chaunceydevega
Log in to comment or register to create your own blog
In a 1986 book by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, the future diplomat argued for the aggressive inclusion of a black history curriculum in American schools, claiming that its omission had “crippling effects” by “providing a child with no more than … a white interpretation of reality.”
The 86-page book, “A History Deferred,” served as a guide for secondary and elementary school teachers wanting to teach “Black Studies,” and was published by the Black Student Fund, an advocacy group where Rice had an internship.
“Susan’s interest in the study of Black history evolved from her desire to learn more about the experiences and achievements of her own people,” notes the preface.
Once more, conservatives and the White Right show you who they really are. Susan Rice is damned for her political beliefs, and also because she has "scary black radical Angela Davis hair" in this photo.
The Right's hostility to Ambassador Susan Rice has been described by the Washington Post and others as motivated by white racism. Partisanship, conspiranoid thinking, and an effort to defrock President Obama are most certainly part of the Republicans' hostility to a black woman who would dare to become Secretary of State. In an era where racism and conservatism are one and the same, Republicans cannot resist the urge and impulse to attack a black woman who serves in the Obama administration--even if race-baiting helped to lead to the downfall of their presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
They have not learned from their failures. Facing demographic suicide, conservatives are addicted to the political meth of white racial resentment and anti-black affect. It is one hell of a drug.
The Tea Party GOP's opposition to Susan Rice has found a new fixation. Just as conservatives wanted to find evidence of anti-white vitriol in Michelle Obama's thesis at Princeton, or anti-white sentiment in black liberation theology and Reverend Wright's common sense observations about American history during Obama first presidential campaign, the new meme will be focused on Susan Rice's work as a college student with the Black Student Fund.
In that capacity, she apparently committed a heinous crime according to the Right-wing muckrakers at The Daily Caller: in 1986, Susan Rice dared to suggest that black kids could benefit from learning that they are not bystanders in American history. To the Right, this is a great crime.
Her offense is also bizarre; Rice supposedly harbors anti-white animus, but somehow she decided to dedicate her life to serving the United States government. Riddle you that one? Maybe she is a Manchurian candidate?
There is nothing in Susan Rice's suggestions from almost twenty years ago, as selectively excised from her longer work (as featured by The Daily Caller) that respected psychologists, social scientists, and others have found disagreement with. Her comments are so basic and obvious that The Daily Caller's white racist histrionics are made all the more apparent.
There Charles Johnson writes:
Central to the book’s ambition was reclaiming lost black achievements and giving black children pride in their history. In that vein, Rice lists black achievements in “Literature,” “the Arts,” “the Music [sic]” and “Public Service” to present an Afrocentric view of U.S. history.
This was necessary, Rice noted in her book’s foreword, because most students were “taught American history, literature, art, drama, and music largely from a white, western European perspective. As a result, their grasp of the truth, of reality, is tainted by a myopia of sorts.”
“American history cannot be understood fully or evaluated critically without ample study of Black history,” Rice added...
Carson, Rice saw a political component in Black Studies, writing that the “absence or cursory coverage of Black history, literature, and culture reinforces pernicious and pervasive social perceptions of Black Americans.”
And failing to teach Black Studies in school, she argued, had negative consequences for the self-esteem of black children.
“Ultimately, what is more important than the white or majority perception of black Americans is the black man, woman, and child’s perception of themselves,” Rice wrote. “The greatest evil in omitting or misrepresenting Black history, literature, and culture in elementary or secondary education is the unmistakable message it sends to the black child. The message is ‘your history, your culture, your language and your literature are insignificant. And so are you.’"
Political speech is a style of discourse that proceeds from a set of unstated assumptions. For the community which frequents The Daily Caller, their prior is one wherein all black people (except bootblack garbage pail kid conservatives) are traitors, untrustworthy, not "real" Americans, and that all events of either significance and importance in the United States (and the world) were created by and for White people.
Students of race and racial ideologies term call this set of attitudes and beliefs "symbolic racism."
In the White Gaze, Black and brown folks are bystanders in human history; smart folks can mock such silliness, but such fictions are taken as the truth for the White Right and the Tea Party GOP. Black people, all of us, everywhere, are also closet radicals who want to get "whitey," and a moment away from attacking our white "hosts."
There are multiple levels of racist, white pathology at work in The Daily Caller's discussion of Susan Rice's work as a young student with the Black Student Fund in 1986.
The comment section is noxious and an ideal typical example of bigotry by the Right, and their basic belief that black and brown folks are not "real" Americans. Moreover, this is a not so subtle demonstration of a disdain for the basic premise that non-whites have anything to offer the American project. As such, for conservatives it is bizarre to think that white children could learn anything about the society in which they live by studying the history of black people in either the Americas or the world.
At times, I am tempted to grumble and complain about the books that my parents, godparents, and teachers gave me in my formative years, and that offered a corrective to the Eurocentric lies that were taught in most public schools. I learned early on that people of color were not bystanders to our own history. I was encouraged to be immediately suspect of "white savior" narratives. Most importantly, I was taught a healthy respect for the Black Freedom Struggle.
Even then, reading the willful lies that made Whiteness and white people central to all events of importance in the United States, and seeing the polite racism masquerading as race neutral disagreement at The Daily Caller and elsewhere, I am troubled.
But, I am not surprised.
I have the armor to resist the mental, psychic, and emotional assaults on people of color brought by the forces of white racism and white supremacy in the Age of Obama. This does not mean that we/us are immune from the blows and/or do not feel impact and vibrations on our metaphorical steel.
As sociologists such as Joe Feagin, Charles Gallagher, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have documented, there is a not so small portion of the American public who has learned to be politically correct in their discussions of race and racism. They have learned a script; however, these same people are still racist. Their new weapon is subterfuge: colorblind racists are now adept at masquerading their true feelings.
In private, online, and in the "backstage", what many white folks really think about non-whites is made clear. The former do not like people of color. Yes, America in the post civil rights era is supposedly "post racial". In reality, there are many people who are simultaneously disdainful of black and brown people, and also fervently believe that non-whites have contributed nothing of worth to American society which White people ought to consider valuable or worthy of respect.
As I have said many times, on a basic level the Right's disdain for President Obama is an extension of a pathological disdain for the humanity of black people, specifically, and the Other, more generally. The casualness of the bigotry on display in the comments section of The Daily Caller's essay on Susan Rice's benign suggestion from 1986 that Eurocentrism is pernicious and harmful, is proof of how white racism is immoral, and also damages not just people of color, but white folks too.
