Handicapping the Race
Apr 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm by Susie
It would be nice if someone knowledgeable would write something addressing the issue of whether race is an insurmountable handicap for Obama in the general election, but this article isn’t it.
And it’s a shame that even talking about it is the third rail of progressive politics. It’s racism! It must be stamped out!
It’s just not that simple, and pretending it is won’t help us win in November.
People are tribal creatures and they tend to vote that way. I’ve covered elections where the voting patterns changed from street to street depending on whether the candidate was Irish or Italian. Anyone who knows anything about elections understands if two unknowns are running a downticket race, and one of them’s a woman, she’s getting two to three percent more on that basis alone. A union guy can count on union members. And so it goes.
So the question Democrats (and super delegates) should be looking at is, is Obama’s race more (or less) of a handicap in the general election than Clinton being Clinton? I honestly don’t know - and neither do you, because these are uncharted waters. Apparently no one’s willing to have an adult conversation about it, the kind that involves numbers - at least, in public. (Ed Rendell took a stab at it and got slammed as a racist for stating the obvious. Plus, people wrote him off because he’s a Clinton backer.)
I think the super delegates are talking about it in private - remember how there was supposed to be a big press conference after March 4th, when all the super delegates were going to come out and announce for Obama? It never happened. That (and the fact that the Obama camp since ramped up attacks on Clinton) tells me the uncommitteds are at least a little worried.
We have a lot of new voters this year, so that’s another wild card. How many of them can we count on for Obama? (In one state, it appears one-third of the newly-registered Democrats are young Obama backers. What about the other two-thirds?) And how many of the new voters will actually show up? I’d love to see those youth registration figures from 2004. Anyone got ‘em?
As a reporter, I was fascinated when these politicians would spit out their election results weeks in advance - and damned if they weren’t usually right. They knew the precincts down to within a handful of votes. They can roll off the stats and cite the different variable in races going back 20, 30, even 40 years. Sometimes they’re wrong, but not that often. They carry a lot of our institutional knowledge, and to ignore them in the debate is dumb.
But this year? This year is a wild card. To what do we compare this? That is, after all, what political handicapping is all about. What data can we use when the choice for our candidate is between a well-known and often-hated woman or an unknown black man - after the RW attack machine bloodies him, as well?
The Clintons think Obama can’t win because of his race. (I tend to agree, but that’s more of a hunch than a fact.) The Clintons have a lot more experience than I do with these things, but I also know the peculiar kind of messianic fervor that overtakes people working on the inside of a tight race. So maybe they’re not the best judges, either.
Voters don’t so much vote on the basis of race as the fear of the unknown. If Obama was a more familiar figure, I don’t think it would be as much of an issue. But really, who knows how he’d govern? It’s too bad there’s so much bad blood between his campaign and the Clintons now, because eight years as VP would have done much to quiet those fears.
Oh well. Woulda, coulda, shoulda…
Thoughts? Keep them civil, please.
I was in Pittsburgh recently and asked a lifelong doctor who that area would support- he said Clinton because he felt most people there were a bit racist.
I personally didn’t think Obama’s race was a disadvantage because he seemed colorless or non-racial f you know what I mean. However, the tapes of his loony Elmer Gantry-like minister with the $1.4 Million house, have now cast Obama as a person who has probably been hiding his true feelings about our country.
That said - shame on Rev. Wright to preach hopelessness and despair to his flock while he himself is doing quite well thank you. I’d love to see what kind of car the good faux reverend drives.
The important thing about this race - and it IS an important thing - is that it gives us a chance to flip the bird to this line of tribalism; I don’t think it’s wrong to pursue whether or not race is likely to be an issue for us in the GE, but I DO think it’s wrong to assume that there’s not going to be a lot of movement on this front over the next six months. I think - and this isn’t just aspirational, I’m pretty sure - that Obama is likely to run a much better campaign than McCain, and that this long primary has put all of the Swift-Boat-worthy material out in the open.
I don’t mean to get too “elitist” here, but I think this is a teachable moment in American history; Obama’s NCC speech DOES show us that it’s possible to be dignified and honest while talking about this stuff, and acknowledge that most of the resentments on each side of the racial divide come from well-earned grievances. I profoundly disagree with the poster above who suggested that Rev. Wright was preaching “hopelessness” and “despair” - who would come to THAT church?
