zimbabwe and be left alone, just like Ian Smith was allowed to stay in Zimbabwe or as in Nigeria with its former military dictators or as they have done with former Apartheid leaders in South Africa -- but your time is up. And if you really care about your country as much as you say you do, then leave it to a new generation to find the answers to the questions and the solutions to the problems that continue to confront the people of Zimbabwe.
Additionally, the MDC, which has been split for years over trivial matters, should be clear about its own motivations and plans because once Mr. Mugabe is gone there are no guarantees that the West or the international financial institutions will rush in with aid and resources to “rescue” Zimbabwe. Therefore, Zimbabwean driven solutions have to be found and articulated.
At independence on April 18, 1980 Bob Marley sang “mash it up in Zimbabwe.” One line in that song was “soon we’ll see who are the real revolutionaries.” Soon is now. The results should be released today not “tomorrow.” At the same time, we should remember that in this globalized world of ours, tomorrow is always today.
Dr. Keith Jennings is President of the African American Human Rights Foundation
©2008 diasporapolitics.org
Nevertheless, what needs to be focused on is ZANU-PF’s shameful disregard for the revolutionary sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who fought for the liberation of their country from Ian Smith’s racist minority settler regime. Their struggle was also for the establishment of a sustainable democratic society. The leaders of the National Liberation Movement and the fundamental changes in the social arrangement they sought to achieve appear to have lost their way.
Mr. Mugabe’s resentment of being lectured to by the British when he decided to retake lands originally violently stolen from the Africans by the colonial settlers or his settling scores with the British over the non-deliver of funds promised during the Lancaster House Agreement talks to buy back the land from the white farmers is understandable. That agreement was put in place to halt the outright military victory of ZANU and to protect the property rights of the minority white settler community.
The Rhodesian system of apartheid was just as ruthless and effective as that established by the Afrikaners in South Africa. That system was supported by the United States, the United Kingdom (officially until the Universal Declaration of Independence was issued by Smith in 1965) and other western government, formally and informally. The burden of history is clear and the actions taken in that regard can be explained to reasonable people not oblivious to their own arrogant or racist views that might lead to them furiously saying, “How dare he treat white people like that, he has to be stopped.”
The recent crackdown against human rights activists and civil society organizers, the arrest of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders, and the deployment of the military to prevent what was to be at best a symbolic general strike in a country with 80% unemployment, and the recent raids against white farmer, that has received widespread coverage in western media, has been decried, rightfully so, as a distraction and a ploy to take the focus off the real issue in Harare, i.e., the ability of the government dominated Election Commission to deliver a credible declaration regarding who won the presidential election in Zimbabwe.
This would be the case whether the Commission declared Mugabe the winner or the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai the victor. While we are certain that some would be extremely happy with Tsvangirai being declared the winner by the Commission, others would be equally disturbed if Mugabe were declared the winner by the Commission. What is necessary is to find another solution for dealing with the problematic results. A run-off, engineered or not, may not be the best solution to the crisis because if that were to happen and ZANU-PF wins, the country is in crisis. If the opposition does not participate in a run-off, as they have said, the country is in crisis.
The opposition has claimed victory. They were declared the victors in the parliamentary contest. Therefore, one could reasonably conclude that they probably also won the presidential vote. While it is also possible that Mugabe won or that the election was so close that a run-off is necessary, the reality now is that few would believe anything the Commission says, given the way this entire process has been handled so far. This is the case despite a significant accomplishment, that should be acknowledged and was stated by the Zimbabwe government representatives at the recently held South African Development Community’s (SADC) extraordinary meeting on Zimbabwe, i.e., the Mugabe government was able to successfully hold elections without any violence in a free and fair political environment.
Certainly Zimbabwe is under siege by the western media and western governments, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom and the western dominated International Financial Institutions. The 100,000 percent inflation did not materialize out of thin air. The “invisible hand” had a lot to do with it.
However, the government’s blatant disregard for the rules of the democracy game is hurting even those who would want to continue offering “critical support” or practice “quite diplomacy” such as South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki knows that what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe would never be tolerated in South Africa and this explains the recent call by the South African government for the results to be released.
From a diaspora perspective the situation looks terrible and volatile, just as Kenya did a few months ago following its December elections before the massive waves of violence broke out. How long does verification of ballots and investigation of irregularities take? The human rights violations cannot be ignored or easily dismissed. Accusations of government sponsored “torture camps” have been made by Human Rights Watch. If true, then this has to be condemned just like the U.S. run torture camp at Guantanamo Bay should be condemned and those running it held accountable.
Everyone opposing the government is not a “sellout uncle tom” or “a lapdog of the imperialists.” The contradictions between the government and the people are antagonistic and cry out for a resolution. The lack of a ZANU-PF succession plan is a critical shortcoming that perhaps could have helped avoid much of what is being played out today.
The silence on the continent by most governments, especially those in the SADC region, should not be read as support. The idea of non-interference in the internal affairs of a country still resonates with many leaders, as well as with some big powers such as China and India. Moreover, the land question exists in other countries in the region, in some cases it is as bad as or worse than in Zimbabwe. However, what they all know from their own liberation movement experiences is that the clock is ticking in Zimbabwe and that oppressed people will not remain oppressed forever.
Perhaps as oppose to threatening to take Mugabe to the Hague, as the opposition is currently doing, they might consider another approach of suggesting (along with other influential voices on the continent, especially, The African Union, and in the diaspora) to Mr. Mugabe,-- you can have all your money and you can even stay in Zimbabwe and be left alone, just like Ian Smith was allowed to stay in Zimbabwe or as in Nigeria with its former military dictators or as they have done with former Apartheid leaders in South Africa -- but your time is up. And if you really care about your country as much as you say you do, then leave it to a new generation to find the answers to the questions and the solutions to the problems that continue to confront the people of Zimbabwe.
Additionally, the MDC, which has been split for years over trivial matters, should be clear about its own motivations and plans because once Mr. Mugabe is gone there are no guarantees that the West or the international financial institutions will rush in with aid and resources to “rescue” Zimbabwe. Therefore, Zimbabwean driven solutions have to be found and articulated.
At independence on April 18, 1980 Bob Marley sang “mash it up in Zimbabwe.” One line in that song was “soon we’ll see who are the real revolutionaries.” Soon is now. The results should be released today not “tomorrow.” At the same time, we should remember that in this globalized world of ours, tomorrow is always today.
Dr. Keith Jennings is President of the African American Human Rights Foundation
©2008 diasporapolitics.org
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Tight Rope and The Needle: Race, Class and Gender in the 2008 Presidential Primaries
Oakland, California. The Clinton campaign can do all the distancing it wants from Geraldine Ferraro’s chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome, but this is not the first time Obama has been cast as the beneficiary of affirmative action.
Here’s Erica Jong, more than a month ago, on the same issue. After allowing that “Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he’ll be president some day,” she goes on to say: “Obama is also a token – of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.”
Right now, black female voter that I am, I’m most definitely understanding the condescension – and righteous indignation – of white liberal feminists who believe Obama skipped ahead of them in line. I’m also understanding the sheer frustration of women who were headed towards an easy coronation, but then got sideswiped and stalled by an upstart prince.
It appears that all the mainstream, high-profile feminists got the same talking-points memo from the Clinton campaign. Ferraro, pit bull that she is, was just a little more raw in her delivery. If you didn’t get the memo, here are the talking points.
Ø Though the Democrats are blessed with an embarrassment of riches, with a black man and a woman contending for the nomination, Clinton is unequivocally the only one prepared for the rigors of the presidency.
Ø Obama is all fluff, no substance, glib and attractive, but also a cocksure, ageist upstart.
Ø Given the depths of Obama’s inexperience, his present popularity can only be explained by the reverse discrimination effect: he’s unfairly benefiting from his status as a black man.
Ø Older white women are supporting Clinton because they recognize bottom-line competence, know how to vote in their own best interests, grow more radical with age, and are ready to make history.
Ø White men are supporting Obama because of their latent or blatant sexism. They’re confused by the unfamiliar choices presented them, and more freaked out by the prospect of a woman in the White House than they are by the prospect of the first African American president.
Ø Maybe Obama will be a candidate to consider once he’s more politically seasoned, i.e., after eight years of Clinton.
Ø Sexism is the most pervasive and persistent form of discrimination.
Ø Racism is on the run, nearly vanquished save a few remnants.
From Gloria Steinem to Robin Morgan to Geraldine Ferraro to Erica Jong, they’re all playing the same tune. Now we can’t blame the women for fighting hard for their candidate, but it is disappointing, to say the very least, that in heralding Clinton as the proper choice for every feminist and all women they have also managed to dredge up some of the least attractive features of liberal feminism.
For nearly forty years feminists have wrangled over how to integrate issues of race, class, sexual orientation and other markers of inequality into a coherent, powerful gender analysis. Women of color insist on the complex relationship between racism and sexism and the central significance of racism in the lives of people of color. White feminists nod their heads, “Yes, of course, we understand, we’re with you on that.” Then comes the crunch, when the content of your feminism actually matters – as it does in this campaign – and they revert to the primacy of sexism over all other forms of discrimination and oppression. All the tendencies that got feminism tagged as a white, middle-class women’s thing are, brutally, back in play.
There’s a lot of twisting and turning going on in the effort to explain Obama’s viability. If he’s so completely inexperienced, why are people coming out to vote for him in record numbers? Must be that racism is dead but sexism isn’t. Must be that he’s an affirmative action baby. Must be that people are mesmerized, charmed and bewitched by his silver tongue. Must be that people are voting with their hearts for hope instead of with their heads for hard-headed competence.
In fact, it must be anything except that he’s knit together a coalition the existence of which most political actors could not have predicted, much less activated. Except that his politics and presentation of self have motivated millions of new voters and re-energized previously disaffected millions more in ways that her politics and presentation of self have not. Except that voters have weighed his experience and hers and concluded that she’s not bringing appreciably more to the table than he is. Except that she’s pegged her vaunted experience to her White House years and a fair share of voters (raise your hands y’all) were not enthralled with the policies of the Clinton presidency.
It’s just not such a terribly long walk from the Clinton campaign’s insistence on Obama’s lack of experience and complete unreadiness to lead to the notion that he’s gotten as far as he has not on his own merits, but as a result of the workings of some pro-brother bias. That is, to put it baldly, the playing field is tilted in favor of the minority candidate who, despite his thin resume, has managed to leapfrog over the more qualified white candidate. There’s a reason this reminds you of every reverse discrimination complainant from Allan Bakke forward. It undermines the legitimacy of affirmative remedies for identifiable, quantifiable discriminatory practices while simultaneously denigrating the qualifications of people of color in high places, whether they got there by means of affirmative action or not.
Then there’s the basic categorical confusion. Let’s go back to that historic juncture, wherein a black man and a woman are close contenders for their party’s nomination. If his race is noteworthy, Obama the black man (regardless of how many ways his blackness has been interpreted), then so too is hers. [For those of you who believe we’re living in a post-racialist society, if you haven’t tuned out already, you’ll probably want to skip the rest of this piece.] This is a contest between a black man and a white woman. Voters orient themselves toward Obama along a broad spectrum of racial attitudes ranging from, “Of course I’m voting for the brother” to “I’d never in a million years cast my vote for an African American.” And everything in between.
The point is, most sane people recognize that Obama’s race matters. Well then, how is it that Clinton’s doesn’t? If Obama’s blackness is a positive incentive for some voters, a liability for others and a source of confusion and ambivalence for still others, how is it that Clinton’s whiteness is a big fat neutral. Is it not at least theoretically possible that some voters are positively inclined toward Clinton because she is white?
There is a brand of feminism, amply critiqued but still very much alive, that focuses on gender bias while consistently downplaying the salience of race. And the easiest way to avoid acknowledging that whiteness comes with its privileges is to avoid acknowledging it at all. Whiteness as default, normative, unworthy of note. Clinton the woman; Obama the black man. In fact, Obama as doubly favored, as a man and, with reverse discrimination and tokenism in play, as an African American. Clinton, meanwhile, is hobbled by her gender and, since her whiteness is unacknowledged, neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by her race. This is the topsy-turvy world we’re being asked to accept as reality.
I, for one, am going to take a pass on delusion. In Mississippi, though Obama took the state, 70 percent of white Democatic voters chose Clinton over Obama. In South Carolina, Obama took over 75 percent of the black vote but only 15 percent of the over-60 white vote, with similar results in Alabama. Isn’t is possible that at least some of those white voters would prefer to see a white person in the White House, regardless of gender, than an African American? And isn’t it possible that whiteness is an element of Clinton’s appeal in Ohio, Texas and, potentially, Pennsylvania, states in which Reagan Democrats (and Nixon Democrats before them) were won over to the Republican Party, at least in part, on the basis of frankly racist appeals? As long as Clinton’s whiteness is unacknowledged, so too are the dynamics that work to her advantage in this campaign.
