Bob Dylan meet Noel Ignatiev/Ignatin. [DOC] Marxism and White Skin Privilege File Format: Microsoft Word 2000 - View as HTML Marxism and White Skin Privilege. References. ... Now we come to some of the other major issues in the 'white skin privilege' approach of RT. ... http://www.endpage.com/Archives/Subversive_Texts/ Wright_C/Marxism_and_White_Skin_Priv.doc
DAILY EXPRESS Rebel Yelp by Jonathan Chait
Only at TNR Online | Post date 11.07.03
E-mail this article
In 1984 Michael Kinsley famously wrote that a gaffe occurs "not when a politician lies but when he tells the truth." This line has been quoted endlessly since. But the more insightful part of the same column was Kinsley's observation that, to become a gaffe, "the subject matter should be trivial." The column drew a comparison between political journalism and literary deconstructionism. "The ideal 'text' for political journalists to chew on," he wrote, "is an episode of no real meaning or importance--such as a small joke about New Jersey--which can then be analyzed without distraction exclusively in terms of its likely effect on the campaign."
The furor over Howard Dean's comments about the Confederate flag offers a perfect illustration of this dynamic. Sometimes politicians send out subtle signals that are meant to attract racists to their side--think of George W. Bush going to Bob Jones University or Mississippi Governor elect Haley Barbour meeting with the Conservative Citizens Councils. But this is obviously not one of those instances. No sane person believes that Dean approves of the Confederate flag or that he said anything that could be reasonably construed as such. Certainly no sane person thinks Dean is a racist. Everyone agrees, rather, that the problem is Dean's failure to apologize. Well, if he didn't say anything wrong in the first place, why should he apologize? In classic fashion, the story has become Dean's failure to handle the story. Reporters and pundits created the dynamic they're purporting to analyze.
If you step back from the situation for a moment, the notion of Howard Dean as a closet Confederacy sympathizer is about the most ridiculous subtext for a scandal you can imagine. It's as if Dennis Kucinich were accused of being a lackey of the big defense contractors. Dean's Confederate flag riff is actually notable for being a wildly unconvincing attempt to persuade people that, if nominated, he could carry some Southern states. As Dean said in a speech to the Democratic National Committee last February:
"White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either, and their kids need better schools too!"
So Dean's plan is to get poor Southern whites to vote their economic interests rather than their cultural predilections. How simple! Why hasn't somebody else thought of that idea? Oh wait, that's right: Everybody has thought of that idea.
The notion that the Southern economic elite try to divide the populace along racial rather than economic lines goes back around 400 years. Even though most southern whites didn't own slaves, a majority of them supported the institution. This analysis is familiar to anybody with a high school- level understanding of American history--or, failing that, anybody who's ever heard the 1964 Bob Dylan song, "Only a Pawn in Their Game":
A South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used it is plain For the politician's gain As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train But it ain't him to blame He's only a pawn in their game.
As it turns out, forging that economic coalition is a good deal more difficult than it sounds. The only success liberals have enjoyed has come when they've found candidates like Bill Clinton, who distanced himself from cultural liberalism (on issues like crime and welfare, for instance) to convince Southern whites that he was more conservative than the national Democratic Party.
It would be a massive understatement to say that Dean is not ideally positioned to replicate this strategy. His aggressive secularism, association with civil unions, and antiwar stance all make him culturally anathema in the South. This is one of the many, many reasons Dean would be squashed like a bug in the general election if nominated: Bush could take the South for granted, and concentrate all his resources on battleground states like Pennsylvania. Thus Dean's bold assertion that he would win the South because he would concentrate on economic issues, as if liberals haven't been trying that for decades.
What's alarming here is not that Dean wants to win votes from guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. It's that he thinks he actually can.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at TNR.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030728&s=chait072803
-- Michael Pugliese