Will white opinion leaders in the Republican Party help to free their own voters and public from the poison pill that is white racism? I am unsure.
The Walking Dead TV series exists in a universe apart and separate from the comic book. Season Three's storyline with The Governor has reinforced this fact. However, both of these stories are a version of "The Walking Dead." As such, they provide an example of what Culture Studies types call "intertextuality." Here, the comic book and TV series reference each other, while also signaling to other examples of storytelling in the zombie genre.
[For example, the TV series character named "Milton" is a clear allusion to Dr. Logan's character in George Romero's classic film Day of the Dead and his "pet" zombie Bub.]
As I wrote about here, The Walking Dead TV series has little to no interest in developing its African-American characters. The graphic novel has several black male characters who are integral to the story, and are not sideshow stand-ins that are included because of a sense of multicultural political correct noblesse oblige. By contrast, the AMC series has (the now dead) "T-Dog"--a character that was a glorified black man servant chauffeur to the white characters, a black gollum mute with few lines, who lived only to serve and protect the other survivors.
Michonne, a fan favorite, and a richly developed, full, interesting, and challenging character in the graphic novel, was first introduced as a black caretaker and best friend/magical negro to Andrea on the TV series.
There, this iconic character is a black pit bull warrior, unfeeling, laconic, and damaged. Michonne, has a few more lines of dialogue than T-Dog; but she is dangerously close to being a two-dimensional figure whose only plot purpose is only to serve as a weapon to be unhinged at the command of Rick, the leader of the intrepid group of zombie apocalypse survivors.
In future episodes, I would suggest that it will be even more clear that Michonne is only a slightly more under control version of the X-Men's Wolverine for Rick. Wolverine was Weapon X; Michonne is a Samurai sword wielding loyal negress.
Glenn is the Asian fix it man, former pizza delivery man, and loyal friend of the white men in the party. Glenn is a post apocalyptic version of the model minority myth. Glenn is not a full "Hop Sing"; however, he is very close to that archetype.
To point. For two seasons, he remains "feminized"--"sneaky, evasive, and stealthy"--until being forced into "manhood" by Merle's interrogation in the most recent episode "When the Dead Come Knocking." Glenn's loyalty to Rick, and the system of white male patriarchal authority he embodies in the show, was symbolically "rewarded" by the former's sexual union with Maggie, a white woman.
In The Walking Dead universe, upward racial mobility would seem to have its "perks."
The Walking Dead TV series is ultimately a story about how white male authority is enduring in a world populated by the undead. As a premise, this is a fine, interesting, and potentially fascinating framework for genre storytelling (I wonder how many viewers understand that this is the not so subtle subtext of the series?).
As further proof of the continuing dominance of white masculinity in a world where the dead now walk the Earth, this season's villain has also surrendered to the white racial frame, where The Governor, who was originally Hispanic in the graphic novel, has been rewritten as a white character.
I can accept that The Walking Dead TV series occupies its own universe and narrative space. I can also accept that people of color are peripheral in this universe, and as such, the roles played by them will be different than the vision offered by the graphic novel. But, I am less forgiving of how a character such as Michonne has been robbed of her power and complexity. My claim is a challenging and provocative one: if you love a character and respect them, then you, the author/creator, must at times let bad things happen to your beloved creation.
Suffering and loss are often part of an iconic character's arc and (eventual) greatness. To allow these moments is to respect both the character and the reader.
Michonne, who was brutally raped by The Governor in The Walking Dead comic book series, has to suffer in order to have her revenge and triumph over him. Michonne is made by pain; it tempers and refines her like an alloy or fine blade of steel.
If you remove her personal challenges, tragedies, and triumphs, you remove Michonne's power in The Walking Dead. This is disrespectful to the character. Considering that Michonne is one of the most compelling characters in any recent comic book, and who also happens to be a person of color (a group marginalized in graphic novels), the insult is very much magnified.
The centuries of sexual exploitation, rape, and violence suffered by black women in the United States as human chattel, also as free people, and later as full citizens, are socially and politically combustible elements in our public discourse. This history and present are not be treated lightly. The racialized and gendered body--to be both female and black--occupies a very potent, and in many ways precarious location in the body politic.
I am unsure if the writers of The Walking Dead TV series are either cowards, or if they are just afraid of controversy. Perhaps, they are both? The White Gaze can do wrong even as it explains itself by an appeal to "kindness."
Michonne has to suffer at the hands of The Governor so that she can evolve and grow into an even more essential character who is (at least) as important and capable a leader as Rick. Michonne's role is doubly important because Tyrese, who in The Walking Dead comic book is every bit the leader and masculine authority figure as Rick (if not more so), is not present in the story.
[This will finally be corrected. Tyrese, has been cast. He will be portrayed by Chad Coleman, who played Cutty on The Wire, in the next episode.]
There is a deep fear of black justice and righteous revenge in America's collective subconscious. Is Michonne's character hamstrung and neutered by this anxiety? Or alternatively, are the writers, directors, and producers of The Walking Dead TV series (where at least one of them is African-American) afraid that characters such as Michonne and Tyrese will discourage white viewership? Are white audiences really that fickle? Are strong and dignified black characters that off putting?
In all, The Walking Dead TV series is operating under a logic that I am unable to fully comprehend.
A white female character such as Maggie can be threatened with rape, and quite likely allowed her revenge. Michonne, a black female character, in a society which systematically devalues people of color, and black women in particular, is not raped by The Governor.
Is this progress? Political correctness run amok? Lazy writing? Is the suffering of a white female character noteworthy, and the rape and abuse of a black female character anticlimactic and uninteresting? Are matters really that (ironically) retrograde?
Almost two weeks post election, the media is still fascinated by Mitt Romney's defeat and how America's ostensibly changing racial demographics will doom (or not) the Republican Party to obsolescence. The chattering classes are getting a bit more close to the foundational questions that we as a country should be reflecting upon in this moment.
Last week for example, The New York Times offered up an interesting, albeit brief, exploration of the relationship between immigration and American national identity. There, the amazingly accomplished historian, Nell Irvin Painter, an authority on the history of white people, was given too little time to explore the foundational questions that a longer and more sustained essay would have most certainly allowed her. In fairness, the other essays were insightful as well.