The deep disappointment in the voting behavior of Obama-supporting men (read white men; see above) while officially chalked up to misogyny, has, in the argument of some feminists, crept uncomfortably close to a howl of anger at racial betrayal. In a Chicago Tribune article entitled “Sexism, not Racism, Thriving,” a clearly frustrated Frida Ghitis claims “We may be winning the war against racism, but sexism is putting up quite a fight….Women are voting for Clinton and blacks are voting for Obama…. If we look for someone who looks like us, for whom should a white man vote?... White men are giving their vote to Obama over Clinton.”*
Let us grant without argument that many men, and a good number of women as well, would prefer to see a man in the White House than a woman. Is this evidence that sexism is alive and well? Indeed it is. But, as our own political processes constantly remind us, voting behavior is more than a little complex. Perhaps white men should be excoriated for their persistent sexism; perhaps we should be celebrating their transcendence of a century’s-long resistance to placing African Americans, men or women, in positions of power.
Would it be better, and for whom, if white men were to line up with white women and, as the saying goes, “vote their race?” Could this be what liberal feminists are advocating? Is Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the house?
It ought to be possible to point to the prevalence of sexism and misogyny, and their impact on Clinton’s campaign, without downplaying the longstanding, ongoing, pervasive impact of racism in the U.S. But this is not the path they have chosen. In order to bolster their case for Clinton’s relative disadvantage in the primary campaign, explain the white male vote in places like Iowa, Virginia, and Utah, and encourage white women to seize the historic moment, they impose a ranking order between racism and sexism, with sexism at the top, and insist on the declining significance of race.
Gloria Steinem: “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life…. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women.”**
Those of us who witnessed the response to Hurricane Katrina; who check in occasionally on the racial demographics of the incarcerated; who are aware of the racial divide in income and, more significantly, wealth; who recognize that the public schools grow ever more segregated while the push-out rate for Black and Latino students rises ever higher; who track the relative scarcity of African Americans in professional schools, as well as in a whole range of professions; who know that the infant mortality rate for black babies outstrips the rate for white babies by two to one; who watch the dynamics of gentrification, dislocation and homelessness – we are not convinced that racism is an insignificant remnant. And we’re hard pressed to understand why this argument should be any more tolerated when it comes from liberal feminists than when it comes from the more frankly racist right wing. Since I’m not running for president I can be blunt. The denial of the significance of racism is a deep and abiding form of the thing itself.
Much has been made of the gender tightrope Clinton must walk. She can’t seem too soft or too hard. She has to look attractive and expect that her hairdo, pantsuits, cleavage and ankles are all fair game for commentary. Tears will be relentlessly analyzed. She will be judged in ways that men never are. All of this is true, and an indication of how very far we have to go.
But, interestingly, Clinton can and does directly associate her campaign with a potential blow against gender discrimination. Obama cannot do the same with regard to race. Clinton regularly posits winning the presidency, breaking through that highest and hardest glass ceiling, as she puts it, as an historic win for women, more than 50 percent of the population.
Obama, meanwhile, does not have the latitude to explicitly associate his campaign with the interests of African Americans or an anti-racist agenda. Part of this is simply about the numbers. But there’s much more at work here. While Clinton has been walking her tightrope, Obama has been busy threading the very narrowest of needles. There may be dozens of ways for a white man to campaign for the presidency and, if our common history, both recent and remote, is any guide, just about any kind of white man can become president, as long as he has the cash and the connections.
Not so for the black man. At issue are not only his politics and his campaign craft, but also, crucially, how he inhabits his black manhood. (Now, up until a few months ago I couldn’t have imagined that there was any way for a Black man to become a serious contender – to thread the needle – so we’re all learning as we go here.) White folks, in general, don’t want to see any chips on the shoulders or any psychic scars on the soul. There isn’t a black male in America over the age of 10 who doesn’t have a few chips and scars, but letting them show is a major deal breaker in the halls of power. So props to Obama for a fine acting job.
There’s a bargain that white voters have struck with Obama, and here, in brief, is what it is:
“You can be black, and we’re happy to congratulate ourselves on voting for a black man, as long as you’re black in a way that doesn’t upset us, scare us, make us feel guilty, or make us feel too white.” Obama is holding up his side of the bargain, either because he’s temperamentally inclined to do so or because he’s carefully calculated what it takes to win over white voters, or some combination of the two. But the quality of his blackness is nonetheless an issue. This is the meaning of the insistence that Obama distance himself from his pastor, Reverend Wright, and from Minister Farrakhan. Way too many chips and scars. Way too little regard for what white folks think. And way too much attachment to the African American community. So, if Obama himself can’t be tagged as too black for prime time, maybe he’s too black by association.
Further, while Obama has assiduously courted the black vote, he hasn’t done so with an explicitly anti-racist message and he certainly hasn’t posited the African-American community as the core of his coalition. Why? Because to do so would sink his campaign like a hundred weight stone. This, in part, is the difference between the Jackson campaign, which built a disruptive, progressive coalition with Black voters and anti-racist politics at its core, and Obama’s liberal coalition that is inclusive of and reliant upon black voters without centralizing their concerns in a way that would scare off white voters. Jackson ran as a direct challenge to the status quo, implementing an inside-outside strategy without the burden of expecting a win. Obama’s first principle is viability, and he threads his needle accordingly.
It’s more than a little interesting that liberal feminists, so highly attuned to the ways in which gender frames how Clinton can run, are blissfully (willfully?) ignorant of how race and racism shape the Obama campaign. Black racial solidarity still reads as a threat in a way that gender solidarity does not.
One last talking point before we close: the voting behavior of white women. Every national election cycle we’re treated to lots of commentary about the gender gap and its meaning. More eligible women vote than do eligible men and women are somewhat more likely to cast their votes for Democrats than for Republicans. Clinton is undeniably running strongly among white women Democrats, especially those over the age of 50. Should we be reading this as further evidence that the older women voters get, the more radical they become, as Morgan and Steinem contend? [Steinem: “Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.” Robin Morgan: “Older women are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age…”]
The two party lockdown ensures that there’s no real way to register radicalism in presidential primaries or national elections. So let’s assume that those voting Democratic are somewhat more radical than those voting Republican. In the 2004 presidential election 55 percent of white women gave their votes to George W. Bush; 62 percent of white men did the same. A significant gender gap.
Meanwhile, 90 percent of African American women and a slightly smaller proportion of African American men voted for John Kerry. In the 2000 presidential election an astounding 94 percent of African American women voted Democratic. I can’t do the math, but I suspect that if you were to subtract the overwhelmingly Democratic votes of African American women the gender gap would narrow considerably.
Younger voters from 18-29 years old cast 54 percent of their votes for the Democratic candidate in 2004. Exactly the same percentage of voters 60 and over cast them for Bush.
I just don’t see the evidence that older white women constitute a hotbed of radicalism, or even consistent liberalism. Had they followed the lead of African American women in 2000 and 2004 we all would have been spared a whole lot of grief.
Liberal feminists have every right to spend down their political capital on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hard choices have to made; political debts have to be paid. But it will not count as progress if a Clinton win is purchased at the cost of deepening the racial divide. It is inexcusable to support a candidate in the name of feminism while deploying racist argumentation, minimizing the existence and impact of racism, and denying the advantages of inhabiting the racial space called “white.” It will not be excused. Nor will it be forgotten.
_________________________________________________________________________________
*A whole nother article could be written about the disappearance of Black women in this rumble. And we have the title already at hand, the 1982 classic All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.
**And yet another article on the black folks who died trying to exercise the right to vote, right up into the 1960s, and ongoing black disfranchisement, down to today. The struggle for women’s suffrage was a valiant and protracted one, as is the struggle for black political enfranchisement. The distinction in the character (and timing) of those struggles speaks to distinctions in the character and quality of racism and sexism, not to the primacy of one over the other.
© Linda Burnham
Linda Burnham is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Women of Color Resource Center.
Here’s Erica Jong, more than a month ago, on the same issue. After allowing that “Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he’ll be president some day,” she goes on to say: “Obama is also a token – of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.”
Right now, black female voter that I am, I’m most definitely understanding the condescension – and righteous indignation – of white liberal feminists who believe Obama skipped ahead of them in line. I’m also understanding the sheer frustration of women who were headed towards an easy coronation, but then got sideswiped and stalled by an upstart prince.
It appears that all the mainstream, high-profile feminists got the same talking-points memo from the Clinton campaign. Ferraro, pit bull that she is, was just a little more raw in her delivery. If you didn’t get the memo, here are the talking points.
Ø Though the Democrats are blessed with an embarrassment of riches, with a black man and a woman contending for the nomination, Clinton is unequivocally the only one prepared for the rigors of the presidency.
Ø Obama is all fluff, no substance, glib and attractive, but also a cocksure, ageist upstart.
Ø Given the depths of Obama’s inexperience, his present popularity can only be explained by the reverse discrimination effect: he’s unfairly benefiting from his status as a black man.
Ø Older white women are supporting Clinton because they recognize bottom-line competence, know how to vote in their own best interests, grow more radical with age, and are ready to make history.
Ø White men are supporting Obama because of their latent or blatant sexism. They’re confused by the unfamiliar choices presented them, and more freaked out by the prospect of a woman in the White House than they are by the prospect of the first African American president.
Ø Maybe Obama will be a candidate to consider once he’s more politically seasoned, i.e., after eight years of Clinton.
Ø Sexism is the most pervasive and persistent form of discrimination.
Ø Racism is on the run, nearly vanquished save a few remnants.
From Gloria Steinem to Robin Morgan to Geraldine Ferraro to Erica Jong, they’re all playing the same tune. Now we can’t blame the women for fighting hard for their candidate, but it is disappointing, to say the very least, that in heralding Clinton as the proper choice for every feminist and all women they have also managed to dredge up some of the least attractive features of liberal feminism.
For nearly forty years feminists have wrangled over how to integrate issues of race, class, sexual orientation and other markers of inequality into a coherent, powerful gender analysis. Women of color insist on the complex relationship between racism and sexism and the central significance of racism in the lives of people of color. White feminists nod their heads, “Yes, of course, we understand, we’re with you on that.” Then comes the crunch, when the content of your feminism actually matters – as it does in this campaign – and they revert to the primacy of sexism over all other forms of discrimination and oppression. All the tendencies that got feminism tagged as a white, middle-class women’s thing are, brutally, back in play.
There’s a lot of twisting and turning going on in the effort to explain Obama’s viability. If he’s so completely inexperienced, why are people coming out to vote for him in record numbers? Must be that racism is dead but sexism isn’t. Must be that he’s an affirmative action baby. Must be that people are mesmerized, charmed and bewitched by his silver tongue. Must be that people are voting with their hearts for hope instead of with their heads for hard-headed competence.
In fact, it must be anything except that he’s knit together a coalition the existence of which most political actors could not have predicted, much less activated. Except that his politics and presentation of self have motivated millions of new voters and re-energized previously disaffected millions more in ways that her politics and presentation of self have not. Except that voters have weighed his experience and hers and concluded that she’s not bringing appreciably more to the table than he is. Except that she’s pegged her vaunted experience to her White House years and a fair share of voters (raise your hands y’all) were not enthralled with the policies of the Clinton presidency.
It’s just not such a terribly long walk from the Clinton campaign’s insistence on Obama’s lack of experience and complete unreadiness to lead to the notion that he’s gotten as far as he has not on his own merits, but as a result of the workings of some pro-brother bias. That is, to put it baldly, the playing field is tilted in favor of the minority candidate who, despite his thin resume, has managed to leapfrog over the more qualified white candidate. There’s a reason this reminds you of every reverse discrimination complainant from Allan Bakke forward. It undermines the legitimacy of affirmative remedies for identifiable, quantifiable discriminatory practices while simultaneously denigrating the qualifications of people of color in high places, whether they got there by means of affirmative action or not.
Then there’s the basic categorical confusion. Let’s go back to that historic juncture, wherein a black man and a woman are close contenders for their party’s nomination. If his race is noteworthy, Obama the black man (regardless of how many ways his blackness has been interpreted), then so too is hers. [For those of you who believe we’re living in a post-racialist society, if you haven’t tuned out already, you’ll probably want to skip the rest of this piece.] This is a contest between a black man and a white woman. Voters orient themselves toward Obama along a broad spectrum of racial attitudes ranging from, “Of course I’m voting for the brother” to “I’d never in a million years cast my vote for an African American.” And everything in between.
The point is, most sane people recognize that Obama’s race matters. Well then, how is it that Clinton’s doesn’t? If Obama’s blackness is a positive incentive for some voters, a liability for others and a source of confusion and ambivalence for still others, how is it that Clinton’s whiteness is a big fat neutral. Is it not at least theoretically possible that some voters are positively inclined toward Clinton because she is white?
There is a brand of feminism, amply critiqued but still very much alive, that focuses on gender bias while consistently downplaying the salience of race. And the easiest way to avoid acknowledging that whiteness comes with its privileges is to avoid acknowledging it at all. Whiteness as default, normative, unworthy of note. Clinton the woman; Obama the black man. In fact, Obama as doubly favored, as a man and, with reverse discrimination and tokenism in play, as an African American. Clinton, meanwhile, is hobbled by her gender and, since her whiteness is unacknowledged, neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by her race. This is the topsy-turvy world we’re being asked to accept as reality.