Anger, though, is the primary reason people are uncomfortable with Jeremiah Wright. God forbid he should be angry and talk a lot about “rich white people.” Appalling social injustice really does exist in this country, and it falls WAY disproportionately on the African-American community. But God forbid black people express their outrage about a society that’s screwed them over to the nth degree for centuries. People might get a little uncomfortable. People might read it as hatred or “reverse racism” or blaming the white man.
I don’t deny that Wright overstepped his bounds a couple of times. The real message of this controversy, though, is clear: don’t be an angry black man. If you’re an angry white man, you can be a talking head on MSNBC like Pat Buchanan; if you’re Rev. Wright, you’re the antichrist and diarists on MyDD are comparing your parishioner to a black George Wallace. No, really.
i think the media’s treatment of clinton illustrates that sexism might be a pretty strong strike against clinton, just as race could be against obama. and, as has been pointed out before, clinton has a really high negative rating with the american public going into the race. no one has ever won the presidency when some 40% of the public hates them so much they won’t even consider voting for her.
but as you said, no one really knows how much it will count. obama does have the advantage of the “tokenism mojo”–that is, open racism is completely discredited in this country even though there are still a lot of people with racist biases. because racism is discredited, even racists don’t want to admit that they are judging people because of their skin color. and so they attribute their feelings to other things, like not liking people who are “too ghetto”. a side effect of that is that black people who don’t come across as “culturally black” can actually get a boost in popularity for not seeming black. thus we have people like tiger woods or colin powell. i think obama could benefit from that. he’s black but doesn’t sound black. and that’s why i think he’s running a campaign based on such optimistic themes. he has to. black people can’t get away with seeming angry. it turns people off much more than it turns off people when whites do it.
that’s also why the reverend white thing was potentially so threatening to obama’s campaign. it linked him, not just with black culture, but also with angry rhetoric. on the other hand, obama really did seem to handle the wright thing well. no doubt it will come up again, but the media seems to be over it, which means that anyone who brings it up from now on will be portrayed as dredging up “old news”. obama really did a great job dodging what could have been a fatal blow.
i guess the bottom line of my longish ramble is that: (1) i agree that no one really knows who is electable and who isn’t. (2) i think that sexism and irrational clinton hatred is just as much a liability for clinton as racism is for obama. (3) in one way race actually can play into obama’s favor because of the tokenism phenomenon i discussed above. (4) my gut tells me that mccain can be taken down by either candidate, they just have to start laying into him now to reverse years of media fluffing.
by “reverend white” i meant “reverend wright”
freudian slip?
yep,
if hrc spends 8 years as obama’s vp it will definitely decrease the fears people have about her.
RU a closet racist, Noz? LOL
THIS does not help Mr. Obama’s chances of actually being the nominee, regardless of what color his skin is. This is all about Hillary & what she believes is rightfully hers. Florida & Michigan will vote on each others credentials, the majority of both states will go into the Clinton camp, & that will be that.
What a friggin’ mess……..
I’ve always thought that the Clintons felt Obama was unelectable, not because of his race but because of his baggage……Wright, Rezko……and other questionable characters he’s been associated with in Chicago…….that you just know the Media will jump on a soon as he’s the nominee.
Hillary has baggage too, but it’s old hat. Most people have already made up their minds about her. Obama is still a clean slate onto which the Media can write anything. So far they have written good things but there is no way that can last against their true love…..McCain
My personal suspicion has always been that it would be easier for a black man to become president than a woman of any race. This is simply because it is possible for a black man to be “white enough” to allay the fears of most racists. I don’t know whether Obama achieves that but I do think it is possible for a black male candidate to do so. On the other hand, it is not possible for a female candidate to be “man enough” to appease sexists for the following reason: a woman who acts womanly is considered too weak to do a “man’s job” but a woman who acts manly in nearly any way is threatening to sexists in a way that black men who assimilate into while male power structures generally aren’t.
The real subtext of the Wright controversy isn’t the alleged anti-Americanism — you can’t go into a white SBC church without hearing a white pastor pounding on the podium about how America is damned for having turned its back on God for one reason or another. The point is that it undermines Obama’s claims to be post-racial, which, IMO, is really just code for “white enough.”
Disclosure: I personally support Obama at the moment, but I really only favor him over Clinton by a 60-40 margin. In the general, I will vote for a potted plant if it gets the Dem nomination.