However, not one of these excellent short essays broached the basic question of how the black-white binary is dependent upon the fact that African-Americans are by definition "unassimilable." Blacks folks are not an "ethnic" group as classically defined by Sociology--we are the basement group against which non-blacks (and many Afro-Caribbean immigrants) define their position in the social hierarchy. For at least three centuries, this "public" calculus has remain unchanged in the United States.
Perhaps, such questions are political dynamite in the Age of Obama and post-civil rights multicultural America? This fact would explain the obvious evasion.
Moreover, we are not asking these important questions either:
Are demographics destiny? Do race and ethnicity neatly map onto political attitudes and ideology? Are racial categories static or changing? And how does a consideration of how race is a category defined by both stability and change upset all of this premature doomsday epitaph writing for the preeminent power of Whiteness in American politics?
I believe in first principles. As such, we should always strive to define our terms.
Social scientists are trained to the idea of the sociological imagination--ironically, many of them forget the power of the quotidian, and how real folks live these concepts, even if they do not have the vocabulary to describe their lives in such academic terms.
To point. I would suggest that the Mitt Romney postmortem of white people, and the role of a particular type of Whiteness in American politics, is both very premature and misspecified.
Before we work through the details of this error in reasoning by the pundit classes, it is necessary to meditate on some basic matters: "Whiteness" as a term and concept is circulating throughout the public discourse during this political moment; let's try to define the essential attributes of Whiteness before talking about its changing relationship to the future of American politics and social life.
For me, Whiteness is many things. These observations are far from exhaustive.
Whiteness is separate and apart from "white" people. There are many white people--and some people of color--overly identified with and invested in Whiteness. However, the socio-historical and political concept known as Whiteness does not necessarily tell me anything about a given white person.
Whiteness is a type of privilege and property. Whiteness is also typified by invisibility and a sense of normality for its owners. As such, in America, to be "normal" is to be white.
Whiteness is benign and innocent for its owners and allies. Whiteness is also terrifying, violent, destructive, and belligerent towards those who have suffered under it.
How would you define Whiteness? Complete the following sentence if you would: "To me, Whiteness is..."
Superstorm Sandy has made the divisions of class in the New York City area readily apparent. The "haves" are able to muster the resources to somehow survive. The "have nots" are left to their own devices.
Superstorm Sandy has also reminded us of how race remains one of the main dividing lines in our society. While naked displays of racism are now outside of the norms of "polite society," racial micro-aggressions, the day-to-day moments of white racial hostility and animus towards people of color, continue onward.
Racial micro-aggressions can impact the lives of black and brown folks in ways that are "just" inconvenient--the store detective that follows you around while shopping; being asked for ID when using a credit card; when your friends or colleagues "complement" you by saying you are one of "the special" or "good" ones.
Alternatively, these racial micro-aggressions can also be deadly in their outcomes.
Superstorm Sandy has yet to provide an iconic example of white racist media framing such as when during Hurricane Katrina, black people were described as "looters," and whites, also trying to survive, were captioned in news photos as "looking for food."
A lack of an iconic moment does not mean that race no longer impacts life outcomes, the safety and health of people of color, or how white society chooses to view (or not) African-Americans as full members of the polity and broader community.
Tragically, the drowning deaths of two black children while their mother, a black woman, begged for help in a white ethnic suburban community in Staten Island--and then was left crying and broken on the porch of a house for 12 hours when its owner refused her aid (and did not call authorities for assistance)--is a reminder of how the color line can kill you.
Neighborhoods are fundamentally prefaced upon community and belonging. America is a profoundly segregated society. Few people, especially those in the suburbs, explore the causes and history behind this phenomenon. America's segregated communities are a result of decisions by real estate agents, home owners, government, and individuals.
Historically, the whiteness of these communities--what were called "sundown towns"--was protected through violence, intimidation, and murder of non-whites.
Until the near present, white communities could be maintained by law through such practices as "red lining" and restrictive housing covenants. For example, New York, and Long Island in particular, were the sites of some of the first planned suburban communities in the post-World War 2 era. These neighborhoods, Levittown being the most famous of them all, were "racially exclusive." In plain English: no blacks or non-whites were allowed to live there.
In the Age of Obama, the racial exclusivity of white communities is protected by informal norms and practices. Real estate agents will not show people of color property in certain neighborhoods, regardless of their ability to buy a home there. Neighbors are less than welcoming to these new arrivals if they somehow manage to move in.
Police will harass and profile racial minorities, blacks and Latinos in particular, if they happen to be traveling through white neighborhoods such as the Jersey Shore, and certain parts of Staten Island, for example.
Moreover, housing segregation is so prevalent in Staten Island that the Staten Island Expressway has been rechristened the "Mason-Dixon" line by locals in the area.
During Superstorm Sandy, Glenda Moore and her two children, Connor and Brandon (aged 4 and 2) found themselves the victims of this reality.
Neighborhoods create boundaries around who is considered a stranger. Strangers can be ignored. We are taught to be weary of them. In some cases, strangers can be made into legitimate targets for violence and threat. Black Americans are existential strangers in their own country. Our status as citizens is contingent on white approval and acceptance--even if you are President of the United States. African Americans are assumed to be a threat and a perilous type of stranger until we prove otherwise.
The murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was an example where a neighborhood vigilante decided that a black teenager was a particular type of stranger, dangerous by nature, who could be shot dead in the street without consequences.
During Superstorm Sandy, Allen, the homeowner in question, decided that Glenda was a stranger who could be ignored while her children drowned. Here, the stereotype and logic is one where black strangers in white neighborhoods are automatically looters and brigands. They can never be a mother fighting to save the lives of her children.
America is a sick society. Racism is internalized by all Americans. Glenda Moore's loss of her two children is a horrible example of how implicit and subconscious racial bias can impact a white person's level of empathy and sympathy towards African-Americans. A woman cried, begged, and screamed for help while her children drowned. A decision was made by a white neighborhood that this type of person, in that gendered body, with that skin color, was not worthy of assistance.
For twelve hours she pleaded for help. Her children died. Students of race and politics often discuss these matters in the abstract, and through examples grounded in a careful study of social and political institutions, as well as Power. The death of Glenda Moore's children, and her treatment that evening by the people in that neighborhood, is an example of racial immorality on the most personal level.