I, for one, am going to take a pass on delusion. In Mississippi, though Obama took the state, 70 percent of white Democatic voters chose Clinton over Obama. In South Carolina, Obama took over 75 percent of the black vote but only 15 percent of the over-60 white vote, with similar results in Alabama. Isn’t is possible that at least some of those white voters would prefer to see a white person in the White House, regardless of gender, than an African American? And isn’t it possible that whiteness is an element of Clinton’s appeal in Ohio, Texas and, potentially, Pennsylvania, states in which Reagan Democrats (and Nixon Democrats before them) were won over to the Republican Party, at least in part, on the basis of frankly racist appeals? As long as Clinton’s whiteness is unacknowledged, so too are the dynamics that work to her advantage in this campaign.
The deep disappointment in the voting behavior of Obama-supporting men (read white men; see above) while officially chalked up to misogyny, has, in the argument of some feminists, crept uncomfortably close to a howl of anger at racial betrayal. In a Chicago Tribune article entitled “Sexism, not Racism, Thriving,” a clearly frustrated Frida Ghitis claims “We may be winning the war against racism, but sexism is putting up quite a fight….Women are voting for Clinton and blacks are voting for Obama…. If we look for someone who looks like us, for whom should a white man vote?... White men are giving their vote to Obama over Clinton.”*
Let us grant without argument that many men, and a good number of women as well, would prefer to see a man in the White House than a woman. Is this evidence that sexism is alive and well? Indeed it is. But, as our own political processes constantly remind us, voting behavior is more than a little complex. Perhaps white men should be excoriated for their persistent sexism; perhaps we should be celebrating their transcendence of a century’s-long resistance to placing African Americans, men or women, in positions of power.
Would it be better, and for whom, if white men were to line up with white women and, as the saying goes, “vote their race?” Could this be what liberal feminists are advocating? Is Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the house?
It ought to be possible to point to the prevalence of sexism and misogyny, and their impact on Clinton’s campaign, without downplaying the longstanding, ongoing, pervasive impact of racism in the U.S. But this is not the path they have chosen. In order to bolster their case for Clinton’s relative disadvantage in the primary campaign, explain the white male vote in places like Iowa, Virginia, and Utah, and encourage white women to seize the historic moment, they impose a ranking order between racism and sexism, with sexism at the top, and insist on the declining significance of race.
Gloria Steinem: “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life…. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women.”**
Those of us who witnessed the response to Hurricane Katrina; who check in occasionally on the racial demographics of the incarcerated; who are aware of the racial divide in income and, more significantly, wealth; who recognize that the public schools grow ever more segregated while the push-out rate for Black and Latino students rises ever higher; who track the relative scarcity of African Americans in professional schools, as well as in a whole range of professions; who know that the infant mortality rate for black babies outstrips the rate for white babies by two to one; who watch the dynamics of gentrification, dislocation and homelessness – we are not convinced that racism is an insignificant remnant. And we’re hard pressed to understand why this argument should be any more tolerated when it comes from liberal feminists than when it comes from the more frankly racist right wing. Since I’m not running for president I can be blunt. The denial of the significance of racism is a deep and abiding form of the thing itself.
Much has been made of the gender tightrope Clinton must walk. She can’t seem too soft or too hard. She has to look attractive and expect that her hairdo, pantsuits, cleavage and ankles are all fair game for commentary. Tears will be relentlessly analyzed. She will be judged in ways that men never are. All of this is true, and an indication of how very far we have to go.
But, interestingly, Clinton can and does directly associate her campaign with a potential blow against gender discrimination. Obama cannot do the same with regard to race. Clinton regularly posits winning the presidency, breaking through that highest and hardest glass ceiling, as she puts it, as an historic win for women, more than 50 percent of the population.
Obama, meanwhile, does not have the latitude to explicitly associate his campaign with the interests of African Americans or an anti-racist agenda. Part of this is simply about the numbers. But there’s much more at work here. While Clinton has been walking her tightrope, Obama has been busy threading the very narrowest of needles. There may be dozens of ways for a white man to campaign for the presidency and, if our common history, both recent and remote, is any guide, just about any kind of white man can become president, as long as he has the cash and the connections.
Not so for the black man. At issue are not only his politics and his campaign craft, but also, crucially, how he inhabits his black manhood. (Now, up until a few months ago I couldn’t have imagined that there was any way for a Black man to become a serious contender – to thread the needle – so we’re all learning as we go here.) White folks, in general, don’t want to see any chips on the shoulders or any psychic scars on the soul. There isn’t a black male in America over the age of 10 who doesn’t have a few chips and scars, but letting them show is a major deal breaker in the halls of power. So props to Obama for a fine acting job.
There’s a bargain that white voters have struck with Obama, and here, in brief, is what it is:
“You can be black, and we’re happy to congratulate ourselves on voting for a black man, as long as you’re black in a way that doesn’t upset us, scare us, make us feel guilty, or make us feel too white.” Obama is holding up his side of the bargain, either because he’s temperamentally inclined to do so or because he’s carefully calculated what it takes to win over white voters, or some combination of the two. But the quality of his blackness is nonetheless an issue. This is the meaning of the insistence that Obama distance himself from his pastor, Reverend Wright, and from Minister Farrakhan. Way too many chips and scars. Way too little regard for what white folks think. And way too much attachment to the African American community. So, if Obama himself can’t be tagged as too black for prime time, maybe he’s too black by association.
Further, while Obama has assiduously courted the black vote, he hasn’t done so with an explicitly anti-racist message and he certainly hasn’t posited the African-American community as the core of his coalition. Why? Because to do so would sink his campaign like a hundred weight stone. This, in part, is the difference between the Jackson campaign, which built a disruptive, progressive coalition with Black voters and anti-racist politics at its core, and Obama’s liberal coalition that is inclusive of and reliant upon black voters without centralizing their concerns in a way that would scare off white voters. Jackson ran as a direct challenge to the status quo, implementing an inside-outside strategy without the burden of expecting a win. Obama’s first principle is viability, and he threads his needle accordingly.
It’s more than a little interesting that liberal feminists, so highly attuned to the ways in which gender frames how Clinton can run, are blissfully (willfully?) ignorant of how race and racism shape the Obama campaign. Black racial solidarity still reads as a threat in a way that gender solidarity does not.
One last talking point before we close: the voting behavior of white women. Every national election cycle we’re treated to lots of commentary about the gender gap and its meaning. More eligible women vote than do eligible men and women are somewhat more likely to cast their votes for Democrats than for Republicans. Clinton is undeniably running strongly among white women Democrats, especially those over the age of 50. Should we be reading this as further evidence that the older women voters get, the more radical they become, as Morgan and Steinem contend? [Steinem: “Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.” Robin Morgan: “Older women are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age…”]
The two party lockdown ensures that there’s no real way to register radicalism in presidential primaries or national elections. So let’s assume that those voting Democratic are somewhat more radical than those voting Republican. In the 2004 presidential election 55 percent of white women gave their votes to George W. Bush; 62 percent of white men did the same. A significant gender gap.
Meanwhile, 90 percent of African American women and a slightly smaller proportion of African American men voted for John Kerry. In the 2000 presidential election an astounding 94 percent of African American women voted Democratic. I can’t do the math, but I suspect that if you were to subtract the overwhelmingly Democratic votes of African American women the gender gap would narrow considerably.
Younger voters from 18-29 years old cast 54 percent of their votes for the Democratic candidate in 2004. Exactly the same percentage of voters 60 and over cast them for Bush.
I just don’t see the evidence that older white women constitute a hotbed of radicalism, or even consistent liberalism. Had they followed the lead of African American women in 2000 and 2004 we all would have been spared a whole lot of grief.
Liberal feminists have every right to spend down their political capital on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hard choices have to made; political debts have to be paid. But it will not count as progress if a Clinton win is purchased at the cost of deepening the racial divide. It is inexcusable to support a candidate in the name of feminism while deploying racist argumentation, minimizing the existence and impact of racism, and denying the advantages of inhabiting the racial space called “white.” It will not be excused. Nor will it be forgotten.
_________________________________________________________________________________
*A whole nother article could be written about the disappearance of Black women in this rumble. And we have the title already at hand, the 1982 classic All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.
**And yet another article on the black folks who died trying to exercise the right to vote, right up into the 1960s, and ongoing black disfranchisement, down to today. The struggle for women’s suffrage was a valiant and protracted one, as is the struggle for black political enfranchisement. The distinction in the character (and timing) of those struggles speaks to distinctions in the character and quality of racism and sexism, not to the primacy of one over the other.
© Linda Burnham
Linda Burnham is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Women of Color Resource Center.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Suharto's Legacy
February 7, 2008
Atlanta, Georgia. Former Indonesia Dictator Suharto has died. May God grant his soul rest and provide his family peace. At the time of anyone’s death most people feel some degree of sympathy for the loss of life, even if they did not know the person. I did not know Indonesia’s Suharto. But I knew of his villainous work for over 32 years on behalf of the United States and other western governments and institutions.
When I lived in Indonesia, there were constant sightings of Suharto. He, like Chile’s notorious dictator, General Pinochet, seemed to always get ill just before he was due in court to face charges for his crimes.
The official history of United States’ foreign affairs revealed that Suharto did the bidding of Washington in the most vicious manner, coordinating the assassination of over 1 million Indonesian citizens in one of the worse anti-communist massacres and crimes against humanity ever recorded. Suharto’s sustained and violent slayings, over a one year period, ranks up there with what Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia -- which today is unmistakably acknowledged as genocide.
During his rule, Suharto and his family amassed a fortune. According to economist Jeffrey Winters, he stole at least 35 billion dollars, perhaps (as some say) with the World Bank’s acquiescence. Suharto also instituted a system of institutionalized corruption, which was almost seen as a 10% tax and became so despicable that at one point, it led to Indonesia being ranked second only to Nigeria, another military dictatorship, as the most corrupt country in the International community.
That he would now be receiving a state funeral and a week of national mourning is the business of the Indonesia government, currently lead by President Susilo Bambang, a former Suharto loyalist General. The government’s decisions no doubt were influenced by its concern with maintaining the delicate political balance that the Indonesia political elite arranged and have stage managed since 1998. That balance has been recognized by B.J. Habbie, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid (who was impeached/removed from office by the legislative branch), and even Megawati Sukamnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter, when they governed the sprawling natural resource endowed country (Indonesia is rich in oil, natural gas, gold, and timber) of more than 235 million people.
Memory of an Emerging Global Power
Indonesia, like Algeria was once seen as one of the most important outposts for the anti-colonial and national liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It was the sight of the famous 1955 Bandung Conference which brought together some of the most prominent and militant nationalist and socialist leaders of that era from Asia, Africa and Latin America. That historic gathering, which was hosted by Indonesia’s own celebrated anti-colonial leader Sukarno, was memorialized in Richard Wrights’ book Black Power and Malcolm X’s remarkable speech, Message to the Grassroots.
The Bandung Conference was perceived to be so important that the Eisenhower Administration did not allow African American leaders such as W.E.B. Dubois or Paul Robeson to attend. The State Department refused to give them their passports so they could travel. Their passports had been confiscated during the anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthyism era in the USA.
Right they were. Bandung turned out to be the beginning of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), which would become the platform for “Third World” global concerns to be voiced. The NAM’s concerns over global poverty and the debt crisis would lead to it becoming the first organization to call for a “new international economic order.” Bandung also gave inspiration to the budding Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama being led by a then 26 year old minister named Martin Luther King Jr. It would also inspire the revolutionary spirit of a young Fidel Castro in Cuba who would eventually be elected head of the Non-aligned Movement.
Overthrowing Sukarno
Indonesia’s role and Sukarno’s leadership was not to be tolerated for long by the west. The plans for overthrowing Sukarno, decimating the Indonesian Communist Party (that remains banned to this day) and the extermination other Indonesian progressives by the thousands was “made in the USA.”
Suharto’s first act in 1965 was to stage a covert overthrow of the popular, democratically-elected President Sukarno (who would later die under house arrest in 1970) and blame the entire coup on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). What followed was nothing short of a bloodbath with hundreds of PKI members being killed each night from late 1965 through middle of the 1966, according to U.S. Embassy communiqués. Suharto then, like Mobutu in The Congo, Marcos in the Philippines, the Shah of Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua and Baby Doc in Haiti, set out to eliminate any and all opposition. He arranged the deaths of the top six generals immediately following the gruesome pogroms and then promoted himself to the rank of four star general. It is estimate that as many as one million people were killed as Suharto’s regime took the reins in 1965; the majority of these deaths being PKI members, alleged PKI members, and ethnic Chinese Indonesians.
The historical record suggests that those plans were hatched apparently simply because there was a western fear of a “Chinese connection” to the progressive social forces in Indonesia. Whether they were somehow allied with Mao Tse Tung’s “Red China” – the same China that every U.S. based transnational corporation from Google to Wal-Mart are stepping over each other for commercial interests today – was of little importance to Suharto. Following Sukarno’s confrontation with the United States between 1964 and 1965, Suharto’s masters gave the order and he gladly carried it out.
The official United States foreign policy history, released in 2000 by the Clinton Administration’s State Department was filled with documentation on the Indonesian Army’s campaign against the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) in 1965-66; it also contained details of US policy deliberations that reveal the involvement of the United States government in the bloodbath. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta provided a list of the top communist leaders to Suharto and a covert payment of 50 million Rupiah to the reactionary Kap-Gestupu movement that was leading the repression.