Ironically, we have an African American frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, but racism is actually less of an issue this year than it might have been in previous years. Obama can’t win the general election with a base of the NPR vote and the African American vote, but he can attract some independents and crossover Republicans. There won’t be enough of them, however, to compensate for all the women, older voters, and moderate Democratic voters who feel alienated from Obama and his campaign (these voters, who are not racists, must be added to the dwindling contingent of hardcore racists in both parties who would never vote for any African American). Also, Obama’s NPR/AA/media admirers seem to be in denial about the extent of the damage done to his candidacy by his long association with Jeremiah Wright and TUCC, since Obama’s partisans are mistakenly focused on the question of racism rather than on the question of their candidate’s poor judgment (and there’s still more to come out from the Rezco trial, now back in session).
Neither Democratic candidate’s prospects are helped by the fact that the Republicans, despite themselves, managed to nominate the candidate who represents their best shot in what should be a Democratic landslide. McCain will also have the MSM on his side. The contingent of hardcore misogynists and Hillary-haters is probably larger than the base of hardcore racists, but so is the bloc of women (Democratic and Republican) who will vote for Clinton. If Clinton loses, she’ll lose the way Humphrey and Gore did, by a small margin. But she may very well win, given the state of the economy. When–not if–Obama loses, he’ll lose like Mondale or Dukakis, though probably not as badly as McGovern. Even the state of the economy won’t be enough to counteract Obama’s negatives, whereas the wrecked economy evokes, in the minds of many voters, the prosperous years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
It’s also a fact that, despite the “no more dynasties” meme, many Democratic voters would be very happy to have Bill Clinton once more near the levers of presidential power. I hope that the group of superdelegates who are poised to forfeit this election just to get the Clintons out of the way will not be allowed to succeed.
Kevin, I think you and many Obama supporters didn’t see the Florida and Michigan situation for what it is: a MASSIVE political problem for the Democratic party in the general election. Just because counting those votes benefits Clinton doesn’t make it wrong - you simply can’t throw out all those party and elected officials if you want to win in November, and some kind of compromise was inevitable.
Lots of people won’t vote for Obama because he’s black. Lots of people won’t vote for Clinton because she’s a she. Lots of people won’t vote for McCain because he’s old. I don’t know if any of those things alone make any of them unelectable, and I doubt that we’ll know after one of them loses, either. Lots of imponderables, such as whether Obama’s race or Clinton’s gender would drive a racist or misogynist Dem to vote for McCain or simply stay home. I think Alan has a good point about the racism v. misogyny sweepstakes, though.
Whichever of the Dems wins the nomination will 1) win the general and 2) be a huge disappointment for those whose expectations aren’t already in the gutter. As for McCain’s performance, it’s a tossup between Goldwater and Dole.
You know, I hadn’t thought about either of them as being vice president. Obama certainly seemed miffed by the suggestion, and he hasn’t returned the offer. The two of them together, in whatever configuration, would be formidable - if they could get along.
But yeah. I suspect a black man outscores a white woman. But the people that would be keeping that kind of score aren’t going to be voting for either of them anyway. Unless Hell has gotten very cold.
I wonder why the United States has such a problem with women. Israel, Pakistan, India and other countries have elected female leaders.
I don’t think the issue is whether to count the FL and MI votes, rather how it can be done fairly.
I have favored seating FL based on the initital results and doing a primary in MI. Each candidate gets an advantage in one state, but not overwhelmingly. It also is a solution that actually might be achievable, unlike full revotes.
As to the role that of sexism, racism or ageism might play in the race; From Mother Jones:
“According to a new NBC/WSJ survey, 29 percent of respondents feel this country isn’t ready for a president over 70.
By contrast, the same survey showed that 20 percent of respondents said the country is not ready for a female president and 18 percent said it is not ready for an African American one. This is consistent with an early 2007 poll that showed being 72-years-old on election day is as much of a disadvantage as being homosexual. “
Yes. And as people have been saying ab out electability. who knows? We simply don’t know which candidate will do better in the general election, and there are too many variables to make any claim about it with certainty. I’ve seen various “head to head” polls vs. McCain which show both Dems at different times doing well against McCain. This far out, I wouldn’t give much weight to any such polls, no matter who they favor.