Some other thoughts and questions about racial framing and SuperStorm Sandy:
1. Has racial framing become more or less prominent in the media's coverage of Superstorm Sandy? I have noticed a good number of photos where people of color are shown in line waiting for gasoline and food. I have not seen many similar images of white people. In discussions of looting, the only stories I have seen have featured black men. Have any of you seen stories about social disorder following Superstorm Sandy in white communities?
2. The white victims of SuperStorm Sandy in Staten Island, and the Jersey Shore in particular, have been framed by the media as "hearty" stalwarts and survivors. In comparison to Hurricane Katrina, why is their decision to stay put after an evacuation order, not being interrogated as that of "irresponsible" people?
3. If Glenda Moore were white, and her children were "white" how would the coverage be different? In one of the worst storms in recent memory, why is this not a huge story? Alternatively, what if a white woman was refused help in a black neighborhood and her children then died? What would result?
4. Moreover, white people's demands for assistance are being treated as legitimate and reasonable. Where is the critique of "lazy, not self-reliant, and entitled" people who should have "personal responsibility" for their choices that greeted the survivors of Hurricane Katrina?
5. Will the white folks who are seeking assistance from FEMA, and then voting for Mitt Romney, understand their hypocrisy? Will they be made more or less sympathetic to others, especially people of color, who find themselves in need of government aid and assistance?
6. If you want a reminder of how white privilege and the white racial frame can color a person's understanding of reality, and levels of empathy and sympathy towards the Other, read the comment sections on either Youtube or in the online press regarding the tragic drowning deaths of Glenda Moore's children.
7. Glenda Moore's two children were fathered by a white man. In many ways, the multiracial movement is prefaced on gaining white privilege for those people who are of a "mixed race" background in order to create a buffer race and colored class.
The white parentage through their father of those two beautiful black children did not extend any privilege, or sense of white kinship to them, through their mother. The boundaries of white community were not broad enough to save those two children.
The "one drop" rule is real in American society. For example, while some white folks are confused (and even offended) by Barack Obama's claim to a black identity, this tragic event is more proof that in this society African Americans of a "mixed race" background are still stigmatized by their blackness. In total, White privilege, and their "white" lineage, did not save Glenda Moore's two children. It left them to drown and die.
There is a real, airtight bubble in this election, but it's not Obama's. As a middle-aged white man, in fact, I'm breaching it. White people—white men in particular—are for Mitt Romney. White men are supporting Mitt Romney to the exclusion of logic or common sense, in defiance of normal Americans. Without this narrow, tribal appeal, Romney's candidacy would simply not be viable. Most kinds of Americans see no reason to vote for him...Tom Scocca's piece at Slate about Mitt Romney and the white vote is sharp and worth your time to read. However, folks like me, and a few others, have been discussing the relationship between Whiteness and Mitt Romney for some time. The Right, and some on the Left, are quick to deride and mock "identity" politics. That category of fighting over "who gets what, when, how, and why" is apparently abnormal political behavior best left to the gays, women, blacks, brown people, and those others whose citizenship is somehow made contingent when compared to the de facto "Americanness" of white men.
Good white men would never indulge in such things. The irony is clear: the United States is a country built upon maintaining, expanding, and protective the privileges of Whiteness. Mitt Romney has based a whole campaign on white identity politics and white victimology. Few in the mainstream media have had the courage to call attention to his strategy.
Folks like me are also part of the problem as well. I often use technical and academic language when plain speaking would be more helpful for equipping readers with a vocabulary that can be used in their day-to-day conversations about race and politics.
I am also open to self-correction when appropriate. As such, Scocca's points about white folks, and my claims about why white men in particular support Mitt Romney--and the Tea Party GOP's, deranged, anachronistic, and retrograde throwback politics--can be summed up in simple terms.
America is a white supremacist country by design. Racism has (of course) changed and evolved over time. However, Whiteness as a racial identity prefaced on privilege and superiority over non-whites remains in many ways very much unchanged. The need to maintain white control over America's political, social, economic, and cultural institutions is manifest in overt and subtle ways.
For example, despite their great advantages in wealth, income, power, social mobility, resources, and all other socioeconomic measures, many white people--especially white male conservatives--are terrified and upset by the symbolic power of a black man who happens to be President of the United States.
Ultimately, White Masculinity is imperiled by the idea of Barack Obama. White men rule this country; ironically, no group of people, especially on the Right are as insecure.
Broad social categories such as class, gender, and sexuality are all operative here as well.
White men, as a group, are full of anxiety because of a perception--there is scant if any evidence to support this belief--that they are a group in relative decline. Romney's campaign to mine white racial resentment, and his overwhelming support among white people, is a reflection of that fear.
The misogyny, perverse obsession with women's reproductive rights and their bodies, and a fixation on the right of white men to rape women--and yes, in its most basic form the whole discourse about "legitimate" and "real" rape is about white men's (and never black men's) "right" to women's bodies--is fundamentally about control and power.
In the Age of Obama, White Masculinity imagines itself as at risk and obsolete. Because of their authoritarian streak, white conservative men must have control of women and the Other.White Conservative Masculinity's overreaction to the Age of Obama, and the social and political gains of people who are not white, male, and straight, are a function of this standing decision rule.
There are three concepts that are especially helpful for understanding why white people, and white men in particular, support Mitt Romney. These frameworks are also very useful for making sense of white racial resentment, an enraged type of White Privilege, and the rise of anti-black and brown affect in the four years since President Obama became president.
The first is the idea of "cognitive mapping":
For Jameson, cognitive mapping is a way of understanding how the individual´s representation of his or her social world can escape the traditional critique of representation because the mapping is intimately related to practice – to the individual´s successful negotiation of urban space. Cognitive mapping in this sense is the metaphor for the processes of the political unconscious. It is also, however, the model for how we might begin to articulate the local and the global. It provides a way of linking the most intimately local – our particular path through the world – and the most global – the crucial features of our political planet...
The second is the concept of a "lifeworld":
By this means, lifeworld describes a person’s subjectively experienced world, whereas life conditions describe the person’s actual circumstances in life. Accordingly, it could be said that a person’s lifeworld is built depending on their particular life conditions. More precisely, the life conditions include the material and immaterial living circumstances as for example employment situation, availability of material resources, housing conditions, social environment (friends, foes, acquaintances, relatives, etc.) as well as the persons physical condition (fat/thin, tall/small, female/male, healthy/sick, etc.). The lifeworld, in contrast, describes the subjective perception of these conditions.
