by Damozel | The New York Times has a lengthy preview of an article [scheduled to appear in the Sunday Magazine] on Obama's potential effect on "black politics." The article focuses on certain shifts in viewpoint among younger activists---and possibly Obama himself--- about how issues affecting African-Americans can best be addressed and solved.
The article discusses at some length the new culture of African-American netroots politicos who reject the older culture of black politics.
[T]here is a strong sense that the leaders of the civil rights generation need some kind of retirement plan, and soon. “Victims don’t make things happen,” says Rucker, who previously worked for MoveOn. “Things are changing from where they were 30 years ago. The fights are changing. And you have an infrastructure that’s not producing results. Look at the incarceration rates, the difference between whites and blacks. What are the old organizations accomplishing?”
Most of all, the black roots make it clear to elected officials and civil rights advocates that being black doesn’t, by itself, make you a leader...“There are some members who need to go or to update and be accountable,” Rucker told me. “It’s not about getting rid of the N.A.A.C.P. or our members of Congress. It’s just wanting to be proud of our leaders.” (NYT).
Activists have criticized the Congressional black caucus for standing by William Jefferson---and also Al Sharpton for "reflexively" defending certain criminal defendants in a particularly horrific case. (NYT)
Some African-Americans are afraid that an Obama presidency will mean that they are less well-represented. (NYT)
The argument here is that a President Obama, closely watched for signs of parochialism or racial resentment, would have less maneuvering room to champion spending on the urban poor, say, or to challenge racial injustice. What’s more, his very presence in the Rose Garden might undermine the already tenuous case for affirmative action in hiring and school admissions.
I've heard people perfectly seriously make this argument. A colleague of mine recently wrote a satirical piece mocking the "reasoning" by which certain right wingers get to this conclusion. Unfortunately, some people didn't realize it was satire)
But such people exist. Of course they do. And they doubtless will argue: "We've now got a black president. Clearly, there's no longer any imbalance to be redressed." (NYT) And some people are worried about this. Artur Davis, "an Alabama representative and one of the most talked-about young talents on Capitol Hill." expressed this exactly concern.
“If Obama is president, it will no longer be tenable to go to the white community and say you’ve been victimized....[A]nd I understand the poverty and the condition of black America and the 39 percent unemployment rate in some communities. I understand that. But if you go out to the country and say you’ve been victimized by the white community, while Barack Obama and Michelle and their kids are living in the White House, you will be shut off from having any influence.”
As I've said many, many times before, Barack Obama isn't exactly standard-bearer for the progressive movement. He never has been, and he never will be. That's not who he is. Still, it's only fair to say that he has certainly acknowledged the problem and the need for a solution, even if he envisions trying a different path.(NYT)
Obama himself has offered only tepid support for a policy that surely helped enable him to reach this moment. In “The Audacity of Hope,” he wrote: “Even as we continue to defend affirmative action as a useful, if limited, tool to expand opportunity to underrepresented minorities, we should consider spending a lot more of our political capital convincing America to make investments needed to ensure that all children perform at grade level and graduate from high school — a goal that, if met, would do more than affirmative action to help those black and Latino children who need it the most.”(NYT)
The exact role of affirmative action in Obama's success is unclear. Today, Maureen Dowd (I know, I know) wrote:
McCain could dismiss W. as a lightweight, but he knows Obama’s smart. Obama wrote his own books, while McCain’s were written by Salter. McCain knows he’s the affirmative action scion of admirals who might not have gotten through Annapolis without being a legacy. Obama didn’t even tell Harvard Law School that he was black on his application. (NYT; emphasis in original)
Reading a response to MoDo by Ann Althouse, I found this link-- "Delicate Obama Path on Class and Race Preferences," by Rachel L. Swarns---for which I owe her a hat tip, I guess.
In 1990, as his fellow students rallied to protest the dearth of black professors at Harvard Law School, Barack Obama wrote a vigorous defense of affirmative action. The campus was in an uproar over questions of race, and Mr. Obama, then the first black president of The Harvard Law Review, decided to take a stand.
Mr. Obama said he had “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action” in his own academic career, and he praised the intellectual heft and wide-ranging views of his diverse staff.
“The success of the program speaks for itself,” he said of the law review’s affirmative action policy in a letter published in the school’s student newspaper.
Mr. Obama, a Democrat, has continued to support race-based affirmative action, calling it “absolutely necessary” when he was a state senator in Illinois and criticizing the Supreme Court for curtailing it in his time in the United States Senate. But in his presidential campaign, he has unsettled some black supporters by focusing increasingly on class and suggesting that poor whites should at times be given preference over more privileged blacks....
