Colorblind Comedy

Ok, so yesterday, I gave a talk on racism, health disparities, and social movements.  The whole talk centers around recognizing the importance of race, especially in the images people use during social movements.  Pretty much the antithesis of colorblindness.

After the talk, I was laughing with a white woman about Chris Matthews' racist comment that he "forgot Obama was black" for about an hour.  (see Chris Matthews "forgot Obama is black") The obvious implication being that Obama was doing so well that he transitioned from black to white in Matthews' mind.  I laughingly  recounted the story and that brief analysis.  The white woman responded, "I don't even see color.  I hate that stuff."

I was mesmerized by her obvious lack of reflection on so many levels!  First, I bet Chris Matthews would say the same thing.  He was celebrating a "colorblind hour," in which he basically went to the highest level of racial Zen.  Secondly, uh...did you hear my talk?!  She actually thought she was agreeing with me!  I really want to say, "Hey lady! Go home.  You're not on the team...you can't even cheer from the bleachers."  Feigned colorblindness and confused outrage are not helpful.

I could go on, but why..?  Anyway, maybe the woman was more aware than I think.  She quickly turned her back to me after her comment.

Giving God Props

So...yesterday was a tough day.  I gave a professional talk on campus.  I did a lot of high-stress prep before hand and I was totally gassed.  As ya'll know, I been studying for my prelims like a mad man!  I feel close to ready...which is good b/c they start in 5 days. 

Anyway, with very little time to go, and none to waste, I was growing increasingly hopeless and scared.  Cousin/Pastor Thom was nice enough to offer an early morning prayer.  God immediately lifted the fear- and fatigue-induced fog in my head and got me through the talk.  My work was well-received. 

Just want to thank God for everything.  Hopefully, I'll remember to ask God from the beginning. 

A White Supremacist Century: SCOTUS Extends White Power Through 21st Century

[I posted this on RacismReview.com]

The recent Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission [[http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf]], which essentially forbids any restrictions on corporate financing of political candidates, has garnered much media attention this past week. Ostensibly, the ruling extends ridiculous precedents granting corporations status as persons and endowing them with accordant rights. Liberal commentators and politicians have rightly expressed outrage at the serious threat Citizens United poses to the last vestiges of American democracy. Most of the outrage has been on one or more of several grounds: Marxist/class-based, partisan, and/or politico-structural (i.e. how laws and the structure of federal and state governments will change as a consequence of corporate influence). Too little analysis has focused explicitly on the racial causes and implications of the ruling.

I believe the timing of this ruling is an intentional effort by white [male] elites to restore whites’ structural political advantages. For whites, Obama’s election and Latinos’ increased voting power threaten whites’ historical dominance. The ruling is designed to immediately weaken the currently ascendant political coalition of people of color and liberal whites. It is also sets the social, political, and economic conditions for whites to continue racial domination after they cease to be the numerical and electoral majority in the United States.

MSNBC noted the irony of the Supreme Courts’ ruling, which greatly empowers banks and other large financial institutions, coming down within hours of President Obama announcing proposals to reestablish limits on the nation’s largest banks. On its face, the timing of events appears to be either oddly coincidental or, more likely, the first shots in a war between two ruling sectors in the United States—the state and the capital class. But from a critical racial perspective, the Supreme Court ruling smacks of racism. Over the past three years, much was made about Obama’s ability to raise money through non-corporate vehicles. To be sure, he received much corporate support, but the rhetoric surrounding his campaign was a populist one, and the campaign greatly benefitted from “small” contributions from “regular people.” For the first time in many cycles, the Democratic candidate had a significant financial advantage over his Republican rivals. Obama effectively used that financial advantage to exhaust the resources of the McCain campaign. The Democrats held vulnerable territories without much challenge (e.g. Michigan) and won Republican-trending states (e.g. North Carolina and Virginia) via sustained (and expensive) media and grassroots efforts. [[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2008/obamas-spending-edge.html]] This change in presidential campaign norms was all the more stunning given that it was done by the first Black candidate to lead the ticket of a major party.

Sociological research indicates that dominant groups (e.g. white policy-makers and Supreme Court justices) respond to threats (i.e. a Black man becoming chief executive) by using state institutions to weaken the threat and strengthen the dominant group. (See the introduction to the second edition of McAdam’s Political Process and the Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, for one of many examples.) The research seems to be especially applicable in this case. If Obama’s political strength comes, at least in part, from his advantage in non-corporate funding, allowing corporations to spend infinite dollars in support of oppositional candidates diffuses Obama as a political threat and greatly strengthens his opposition.