The third idea is the "white racial frame":
Since its development in the 17th century, this racial frame has been a “master frame,” a dominant framing that provides a generic meaning system for the racialized society that became the United States. The white racial frame provides the vantage point from which European American oppressors have long viewed North American society. In this racial framing, whites have combined racial stereotypes (the cognitive aspect), metaphors and interpretive concepts (the deeper cognitive aspect), images (the visual aspect), emotions (feelings), and inclinations to discriminatory action. This frame buttresses, and grows out of the material reality of racial oppression...
When you watch Fox News and it makes not a bit of sense to you because you are not part of that subculture and skewed reality, these three concepts will help you.
When you try to understand why many white conservatives are brought to mouth frothing rage at the mere mention of Barack Obama, and then proceed to recycle nonsense about birtherism, "affirmative action," and how he is oppressing white people, these three concepts will help you.
When you want to make sense of why so many white people, and white men in particular, are supporting Mitt Romney, even while admitting that his policies will hurt people like them, these three concepts will help you.
Knowing is half the battle. Knowledge will also make you more calm, at peace, and happy. An understanding of these concepts is also indispensable for making sense of the outcome of the election this Tuesday. Mitt Romney was not been playing three dimensional chess in order to beat Barack Obama. No, he was simply using a centuries old strategy, one that dates back to the founding of the republic, to defeat the country's first black president. When viewed from that perspective, Romney's strategy of wholesale lying and naked racial appeals is a thing of simplicity, one that is deeply rooted in the American political tradition.
Disasters expose the ugly realities of "normal" society. In those moments, when the great social leveler that is the government is rendered either impotent, moot, or a non-factor in its ability to stop a disaster from occurring, the ties that bind us together are strained. Moreover, here, government's ability to act as a salve and agent that masks social inequalities--or at least sweeps them under the rug in many cases--is removed.
During Katrina for example, the American people saw how the intersections of wealth, income, and racial inequality left whole communities destroyed, abandoned, and people unable to escape the wrath of mother nature because they did not have the resources necessary to buy a car in order to evacuate. Hurricane Katrina, was also an object lesson inhow the State decides who was valuable, and which people were expendable.
Super Storm Sandy has revealed how New York is also a city of great divides in wealth and income. She is a multicultural mega city; New York is also a city where the very rich and the very poor exist in an exploitative relationship with one another.
The working class and poor, living on less than a living wage, make the lives of the rich and upper class comfortable and possible. As detailed here, the rich were able to take Super Storm Sandy in relative stride, riding it out in nice hotels, having an adventure of it all, and complaining about a lack of cell phone service and power.
By comparison, their maids, nannies, drives, assistants, and those many unnamed others who work in the service sector had to go to work during this time of peril for fear of losing their jobs, sleeping in cars or in shelters because they could not afford a hotel, or continuing to take care of the spoiled children of the rich while the care givers themselves were unable to offer comfort to their own kids.
It is estimated that there are tens of thousands, if not more, homeless people in New York City. They are families, children, men, women, the elderly, and the working poor. They are largely invisible not because we cannot see them. Rather, one of the survival skills that a person learns in order to successfully live in any city is to ignore the obvious, the pain, and the hurt of others. City life is an existence of social atomization. In order to function, most folks learn to look away both as a practical skill for maintaining sanity, and to avoid the frightening reality that many Americans are a paycheck away from being homeless themselves.
There are other homeless folks who are almost quite literally invisible. They are the "Mole People" who live in the subways of New York. It is estimated that there are thousands of people who live in this subterranean world, where they have established cities that live off of the electricity, scavenge the excess of a city that is decadent in its wastefulness, raise children and tend to pets, live and love, and make a civilization where they are the mayors, citizens, doctors, and police.
These human beings, us, and yes we are them, are not monsters or "CHUDS." In order for the collective consciousness of New York to maintain a veneer of normality, the Mole People are transformed into the stuff of legend and urban mythology. Nevertheless, they are real
What happened to them during Super Storm Sandy? Are there thousands of dead people who are now washed away by the greatest disaster in the history of New York City's mass transit system? Is this "human management problem" now solved by an intervention from nature? Are the biopolitics of the State in a time of economic crisis so cruel and calculating? What of their family members, friends, and loved ones? Will they ever have any closure?
For those of you in the New York area, please share any information you may have on what has happened to the Mole People in the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy. If there are any freelance writers or others who want to share their insight or stories about the people who live in the subway system of New York, by all means do email it to me. I will post it here on Alternet and also on my site We Are Respectable Negroes.
This is a story that demands and deserves more attention.
A human tragedy is no less horrible or wrong because the people involved are poor. Sadly, Americans have internalized this narrative, conservatives especially, because it turns poverty into a moral claim, where those less advantaged are made responsible for the failures of an economic system predicated on surplus labor, i.e. unemployment, in order to transfer wealth and resources to the rich. The poor are thus "bad people" who deserve their fate; the rich and the middle classes are virtuous and good as proven by their economic resources. For the most twisted of Americans, those possessed by a certain type of religious mind, money is taken as a sign of divine blessings.
This is backwards logic. But, It is no less compelling for those who have drunk in the myth of meritocracy, the logic of neo liberalism, and the chimera that is the "American Dream."
White privilege is the bundle of unearned advantages that come with being categorized as "white" in American society. Those of us who study race and politics often have a hard time convincing white people--and some others overly identified with Whiteness--of how this dynamic impacts our society.
On Tuesday, Mitt Romney was embarrassed by Barack Obama in a debate about foreign policy. There, Romney was a child trying to engage in a fist fight against a grown man, and subsequently had his behind, almost quite literally, handed to him. Obama thrashed Mitt Romney in the prior debate as well. Thus, a puzzle and conundrum: Mitt Romney has gained supportamong white voters after both horrible performances.
How do we explain this trend?
President Obama has the double burden of being African-American and an incumbent. His record in office is colored by his race--and what the white public's perception of Obama's blackness means for how they assess his performance and accomplishments.
Barack Obama is hamstrung by a double standard where he is held to a far higher bar for success than a white president. For that reason, and some very significant others too, his reelection campaign is now very much imperiled.
