There are many things that fascinate me, as I hope this blog will eventually show. But the issue I am most passionate about, unquestionably, is the unfinished history of the black freedom struggle in the United States. More than just an "issue," it is one of the most illuminating facets of American life, serving, however fitfully and problematically, not just as a model for progressive activism, but as a supreme mode of creative trouble-making for those of us able to learn a thing or two from its fearlessness, impetuosity, and joyous infidelity to the dominant "success narrative" of America.
It's an interesting time to be writing about race. Sooner than any of us expected, a black man found a way to get himself elected President of the United States. Predictably, this leads many to herald the inauguration of a post-racial America, especially among those benighted intellects for whom the mere presence of black faces in high places is sufficient to proclaim the end of racism.
But some of us are duty-bound to continue worrying about ordinary black folks, however much it may put us in bad odor with the prophets of post-racialism, and I'm just arrogant enough to believe I can give some coherent form to the experiences of people such as families victimized by the subprime mortgage implosion, young men (and increasingly women) caught up in the racist "War on Drugs," and those left to their own devices to respond, constructively and otherwise, to the economic shocks of our post-industrial society and its destructive permutations.
I can and will write about things other than race. But, given the unprecedented degree of popular dissatisfaction with mainstream institutions (shown in poll after poll), it is apropos to frequently revisit the history of a social group that, more than any other (and with all due respect to everyone fighting similar forces), has put into practice the imperative of getting this goddamned country to rethink its own bullshit.
Take what is
happening right now in Wisconsin. Yes, those people deserve applause, as well as every possible show of solidarity from progressives. But, deviant that I am, I can’t help wondering how the national conversation about Wisconsin’s public employees would be different if it were mostly black and brown faces that we saw on those nightly news broadcasts. Of course, when it comes to workers standing up in the face of relentless political attack, nothing can be taken for granted, and under all but the most extraordinary circumstances (which these are) workers of all colors struggle to earn the benefit of the doubt in a country that holds up visionary capitalists as the true makers of society. So for heaven’s sake let’s not minimize the crap that Wisconsinites are dealing with.
But let us consider for a minute how things might be different if the protesters were mostly people of color. In fact, we already have some context for such a comparison. In 2009 and 2010, while a few scattered Tea Party protests dominated the headlines, at least a few on the left couldn’t help but be fascinated by the relatively indifferent press response to the far larger
immigration reform protests of a few years ago. Yes, there was press coverage, notably from the
Los Angeles Times, as a click-through will show. But there was nothing approaching the saturation coverage of the Tea Party phenomenon, and never any suggestion that Latino disaffection is a world-altering force to which the two major political parties must orient themselves
or else. For some, the Democrats’ losses in the 2010 elections confirmed the wisdom of focusing on the Tea Party, while others see the shellacking of the Dems as the predictable result of an off-year electorate being allowed to marinate too long in the sour juices of a bad economy. For this writer, it confirmed at least this much: spasmodic expressions of black and brown rage can spark “national conversations” but they will never be given public sanctification, and much less will they be seen as outpourings of the true national self to which all must answer.
To see just how different the discourse can be, the immigration protests can again serve as an illustrative case. At around the time that the protests reported on by the L.A. Times were happening in 2006, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly took the opportunity to make repeated claims on both his radio program and TV show that the immigration rights movement is little more than a conspiracy to take over the nation and subjugate good, decent white folks. For example, during the May 16 edition of The O’Reilly Factor:
The New York Times and many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad, so a drastic change is needed. According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will….An open border policy and the legalization of millions of Hispanic illegal aliens would deeply affect the political landscape in America.
Additionally, on the May 1 edition of the Radio Factor, sayeth O’Reilly:
Then there’s the hardcore, militant agenda of “You stole our land, you bad gringos.” The organizers of the demonstrations [say] “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” That is their slogan, that “you stole our land, and now we’re going to take it back by massive migration into the Southwest, and we’re going to control those places because you stole it from us,” and that’s the agenda underneath.
assimilationist urge can even exist side-by-side with an ironic awareness that “the border crossed us,” a fact that seems to escape Mr. O’Reilly and many others. For all their surface militancy, the immigration rights protests fall well within the best traditions of American reformism—it’s no accident that the movement’s signature legislative initiative is The DREAM Act, which aims at nothing more radical than easing the path to citizenship for undocumented college students, who by their very existence prove their group’s fealty to middle-class striving.
And the Tea Party? Well, we have this from O’Reilly’s Fox News colleague Sean Hannity:
Hannity: The summer may be coming to a close, but politicians across the country are still feeling the heat from their constituents. Now thousands of ordinary Americans (emphasis mine) are taking part in what is known as the Tea Party Express. They’re speaking out against government-run health care, out-of-control spending, and the rallies that started just last week in CA will conclude in Washington on Sep. 12. And our very own Griff Jenkins has been on board the Express since day one, and he joins us now from the site of tonight’s rally in Flagstaff, Arizona. Griff?
Griff Jenkins: Sean, this is the story of the America that Washington forgot, and apparently doesn’t want to hear from. They’re miners, they’re small business owners, they’re veterans, they’re nurses, they’re mothers, and what you’re hearing right here in Flagstaff is going on all across the great American West.
This broadcast came near the beginning of the Tea Party phenomenon in 2009, and Fox’s coverage would only become more shamelessly obliging toward the movement after that. Now, there is more to media discourse than just whatever emanates from the Fox News sewer, and the Tea Party certainly has its critics, both inside and outside mainstream circles. But even among those who know better, it takes effort to beat back the media narrative that the Tea Party, for all its overheated and at times violent rhetoric, is where “ordinary Americans” are to be found—not the brown-skinned people who are lobbying to get The DREAM Act signed into law.
And not the African-Americans who were among the first to protest what the subprime mortgage industry was doing before the bubble burst in late 2008. This brings me back to the situation in Wisconsin, indeed the situation confronting the entire country. As heroic as the protesters truly are, I can’t help but wonder how much further down the path toward a less brutal social order we might be if black disaffection were taken as seriously. As it is, some in the chattering classes (and not just in the precincts of the far right) can’t seem to resist trying to niggerize Wisconsin’s public sector workers—as lazy, coddled, overpaid, undeserving—so it doesn’t take much imagination to see how actual, protesting niggers would play.