“We have to think about affirmative action and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren’t getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more,” Mr. Obama said last week in a question-and-answer session at a convention of minority journalists in Chicago....
Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School and an adviser on black issues to Mr. Obama, said some of Mr. Obama’s supporters were “obviously concerned about whether this is a retreat from a commitment to affirmative action in its classical sense.”...
Former classmates say Mr. Obama chose not to mention his race in his application to Harvard Law School to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an assertion that his campaign declined to confirm or deny.
[A]s a state senator, he spoke with empathy about accomplished minority students at elite universities who sometimes lived “under a cloud they could not erase.”
Even as he argued that timetables for minority hiring may be necessary where there is evidence of systemic discrimination, he also warned in his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” that “white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America.”...
Presaging his recent focus on class, Mr. Obama argued that whites were more likely to join blacks in supporting programs that were not racially based.(NYT; emphasis added)
It's at least clear, as Althouse puts it, that his views on affirmative action are nuanced. Althouse concludes that we don't know what he thinks---"But we don't know a lot of things about Barack Obama," she says.
I'd frame this point differently. What we know is that his view is nuanced. He may well have doubts whether affirmative action is the best way to bridge the gap. He strikes me as an eminently pragmatic politician.
What we don't know is what he will do about it. Andrew Sullivan---a commentator with whom I generally disagree--- recently expressed a hope that Obama would lead the way in getting rid of racial preferences. [I have very mixed feelings on this issue. One part of me---based on a certain amount of experience--- thinks racial preferences remain necessary, while another part is open to listening to someone with a better idea for achieving equivalent goals. I'm not sure if Obama has that better idea, mind you. I am not sure that there is a better idea.]
Some of his policies are clearly designed to address existing needs of urban communities.
As a candidate, Obama has outlined an agenda for “civil rights and criminal justice,” aimed primarily at urban African-Americans. His platform includes refocusing the Justice Department on hate crimes, banning racial profiling by federal law-enforcement agencies and reforming mandatory minimum sentences (which disproportionately affect black men, especially those convicted on crack-cocaine charges). (NYT)
But his advisers have issued a caveat.
Obama’s black advisers caution, however, that no one should expect him to behave like a civil rights leader, marching alongside Al Sharpton to protest the next Jena or putting black causes ahead of anyone else’s. “It’s a very interesting question, but as a black person, you should feel confident that he will focus on your injustices and know that all the other injustices in other communities affect you too,” Valerie Jarrett told me. “There have been wounds in all the communities, not just in the black community. There are plenty of wounds to go around.” (NYT)
Jill Tubman at Jack-and-Jill Politics writes:
I don’t think Barack Obama is the end of black politics. What do you think? The challenges that impact African-Americans disproportionately are going to go away overnight with the miraculous ascendancy of Obama. However we are witnessing the end of one style of African-American political engagement and participation to another where African-Americans are fully able to represent all Americans who believe in American ideals and the American dream. We’re ready to talk more about what we have in common with all other Americans rather than what makes us different.
But Prometheus 6 was disturbed by the piece and---because I grew up in the south and it wasn't that long ago---his comment rings true to me.
Why does this disturb me? Because it was predicted by Martin Luther King Jr. in an essay titled Black Power Defined... [Y]ou have responsibility for Black folk being assigned to a cadre of ambitious folk who are specifically stating they are not interested in the job.. It is so obviously not the end of Black Politics. In a way it validates some of Clarence Thomas' decisions...difference being, he sold out and these gentlemen have bought in. The motivation is strictly personal, though. And I don't want these gentlemen seen or spoken of as Black leaders, social or political, any more than they do themselves.
If you can't complain while Barack and Michelle are in the White House, you think you'll be able to complain when they leave?...At least my generation thought we were breaking new ground for Black people and America instead of just ourselves.
On the other hand, maybe this is the next logical step. I just don't know. I can see how a lot of good could come out of an Obama presidency, but it's a strictly metaphorical wind that blows nobody no ill.
And as I've recently been told by an African-American reader that a liberal white lady who grew up in the south in the days of school desegregation has no standing to participate in the discussion, I won't venture an opinion of my own here. (The mere wish to be of service isn't enough, I know.)
But of this one thing I am sure: Obama will be better on all issues affecting the disenfranchised, oppressed, victimized, impoverished, etc. etc. than John McCain.
Memeorandum has more discussion here.
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Posted by: rawdawgbuffalo | August 07, 2008 at 04:40 PM