Let me be clear: Barack Obama did poorly in the first debate against Mitt Romney. However, Obama's sub par performance was better than either of Romney's performances in the last two contests. But, Romney is gaining in the polls with voters who somehow see him as "qualified" enough to be President after losing two debates in a row against the president.
The empirical evidence has long suggested that presidential debates are unimportant for voters' decisions on election day. We have also never had a black president running for a second term. I would suggest that this upsets all of our existing models and explanations.
Obama is playing a game that folks who look like him are not supposed to be involved in. Black Americans have been defined for centuries as "anti-citizens," and had to be specifically written back into the Constitution in order to correct what was a gross birth defect at the heart of "the greatest democracy" in the world. Obama's rise to the presidency is an anomaly in the the American political tradition.
Consequently, all rules are now off and need to be rewritten as we try to conceptualize Barack Obama's run for reelection within the long arch of race and politics in American history.
The counter-factual is very telling. Consider the following scenario for a moment.
If Obama had lost the final two debates by the same degree as Romney, the polls would be even more overwhelmingly in favor of the challenger (at this point, Obama would be calling the moving trucks; Romney would be measuring the curtains). In all, the outsized advantage enjoyed by Romney is more than a twist on the advantage held by a candidate without a record, who is running a post-truth campaign where lying is the norm, and against an incumbent who is in office during hard economic times.
Historically, white privilege has meant the subsidization of white mediocrity. In this election, that standing rule has played out with white independent voters, many of who simply want the incumbent out of office, and are influenced by a concerted campaign of anti-black racism, the mining of white racial resentment, and the Republican Party's use of the Southern Strategy 2.0 to undermine the country's first black president.
For these voters, white privilege and white racism has legitimated, and thus made okay, a basic calculation. The black guy was given a shot, the White candidate is not doing too great but is good enough, and in their hearts, the "hope and change" we need is for a White candidate to once again be in charge of a White Republic as a way of returning it to normalcy. White is right. Mitt Romney is their candidate.
Centuries of American history have demonstrated how an exceptional black man will almost always lose out to a slightly above average (or even horribly untalented) white man. Black folks do not have to be ten times better to get half as far anymore. Nevertheless, we do need to be substantially better to simply get a fair shot. In presidential politics, this may be a bridge too far for Barack Obama to cross.
White privilege is the de facto standing decision rule in American life, culture, society, and politics. That Romney could win by losing is further proof of a hard truth about the permanence of the color line in post racial, post civil rights, America
Ultimately, a black man can be elected President. White privilege will not allow him to be reelected to the office. The truth hurts. Perhaps, and with two weeks from election day, all of us had best get used to that fact.
Neither does Obama's trumpeting of his work to ensure equal pay necessarily resonate. A couple of months ago, someone called Dee Ralls, a 49-year-old parole and probation worker for the state, at her house to ask about her vote. She said she wasn't planning to vote for Obama, and the next thing she knew, there was a canvasser at her door, giving a big speech about equal pay for women.
"I said, 'I never had that problem,'" said Ralls, a heavily made-up blonde in a white peasant blouse and peace-sign earrings. "If anything, the reason I was discriminated against was because I was white."She is what decades of failing public education, and an irresponsible Fourth Estate, have visited upon American democracy.Before her second husband died of a heart attack, for which Ralls received a malpractice settlement, she got pregnant for the fourth time. With three young kids, the timing wasn't right. She got an abortion, but at the clinic, she was shocked and irritated by all the "slutty people" she saw, who didn't seem to be taking the procedure seriously.
Ralls doesn't think about politics much -- she doesn't think it affects her. "Oh, but you know, here's something," she said. Her 23-year-old son was just about to age out of her health insurance when Obama's health-care reform extended the time she could keep him covered, she recalled. "That was a good thing," she said. Plus, her boyfriend says Romney's an idiot, "and he's pretty smart." Ralls is pretty sure she'll vote for Obama.
The final debate is tonight. Like you, I will be watching and wondering how Barack Obama will sell his many successes abroad, while Mitt Romney stands like a professional contrarian and post-truth candidate who is fixated on a version of events--such as the Right's fantasy fictions about a cover-up in Libya and Obama's "apology" tour--that do not exist outside of the Fox News echo chamber.
Guess what? These debates will do little to impact vote choice. Moreover, the final debate on international affairs is on a subject which is too detail oriented, technical, difficult for the general public to understand, and requires contextual knowledge that Joe and Jane Q. Public, the American Idol Honey Boo Boo crowd that they are, do not readily possess.
As such, this makes the final debate an exercise in style and presentation over substance. Mitt Romney is going to push it to the limit and do everything he can to put that "black boy" Barack Obama in his "place." While some of the public were put off by Mitt Romney's disrespect towards Barack Obama in the second debate, there is a good part of the mass public who was excited and exhilarated by the former's rank disrespect towards the country's first black president.
If you doubt this fact, do go and review the comments sections of Fox News, the Free Republic, Town Hall or any of the other Right-wing propaganda mills.
The archconservative and Right-wing populist base voters, as well as Fox News types, were aroused into a political priapism by Mitt Romney's borderline thuggery against Obama. Romney is going to give them their full release in the final debate.
There is a basic fact which followers of political blogs, news websites, those who read the NY Times or other newspapers of record (and folks who watch the evening news, do their own research, and are politically literate) are reluctant to understand and accept. They are not the audience for the debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. In keeping with my professional wrestling and politics analogy, we are the "smart marks" who know better. This political horse race and spectacle are for the benefit of low information voters and undecideds.
Ultimately, those of us who follow political blogs, listen to NPR, religiously watch the news, and think of citizenship as an obligation based upon a critical engagement with the issues and empirical reality are outliers. Politics for the mass public is less about substantive matters of policy than about surface impressions regarding the heart and the pocketbook. And these impressions may very well be incorrect.
For the White Right, and closeted colorblind racist Independents, Obama is increasingly losing on all of those issues. His election in 2008 was the cathartic moment that allowed racism deniers to find peace with the world and themselves; Obama's defeat in 2012 will be a chance to right the world, get revenge on those "uppity" Negroes, and to fire the black or brown boss at their job--who they resent and cannot stand--on a national stage.
Some of you will continue to suggest that my argument is incorrect, and that I have reached an erroneous conclusion. The data and metrics of great analysts like Nate Silver are to be applauded. The raw numbers and data do speak for themselves and suggest that Obama has a better than average chance of winning reelection.