The racial elements are clear. Most obviously, as the first Black president, Obama represents a racialized threat to white power generally. (See Harvey-Winfield and Feagin 2009 for whites’ fears that Obama would serve Blacks’ economic and political interests.) Secondly, the Republican Party, which is the only electorally significant opposition to Obama and the Democrats, is increasingly a white, male party. Empowering corporations to financially prop up the shrinking party of, for, and by white men is an attempt to counter emerging electoral trends (e.g. the majority of each minority group voting for Obama and Democrats; the shrinking percentage of the voting population that is white and male) and promote white privilege. As the only branch of the federal government currently under direct control of white men, the Supreme Court is the best, if not only, tool available to immediately effect whites’ racial politics. That Republicans and big business have long been bed fellows only makes the Supreme Court’s strategy of “freeing” corporate funds a more certain path for achieving white elites’ racist goals. The potential of a split in the capitalist class (i.e. capitalists funding both parties equally) is precluded by the strong overlaps between whiteness, corporate leadership, and the Republican Party.

In short, the timing of the ruling seems to be obviously racially motivated. Democrats have ruled before, but the combination of Black and Brown leadership, increased Black and Brown voting activity, decreased white voting potential, and sufficient non-corporate funding pools for campaigns was a new threat to which whites were compelled to respond immediately. Whites’ desperation and determination to act now are revealed in their naked over-reaching in the case at hand. Section I of the official “syllabus” (i.e. summary of the case, written by the Reporter of Decisions) of United Citizens details the convoluted logic the Court used to justify both acting immediately and overreaching. [[http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf]] The Court is explicit in arguing that they wanted to remove the restrictions on corporate funding before upcoming elections and that they wanted to ensure national impact. In the Syllabus, the Court’s political agenda is in the guise of protection of the First Amendment, but I have articulated reasons to believe the agenda is largely racial.

In my view, the Court’s ruling sets the stage for whites to continue their racist dominance after they lose majority status. Whites’ unjust enrichment (Feagin 2000) gives them a host of weapons with which to oppress people of color. Among the most potent of those weapons is liquid cash. Since Watergate, campaign laws have restricted corporate funding of candidates. Consequently, one of whites’ primary weapons was limited. The limitation was not crucial at the moment because 90 percent of the electorate was white (as of 1980). Therefore, whites’ control of government was unthreatened. However, the decrease in whites’ percentage of the electorate (now under 70%) places their continued electoral dominance in question.

The writing is on the wall for whites’ numerical majority. By and large, most Americans assume a one-to-one relationship between racial demographics and politico-economic dominance. I am constantly impressed by the consistency of undergraduates’ responses to demographic data. Often Latinos are encouraged and empowered by the data. In each of my research projects interviewing Latino students, almost all view their racial/ethnic group as the future dominant group in the U.S. In their version of the cohort effect, racism will “die out” as Latinos replace whites at the heads of major political and economic institutions. Whites usually respond with similar assumptions that their racial and social dominance depends entirely on their numbers. As their relative population falls, so too will their power (and vulnerability to charges of racism). Scholars vary on their takes, but some have adopted a tripartite model in which whites will continue to dominate by extending whiteness to include more groups and bestowing “honorary whiteness” on other groups. These two groups would then derive privileges by oppressing “collective Blacks” (e.g. African-descended peoples, Native Americans, and Southeast Asians).

I respond to all of these assumptions with my own prediction that whites’ primary strategy will be oligarchic in nature. Whites’ dominance of political, social, and economic institutions will far outlast their numerical majority. Whites will use their current majority to construct institutions in a way that ensures they can keep control even without majority status. From these powerful social locations, whites can continue to generate and reproduce a racial structure very similar to the contemporary one. White school boards and a disproportionately white academy will still control the content of education; white executives will still use formal and informal methods to reproduce economic inequality; whites will still have vested interests in segregated neighborhoods; whites will still use wars and other coercive tactics to exploit people of color’s land and labor. Just as the 13th amendment did not end slavery in practice, whites’ fall to plurality status will not change the racial status quo. Demographic majority status is not the basis of racial domination. Access to institutional power, material resources, and control of discourse are. Unleashing white executives to spend corporate dollars as they choose only serves to cement white people and white ideology at the levers of power in America.