So we’re just guessing. We don’t know how much of a factor racism will be, nor sexism. There’s Rev Wright (who mostly spoke the truth, if somewhat stridently), a situation which Obama handled very deftly, and even meaningfully. And then there’s “Bosnia-gate” … out of which war-hero-McCain could probably get some mileage. So who knows? And then there’s the Bill factor, since we’re speculating … has the leopard changed his spots, or is there more “scandal” waiting in the wings? Or maybe the press will just make one up, a la “John Kerry’s mistress” …
Obviously my guess leans toward Obama - get him on a stage in debate with McCain and the contrast between the vibrant, charismatic Senator from Illinois and the wizzened, ill tempered homonculus from Arizona will be striking indeed. We all have our guesses, and that’s mine. Place your bets! Place your bets!
I think it is fair to discuss voting patterns of minorities or groups of any kind. But I think the discussion of race as “will a black man win?” is racist. Casting aside OBs election chances just because of fear of GOP smears or “racist” voting blocs is just letting them win…If the “electibility” question is actually a question of “yeah, he’s winning — but he’s black” then we are doomed to never pull ourselves out from the gutter of race discrimination. imo, if you believe a person cannot do something based upon race then you are a racist. Ditto, if someone won’t vote for hrc because she is a she then that person is a sexist…polls show OB beating mccain…to feel he will lose like dole is just unfounded…
I wonder why the United States has such a problem with women. Israel, Pakistan, India and other countries have elected female leaders.
india and pakistan probably would never have elected a woman who wasn’t the daughter of a popular former leader. same with indonesia and sri lanka. (and, arguably, hillary clinton would be an analogous example if she manages to become president)
the bottom line is that clinton has some negatives that go beyond her gender. indeed, there is clinton hatred and there is woman hatred. hillary clinton gets hit with both. if she’s unelectable that is why. there is a large group of people there who will never ever vote for her. mrs. noz’s grandmother has always voted republican but thinks bush is a disaster and that the country needs a change. and still, she says she cannot vote for clinton–she just hates the clinton’s too much–even though she also says that she would like there to be a woman president. she might vote for obama.
I know a few Republican men who tell me they like Hillary and will vote for her if she runs in the general.
Is it not reasonable to think that Republicans would have gladly voted for Colin Powell back in the 1990s when he was vaguely being suggested? Don’t Republicans like Condi Rice?
I guess the subject matter here is race (and gender) only, but both candidates also have problems that have nothing to do with either. If you don’t like Hillary anyway you might slide easily into thinking of her as a witch; if you don’t like Obama anyway you might slide easily into thinking of him as a typical black guy. I’m not so sure it’s easy to tease these things out.
Part of the problem with Wright is the cognitive dissonance–his message is so antithetical to how Obama presents himself. Shelby Steele says Obama was driven by insecurity, a need to be black, that he took the hatred as more rhetorical than real and therefore worth the price in exchange for a secure black identity. But even that has a measure of cognitive dissonance. The problem Wright raises is who is Barack Obama — which is a problem for Obama anyway, and so in some sense is not even about race.
If you dismiss people who are disturbed by Wright as lesser moral beings or as people unwilling to acknowledge America’s history of racial violence and injustice or unwilling to acknowledge America’s history of violence around the world I think you’re not hearing a message that those who are disturbed are hearing. It’s a deeply conspiratorial and frankly nutty outlook that says all of human history can be defined by race struggles, that the black Jesus was crucified by the white Romans in a race crime, that AIDS was deliberately created and spread by white people (never mind the role of polygamy in Africa for its rapid spread); that drugs are brought into this country by the CIA to deliberately destroy the black community (never mind that neither the contras nor both sides in Columbia nor the warlords in Afghanistan nor combatants anywhere who sell drugs to buy weapons are doing it in order to destroy black kids in L.A.)–and it goes on and on. The subtext of this message is that the only rational reasonable response to this outrage is to hate white people. And the question comes back to how much comfort and joy can you find in an otherwise loving church to stand that, i.e., what the heck was Obama doing there? His beautiful speech never really answered that.
I’m not the only one guilty of still talking about this. It’s not over. And the problem for Obama is that he can’t honestly answer these questions. And he can’t get a pass on the grounds that people already know who he is and trust him, because people don’t know who he is.
Perhaps if one is dismissive of those “disturbed” by extremely short carefully selected outtakes of Wright’s words, it is actually because we are appropriately disturbed and angered by the intellectual dishonesty being displayed. The man has given thousands of sermons and speeches. It would be unusual if there was not something that could be lifted out of context and made to sound bad when played on a continuous loop.