However, I am considering the symbolic politics at play here: the weight of American history wants to revert to the norm (she is a country by design that is a White Republic); Barack Obama is an anomaly; the President is subject to a set of double-standards that are fundamentally unfair in a game where he cannot fully claim his successes, and his opposition can engage in all manner of skulduggery to defeat him without consequences.
The United States was able to dance around the color line and elect a black man as President in 2008. I remain unconvinced if he will be reelected to a second term. Retrospective assessments about a black president's performance in office are going to be fundamentally skewed against him in ways that a white president has never experienced. Such is life in "post racial" America.
The Atlantic's story about the role of "soccer moms" in the 2012 presidential race fits this framework perfectly. They don't know what they know, but they know it...riddle you that one? The women in this narrative are the ideal typical non-ideological, easily confused, not consistent--and as I like to say "the masses are asses"--voters. But, these are the real people, the median voters, who will decide this upcoming election (and most others).
As the truism goes, democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the others. People like Dee Ralls, and the other women in the Atlantic piece "The Revenge of the Soccer Moms", are further proof of said truth.
Apparently, she is still going to vote for Obama despite her misgivings. But, what of all of the other people who are not? And if a low information voter like Dee Ralls, a person whose contradictory and inconsistent views are straight out of a textbook on American politics, can be swayed by her "smart boyfriend" to vote for Obama, how many other voters are going to be pushed the opposite way by "influentials" and other close associates?
Are matters really that dire? Or am I being too hard on the low information, the masses are asses voters, who collectively are going to hand the election to Mitt Romey?
I bet Edward Bernays, Leone Baxter, and Clem Witaker are smiling down on all of what they helped to create.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a great essay on Barack Obama and the burdens of representation and blackness that folks should take the time to read. I have argued that boxing analogies are a very poor fit for politics. But, part of Coates' genius is that he can take a bad example, and salvage it so nicely, in order to make a trenchant point. He knows his cultural politics quite well. When I grow up I would like to be able write like him:
In 1936 Joe Louis faced off against Max Schmeling. Louis was young and undefeated. More significantly for our purposes, he was the pride of his people. The shadow of Jack Johnson still loomed -- a man who had lived a sordid life, consorted with white women, and drove the country to riot. Unlike Johnson, Louis was a "credit to his race." He was clean. He didn't trash talk. He handled his business in the ring and humbly returned to his corner. He was distinctly aware of his status as a standard-bearer, an ambassador, for his people, and his people loved him for not embarrassing them...This is an enormous burden to carry. Obama is hated because he is black. Obama is loved by some because he is black, the President of the United States, and the embodiment of a particular type of black genius. His blackness is a source of strength. It is also a liability. He is in many ways obligated to a community. But, Obama cannot claim that community lest he remind his detractors that he is a member of it.Like Joe Louis, like Warren Moon, like any black person significant for the fact of being black, I imagine that Barack Obama would love to have only the burden of being great at his craft. All presidential candidates represent something larger than themselves, and in that sense their loss is always broadly shared. But few classes in America have so little to lose as the one Obama represents.
Obama was able to win the presidency because he was an "exceptional negro" and a "good one" when viewed through the white gaze. However, such praise existed in a vacuum, was contingent, and could easily default back to a position where being black, American, breathing air, and nearby was good enough to jettison one's support for him. Obama's blackness is like a version of the Rock of Sisyphus: it grounds him and offers some protection. But, it is also a liability.
Barack Obama is going to lose the election in November. This will create a cottage industry for analysts, political scientists, historians, and others who study American politics. I have always thought that the more interesting question regarding Obama was not if a black person could be elected president. Rather, what we should have been asking was, could a black president be reelected to a second term?
Elections are referendums that involve a backward looking assessment, a consideration of how things are doing in the present, and how a voter thinks the future will be. Different voters apply these rubrics in different ways and to various degrees. Obama's burden of blackness is that all things being equal--and despite the fantasies of Conservatives, racially resentful white people, and the Right-wing media--he will be assessed more harshly than a white man in the same position.
This is what Coates, in his analogy to Joe Louis teases, but does not drive home. The old saying was that we used to have to work ten times as hard to get half as far as white people. With the decline of Jim and Jane Crow, the rise of colorblind racism, as well as "soft" institutional white supremacy, that metric has changed to some degree.
But, I am sure that we all have many stories where we as black and brown strivers, or full members of the professional class were made acutely aware of our race, were held to a higher standard than our white colleagues, or were criticized for a shortcoming (real or imagined) that would have gone overlooked for a white peer.
We may not have to be ten times as good to get half as far, but black and brown folks still need to be a hell of a lot better than our white peers to do just as well. In all, Barack Obama's presidency, and the challenges he faces from the White Right are so potent because it is our story amplified on a national stage.
Coates continues:
When you are deemed a "credit to your race," as Joe Louis so often was, the weight can be crushing. But it also can be the source of great power. In championing the reviled, the battle-weary, the low, you champion something greater than yourself. Wherever you fight, you are always fighting for your hometown. You trade the aspect of the lone wolf, for that of the wounded bear with rearing up in defense of her cubs.Joe Sununu's calling Obama a lazy black bum; Gingrich saying that Obama is not competentand has a special black rhythm that involves sleeping and eating all day; Romney's son talking about punching Obama in the face because the uppity negro back-sassed his poppy Mr. Charlie; the birtherism, graderism, and other conspiranoid fantasies of the White Right, are part of a persistent pattern of disrespect that is a function of more than naked partisanship.Thus it was with little surprise (though some small thrill) that I watched Barack Obama maul Mitt Romney last night, much as Louis mauled Schmeling in the rematch all those years ago. Unlike Louis, Obama's bout continues on. But should he lose the election it will not be in the shameful manner which, to some, appeared imminent. He will not fall as "the lethargic, chicken-eating, young colored boy." He will not go out confirming the warped logic of those who hate him and the community in which he is rooted. He represents too much.
Conservatism and racism are intertwined in modern American politics. The White backlash against Obama is prefaced on a sense of group position and group entitlement. For a significant portion of the white voting public the idea of a black man as president is anathema to their understanding of authority. Many of these people, as a function of living in American society, are so sick with white racism and white privilege that they are not even aware of what motivates their anxiety towards people of color, generally, and a black president, specifically.
