>>> "Joseph Catron"
Charles Brown wrote:
> It's an anti-fascist leading indicator when a
> bunch of white Americans vote for a Black person. I mean a normal
Black
> person, not Condeleeza Rice that type.
Let me get this straight: A woman raised by a black schoolteacher and a black minister (who, IIRC, moonlit as a school guidance counselor) in Birmingham has less claim to her race than a man with exactly one month of exposure to the African side of his family, who was otherwise raised exclusively by affluent whites and Indonesians?
^^^^^^ CB: You should read what I said in the context of the thread. I was writing fast, and a more precise usage would be a "modal Black voter" or "modal Black American in politics". I'm not even thinking about "Black personal authenticity". I'm talking about electoral politics.
In fact that's not fully precise since the modal Black person doesn't vote. Most Black people don't vote. The turn out at most elections in Detroit is around 30%.
^^^^^^
I shy away from the recurring debate over the "authenticity" of Obama's blackness, because it's none of my business and I don't care.
But if you're seriously arguing that Obama's blackness is "realer" than Rice's simply because you marginally prefer the former's politics, I'm going to have to stick my nose in long enough to object.
^^^^^ CB: Obama's politics are way more prevalent in the Black community than Rice's politics. Rice's politics are an extreme outlier in the Black community. Most Black people don't even vote. But of those who vote, the overwhelming majority vote Democrat.
Actually, in a way, my politics are an extreme outlier among Black people, less common than Rice's. There are probably fewer Black Communists or socialists than there are Black Republicans. However, in some ways my politics are more typical. In some ways, I have more in common with the non-voters who are the majority.
However, I am authentically Black ( smile).
Black Power ! Black is Beautiful !
But the point I was making about Rice or Clarence Thomas was as an exception to what I said in response to what Carrol Cox said about Obama's campaign. Cox said that the Obama "phenom" had the characteristics of what an American fascist movement would look like. I said that was wrong, because an American fascist movement wouldn't have a lot of white people supporting a Black person as its leader. It would have to be too racist to have a Black leader. Then I thought to make an exception if that leader was a Black racist or right-winger. So I gave Rice as an example - a non-normal or non-modal Black political personality. That was just a thought to cover some extreme exception, or whatever. When I think about it more, I don't even think an American fascist movement would have Rice or Clarence Thomas as its leader. That's how central racism would have to be to an American fascist movement.