The documented history also makes plain the demented thinking of the Johnson White House on the distressing development in Indonesia. The documents also show that National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who now has interests in the gold mines of Papua, would tell Nixon to let Suharto know that he understands the problem in “West Irian” which was a signal to Suharto to invade and annex Papua in 1969 over objections of the Papuan people and the United Nations. U.S. political and military support was also instrumental in the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999 that resulted in more than 250,000 Timorese being slaughtered.
Upon taking office in 2001, one of the first things the Bush Administration did was to agree with the CIA and promptly removed those documents from public view, even though they had been declassified in 1998.
Democratic Underdevelopment
Suharto was re-elected president six times by a rubber stamp legislature, the DPR. One third of the seats were reserved for his military colleagues. Obviously, Suharto was never opposed while running for president as a blanket of fear engulfed the entire country. Suharto and his supporters manipulated the constitution and used it as an instrument of authoritarian rule. All power was concentrated in the executive. Demands for constitutional change were integral to the reformasi movement that helped to hasten Suharto’s fall following the 1997 Asian economic crisis. The democratic process in Indonesia was so successfully high-jacked by Suharto that in spite of notable reforms, it remains fragile to this day.
Suharto’s repression was absolute. For example, he also instituted anti-Chinese legislation that forbid the use of the Chinese language in schools, on public signs, in news papers, or on the radio, forcing Chinese Indonesians to adopt Malay-sounding names, and forbidding the celebration of Chinese holidays.
Suharto was a cruel, menacing, vindictive and cold-blooded butcher who terrorized his own people for three decades while willingly serving as a reliable Cold War ally of the United States of America and brutally suppressing neighboring peoples right to self-determination. Suharto’s record of terror in Indonesia, East Timor, Ache and Papua is unmatched in annals of human history.
The Puppet Show
In Indonesia, puppet shows are extremely popular most of all shadow puppetry. While there can be as many as fifty different characters in a given puppet show, the most revered person in the show is the “Dalang”, or the “puppet Master” behind the screen, making all the characters move in unison and tying the ever-evolving story together. Outsiders living and working in Indonesia often remark that it is hard to tell what’s going on behind the screen or in the minds of Indonesians, but what is clear is that Suharto was Indonesia’s greatest Dalang, pulling the strings and running the show.
These acts of shadow play continued through the weeks preceding Suharto’s death and, during the official mourning – movie stars and opposition party members lined up to pay their last respects. There was the proper show of tears, and of the pomp and circumstance required for the passing of a man of such stature. But in good Indonesian fashion it all had at least a dual meaning. In other words, don’t mistake all the weeping as sympathy; some of the tears undoubtedly were tears of joy that the merciless tyrant has finally been buried, deep and tight.
Dr. Keith Jennings is President of the African American Human Rights Foundation and was Indonesia Country Director for the National Democratic Institute from 2000-2003
Atlanta, Georgia. Former Indonesia Dictator Suharto has died. May God grant his soul rest and provide his family peace. At the time of anyone’s death most people feel some degree of sympathy for the loss of life, even if they did not know the person. I did not know Indonesia’s Suharto. But I knew of his villainous work for over 32 years on behalf of the United States and other western governments and institutions.
When I lived in Indonesia, there were constant sightings of Suharto. He, like Chile’s notorious dictator, General Pinochet, seemed to always get ill just before he was due in court to face charges for his crimes.
The official history of United States’ foreign affairs revealed that Suharto did the bidding of Washington in the most vicious manner, coordinating the assassination of over 1 million Indonesian citizens in one of the worse anti-communist massacres and crimes against humanity ever recorded. Suharto’s sustained and violent slayings, over a one year period, ranks up there with what Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia -- which today is unmistakably acknowledged as genocide.
During his rule, Suharto and his family amassed a fortune. According to economist Jeffrey Winters, he stole at least 35 billion dollars, perhaps (as some say) with the World Bank’s acquiescence. Suharto also instituted a system of institutionalized corruption, which was almost seen as a 10% tax and became so despicable that at one point, it led to Indonesia being ranked second only to Nigeria, another military dictatorship, as the most corrupt country in the International community.
That he would now be receiving a state funeral and a week of national mourning is the business of the Indonesia government, currently lead by President Susilo Bambang, a former Suharto loyalist General. The government’s decisions no doubt were influenced by its concern with maintaining the delicate political balance that the Indonesia political elite arranged and have stage managed since 1998. That balance has been recognized by B.J. Habbie, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid (who was impeached/removed from office by the legislative branch), and even Megawati Sukamnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter, when they governed the sprawling natural resource endowed country (Indonesia is rich in oil, natural gas, gold, and timber) of more than 235 million people.
Memory of an Emerging Global Power
Indonesia, like Algeria was once seen as one of the most important outposts for the anti-colonial and national liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It was the sight of the famous 1955 Bandung Conference which brought together some of the most prominent and militant nationalist and socialist leaders of that era from Asia, Africa and Latin America. That historic gathering, which was hosted by Indonesia’s own celebrated anti-colonial leader Sukarno, was memorialized in Richard Wrights’ book Black Power and Malcolm X’s remarkable speech, Message to the Grassroots.
The Bandung Conference was perceived to be so important that the Eisenhower Administration did not allow African American leaders such as W.E.B. Dubois or Paul Robeson to attend. The State Department refused to give them their passports so they could travel. Their passports had been confiscated during the anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthyism era in the USA.
Right they were. Bandung turned out to be the beginning of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), which would become the platform for “Third World” global concerns to be voiced. The NAM’s concerns over global poverty and the debt crisis would lead to it becoming the first organization to call for a “new international economic order.” Bandung also gave inspiration to the budding Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama being led by a then 26 year old minister named Martin Luther King Jr. It would also inspire the revolutionary spirit of a young Fidel Castro in Cuba who would eventually be elected head of the Non-aligned Movement.
Overthrowing Sukarno
Indonesia’s role and Sukarno’s leadership was not to be tolerated for long by the west. The plans for overthrowing Sukarno, decimating the Indonesian Communist Party (that remains banned to this day) and the extermination other Indonesian progressives by the thousands was “made in the USA.”
Suharto’s first act in 1965 was to stage a covert overthrow of the popular, democratically-elected President Sukarno (who would later die under house arrest in 1970) and blame the entire coup on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). What followed was nothing short of a bloodbath with hundreds of PKI members being killed each night from late 1965 through middle of the 1966, according to U.S. Embassy communiqués. Suharto then, like Mobutu in The Congo, Marcos in the Philippines, the Shah of Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua and Baby Doc in Haiti, set out to eliminate any and all opposition. He arranged the deaths of the top six generals immediately following the gruesome pogroms and then promoted himself to the rank of four star general. It is estimate that as many as one million people were killed as Suharto’s regime took the reins in 1965; the majority of these deaths being PKI members, alleged PKI members, and ethnic Chinese Indonesians.
The historical record suggests that those plans were hatched apparently simply because there was a western fear of a “Chinese connection” to the progressive social forces in Indonesia. Whether they were somehow allied with Mao Tse Tung’s “Red China” – the same China that every U.S. based transnational corporation from Google to Wal-Mart are stepping over each other for commercial interests today – was of little importance to Suharto. Following Sukarno’s confrontation with the United States between 1964 and 1965, Suharto’s masters gave the order and he gladly carried it out.
The official United States foreign policy history, released in 2000 by the Clinton Administration’s State Department was filled with documentation on the Indonesian Army’s campaign against the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) in 1965-66; it also contained details of US policy deliberations that reveal the involvement of the United States government in the bloodbath. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta provided a list of the top communist leaders to Suharto and a covert payment of 50 million Rupiah to the reactionary Kap-Gestupu movement that was leading the repression.
The documented history also makes plain the demented thinking of the Johnson White House on the distressing development in Indonesia. The documents also show that National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who now has interests in the gold mines of Papua, would tell Nixon to let Suharto know that he understands the problem in “West Irian” which was a signal to Suharto to invade and annex Papua in 1969 over objections of the Papuan people and the United Nations. U.S. political and military support was also instrumental in the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999 that resulted in more than 250,000 Timorese being slaughtered.
Upon taking office in 2001, one of the first things the Bush Administration did was to agree with the CIA and promptly removed those documents from public view, even though they had been declassified in 1998.
Democratic Underdevelopment
Suharto was re-elected president six times by a rubber stamp legislature, the DPR. One third of the seats were reserved for his military colleagues. Obviously, Suharto was never opposed while running for president as a blanket of fear engulfed the entire country. Suharto and his supporters manipulated the constitution and used it as an instrument of authoritarian rule. All power was concentrated in the executive. Demands for constitutional change were integral to the reformasi movement that helped to hasten Suharto’s fall following the 1997 Asian economic crisis. The democratic process in Indonesia was so successfully high-jacked by Suharto that in spite of notable reforms, it remains fragile to this day.
Suharto’s repression was absolute. For example, he also instituted anti-Chinese legislation that forbid the use of the Chinese language in schools, on public signs, in news papers, or on the radio, forcing Chinese Indonesians to adopt Malay-sounding names, and forbidding the celebration of Chinese holidays.
Suharto was a cruel, menacing, vindictive and cold-blooded butcher who terrorized his own people for three decades while willingly serving as a reliable Cold War ally of the United States of America and brutally suppressing neighboring peoples right to self-determination. Suharto’s record of terror in Indonesia, East Timor, Ache and Papua is unmatched in annals of human history.
The Puppet Show
In Indonesia, puppet shows are extremely popular most of all shadow puppetry. While there can be as many as fifty different characters in a given puppet show, the most revered person in the show is the “Dalang”, or the “puppet Master” behind the screen, making all the characters move in unison and tying the ever-evolving story together. Outsiders living and working in Indonesia often remark that it is hard to tell what’s going on behind the screen or in the minds of Indonesians, but what is clear is that Suharto was Indonesia’s greatest Dalang, pulling the strings and running the show.
These acts of shadow play continued through the weeks preceding Suharto’s death and, during the official mourning – movie stars and opposition party members lined up to pay their last respects. There was the proper show of tears, and of the pomp and circumstance required for the passing of a man of such stature. But in good Indonesian fashion it all had at least a dual meaning. In other words, don’t mistake all the weeping as sympathy; some of the tears undoubtedly were tears of joy that the merciless tyrant has finally been buried, deep and tight.
Dr. Keith Jennings is President of the African American Human Rights Foundation and was Indonesia Country Director for the National Democratic Institute from 2000-2003
Obama and Southern Politics
February 12, 2008
Atlanta, Georgia. Whatever one thinks of Obama’s politics or whatever the final outcome of the presidential contest might be, his performance to date will have a lasting impact on the Democratic Party for some time to come. In fact, the story of the 2008 elections may not be who won the presidency but the “Obama Phenomenon” and its incredible impact on the future of American politics, in particular “Southern politics.”
Obama’s Super Tuesday victories, 13 in all to Clinton’s 9 (New Mexico was added to Clinton’s total after nine days of counting and recounting ballots), his Saturday, February 9th and 10th sweep of all five contests in Louisiana, Washington State, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands, and Maine, and his more recent triumphs in the Potomac primary – Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., and now Wisconsin and Hawaii (the US state with the largest Asian American population) are nothing short of amazing.
Shock to the System
In Tiger Woods like fashion, Obama’s impressive string of victories defies the script and has been a shock to the system. They have left pundits wondering how to analyze or explain it. A few have been very clumsy in discussing race and gender but in most cases all conventional tools of analysis seem outdated.
The vaunted Clinton machine still does not appear to know what hit them. According to informed sources, the Clinton campaign is gasping for ways to respond beyond the abnormal campaign explanation but now usual spin that they were not expecting to do well in the states he won. Some of the most astute Southern political commentators did not believe Obama would win white southerners to his campaign because of their “anti-black” prejudices or win any states in the Deep South.
Obama just didn’t win, he won decisively and throughout the country: 57% - 36% in Louisiana; 68%-32% in Nebraska; 68%-31% in Washington and 90% - 8% in The Virgin Islands. This was immediately followed by another lopsided victory in Maine 59% - 40%. His victories in Maryland 67% - 36% and the District 75% -24% were just as decisive. The Clinton campaign and the media thought Clinton would be more competitive in Virginia, but even there Obama won convincingly by 63% - 37% margin. It was more of the same in Wisconsin 58%-41% and in Hawaii 76% - 24%.
He now leads Clinton in the number of states won, 25 – 11; in the number of votes garnered, approximately 11,000,000 to 10,000,000, and in the number of delegates won, 1,319 – 1,250, (including estimated support of super delegates). Excluding super delegates, he leads Clinton by a wider margin, 1158 to 1016 delegates. A total of 2025 delegates are needed to secure the nomination.
With only 17 more primaries remaining, this was not expected. Three months ago, anyone outside of perhaps the candidate himself and his top advisers who might have suggested that Obama would be leading Clinton at this stage of the contest would have certainly been laughed out of any serious discussion. Following Clinton’s Iowa defeat, Terry McAuliffe, key Clinton fundraiser and former Democratic National Committee chair, had said “this will be over by February 5th.” He was not alone. Most political operatives, media observers and party activists also believed that both the Democratic and Republican nominees would likely have been determined by now.
Spinning History?