While it is true that Obama received significant white support, a majority of white people did not support him. Current public opinion research suggests that these dividing lines of party, ideology, and identity have only hardened since his election.
These people are not Klan card holders or other caricatures of depraved Whiteness and racial chauvinism.
No, they are the nice people who are surprised and made nervous when a person of color enters the room as their training seminar leader. They are the nice white teacher who appreciates the capriciousness and "high-energy" level of the white boys in her class, but isquick to mark a black or brown child as "disruptive" for doing the same things. These are the people who have many more follow-up questions for their black or Latino teachers, doctors, nurses, mechanics, or consultants in order to establish the latter's bonafides and ability, who by comparison choose to accept white expertise by people similarly trained and titled as a given.
The mouth breathing bigots will not defeat Barack Obama. The quiet, polite, collegiate, quiet racists who assess black people by a different set of rules (often unknowingly) will be the ones who defeat him in November. In their eyes, the polite and colorblind racists saw the demon of racism exorcised by the election of the country's first black president. It is time to end the experiment; a black was given a chance and he showed that he was not up to the job; let's end the trial run now; racism is dead.
Maybe that is the real burden of blackness. Could the great irony be that a black man was elected president only to see the justice claims of African-Americans further marginalized because his mere presence in the White House was taken as a justification for colorblind racists and the White Right to argue that racism and white supremacy are no longer significant social forces in American life? Moreover, to enable their bizarre claims that white people are victims of racism in the Age of Obama?
On election night in November 2008, archconservative Bill Bennet said that Obama's victory meant that African Americans had better stop complaining, and young blacks should pull up their pants and get ahead in life. In that moment, he let slip how Obama's particular burden of blackness could actually be used in the service of the white racial frame and the New Right's post civil rights agenda. Four years later, those seeds have grown into adulthood.
Last night President Obama ethered Mitt Romney.
Barack Obama delivered a clinical beat down of Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate. Obama supporters will still be holding onto their misplaced dream that the President's poor performance in the first debate was some deep game of political chess. They remain incorrect.
The outcome is far more simply explained: Barack Obama was much more prepared for his second outing against Mitt Romney. While boxing is a poor fit for describing Obama and Romney's first debate, this second contest is akin to the wildcat offense in football. Romney's trick play of obfuscation, factual pivots, and post-truth speech was countered by a well-practiced and prepared defense. At this point, Romney is running a one-dimensional offense and was exposed as such. This allowed President Obama to score on both offense and defense (almost) at will.
Entering the debate I was, and remain concerned, about the stylistic limitations faced by Barack Obama in these presidential debates. Obama lost the first match because he was passive and too gentlemanly. The public and his advisers clamored for the President to show some fortitude, passion, and energy against Mitt Romney, to confront him on what is an obviously disconnected relationship from empirical reality and the facts. In short, Obama had to act "presidential."
However, he is also a president who happens to be black, playing a game that was not designed for a man who looks like him.
Obama is also a black man with all of the stereotypes, projections, and insecurities of the white racial frame transposed onto him. Of course, the Fox News crowd saw an "uppity" and "arrogant" and "threatening" black man on stage. When Barack Obama wakes up in the morning and breathes air the white racial resentment and anti-black animus of the Right is immediately activated. As such, their verdict is predictable.
By comparison, like many of you, I too am blessed with what Du Bois described as the second sight that comes with life behind the veil of double-consciousness. This evening, I saw the country's first black president putting in work. The little man came from behind the stove and took Romney out at the knees.
Some thoughts and questions:
1. Am I the only person who wished that there was a thought bubble above Mitt Romney's head? Am I alone in wishing that Romney would have broken script and ushered the racial epitaph that seemed poised to come out of his mouth at any moment?
2. Romney made "special efforts" to ensure that women were represented in his hiring and recruitment pool while Governor of Massachusetts. Funny thing, I did not know that he supported affirmative action (as what Romney did there is what said policy in practice usually involves). If the Right were at all intellectually honest, their heads would be spinning at Romney's policy position on the hiring of women--it stinks of being a "moderate."
3. Was Romney's rude demeanor a function of his entitlement as a rich man? A rich, privileged, straight, white man? His experiences as a CEO, and a particular social experience and identity wherein all people--especially women and people of color--are supposed to be deferent to him?
4. Why didn't Obama take Romney down regarding his lies about supporting Pell grants, a program he and Ryan would cut?
5. Let's call out a willful lie that is caused by conflating capitalism with democracy, and where government is framed as always being a societal evil. Governments do create jobs. They create jobs all of the time. Never mind the New Deal, we can point to many more recent examples of this fact. One does not need to go all wonky and start discussing Keynesian economics to make this basic point.
6. Why are Romney and the Right-wing echo chamber fixated on "Fast and Furious?" This is a conspiracy theory that is of little interest to low information voters and undecideds. When Romney and other talking-point conservatives bring this issue up they are confusing the general public (as most will think of the movie). Their insistence on that ineffective meme is a great example of how epistemic closure has intellectually and politically ghettoized the Right and conservatives in this country.
7. On first glance, am I the only person who thought that the brother who asked Obama a question was a black conservative plant like Herman Cain in 1994? Am I the only person, who realized that said audience member may have simply served up an easy pitch for Obama to knock out of the park with his great promo and stump speech?
8. Was the archetypal Fox News, Rush Limbaugh listener who was "hanging out with his boys" talking about the terrorist attack in Libya a Right-wing plant?
9. Romney had to feed the Culture War gods. Why are conservatives confused about a basic social science finding: people do not miraculously get jobs because they are married. Deindustrialization, and other structural inequalities contribute to the "bad culture" conservatives are so fixated on. Are they incapable of understanding this basic fact? What of all the "bad culture" in Red State America? A curious silence.
10. Apparently, Mitt Romney believes that all people are created equal. But, he belongs to a faith that until 1977 said that black people were second class citizens who go to a segregated heaven. Riddle you that one.
11. He was in the clear; why did Mitt Romney bring up his secret "47% of the American public are losers, bums, and parasites" video? Calculated risk or misstep out of desperation and confusion?
12. Obama mentioned his hometown of Chicago and the violence there. Cue the Fox News talk radio late night conspiracy talking point meme machine! "Obama," "Chicago," and "violence" are a home run for the conspiranoids on the Right.