Hillary Clinton’s own former minister knows better. It would be good if more people who consider themselves progressives bothered to glean a more full understanding instead of parroting talking points from the right wing.
http://www.foundryumc.org/pdfs/Statement%20concerning%20Rev.%20Jeremiah%20Wright.pdf
“To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize.”
Obama’s electability issues aren’t just about racism and I don’t know that racism would figure out into the calculations made by HRC in whatever suggestions she has made about Obama’s electability.
The bigger problem that people have with Obama (bigger than Wright, Rezko, racism), is that he is what is often referred to as an ‘empty vessel’ - He is a relative unknown and he’s trying to win by concealing his true nature, his predilections of philosophy and governing.
He makes his largest point of all, not voting for the AUMF but that was a vote that he didn’t have to make. Beyond the puff about the vote he didn’t have to make, there isn’t any issue which defines him. We don’t really know him. His greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.
Modern day politics almost requires that the candidates navigate the high road and the 527 groups take the low road but that’s a strategy that is designed more for the general election than the primaries. Since the media hasn’t critically examined Obama as they have the other candidates (and most especially Hillary), he’s been given a mostly free ride which I seriously doubt that such good fortune will get past September.
But since you really want to talk about race…it was no accident that HRC (and for that matter, Bill too) were branded racists even though the generally accepted view was that Bill was the first black president (honorarium given to Bill by Maya Angelou). This was pure political calculation by Obama’s team to maximize their votes and with a very willing media looking for controversy, maximize the black vote they did. Obviously being the black candidate and capitalizing on his race cost him some white votes but so far not enough to lose…unless he gets clobbered in Pennsylvania.
If it ultimately becomes Obama as the nominee, I am quite convinced that Obama would lose the press advantage, lose control over the narrative by having to combat the endless 527 loops and the sad fact that he has accomplished little in his adult life will become the parcel of attack by McCain himself and McCain will be able to tell that story without significant damage to his prospects.
I wasn’t crazy about the extremely short selective outtakes of Wright’s words but then I read a bit about the Afrocentric black liberation theology — for which apparently Wright is a famous proponent — and it got a whole lot crazier. The ancient history is particularly insane, even funny, because who cares about ancient history. Everything that ever happened is all about race, specifically about white people trying to eradicate black people. Reminded me of Charles Manson (if you read Helter Skelter).
This theology continues into the present. In one of the sermons about 9/11 (not the chickens coming home to roost one) he blames 9/11 on race–black people (I think he said black, not just people of color) telling white people something to the effect, “we’re still here.” Overall it’s a vision of a deeply racist nation deserving of violent retribution. I’m not sure which is worse, the indoctrination of hatred against all white people collectively, or the sheer kookiness of it all.
I’m know I’m not supposed to judge as a typical white person, but I don’t see how you solve the problems of the black community if you don’t live in the real world and see the real world causes.
And frankly, I just don’t get how a history of racial injustice justifies vicious anti-Semitism. Was Thomas Jefferson Jewish? Were the plantation owners Jewish? What justifies comparing the Hamas screed calling for the extermination of the Jews to the Declaration of Independence? Rev. Wright’s defense of the Palestinian boycott of the anti-racism conference in South Africa years ago - part of what may have been on the TV clips - was indefensible and inexcusable. If you remember that episode several years ago the Palestinians protested using Nazi iconography showing Jews as vermin and apes. Oh and then there’s another 9/11 sermon about how the Jews caused 9/11.
It’s fine if the church community defends their own — Huckabee gave a lovely defense as well — but I’ll decline to sign on.
That’s not Hillary Clinton’s “former minister.” He is the current minister of her former church.
Amelia, by all informed accounts, Rev Wright very much does live in the real world, and very much does deal with real world issues, with his congregation and with the larger black community.
I’m not sure which black liberation theology text you’re referring to (nor can I be sure you’re giving it a fair summary), but you can’t tie Wright to just any old thing that comes under the heading of black liberation theology - are the views you read there actually his? In any case, I find most theology pretty nutty, so the Rev gets the same pass on that I’d give to other religious leaders, whatever his actual theology is.
Also, the “we’re still here” line is in keeping with the “chickens coming home to roost” line. I’m not in favor of violence, and what people suffered at the WTC on 9/11 is beyond awful. At the same time, there is truth to the idea that the seeds for that event were sown by our government’s policies in the Middle East, and yes, toward non-white populations, over several decades. Wright’s not wrong about that.