So then, the Supreme Court’s decision has clear structural impacts that promote white supremacy for the foreseeable future. White executives will use corporate dollars to put in place laws, ideologies, and individuals to sustain the white supremacist status quo. These structural moves, however, will still take place in public arenas (e.g. elections, mass media). Consequently, whites will need justifications for taking their actions. They will have to convince the public to vote for their candidates and accept occasional visible legal changes. With these goals, white corporate executives will buy lots of ads and command much attention. What worries me is the probable content of those ads. American history teaches us that whites often use African Americans and other people of color as threats and scapegoats to justify oppression. Recently, the “welfare queen,” “crack baby,” and “Latin drug lord” were powerful images in the 1980s and 1990s that whites used to dismantle the social safety net for everyone. Whites have used images of hypersexual people of color (of all stripes) to justify everything from segregating “dangerous” Asian “sexual predators” to castrating and sterilizing Black men and women involuntarily (see Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body). Each of these projects, and innumerable others, served white elites’ corporate interests and were popularized via corporate actions and financial contributions. Whites are not finished with this type of business. Corporations will undoubtedly turn up the heat again and aggressively use racist imagery to motivate [white] masses to support corporate ends.

As people interested in racial justice, we must quickly consider how we can act now to address the serious racial threats white elites launched via the Supreme Court. Despite the electoral successes of 2008 and people of color’s growing electoral strength, we may currently be at the peak of our power to resist. With each passing day, whites are plotting ways to mobilize and use their considerable economic resources to reshape the government, influence our views, and frustrate all organized resistance efforts. Very soon, they will begin implementing those plans in earnest. Then we will have a very tough fight on our hands, indeed!

Celebrating MLK with Lessons from Obama’s Inauguration

A couple of articles have inspired me to add a brief word about this MLK Day. [see Boyce Watkins at TheGrio.com. http://www.thegrio.com/2010/01/would-martin-luther-king-support-president-obama.php] Hopefully, my words are in keeping with both the spirit and beliefs of Dr. King himself.

A year ago this week, I joined nearly 3 million people in the nation’s capital for the inauguration of President Obama. The entire week, especially inauguration day, encapsulated much of what I understand about the “civil rights” movement and Dr. King’s legacy. Being a child of the 1980s, my understanding of Dr. King and the movement is a contested conglomeration of familial discussions, white-frame “civil rights” history, and independent study. Like most people my age, I may well be more in touch with the myth than the memory of King.

The morning of the inauguration seemed to mirror King’s 1963 march. The crowd came from all over the country and braved extreme temperatures (if on opposite ends of the thermometer) with grace and enthusiasm. The millions on the Mall that morning were very conscious of the parallels between contemporary and 1963 events. I saw hundreds of middle-aged and elderly African Americans making their way to the service. Everyone was so appreciative of their presence and sacrifices. I am convinced no Black person over age 60 would have had to so much as touch the ground with her own feet if she did not want. It was truly a remarkable and unforgettable moment.

The event itself was a reflection of what we were all celebrating. In name, we were witnessing a ceremony centered on one man, Barack Obama. In truth, we were actually there to culminate and celebrate a massive, multiracial, cross-coalitional effort that we hoped would produce meaningful and lasting institutional change. Everyone cheered the new president, but we all shared stories of sustained local efforts to mobilize America’s oppressed classes. The mass effort and happy gathering reflect the hopeful imagery and activist narrative associated with Dr. King.

After partying with friends (and strangers), I decided it was time to go home. On the edge of one of D.C.’s many Black neighborhoods, I found myself in need of a cab to get home. After a few blocks, I reached a busy corner and tried hailing a cab. Despite the festive occasion, I received the same treatment we Black men (and women) receive all the time. Cab after cab passed me by and quickly picked up white passengers.

A young white woman, whose name I still do not know, witnessed the entire scene. The hour growing very late at this point, she confidently approached me with a brilliant offer. If I would use my status as Black and male to safely escort her to the next corner where she was meeting some friends, she would use her status as a white female to get me a cab. I quickly agreed. Within 30 seconds of connecting her with her friends, the white woman told me to follow her to a cab. She said she would hail the cab and when the cabbie opened the door for her (a taken for granted response), I was to jump in. Local law, apparently, prevented cabbies from evicting passengers without cause. Needless to say, she executed the plan flawlessly and got me home without at hitch.