Following Super Tuesday, some in the media surprisingly chose to focus on Asian American voter support for Clinton in Washington State or how well Clinton was performing with Latino voters as opposed to the remarkable performance of Obama, who according to the Economist, could not even get a floor pass at the 2000 Democratic convention. Other more cynical “spin-doctors” continue to use code words like “electability,” some, like the president of the Machinist Union, have even argued in a vulgar tone that Obama is all style and no substance. Others continue to point to Obama’s African American support in ways that attempt to limit him to being a “black candidate” whatever that is supposed to mean. The desperation of those who want to stop Obama is being shown as others have aimed their “unpatriotic” arrows at Michele Obama and her recent comment about being proud of her country for the first time in her adult life and now raised the issue of so-called support for the candidate from Minister Louis Farrakhan and Obama’s own Christian minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright (none of the three are running for president).
While we do not see anything wrong with being compared to the historic presidential campaigns of Shirley Chisholm or Jesse Jackson, some apparently do. Coded language is easily detected today, especially by ears that have heard it all before. To his credit, Obama, particularly since the South Carolina debates, has refused to step into to the “stereotype trap” or personally respond to Hilary Clinton’s biggest asset and biggest liability, her husband, the former president, Bill Clinton. Despite well calculated attempts to employ them from Pennsylvania to Ohio, the racial politics of the old era and Islamaphobia fear mongering has failed to achieve its desired outcome.
What do the facts say? Obama has won at least 11 states whose African American population is between 0.4% and 5% (Iowa, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Washington, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Alaska, Hawaii and Maine). In the South where close to 60% of the African American population now resides, Obama has averaged a staggering 85% of the black vote in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Virginia but he has also averaged an astonishing 29% - 55% of the white vote and 55% - 65% of the overall 18-29 year old vote in those contests.
Saying Obama “won where he was expected to win” ignores the critical fact that just two months ago Clinton had double digit leads in most states. The contention that Clinton is winning despite losing no longer works. She was winning the Latino vote and the women’s vote (largely on the basis of overwhelming support from older white women). But even that changed in the Potomac primaries where Obama averaged close to 60% of the women’s vote while winning the Latino vote. He increased his hold on the 18-29 year old vote to 68%. This continued in Wisconsin.
That appears to be momentum.
The facts also show historic turnouts across the country, including in so-called “red states” – states regularly won by Republicans- such as Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama. The turnout of Democratic voters nationwide has dwarfed that of Republican voters by an astonishing 22,000,000 to just over 14,000,000. Those numbers excludes voters who participated in caucuses! The Democratic totals have already surpassed previous turnout records set in 1988, when Jackson last ran.
After the Saturday sweep, the Potomac primaries and victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii, Obama certainly has the “wind at his back.” Going forward primaries will be held between March 4th and June 7, the delegate rich ones are Texas (228), Pennsylvania (188), Ohio (161), North Carolina (134), Indiana (84) and Puerto Rico (63). Of the remaining primaries, Obama is likely to do well in all of them, especially in the southern contests (Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Puerto Rico) if his ever expanding coalition remains true to form.
The New South and “Southern Politics”
In the last two presidential elections, Democratic campaigns have written off many of the states that Obama has won, particularly those in the South. This is because the nominees and their advisors believed Democrats could “whistle pass Dixie” on the way to winning the White House with an 18 state strategy. The problem with that academic strategy is that there is no room for error. Lose one of the 18 states and the election is lost. Besides, that approach only addresses presidential politics and the here and now, not state level politics or the future of the country given the continuing shifts of population and electoral votes as well as congressional seats (to the South, Southwest and West). States projected to lose congressional district after the 2010 census and therefore electoral votes include New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois, and Michigan.
Prioritizing the Southwest will be an important key to victory in November for either party. However, it will be a big mistake if the Democrats continue to write off much of the South because it has been deemed “non-competitive” by the experts. The Obama coalition and the large turnouts it has generated may have put a number of states in the Deep South in play, including Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia. It makes little sense to once again hand the Republicans a 161 electoral vote lead and then to try to beat them to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Such a strategy writes off a region in which a large mobilized and organized African American vote could play a significant role up and down the ballot in the general election.
Instead of writing off the South, the Democrats and their allies should look for regional and state specific issues that matter to Southerners. Issues such as healthcare appear to fit the bill because such as issue would keep those already mobilized motivated to continue to participate.
A New Politics?
Obama is redefining politics for a new generation and possibly redefining the political arithmetic associated with Southern presidential campaigning. He is also shaping an electoral model for national minority candidates at the local, state and national level. How that model is ultimately defined could become problematic for contemporary Black politics.
Beyond the “ego-tripping” of popular black talk show host Tavis Smiley or typical ultra-left critics, complaints emanating from the African American community about the Obama Campaign and supporters lack of appreciation for existing African American institutions and their secondary focus on the Black community by using inexperienced operatives who often arrive at the last minute empty handed --with no office, no computers, no lists, no staff and no funding- cannot be easily dismissed. The charismatic candidate and his campaign appear to be on different pages with respect to this approach. Obviously, this will not work in a general election because it assumes the very thing that Obama says he does not want to see, an expectation that African Americans will support him only because he is an African American.
Moreover, some of Obama’s white Southern supporters, drawn to him on the basis of his inclusive rhetoric and message of hope and change, may believe that in the historical and existing racial divide all should be forgotten and forgiven, because at last whites have shown that they are willing to put aside any racist views and provided support to a “well qualified” African American candidate. For others, the existence of an African American candidate and/or a female candidate will be prima facia evidence that gender equality and a color-blind society have finally been realized, meaning that remedies such as affirmative action or any social programs are no longer needed.
Unfortunately, -and in spite of the Bush Administration’s recent report on Racism in the U.S. to the United Nations – racism, gender discrimination and economic exploitation have not disappeared in the New South or any other region of the United States. In fact, the wholesale appointment of hundreds of right-wing judges and the failure of the Bush Administration to do anything about rampant institutionalized discrimination in housing, employment, health care, education or the criminal justice system are among the most visible characteristics of Bush’s presidential legacy, and what must be focused on by those interested in realizing “change” that would produce more freedom, justice and equality in the society. Pictures of dead Black bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans, during the Katrina hurricane and the current destruction of public housing, are still vivid in the minds of millions of people, especially those who suffered from the scandalous human rights abuses directly attributable to the Bush Administration’s in-action.
The right-wing will certainly try to obfuscate reality by playing on everyone’s fears and manipulating real concerns about economic and personal insecurity --as the Tennessee Republican Party recently did when it sent out literature using Obama’s middle name (Hussein) and presented a picture of him dressed in traditional Somali attire (following the Clinton Campaign’s lead). which an uninformed American audience might assume is Muslim attire. The point of their subtle racist attack was supposedly to “question Obama’s support for Israel.”
The right-wing attempt this time could be met with a new resistance from a broad based social movement that renders the old and new racial appeals, used against Black politicians from Harvey Gantt in North Carolina to Harold Ford in Tennessee, much less effective.
The Unspoken Struggle for the Future
Barack Obama has chosen to address the future in the present. He and Hillary Clinton are locked in a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party much like McCain and Huckabee are locked in an epic battle to determine which wing of the Republican Party will be in control. How all this ends remains to be written by the American people. Arguably, the chapters written so far suggest that “New South” political behavior has challenged conventional thinking about “Southern politics” and has already played a determining role in this unspoken struggle. One thing is certain, America will never be the same.
Dr. Keith Jennings is President of the African American Human Rights Foundation and Dr. William Boone is Director of the Center for Citizens Participation at Clark Atlanta University.
Atlanta, Georgia. Whatever one thinks of Obama’s politics or whatever the final outcome of the presidential contest might be, his performance to date will have a lasting impact on the Democratic Party for some time to come. In fact, the story of the 2008 elections may not be who won the presidency but the “Obama Phenomenon” and its incredible impact on the future of American politics, in particular “Southern politics.”
Obama’s Super Tuesday victories, 13 in all to Clinton’s 9 (New Mexico was added to Clinton’s total after nine days of counting and recounting ballots), his Saturday, February 9th and 10th sweep of all five contests in Louisiana, Washington State, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands, and Maine, and his more recent triumphs in the Potomac primary – Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., and now Wisconsin and Hawaii (the US state with the largest Asian American population) are nothing short of amazing.
Shock to the System
In Tiger Woods like fashion, Obama’s impressive string of victories defies the script and has been a shock to the system. They have left pundits wondering how to analyze or explain it. A few have been very clumsy in discussing race and gender but in most cases all conventional tools of analysis seem outdated.
The vaunted Clinton machine still does not appear to know what hit them. According to informed sources, the Clinton campaign is gasping for ways to respond beyond the abnormal campaign explanation but now usual spin that they were not expecting to do well in the states he won. Some of the most astute Southern political commentators did not believe Obama would win white southerners to his campaign because of their “anti-black” prejudices or win any states in the Deep South.
Obama just didn’t win, he won decisively and throughout the country: 57% - 36% in Louisiana; 68%-32% in Nebraska; 68%-31% in Washington and 90% - 8% in The Virgin Islands. This was immediately followed by another lopsided victory in Maine 59% - 40%. His victories in Maryland 67% - 36% and the District 75% -24% were just as decisive. The Clinton campaign and the media thought Clinton would be more competitive in Virginia, but even there Obama won convincingly by 63% - 37% margin. It was more of the same in Wisconsin 58%-41% and in Hawaii 76% - 24%.
He now leads Clinton in the number of states won, 25 – 11; in the number of votes garnered, approximately 11,000,000 to 10,000,000, and in the number of delegates won, 1,319 – 1,250, (including estimated support of super delegates). Excluding super delegates, he leads Clinton by a wider margin, 1158 to 1016 delegates. A total of 2025 delegates are needed to secure the nomination.
With only 17 more primaries remaining, this was not expected. Three months ago, anyone outside of perhaps the candidate himself and his top advisers who might have suggested that Obama would be leading Clinton at this stage of the contest would have certainly been laughed out of any serious discussion. Following Clinton’s Iowa defeat, Terry McAuliffe, key Clinton fundraiser and former Democratic National Committee chair, had said “this will be over by February 5th.” He was not alone. Most political operatives, media observers and party activists also believed that both the Democratic and Republican nominees would likely have been determined by now.
Spinning History?
Following Super Tuesday, some in the media surprisingly chose to focus on Asian American voter support for Clinton in Washington State or how well Clinton was performing with Latino voters as opposed to the remarkable performance of Obama, who according to the Economist, could not even get a floor pass at the 2000 Democratic convention. Other more cynical “spin-doctors” continue to use code words like “electability,” some, like the president of the Machinist Union, have even argued in a vulgar tone that Obama is all style and no substance. Others continue to point to Obama’s African American support in ways that attempt to limit him to being a “black candidate” whatever that is supposed to mean. The desperation of those who want to stop Obama is being shown as others have aimed their “unpatriotic” arrows at Michele Obama and her recent comment about being proud of her country for the first time in her adult life and now raised the issue of so-called support for the candidate from Minister Louis Farrakhan and Obama’s own Christian minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright (none of the three are running for president).
While we do not see anything wrong with being compared to the historic presidential campaigns of Shirley Chisholm or Jesse Jackson, some apparently do. Coded language is easily detected today, especially by ears that have heard it all before. To his credit, Obama, particularly since the South Carolina debates, has refused to step into to the “stereotype trap” or personally respond to Hilary Clinton’s biggest asset and biggest liability, her husband, the former president, Bill Clinton. Despite well calculated attempts to employ them from Pennsylvania to Ohio, the racial politics of the old era and Islamaphobia fear mongering has failed to achieve its desired outcome.
What do the facts say? Obama has won at least 11 states whose African American population is between 0.4% and 5% (Iowa, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Washington, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Alaska, Hawaii and Maine). In the South where close to 60% of the African American population now resides, Obama has averaged a staggering 85% of the black vote in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Virginia but he has also averaged an astonishing 29% - 55% of the white vote and 55% - 65% of the overall 18-29 year old vote in those contests.
Saying Obama “won where he was expected to win” ignores the critical fact that just two months ago Clinton had double digit leads in most states. The contention that Clinton is winning despite losing no longer works. She was winning the Latino vote and the women’s vote (largely on the basis of overwhelming support from older white women). But even that changed in the Potomac primaries where Obama averaged close to 60% of the women’s vote while winning the Latino vote. He increased his hold on the 18-29 year old vote to 68%. This continued in Wisconsin.
That appears to be momentum.
The facts also show historic turnouts across the country, including in so-called “red states” – states regularly won by Republicans- such as Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama. The turnout of Democratic voters nationwide has dwarfed that of Republican voters by an astonishing 22,000,000 to just over 14,000,000. Those numbers excludes voters who participated in caucuses! The Democratic totals have already surpassed previous turnout records set in 1988, when Jackson last ran.
After the Saturday sweep, the Potomac primaries and victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii, Obama certainly has the “wind at his back.” Going forward primaries will be held between March 4th and June 7, the delegate rich ones are Texas (228), Pennsylvania (188), Ohio (161), North Carolina (134), Indiana (84) and Puerto Rico (63). Of the remaining primaries, Obama is likely to do well in all of them, especially in the southern contests (Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Puerto Rico) if his ever expanding coalition remains true to form.
