You may be right about many leftists taking the "Black community" for granted, but your comments about us designating Bubba "an honorary Black man" are way off the mark. Other than a few wealthy Black celebs, much of the Black religious establishment who were simply looking for some instant cash for their political machines, and the press hounds of the DLC and Jim Carville, very few Black folk that I have seen see Clinton as anything quite so "honorary". Maybe you have missed his support for the GOP welfare "reform" bill; or his stance against balancing the uneven sentencing for crack and powder cocaine; or his pandering to the hard-hats on the necessity of imposing severe work requirements on poor people, most of whom are disapprotionally Black; or his rope-a-dope civil rights commission which managed to say a lot of neat things about how we all should get along yet managed no real solutions to the real problems of racism and discrimination. (And do the names Joycelyn Eld
er s and Lani Guinier ring a bell with you either???) If there was any "core support" for Clinton among Black folk, in my view it was mostly generated by the very same "lesser evil" mantra that IMHO has trapped progressive folk in the Republicrat plantation for a long time....and by the fear of the Republicans as well that was generated by Clinton's impeachment.
As to your comments about the Black church and their fawning support for Clinton and the Democrats: my guess is that the Black church will support whomever will feed them the gravy to maintain their fiefdoms. Plus, Black evangelicals have become more open to conservatives -- both Democrats (see Diane Magette in Georgia) and Republicans (thanks to Dubya's "faith-based initiatives and the efforts of the Christian Coalition, never mind the increased power of Black Muslims) -- due to their natural social and sexual conservatism. If Nathan believes that leftists should embrace such conservatism as a means of helping the Democrats get back the White House and Congress, that's his belief; those of us who believe that leftists should resist pandering to such issues and leave them to the Right where they belong have a different plan of success.
And finally....I didn't know that it was the duty of WBAI or any "community-based" radio station to sacrifice their political principles just to pander to any particular group. Just because some Black people go to church and vote Democratic does not make them progressive....in fact, some Black Democrats are quite conservative, even reactionary. (I could give you examples from my own family.) I guess that I, as a secular, progressive independent Black man whose views on sexuality are the exact opposite of the typical religious Black Democrat, would have no place in Nathan's desired community???
But then again, since Nathan is the designated booster of the Democratic party here in this list, he is perfectly free to tell us why we should once again trust them with our rights and future.
The only "moral general problem" that I see is in Nathan's continuous pimping of a failed neoliberalism and a failed political party.
Anthony
--
On Tue, 3 Dec 2002 17:17:31
Nathan Newman wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>>go into those communities, get programmers, give them
>>training, see what they want to do. Engage in a process of bringing
>>people aboard. Community radio is developing
>>an audience and an interaction in a community.
>
>-I'm not sure I buy this. WBAI is full of this sort of talk these days
>- we need to bring in voices from the "community." I never know what
>-this means - what *is* the community? It's usually defined
>-demographically, if it's defined at all. But for these purposes, the
>-"black community" largely excludes that portion of the black
>-population that votes Democratic and goes to church.
>
>Which while Doug wants to argue the soft elitist argument that "the people"
>don't know what good for them, he does emphasize a moral general problem
>with the Left, that when they don't participate seriously in the Democratic
>Party or in other mainstream liberal organizations, they are ignoring "the
>community" far more dramatically than the liberals they usually dis.
>
>Frankly, the average Democratic politician spends far more time going to
>black community events (or any other kind of community event) than the left
>activists who spend most of their time telling "the community" to come to
>THEIR LEFT EVENTS and to THEIR LEFT RALLIES. It may drive lefties to
>apoplexy but the fact remains that Clinton is considered an "honorary black"
>(with the official awards to show for it now) while left white heros are
>considerly pale and stale. Folks may write it off as duping his audiences,
>but the fact was that he showed up, time after time, at black churches and
>other gatherings for decades. As they say, showing up is half of life.
>
>I remember going to a Clinton rally back in 1996 in Oakland, an event that
>was dominated by a far more racially diverse crowd than I saw at most left
>rallies even in Oakland. While waiting in line I met a nice middle-aged
>black woman who was there as part of a church choir for the event, who
>spontaneously gushed to me about how great Clinton was and how suspicious
>she was of Jesse Jackson. A couple of interesting points there-- the black
>churches are some of the best media networks in the country and folks like
>Clinton use them, where the Left doesn't even try to bother. (Also not
>mentioned in this discussion is the network of black community newspapers).
>And when a Dem politician holds an event, he knows to invite the choir to
>participate, because rather than preach to the choir, he uses the choir to
>bring the rest of the congregation with them.
>
>Folks talk about the overwhelming force of the media, but the dramatically
>different views of the black community on Clinton-- hard core support
>despite relentless media attacks -- shows that alternative community
>information networks are quite powerful.
>
>The left fails to penetrate the media attacks because it is so piss-poor at
>establishing its own information outreach because it spends its time
>building rallies who live and breathe mainstream media coverage. To repeat,
>having all those rally participants spend the same amout of time going out
>to community events to raise the same issues would have been a far better
>use of the time and money invested.
>
>When the same people who advocate useless time-wasting mass rallies are also
>complaining about how they can't penetrate the conservative media, I got to
>ask when will they finally see the link?
>
>-- Nathan Newman
>
>
>
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