Many of Wright’s statements are sort of Chomsky on steroids, and with a flair … not a winning political platform (hence the need for Obama to distance himself), but not untrue either. (Well, except for his AIDS statements …)
Given the nature of today’s politics, I’ll gladly take the “empty suit” over the well known suits. At least there’s some sliver of a chance he’ll be different, however unlikely it may be. And do I want to see the black community with a representative in the White House? Damn straight! (A woman would be cool too, don’t get me wrong.
i find it weird when i read people call obama an “empty suit”. i mean, i think his speeches are remarkably substantive and detailed. just because they’re delivered well doesn’t mean the soaring rhetoric is empty. he’s done a much better job at spelling out in detail just how he will change american foreign policy than hillary clinton has.
i think this entire race is being driven by stereotypes on both sides. and i’m not just talking about racial or sexual stereotypes either. a lot of the above comments about obama simply suggests to me that he has been typecast as “the inexperienced empty suit”. in my opinion, he’s neither. in fact, part of what turns me off about clinton is how vacuous her foreign policy pronouncements have been.
that’s not to say that clinton is an empty suit either. she’s very substantive when we’re talking about the issues she’s got a lot of experience with, issues like family leave and health care. i just find it really weird when i see both candidates regularly referred to as something that is so different from my own experiences of them.
I wonder why the United States has such a problem with women. Israel, Pakistan, India and other countries have elected female leaders.
I think its a combination of the USA’s acceptability of open aggression against women and it’s denial of the reality of class. In other countries, the class issue is open, and the women who have been elected (Thatcher, Gandhi, Aquino, etc) have been members of the elite, (and enjoyed male patronage, of course).
Teaching that HIV AIDS was introduced deliberately for the purposes of black genocide by the great white oppressor is not living in the real world.
Teaching that the CIA is selling drugs in black communities in order to destroy them is not living in the real world.
The product of this kind of indoctrination is a sense of grievance without justification and accusations of racism where none exists.
The “chickens coming home to roost” whether from Rev. Wright or Prof. Churchill has to do with fine lines. I would even say that it’s mainstream, or almost, to say that the 9/11 attacks were “blowback” for American foreign policy. But you can’t cross the line, as Prof. Churchill did, into fanaticism by saying that therefore innocent people deserved to die horrible deaths, because by virtue of being American they weren’t innocent. There was the same potential implication in Rev. Wright’s “we’re still here” line, with the added kookiness that the 9/11 attacks were retribution for race.
I only read a little bit about Afro-centrism aka black liberation theology so I could well be misunderstanding but yes I thought Rev. Wright shares the views of what’s his name, James Cone - ? — that all history and the Bible itself is about race, specifically the struggle of blacks against white efforts to eradicate them.
I don’t know what any of this means in terms of Obama. It’s hard to understand why people who went to Ivy League schools and have nearly a million dollars in income would want their children to listen to screeds on white oppression. Why would there be a level of comfort in that? What does it mean as far as understanding what issues really need fighting for?
I don’t know how different Obama will be. Certainly the lesson of the 2000 election is that allegedly small differences between Democrats and Republicans have huge consequences. At the same time I’m not thrilled when Obama says he admires the foreign policy of JFK, George Bush the first, and Ronald Reagan. If Obama means what he says then he hasn’t in fact listened to Rev. Wright’s sermons about the depredations of American foreign policy and its consequences.
Amelia, not so very long ago (1996) a reporter named Gary Webb wrote a series of stories about the CIA’s involvement with drug smugglers who doubled as the Contras of Iran-Contra fame and whose product played a role in the emergence of crack cocaine as a staple of west coast gang trafficking. Webb was personally and professionally ruined in response, and recently killed himself. It’s not at all difficult to see how Webb’s reporting, which despite the treatment he received was later largely confirmed by Justice Department and CIA investigations, could be condensed into “the CIA introduced crack into black communities.” Regardless the agency’s motive, it happens to be at least partly true.
That is, in fact, the real world, as was the CIA’s involvement in heroin trafficking during the Vietnam war, which helped give the drug a big boost in the US, which again disproportionately affected black communities. So you have a situation in which one arm of the government is involved, however casually or dispassionately, in supplying drugs to black communities, while other arms are then locking up huge numbers of black men and boys who get caught up in the trade either as users or marketers, not to mention the other nasty side effects of the dynamic in those communities. The conclusion that the circumstances reflect a deliberate effort to destroy black communities is analogous to the reaction of some Iraqis when confronted with the mess the US has made of their country: how could the most powerful, resourceful nation on earth make this much of a mess by accident?