The New South and “Southern Politics”
In the last two presidential elections, Democratic campaigns have written off many of the states that Obama has won, particularly those in the South. This is because the nominees and their advisors believed Democrats could “whistle pass Dixie” on the way to winning the White House with an 18 state strategy. The problem with that academic strategy is that there is no room for error. Lose one of the 18 states and the election is lost. Besides, that approach only addresses presidential politics and the here and now, not state level politics or the future of the country given the continuing shifts of population and electoral votes as well as congressional seats (to the South, Southwest and West). States projected to lose congressional district after the 2010 census and therefore electoral votes include New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois, and Michigan.
Prioritizing the Southwest will be an important key to victory in November for either party. However, it will be a big mistake if the Democrats continue to write off much of the South because it has been deemed “non-competitive” by the experts. The Obama coalition and the large turnouts it has generated may have put a number of states in the Deep South in play, including Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia. It makes little sense to once again hand the Republicans a 161 electoral vote lead and then to try to beat them to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Such a strategy writes off a region in which a large mobilized and organized African American vote could play a significant role up and down the ballot in the general election.
Instead of writing off the South, the Democrats and their allies should look for regional and state specific issues that matter to Southerners. Issues such as healthcare appear to fit the bill because such as issue would keep those already mobilized motivated to continue to participate.
A New Politics?
Obama is redefining politics for a new generation and possibly redefining the political arithmetic associated with Southern presidential campaigning. He is also shaping an electoral model for national minority candidates at the local, state and national level. How that model is ultimately defined could become problematic for contemporary Black politics.
Beyond the “ego-tripping” of popular black talk show host Tavis Smiley or typical ultra-left critics, complaints emanating from the African American community about the Obama Campaign and supporters lack of appreciation for existing African American institutions and their secondary focus on the Black community by using inexperienced operatives who often arrive at the last minute empty handed --with no office, no computers, no lists, no staff and no funding- cannot be easily dismissed. The charismatic candidate and his campaign appear to be on different pages with respect to this approach. Obviously, this will not work in a general election because it assumes the very thing that Obama says he does not want to see, an expectation that African Americans will support him only because he is an African American.
Moreover, some of Obama’s white Southern supporters, drawn to him on the basis of his inclusive rhetoric and message of hope and change, may believe that in the historical and existing racial divide all should be forgotten and forgiven, because at last whites have shown that they are willing to put aside any racist views and provided support to a “well qualified” African American candidate. For others, the existence of an African American candidate and/or a female candidate will be prima facia evidence that gender equality and a color-blind society have finally been realized, meaning that remedies such as affirmative action or any social programs are no longer needed.
Unfortunately, -and in spite of the Bush Administration’s recent report on Racism in the U.S. to the United Nations – racism, gender discrimination and economic exploitation have not disappeared in the New South or any other region of the United States. In fact, the wholesale appointment of hundreds of right-wing judges and the failure of the Bush Administration to do anything about rampant institutionalized discrimination in housing, employment, health care, education or the criminal justice system are among the most visible characteristics of Bush’s presidential legacy, and what must be focused on by those interested in realizing “change” that would produce more freedom, justice and equality in the society. Pictures of dead Black bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans, during the Katrina hurricane and the current destruction of public housing, are still vivid in the minds of millions of people, especially those who suffered from the scandalous human rights abuses directly attributable to the Bush Administration’s in-action.
The right-wing will certainly try to obfuscate reality by playing on everyone’s fears and manipulating real concerns about economic and personal insecurity --as the Tennessee Republican Party recently did when it sent out literature using Obama’s middle name (Hussein) and presented a picture of him dressed in traditional Somali attire (following the Clinton Campaign’s lead). which an uninformed American audience might assume is Muslim attire. The point of their subtle racist attack was supposedly to “question Obama’s support for Israel.”
The right-wing attempt this time could be met with a new resistance from a broad based social movement that renders the old and new racial appeals, used against Black politicians from Harvey Gantt in North Carolina to Harold Ford in Tennessee, much less effective.
The Unspoken Struggle for the Future
Barack Obama has chosen to address the future in the present. He and Hillary Clinton are locked in a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party much like McCain and Huckabee are locked in an epic battle to determine which wing of the Republican Party will be in control. How all this ends remains to be written by the American people. Arguably, the chapters written so far suggest that “New South” political behavior has challenged conventional thinking about “Southern politics” and has already played a determining role in this unspoken struggle. One thing is certain, America will never be the same.
Dr. Keith Jennings is President of the African American Human Rights Foundation and Dr. William Boone is Director of the Center for Citizens Participation at Clark Atlanta University.
Super Tuesday, The Black Vote and the Obama Phenomenon
January 16, 2008
Atlanta, Georgia. Hillary Clinton’s surprising New Hampshire comeback last Tuesday sets the stage for a major contest between the two new political titans in the democratic primary campaign. The pollsters and media pundits, befuddled by the startling turn of events, are now searching for fingerprints of a last minute “Bradley Effect,” or a “do-or-die” sisterhood rally. But despite the recovery of the famed Clinton machine, Obama’s performance to date has shaken the foundations of conventional wisdom. And as the campaign travels southward for Super Tuesday, when 21 states hold their primaries, the unimaginable influence of African American voters may elude traditional calculations and campaign fortune telling.
Without a crystal ball at the start of this long campaign season, no one could have imagined the possibility of African Americans being in a position to play such a determining role in presidential politics, in spite of the large percentage of Democratic Party primary voters they represent in southern states from South Carolina to Arkansas. Most conventional observers would have had Hilary Clinton pegged to win with a mobilized machine, plenty of money and Bill Clinton as her secret weapon. But this was before Barrack Obama became the Obama who has raised over $100,000,000, mostly from individual contributions (98%) and who won the Iowa caucuses and came within three percentage points of winning the New Hampshire primary.
A number of observers have remarked that his Iowa victory speech was the best speech they had ever heard him make. Several even alluded to “Kingian” overtones in the speech. Still others have likened his speech to the message of the 1968 Bobby Kennedy and have circulated it widely on the internet.
Obama becoming Obama
Perhaps the best way to appreciate what is happening is to say there was one public perspective on Obama arising out of his speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention all the way through to the Democratic pre-primary debates. But after the Iowa victory, the victory speech and his New Hampshire performance, a bigger than life view begins to emerge.
There is a common thread between those events. Although Obama had previously won millions of white (and Black and Latino) votes before, it now appears that the experience of campaigning and the crystallization of a core message has helped him become the candidate who maximizes his strengths and minimizes his weaknesses and has the ability to touch something deep in the American psyche.
Accusations of hidden right-wing support designed to stop Hilary are out there. In fact, if you examine closely what the right-wing pundits from Limbaugh to Hannity to O’Reilly and Buchanan -- who all make a living out of denouncing anything progressive or Black-- are saying about Obama, you would think there must be a “stop Hillary” conspiracy. Indeed, GOP insiders are said to believe that Obama could be defeated much easier than Clinton. The Republican cross-over vote in open Democratic primaries might also lead some to think this is a ploy that will not be repeated in November.
There is undoubtedly a calculated and sexist "Stop Hillary" effort being orchestrated by the right-wing. However, if indeed the right-wing is encouraging whites to vote for Obama (as some suspect), it may well rebound to Obama's advantage, because the more white votes Obama wins, the more legitimacy his candidacy gains among whites. Perhaps the right is underestimating the degree to which moderate Republicans are disillusioned with an endless war, the falling value of the dollar and a trillion dollar national debt.
Still, a popular myth among right-wing pundits is that Obama’s approach and appeal to whites is actually a repudiation of the politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or in other words a type of Black Politics that openly confronts white racism in America. Whites no longer would suffer the discomfort of black grievance. The page can be turned to a colorblind society; all is forgotten if not forgiven.
The inconvenient truth is that Obama’s success is a product of the Civil Rights Movement and the victories won through hard fought struggles waged by people like Jackson and Sharpton. Moreover, we should note that there is a stark difference between the Jackson and Sharpton campaigns. In 1988, Rev. Jackson won 12 states, including Michigan, garnered close to 7,000,000 votes, and gained 1465 convention delegates. Sharpton only won 58 delegates and no primaries save for the District of Columbia. Many astute observers believe Jackson would have won New York and at least four more southern states in ’88 if the then 39 year old first term Senator Al Gore had not been convinced to stay in the race.
Obama’s message is a repudiation not of Jackson or Sharpton but the mean spirited, constitution shredding, torture sanctioning, war mongering, right-wing politics of fear and division. In so doing, Obama has positioned himself the ultimate “cross-over' candidate whose message consistently repudiates the Bush-Rove doctrine of divisiveness and wedge politics.
Endorsements
Some may ask, but what about the endorsements of legendary African American civil rights leaders such as Andy Young and John Lewis for Hillary Clinton? Or Young’s statement that he wants Obama to be president in 2016, implying that he should wait his turn or that he is not ready now. To this, some have reminded Young of the title of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book “Why We Can’t Wait.” Admittedly, their endorsements, and the support of Martin Luther King III for former senator John Edwards may undermine the potential of a cohesive pro-Obama African American vote as the primaries move southward.
Nonetheless, Obama has an impressive albeit an eclectic list of Black endorsements and supporters, ranging from Dr. Joseph Lowery, the “Dean of the Civil Rights Movement” to prosperity preacher Bishop Eddie Long and entertainment mogul Dallas Austin to former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder to most of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus from the South and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. It doesn’t hurt to have Colin Powell’s support and the endorsements of Bill Bradley and John Kerry. And of course Obama also has the backing of that other modern phenomenon, “Oprah.”
Beyond generating enthusiasm and hope at the grassroots level of the Black community, Obama’s buoyancy has also attracted independents, young professionals, women, and moderate Republicans who were once “Reagan Democrats.” If his endorsements translate into voter mobilization on the ground we might witness a record turnout in the southern primaries.
Obama’s Appeal
We reject simplistic notions that suggest African Americans will now vote for Obama because whites affirmed him in Iowa. Some may, however, most African Americans, responding to the challenges of this “defining moment in history,” probably have already planned to vote for Obama or are in the process of considering it. They more than likely see him as an articulate, insightful, “audacious” young man who is well-qualified to be President. As their turn to vote approaches we predict that in growing numbers they will reject accusations that Obama lacks experience, the whispering campaign which says electing him would be a “roll of the dice,” or that he is not “black enough.” More likely they will draw immense racial pride from the accomplishments of his candidacy and civic confidence in his judgment, the audacity of his campaign and the clarity of his vision for America.
The poison pill of “no experience” makes little sense to most African Americans who are keenly aware that the current President’s experience base was nothing to write home about. He did not even know there were Black people in Brazil or the name of Pakistan’s notorious coup leading General Pervez Musharraf, who is now one of his best friends. No less significant is the recent failures of experience by those who voted for the invasion of Iraq, or the disastrous Clinton Omnibus Crime Bill and Welfare Reform which are responsible for thousands of African Americans being locked-up today and disenfranchised; or US policy under Bill Clinton when genocide was being committed in Rwanda. Another perspective would have us believe that all African American voters will vote for Obama simply because he is black. That is not true either. That is what should be remembered about the Al Sharpton campaign.
Barack Obama is doing what few political candidates in the contemporary period have been able to accomplish, that is the broad and sustained participation of young people, especially those 18-29 year olds, in the political and electoral process. This participation has pained those in the establishment of both major parties. Those persons in the 18-29 year old demographic are extremely receptive to Obama’s call for change. The question for African American voters is to determine whether change is what they want, including a move from the brokered politics of select black leaders and the politics represented by the Clintons and the DLC led Democratic Party. The other question is whether identity politics is evil and should be avoided. American politics have always been characterized by identity politics. Major and minor parties in the past have appealed to nationality, race and religion. To now argue that it is somehow unholy and even anti-democratic for blacks to vote for a candidate based upon his or her race is a-historical in light of American politics.
Hope and Faith
Hope is the offspring of faith. Obama’s optimism and confidence in the American people is contagious and can clearly be associated with the best American traditions. For some, his hopefulness might seem a bit naïve, especially given how difficult it has become to achieve progressive social change in any form over the past twenty years. That view is furthered when one considers the current period that’s been so dominated by our growing distrust of politicians, corruption in high places, the lack of accountability by public officials and corporations, an unjust war, record oil prices and murder rates, and a housing and health care crisis. Whatever the case, Obama’s idea of hope and change is in fact something that has been missing from political discourse for some time.
And it is making a difference with people of all backgrounds and races who are tired of being segmented and manipulated into believing that the reason they are having problems is because of their neighbors and not the policy prescriptions that have been adopted which only benefit a very narrow slice of the society. So far, through Obama and to a degree Edwards, we have learned that many Americans agree with the poet Langston Hughes who once suggested, if America is to be we will have to make it be. And that mandates hope. Yet, without the details of substance, hope is empty of meaning. Translated politically, this means that those who agree that choices must be made at this particular moment in history, should be putting forth bold policy proposals and programs that would help realize Obama’s call for change and give muscle to his eloquent audacity of hope.
Far from Over
Now that Barrack Obama is coming south on the 29th of January with a 14 point lead in South Carolina, he is positioned to do extremely well all across the south and in other parts of the country on February 5th and for some Super Tuesday really will be super.