The past year, like inauguration day itself, is a microcosm of Dr. King’s life and legacy. Having won symbolic federal victories and peering briefly over the mountain at the potential for meaningful change. We forgot that these victories required massive mobilization and sustained multiracial, cross-class effort. Instead, we allowed white media to attribute the work to one man, and we left that man to carry it out virtually alone. In life, Dr. King never labored alone. But the mythological legacy recast him as a great man, producing systemic change through personal will and determination alone. That myth, now thrown onto Obama, has left Obama to labor alone (to the extent he actually wants to). Obama’s isolation is evidenced by the general failure of the DNC to remobilize the massive campaign volunteers in support of the president’s agenda (see NYT article “Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama’s Grassroots” and The Washington Post’s “Obama’s Machine Sputters in Effort to Push Budget” for examples. Respective citations: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/health/policy/15ground.html and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501890.html).

Part of the reason the multiracial grassroots effort “sputters” also parallels King’s life and legacy. Despite the rhetoric of the times, neither the day-to-day structure of the United States remained then and now. My anecdote about getting a cab makes the case for the moment of Obama’s inauguration. As Dr. Watkins’s points out, “Dr. King was very unpopular at the time of his death” as he tried to realize the goals outlined in his speeches. Whites never fully embraced King in life. Their support for his impotent corpse and white-framed memory would not convince Dr. King.

Obama’s situation is similar. As Harvey and Feagin (2009) document, the majority of whites voted against now President Obama. A recent article in The New York Times (http://s.nyt.com/u/rkT) documents whites’ increasing opposition to Obama: “According to an analysis of New York Times and CBS News polls, Obama has the lowest approval rating among whites at the end of his first year in office than any president in the 30 years that The Times and CBS News have collected such data. And the gap between Obama and the others is significant, ranging from 10 to 36 percentage points.” Like Israelites in the wilderness, whites dream of Egypt, a plurality saying Obama is a worse president than George W. Bush.

This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I hope and pray we will learn the lessons Dr. King taught us. Regardless of what the majority of people say, progressive American rhetoric remains miles ahead of its deeds (see King’s brilliant sermon “Paul’s Letter to American Christians”) and gradualism is not the answer. Only collective action, creative and sustained civil disobedience, and mobilization of people of color and poor--for whom cooptation and/or cessation are not viable options—are the only potential means for achieving and sustaining real and systemic change.

Things I've Learned Over the Past Few Days

The race is not given to the swift...

Last week I “discovered” that the measure of a good professional academic is not the same as the measure of a good student. Being a good academic is about sustained effort; it is about labor.

We’ve been taught to believe there is an inverse relationship between talent and labor; the more talented a person is, the less s/he has to labor. The trick, then, has been to find a way to profit from one’s talents, which come easy. A labor intensive life indicated some failure to profit from one’s certain talents. Said failure may be due to ignorance of one’s talents and how to maximize them, some social impediment (e.g. racism, sexism), or some other barrier.

For me, that errant teaching has produced a great deal of frustration and self-doubt for some time now. There is any number of things that I simply did not pursue because deep-down I believed that if it did not come easy, it was not right. Fortunately, I have always been a very good student. Academia has always come easy to me, and I figured I was lucky federal laws mandating school attendance effectively forced me into my talent-field.

I advanced through high school and college mostly on talent alone. Somewhere in elementary school, I figured out that an 80% effort and a 100% effort earned me the same grade. Giving that extra 20% didn’t make any sense, so I stopped doing it. Now, that has to change. But the shift is not a matter of increasing my work ethic so much as figuring out the rules of the game. The extra 20% isn't in the extra thought like is was in grade school and college.  The extra 20% must go to post-creation labor.

Being a good academic is not about talent, at least not for me. Everyone here is talented. Being good at this is about polish. It is about bearing down and really exhausting every data source. It is about going back over my writing 4 or 5 times, taking others’ criticisms, and reworking every paragraph again to make every thought as clear and potent as possible. It is not about the ease of thought anymore. No one cares how long it took me to think of something or write it. They only care how meaningful and well-supported the thoughts are. My worth as an academic does not depend on my nerd-whit and debating skills; it depends on my humility and willingness to slowly work through every issue.

For years now, I have been increasingly stressed and frustrated because I did not think I measured up. I have honestly considered giving up and finding another line of work. If not for my friend, Daniel Delgado, bluntly defining my alternate plans as “self sabotage,” I would never have confronted this issue. Speed has been a large part of my self esteem. Now I realize that speed is of little use and importance. My career will be largely defined by my level of dedication to perfect each project and my courage to confront and incorporate criticism. Ironically, it seems I am among the last to learn these lessons. “God mocks proud mockers” (Proverbs 3:34).