The AIDS legend is off the charts, but even that has a back story: black Americans of Wright’s generation are keenly aware of, for instance, the Tuskegee Experiment, in which black men were for four decades the unwitting subjects in a study on the effects of untreated syphillis. The study was terminated only after it was leaked to the press in 1972. 1972! Syphillis had by that point been safely treatable for at least 25 years, but the subjects in the experiment went deliberately untreated and were never even told they had syphillis. The leap from that very real situation to the alleged AIDS plot requires a shift in scale but not philosophy.
The real world is a very nasty place that lends itself quite nicely to conspiracy theories at least in part because there are conspiracies. Some we find out about, others we don’t.
Adding: the alternative to thinking that the drug situation in black communities or the clusterfvck in Iraqi ones is deliberate is to acknowledge that their lives are so unimportant, so meaningless to the perpetrators, that the damage done is entirely unintentional. Everyone wants their lives, or the destruction of them, to have meaning.
I’m well aware of all that regarding the drugs but there is a distinction with a difference in saying that it was done in a deliberate effort to destroy black communities. Do you also think it is legitimate to believe that warlords in Afghanistan are selling poppies to buy arms (possibly with the help of the CIA) for the specific reason that they wish to destroy black communities in America? Isn’t that silly?
Tuskegee was bad enough for what it was on the true facts. My understanding (perhaps too little of it) is that AIDS in Africa spread like wildfire because of African sexual practices–polygamy, concurrent polygamy, frequent use of prostitutes, and social customs which allowed men of certain social classes to force sex on young girls of a lower class–in other words everybody is having sex with everybody else. These are African social sexual practices that have absolutely nothing to do with the white devil. Isn’t it better to tell the truth if you are going to solve the problem?
I have no idea what Iraqis think or why but whatever happened to the concept — at least here where we know what’s being said — that the truth will set you free. It’s fine that people want to have meaning in their lives but if they find it by believing in convenient conspiracies those notions should be disabused not encouraged.
Have a nice day!
Well, in the case of the drugs, the truth seems to be a combination of indifference, amorality and racism. I’d say Wright is pretty close to the mark there. As for the AIDS thing, it’s not defensible but it is explicable. If we’re living by the truth, the truth is that both Obama and Clinton are mediocre candidates who, while an improvement over Bush and superior to McCain, won’t come close to delivering the fundamental transformations in tone and action that the country needs. Relative to their shortcomings in other arenas, I can’t get fussed about Wright or Obama’s allegiance to him.
Weldon has it covered.
Re: the “empty suit” - for my part, I was merely responding to someone else’s characterization of Obama in that vein … not endorsing it, but saying, “I wouldn’t even care if it were true, I’ll take him, from what I’ve seen.” And I do think there’s some sliver of a chance he might actually be different than business as usual. I’m not predicting it … I mean, follow the money, right? But I think it’s the best shot we have in terms of presidential candidates (hmm. maybe presidential candidates won’t be the answer …)
“It’s hard to understand why people who went to Ivy League schools and have nearly a million dollars in income would want their children to listen to screeds on white oppression.”, Amelia says. That’s kind of the point: There’s clearly more to Rev Wright than many people have garnered, as Obama alluded to in his speech.
I’ll go with the indifference and the amorality but part company with the racism, inasmuch as the word means an intentional state of mind. I think the international drug trade then and now is about gargantuam sums of money first and foremost and any collateral consquences are not even in the mix of motivations. That’s why indifference and amorality apply. The very point of the whole “theology” however is that it is intentional, it is racism and to call it that is both paranoid and destructive. The same is true about the AIDS stuff, and I can’t frankly accept that it is explicable when the unembellished truth (i.e., Tuskegee) is bad enough as it is. Why deliberately create a mythology of victimhood unless you want to be a victim and incite anger and grievance (especially when the historical record is rich enough). Besides I would think that the more traditional Christian message–the God has not forsaken you message–would be more uplifting but I’m out of my element there.
But you’re right, enough about Wright! I’m extremely guilty in that regard and it’s time to stop, I’m saying to myself.