The election of a democratic nominee and a new president of the United States are far from over. Super Tuesday will have a lot to say about who the eventual nominee is. Obama may not talk about “grits and gravy” but right now he is “putting it down there where the goats can get it.”
Dr. Keith Jennings and Dr. William Boone
Atlanta, Georgia. Hillary Clinton’s surprising New Hampshire comeback last Tuesday sets the stage for a major contest between the two new political titans in the democratic primary campaign. The pollsters and media pundits, befuddled by the startling turn of events, are now searching for fingerprints of a last minute “Bradley Effect,” or a “do-or-die” sisterhood rally. But despite the recovery of the famed Clinton machine, Obama’s performance to date has shaken the foundations of conventional wisdom. And as the campaign travels southward for Super Tuesday, when 21 states hold their primaries, the unimaginable influence of African American voters may elude traditional calculations and campaign fortune telling.
Without a crystal ball at the start of this long campaign season, no one could have imagined the possibility of African Americans being in a position to play such a determining role in presidential politics, in spite of the large percentage of Democratic Party primary voters they represent in southern states from South Carolina to Arkansas. Most conventional observers would have had Hilary Clinton pegged to win with a mobilized machine, plenty of money and Bill Clinton as her secret weapon. But this was before Barrack Obama became the Obama who has raised over $100,000,000, mostly from individual contributions (98%) and who won the Iowa caucuses and came within three percentage points of winning the New Hampshire primary.
A number of observers have remarked that his Iowa victory speech was the best speech they had ever heard him make. Several even alluded to “Kingian” overtones in the speech. Still others have likened his speech to the message of the 1968 Bobby Kennedy and have circulated it widely on the internet.
Obama becoming Obama
Perhaps the best way to appreciate what is happening is to say there was one public perspective on Obama arising out of his speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention all the way through to the Democratic pre-primary debates. But after the Iowa victory, the victory speech and his New Hampshire performance, a bigger than life view begins to emerge.
There is a common thread between those events. Although Obama had previously won millions of white (and Black and Latino) votes before, it now appears that the experience of campaigning and the crystallization of a core message has helped him become the candidate who maximizes his strengths and minimizes his weaknesses and has the ability to touch something deep in the American psyche.
Accusations of hidden right-wing support designed to stop Hilary are out there. In fact, if you examine closely what the right-wing pundits from Limbaugh to Hannity to O’Reilly and Buchanan -- who all make a living out of denouncing anything progressive or Black-- are saying about Obama, you would think there must be a “stop Hillary” conspiracy. Indeed, GOP insiders are said to believe that Obama could be defeated much easier than Clinton. The Republican cross-over vote in open Democratic primaries might also lead some to think this is a ploy that will not be repeated in November.
There is undoubtedly a calculated and sexist "Stop Hillary" effort being orchestrated by the right-wing. However, if indeed the right-wing is encouraging whites to vote for Obama (as some suspect), it may well rebound to Obama's advantage, because the more white votes Obama wins, the more legitimacy his candidacy gains among whites. Perhaps the right is underestimating the degree to which moderate Republicans are disillusioned with an endless war, the falling value of the dollar and a trillion dollar national debt.
Still, a popular myth among right-wing pundits is that Obama’s approach and appeal to whites is actually a repudiation of the politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or in other words a type of Black Politics that openly confronts white racism in America. Whites no longer would suffer the discomfort of black grievance. The page can be turned to a colorblind society; all is forgotten if not forgiven.
The inconvenient truth is that Obama’s success is a product of the Civil Rights Movement and the victories won through hard fought struggles waged by people like Jackson and Sharpton. Moreover, we should note that there is a stark difference between the Jackson and Sharpton campaigns. In 1988, Rev. Jackson won 12 states, including Michigan, garnered close to 7,000,000 votes, and gained 1465 convention delegates. Sharpton only won 58 delegates and no primaries save for the District of Columbia. Many astute observers believe Jackson would have won New York and at least four more southern states in ’88 if the then 39 year old first term Senator Al Gore had not been convinced to stay in the race.
Obama’s message is a repudiation not of Jackson or Sharpton but the mean spirited, constitution shredding, torture sanctioning, war mongering, right-wing politics of fear and division. In so doing, Obama has positioned himself the ultimate “cross-over' candidate whose message consistently repudiates the Bush-Rove doctrine of divisiveness and wedge politics.
Endorsements
Some may ask, but what about the endorsements of legendary African American civil rights leaders such as Andy Young and John Lewis for Hillary Clinton? Or Young’s statement that he wants Obama to be president in 2016, implying that he should wait his turn or that he is not ready now. To this, some have reminded Young of the title of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book “Why We Can’t Wait.” Admittedly, their endorsements, and the support of Martin Luther King III for former senator John Edwards may undermine the potential of a cohesive pro-Obama African American vote as the primaries move southward.
Nonetheless, Obama has an impressive albeit an eclectic list of Black endorsements and supporters, ranging from Dr. Joseph Lowery, the “Dean of the Civil Rights Movement” to prosperity preacher Bishop Eddie Long and entertainment mogul Dallas Austin to former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder to most of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus from the South and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. It doesn’t hurt to have Colin Powell’s support and the endorsements of Bill Bradley and John Kerry. And of course Obama also has the backing of that other modern phenomenon, “Oprah.”
Beyond generating enthusiasm and hope at the grassroots level of the Black community, Obama’s buoyancy has also attracted independents, young professionals, women, and moderate Republicans who were once “Reagan Democrats.” If his endorsements translate into voter mobilization on the ground we might witness a record turnout in the southern primaries.
Obama’s Appeal
We reject simplistic notions that suggest African Americans will now vote for Obama because whites affirmed him in Iowa. Some may, however, most African Americans, responding to the challenges of this “defining moment in history,” probably have already planned to vote for Obama or are in the process of considering it. They more than likely see him as an articulate, insightful, “audacious” young man who is well-qualified to be President. As their turn to vote approaches we predict that in growing numbers they will reject accusations that Obama lacks experience, the whispering campaign which says electing him would be a “roll of the dice,” or that he is not “black enough.” More likely they will draw immense racial pride from the accomplishments of his candidacy and civic confidence in his judgment, the audacity of his campaign and the clarity of his vision for America.
The poison pill of “no experience” makes little sense to most African Americans who are keenly aware that the current President’s experience base was nothing to write home about. He did not even know there were Black people in Brazil or the name of Pakistan’s notorious coup leading General Pervez Musharraf, who is now one of his best friends. No less significant is the recent failures of experience by those who voted for the invasion of Iraq, or the disastrous Clinton Omnibus Crime Bill and Welfare Reform which are responsible for thousands of African Americans being locked-up today and disenfranchised; or US policy under Bill Clinton when genocide was being committed in Rwanda. Another perspective would have us believe that all African American voters will vote for Obama simply because he is black. That is not true either. That is what should be remembered about the Al Sharpton campaign.
Barack Obama is doing what few political candidates in the contemporary period have been able to accomplish, that is the broad and sustained participation of young people, especially those 18-29 year olds, in the political and electoral process. This participation has pained those in the establishment of both major parties. Those persons in the 18-29 year old demographic are extremely receptive to Obama’s call for change. The question for African American voters is to determine whether change is what they want, including a move from the brokered politics of select black leaders and the politics represented by the Clintons and the DLC led Democratic Party. The other question is whether identity politics is evil and should be avoided. American politics have always been characterized by identity politics. Major and minor parties in the past have appealed to nationality, race and religion. To now argue that it is somehow unholy and even anti-democratic for blacks to vote for a candidate based upon his or her race is a-historical in light of American politics.
Hope and Faith
Hope is the offspring of faith. Obama’s optimism and confidence in the American people is contagious and can clearly be associated with the best American traditions. For some, his hopefulness might seem a bit naïve, especially given how difficult it has become to achieve progressive social change in any form over the past twenty years. That view is furthered when one considers the current period that’s been so dominated by our growing distrust of politicians, corruption in high places, the lack of accountability by public officials and corporations, an unjust war, record oil prices and murder rates, and a housing and health care crisis. Whatever the case, Obama’s idea of hope and change is in fact something that has been missing from political discourse for some time.
And it is making a difference with people of all backgrounds and races who are tired of being segmented and manipulated into believing that the reason they are having problems is because of their neighbors and not the policy prescriptions that have been adopted which only benefit a very narrow slice of the society. So far, through Obama and to a degree Edwards, we have learned that many Americans agree with the poet Langston Hughes who once suggested, if America is to be we will have to make it be. And that mandates hope. Yet, without the details of substance, hope is empty of meaning. Translated politically, this means that those who agree that choices must be made at this particular moment in history, should be putting forth bold policy proposals and programs that would help realize Obama’s call for change and give muscle to his eloquent audacity of hope.
Far from Over
Now that Barrack Obama is coming south on the 29th of January with a 14 point lead in South Carolina, he is positioned to do extremely well all across the south and in other parts of the country on February 5th and for some Super Tuesday really will be super.
The election of a democratic nominee and a new president of the United States are far from over. Super Tuesday will have a lot to say about who the eventual nominee is. Obama may not talk about “grits and gravy” but right now he is “putting it down there where the goats can get it.”
Dr. Keith Jennings and Dr. William Boone
Colombia Free Trade Agreement, Human Rights and Afro-Colombians
February 1, 2008
Atlanta, Georgia। The Colombia “free trade” deal currently being promoted by the Bush Administration should be opposed by all those who seek justice and those who want the United States to regain some of its lost respect at the international level।
The human rights situation in Colombia (Latin Americas’ third largest country) is appalling and should be clearly and unequivocally condemned by all members of Congress, but especially the Congressional Black Caucus given the abuses faced by the Afro-Columbians।
The free trade agreement, as proposed, is not about fair trade and in effect would further exacerbate human rights violations and environmental degradation in Colombia. This agreement would continue the marginalization and social exclusion of Afro-Colombians, Indigenous Peoples and the poor. Furthermore, the consequential exporting of manufacturing jobs from the United States will continue to have a disproportionately destructive and detrimental impact on Black workers.
Why The Deal Should Be Opposed
During the Bush Administration’s two terms, Latin America has largely been ignored, except for trade deals and immigration bashing by right-wing intellectuals, media pundits and politicians. All of the agreements pursued by the Bush Administration, from Chile to the Dominican Republic, have exhibited several consistent features. The agreements have all marginalized human rights concerns while only paying lip service to the strengthening of democratic institutions. None have ever included any anti-racist provisions or equal opportunity encouragements or demands to respect the land rights of indigenous or African descendant populations.
The official Washington rhetoric today is the same as it was in 2006 when the last trade agreement with Colombia was signed. That deal was supposed to be a comprehensive trade agreement that would eliminate tariffs and other barriers to goods and services, and expand trade between the United States and Colombia. That agreement was “to help foster economic development in Colombia, and contribute to efforts to counter narco-terrorism, which threatens democracy and regional stability.”
In the period since that agreement was signed, Colombia has been close to going to war with its neighbor Venezuela. The internal peace process and the democratic reforms process within the country have significantly slowed. Additionally, efforts to address so-called “narco-terrorism” and have only netted additional U.S. military “advisors” being provided by Washington to Bogotá. Plan Colombia has not stopped the flow of drugs into the United States or Europe. The spraying of toxic chemicals –“fumigation”- and violence have pushed almost 2.5 million Colombians off the most productive tracks of land.
The newly proposed free trade deal would be nothing more than an economic extension of Plan Colombia which has resulted in the second largest internally displaced population in the world, following Darfur, and a state at war with itself. These types of agreements only benefit transnational corporations and the local elite. Liberalized trade and more privatization of state owned industries will only mean less public spending on education, health care, social security and electricity. It will also mean more spending by citizens on basic necessities such as food, water, housing, and transportation. The impact of such an agreement in the United States will continue the “race to the bottom” that pits workers in this country against workers in other countries who do not enjoy union protections, who make poverty wages and who face slave-like working conditions.
Human Rights Violations in Colombia
In fact, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, human rights violations have not disappeared over that period and are of such a dreadful magnitude today that they cannot be relegated to a secondary category or a practically meaningless side agreement. The government of Colombia has systematically committed and tolerated gross human rights abuses. Torture and disappearances are commonplace for leaders who stand up for social justice or stand in the way of foreign investment.
Amnesty International believes that there has been a phony demobilization of the expected 25,000 paramilitaries which may actually result in de facto amnesties for horrific human rights violators.
Human Rights Watch also believes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s claims of demobilization are unfounded. As evidence in support of its position, Human Rights Watch points to an Organization of American States report that identified 22 illegally armed groups in which paramilitary are actively recruiting new troops and are participating in drug trafficking, extortion, selective killings and forced displacement of citizens.
Moreover, the continuation of the violence in Colombia is mainly due to the government failure to bring the perpetuators to justice and fully dismantle paramilitary mafias that have deliberately targeted trade unionists and others. In fact, Colombia is the country with the worse violence against labor leaders, who are killed almost everyday. Since Uribe took office over 400 labor leaders have been killed and more than 1,300 received death threats.
Indigenous communities are completely disrespected and ignored. And the state has become a permanent war machine. The latest United Nations human development report shows 70% of the country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 20% of the population while 64% of its citizens are impoverished. In fact, the Colombian Gini Index, an economic measure of inequality, is virtually the same as that of Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest country.