Pray for me. I really have to a lot of growing to do.

Antiracist Action: Against Tea Party Antics in Minnesota

Below is a link to a piece from Racismreview.com, an anti-racist website run by my friends and colleagues, Drs. Joe R. Feagin and Jessie Daniels.  The story is about anti-racists who lampoon white nativists at a Tea Party rally.  Enjoy...

Antiracist Action: Against Tea Party Antics in Minnesota

Deferential Diplomacy

In my quotidian survey of popular newspapers and political blogs, I was struck by the headline at politico.com declaring President Obama's strategic "diplomacy of deference" and the subsequent critiques (article and image credits available at above link). At first, I assumed the criticisms were based on tacit white supremacist positions, unspoken and generally buried in the subconsciences of the unwitting. I was right about the cause, but wrong about the manifestation. The racial element remains thinly veiled (and I mean thinly), but the supremacist element is bold indeed. Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney, exemplifies the phenomenon:

But critics call Obama’s outstretched hand a miscalculation. Former vice president Cheney said: "There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness."

Did I miss something? Does every U.S. president pass into deity immediately following his inauguration? I was in Washington this past January, and I can tell you I saw nothing of the sort. Why then should American presidents not have to show respect to other national leaders (and frankly, every human being, in my view) via the cultural symbols dominant in that society?

You will notice that Emperor Akihito and President Obama are both simultaneously bowing and shaking hands. Indeed, the image appears to me to represent exactly the kind of mutual respect for one another and the larger societies each represents that is appropriate in diplomatic contexts.

Frankly, I believe Obama's status as the first Black president plays into the situation in myriad ways. First off, I believe that as a Black man, Obama has had to use a host of symbolic forms of respect and deference to others his entire life. Whites have undoubtedly demanded all sorts of indications of deference from him, especially in this "colorblind" era. Obama has skillfully learned to turn whites' racist demands into an asset for himself, which wheals now as second nature.

But more to the point, I believe Obama's racial status contributed to the development of his general orientation toward the world--one of respect and a sense of communal membership, rather than global domination. Part of the historical development of whiteness is the idea that whites have a manifest destiny; a destiny which has gone global over the years. Although it is taken for granted now that everyone issues handshakes as the common greeting, the handshake is actually a Eurocentric tradition. Whites made it universal through aggressive imperialism. Forcing others to use Western cultural symbols represented, and continues to represent, acquiescence to said imperialism.

Obama's decision to recognize indigenous symbols is a repudiation of America's history of white imperialism and racism. Critics of the president are manifesting deep emotional attachments to white supremacy. The degree of "controversy" and the characterization of Obama's moves as "deferential" (rather than respectful) and indicative of "weakness" illustrate the depth and ubiquity of white supremacy in the United States, among all social strata. The emotionally charged rhetoric indicates just how entrench white supremacy and its defenders are in this country.

This "controversy" is really just the white supremacist version of territorial animals' displays of aggression; white supremacists are basically flashing their teeth at us, hoping to intimidate us into giving into their racist demands. But like animals, their reaction is actually a revelation that they feel very threatened, even by something as simple as a bow. They hope brief displays will save them from an actual fight.

As anti-racists, we must accurately recognize the meanings in critics' reactions and respond accordingly. Now is the time to resist. As the president has modeled, just purposing to demonstrate respect and equality is an effective means of attacking white supremacy. We can all do that. Let us support our president in his effort to reestablish the United States as one of many global players, rather than a resented global bully. Let us think globally and act locally. We should make a special effort to learn and use non-Western/white symbols to demonstrate respect.

[[This final paragraph is largely my first attempt to address an issue in critical race studies, and sociology generally. We diagnose social ills extremely well, but our prescriptions for resolution are very limited and under theorized. Like Marx, I believe the tools of revolution exist within every social structure. We only need to recognize them and be willing to use them. Consequently, I am putting more effort to suggesting a range of options and actions we can take to combat social injustices wherever we find them. Massive social movements are wonderful and necessary for some tasks, but we have waited for the movement too long. Not all issues are best addressed by immediate mobilizations. Let's keep trying whatever we can until we find what we can do now that works. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and ideas about resistance.]]