Finally, it should be noted that President Uribe is embroiled in a scandal involving high ranking officials in his Administration and some 40 Congressmen over their links to the paramilitaries.
The Situation of Afro-Colombians
Afro-Colombians constitute between 26% and 40% (the exact percentage is disputed because of self-identification options and the government’s desire to decrease the size of the population) of Colombia’s 45 million people. That percentage of African descendant peoples is the second highest in South America, following the estimated 60% of Brazil’s population and much higher than the 13% that African Americans constitute in the United States’ population.
According to Piadad Cordoba Ruiz, former Afro Colombian Senator, Colombia “continues to be a racist, exclusionary and discriminating society.” Therefore it should come as no surprise that Afro-Colombians live in horrific conditions whether found on the Pacific or Atlantic coast.
The Inter-American Development Bank has reported that over 90% of the Afro-Colombian population lives on less than 2 U.S. dollars a day. 74% have no access to health care. Less than 30% of Afro-Colombian children attend high school. Fewer ever attend college. And similar to the situation of African Americans in the United States, Colombian jails and prisons are overflowing with Afro-Colombians. Even officials with the United States Agency for International Development have recognized that one in three of the displaced has been Afro-Colombian and that “the displaced Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities are truly one of the hemisphere’s least recognized tragedies.”
Because of marginalization, exclusion, racial discrimination, the location of the conflict/fighting and targeted fumigation effort, Afro-Colombians have been hardest hit by internal displacement. From 1995 to 2005, 62% of Afro-Colombians were forced to flee their land. Whole communities such as San Jose de Buey, La Vuelta, Curuchi, San Antonio de Buey, Auroduey, Chibuja and Mansa have been displaced. Afro-Colombians in others communities have lost their land to oil and mining interests connected to the paramilitaries. More recently, 265 Afro-Colombian young people were massacred. The slaughter of those young people has never been fully addressed by the Uribe government.
Why is this happening to Afro-Colombians? It is occurring because they are vulnerable and the land that they occupy is so valuable. Plans are afoot to construct a new Panama Canal this time like last time through Colombian territory. In addition, new oil deposits remain to be exploited in the same Northwest region where many of these small communities have existed for years.
Democrats and Colombia
Recognizing that serious challenges to current U.S. policy exists, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently traveled with a delegation of Democratic lawmakers, who apparently needed to be convinced first-hand of the so-called “progress” being made in Colombia. Some have already shown where they stand and obviously intend to use the trip to rationalize their vote in support of the trade agreement. But let’s be clear on what their vote will really mean. It will mean more of the same: more deaths and misery; more marginalization and social exclusion; and more humiliation, exploitation, internal displacement and migration.
Some of the democrats traveling with the Secretary oppose House Resolution 618, which simply calls for the United States Congress to recognize the plight of Afro-Colombians. Why members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who routinely support resolutions that recognize the plight of Israeli civilians, would oppose such a common sense resolution, is daunting?
At the same time it does suggest that some members must be placing a greater value on their relationship to corporate interests and prefer to remain insensitive to the very visible human rights abuses, environmental damage, health problems and displacement from land historically occupied by Afro-Colombians before Bolivar’s liberation wars, that’s now being fumigated and poisoned by herbicides (supplied by some of the same U.S. Corporations that make contributions to their campaigns) that are sprayed from U.S. piloted planes.
Perhaps we should not expect more from the Democrats than we do from the Republicans. If that is the case, then the Democrats should discontinue their loud rhetoric about reclaiming the “moral high ground” with regard to the promotion of human rights in our foreign policies or restoring respect for the United States abroad.
Rewarding Uribe for What?
While Secretary Rice is lobbying for the free trade deal on the basis of rewarding Uribe’s government for its pursuit of pro-market neo-liberal reforms at a time when many of its neighbors are instituting pro-poor statist policies, millions of Colombia’s citizens are caught in the crossfire in a low intensity war zone where state supported right-wing militias, the Colombian military, left-wing guerillas and drug warlords operate with impunity.
The rewards for Uribe appear to be consistent with the repugnant Bush policy of providing assistance to “friendly” governments who support the U.S. government’s incessant global war on terror, regardless of how appalling their human rights record might be. Such realist inspired policies overlook long-term U.S. interests in the region, especially that of promoting democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.
Uribe is President Bush’s friend and ally -- they both have a penchant for showing off their cowboy skills. They also have something else in common -- an extraordinary ability to remain oblivious to perplexing human rights violations committed in the name of national security. Hopefully, well intended Black elected officials will not develop that skill while accepting campaign contributions from corporate lobbyist. Those who see “progress” need to look again, this time with their eyes and not their hands.
Atlanta, Georgia। The Colombia “free trade” deal currently being promoted by the Bush Administration should be opposed by all those who seek justice and those who want the United States to regain some of its lost respect at the international level।
The human rights situation in Colombia (Latin Americas’ third largest country) is appalling and should be clearly and unequivocally condemned by all members of Congress, but especially the Congressional Black Caucus given the abuses faced by the Afro-Columbians।
The free trade agreement, as proposed, is not about fair trade and in effect would further exacerbate human rights violations and environmental degradation in Colombia. This agreement would continue the marginalization and social exclusion of Afro-Colombians, Indigenous Peoples and the poor. Furthermore, the consequential exporting of manufacturing jobs from the United States will continue to have a disproportionately destructive and detrimental impact on Black workers.
Why The Deal Should Be Opposed
During the Bush Administration’s two terms, Latin America has largely been ignored, except for trade deals and immigration bashing by right-wing intellectuals, media pundits and politicians. All of the agreements pursued by the Bush Administration, from Chile to the Dominican Republic, have exhibited several consistent features. The agreements have all marginalized human rights concerns while only paying lip service to the strengthening of democratic institutions. None have ever included any anti-racist provisions or equal opportunity encouragements or demands to respect the land rights of indigenous or African descendant populations.
The official Washington rhetoric today is the same as it was in 2006 when the last trade agreement with Colombia was signed. That deal was supposed to be a comprehensive trade agreement that would eliminate tariffs and other barriers to goods and services, and expand trade between the United States and Colombia. That agreement was “to help foster economic development in Colombia, and contribute to efforts to counter narco-terrorism, which threatens democracy and regional stability.”
In the period since that agreement was signed, Colombia has been close to going to war with its neighbor Venezuela. The internal peace process and the democratic reforms process within the country have significantly slowed. Additionally, efforts to address so-called “narco-terrorism” and have only netted additional U.S. military “advisors” being provided by Washington to Bogotá. Plan Colombia has not stopped the flow of drugs into the United States or Europe. The spraying of toxic chemicals –“fumigation”- and violence have pushed almost 2.5 million Colombians off the most productive tracks of land.
The newly proposed free trade deal would be nothing more than an economic extension of Plan Colombia which has resulted in the second largest internally displaced population in the world, following Darfur, and a state at war with itself. These types of agreements only benefit transnational corporations and the local elite. Liberalized trade and more privatization of state owned industries will only mean less public spending on education, health care, social security and electricity. It will also mean more spending by citizens on basic necessities such as food, water, housing, and transportation. The impact of such an agreement in the United States will continue the “race to the bottom” that pits workers in this country against workers in other countries who do not enjoy union protections, who make poverty wages and who face slave-like working conditions.
Human Rights Violations in Colombia
In fact, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, human rights violations have not disappeared over that period and are of such a dreadful magnitude today that they cannot be relegated to a secondary category or a practically meaningless side agreement. The government of Colombia has systematically committed and tolerated gross human rights abuses. Torture and disappearances are commonplace for leaders who stand up for social justice or stand in the way of foreign investment.
Amnesty International believes that there has been a phony demobilization of the expected 25,000 paramilitaries which may actually result in de facto amnesties for horrific human rights violators.
Human Rights Watch also believes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s claims of demobilization are unfounded. As evidence in support of its position, Human Rights Watch points to an Organization of American States report that identified 22 illegally armed groups in which paramilitary are actively recruiting new troops and are participating in drug trafficking, extortion, selective killings and forced displacement of citizens.
Moreover, the continuation of the violence in Colombia is mainly due to the government failure to bring the perpetuators to justice and fully dismantle paramilitary mafias that have deliberately targeted trade unionists and others. In fact, Colombia is the country with the worse violence against labor leaders, who are killed almost everyday. Since Uribe took office over 400 labor leaders have been killed and more than 1,300 received death threats.
Indigenous communities are completely disrespected and ignored. And the state has become a permanent war machine. The latest United Nations human development report shows 70% of the country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 20% of the population while 64% of its citizens are impoverished. In fact, the Colombian Gini Index, an economic measure of inequality, is virtually the same as that of Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest country.
Finally, it should be noted that President Uribe is embroiled in a scandal involving high ranking officials in his Administration and some 40 Congressmen over their links to the paramilitaries.
The Situation of Afro-Colombians
Afro-Colombians constitute between 26% and 40% (the exact percentage is disputed because of self-identification options and the government’s desire to decrease the size of the population) of Colombia’s 45 million people. That percentage of African descendant peoples is the second highest in South America, following the estimated 60% of Brazil’s population and much higher than the 13% that African Americans constitute in the United States’ population.
According to Piadad Cordoba Ruiz, former Afro Colombian Senator, Colombia “continues to be a racist, exclusionary and discriminating society.” Therefore it should come as no surprise that Afro-Colombians live in horrific conditions whether found on the Pacific or Atlantic coast.
The Inter-American Development Bank has reported that over 90% of the Afro-Colombian population lives on less than 2 U.S. dollars a day. 74% have no access to health care. Less than 30% of Afro-Colombian children attend high school. Fewer ever attend college. And similar to the situation of African Americans in the United States, Colombian jails and prisons are overflowing with Afro-Colombians. Even officials with the United States Agency for International Development have recognized that one in three of the displaced has been Afro-Colombian and that “the displaced Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities are truly one of the hemisphere’s least recognized tragedies.”
Because of marginalization, exclusion, racial discrimination, the location of the conflict/fighting and targeted fumigation effort, Afro-Colombians have been hardest hit by internal displacement. From 1995 to 2005, 62% of Afro-Colombians were forced to flee their land. Whole communities such as San Jose de Buey, La Vuelta, Curuchi, San Antonio de Buey, Auroduey, Chibuja and Mansa have been displaced. Afro-Colombians in others communities have lost their land to oil and mining interests connected to the paramilitaries. More recently, 265 Afro-Colombian young people were massacred. The slaughter of those young people has never been fully addressed by the Uribe government.
Why is this happening to Afro-Colombians? It is occurring because they are vulnerable and the land that they occupy is so valuable. Plans are afoot to construct a new Panama Canal this time like last time through Colombian territory. In addition, new oil deposits remain to be exploited in the same Northwest region where many of these small communities have existed for years.
Democrats and Colombia
Recognizing that serious challenges to current U.S. policy exists, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently traveled with a delegation of Democratic lawmakers, who apparently needed to be convinced first-hand of the so-called “progress” being made in Colombia. Some have already shown where they stand and obviously intend to use the trip to rationalize their vote in support of the trade agreement. But let’s be clear on what their vote will really mean. It will mean more of the same: more deaths and misery; more marginalization and social exclusion; and more humiliation, exploitation, internal displacement and migration.
Some of the democrats traveling with the Secretary oppose House Resolution 618, which simply calls for the United States Congress to recognize the plight of Afro-Colombians. Why members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who routinely support resolutions that recognize the plight of Israeli civilians, would oppose such a common sense resolution, is daunting?
At the same time it does suggest that some members must be placing a greater value on their relationship to corporate interests and prefer to remain insensitive to the very visible human rights abuses, environmental damage, health problems and displacement from land historically occupied by Afro-Colombians before Bolivar’s liberation wars, that’s now being fumigated and poisoned by herbicides (supplied by some of the same U.S. Corporations that make contributions to their campaigns) that are sprayed from U.S. piloted planes.
Perhaps we should not expect more from the Democrats than we do from the Republicans. If that is the case, then the Democrats should discontinue their loud rhetoric about reclaiming the “moral high ground” with regard to the promotion of human rights in our foreign policies or restoring respect for the United States abroad.
Rewarding Uribe for What?
While Secretary Rice is lobbying for the free trade deal on the basis of rewarding Uribe’s government for its pursuit of pro-market neo-liberal reforms at a time when many of its neighbors are instituting pro-poor statist policies, millions of Colombia’s citizens are caught in the crossfire in a low intensity war zone where state supported right-wing militias, the Colombian military, left-wing guerillas and drug warlords operate with impunity.
The rewards for Uribe appear to be consistent with the repugnant Bush policy of providing assistance to “friendly” governments who support the U.S. government’s incessant global war on terror, regardless of how appalling their human rights record might be. Such realist inspired policies overlook long-term U.S. interests in the region, especially that of promoting democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.
Uribe is President Bush’s friend and ally -- they both have a penchant for showing off their cowboy skills. They also have something else in common -- an extraordinary ability to remain oblivious to perplexing human rights violations committed in the name of national security. Hopefully, well intended Black elected officials will not develop that skill while accepting campaign contributions from corporate lobbyist. Those who see “progress” need to look again, this time with their eyes and not their hands.
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