On Mon, 7 May 2008, Adolph Reed was quoted as saying
> [Obama's] political repertoire has always included the repugnant
> stratagem of using connection with black audiences in exactly the same
> way Bill Clinton did -- i.e., getting props both for emoting with the
> black crowd and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming "tough
> love" message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor
> black communities. Because he's able to claim racial insider standing,
> he actually goes beyond Clinton and rehearses the scurrilous and
> ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made infamous.
To which shag responded, focussing on the last sentence:
> Which is why I'm flummoxed as to why on earth Michael Eric Dyson
> supports Obama.
Because, as shag later elaborated:
> dyson wrote an entire book criticizing cosby and the black middle class
> for spewing the claptrap obama does. for him to support obama without
> ever once addressing that is more than a little troubling.
That's perfectly incisive question. And the answer is that Adolph is not being at all fair here. He's exaggerating what Obama says to the point of distortion. And when he discusses it's policy implications, he assumes the worst possible outcome as if it were the only possible outcome. Dyson has fairer view of what Obama says, and his hope of what might happen in this policy sphere if Obama got elected -- which is the opposite of Adolph's expectation -- is perfectly justifiable based on what Obama says. Adolph might in the end turn out to be right, of course; but it's not a big puzzle why Dyson thinks differently and it is nowise a betrayal of what he's said elsewhere.
IMHO, the fullest expression of Obama's position on any given subject is usually found in _The Audacity of Hope_ which I think is basically the speech he would give if we still did things as in the 19th century and he could talk for five hours straight. The so I think the best place to look for his full position on race in all its nuances is the chapter in that book entitled race. And the passage bears most on this particular question of the sogenannte underclass is pp. 249-259, which I will be glad to pdf if anyone wants to read it and can't get access to the book.
In there you'll see that Adolph is half right, insofar as Obama does approvingly cite that "In private -- around kitchen tables, in barbershops, and after church -- black folks can often be heard bemoaning the eroding work ethic, inadequate parenting, and declining sexual mores with a fervor that would make the Heritage Foundation proud."
But he also continues:
<quote>
What you won't hear, though, are blacks using such terms as "predator" in describing a young gang member, or "underclass" in describing mothers on welfare -- language that divides the world between those who are worth of our concern and those who are not. For black Americans, such separation from the poor is never an option, and not just because of the color of our skin -- and the conclusions the larger society draws from our color -- makes all of us only as free, only as respected, as the least of us.
It's also because blacks know the back story to the inner city's dysfunction....[a history which he summarizes from the great migration through deindustrialization, and then continues]...
In other words, African Americans understand that culture matters but that culture is shaped by circumstance. We know that many in the inner city are trapped by their own self-destructive behaviors but that those behaviors are not innate. And because of that knowledge, the black community remains convinced that if America finds its will to do so, then circumstances for those trapped in the inner city can be changed, individual attitudes among the poor will change in kind, and the damage can gradually be undone, if not for this generation then at least for the next.
<unquote>
So in the first place, that's not the Cosby shtick. It's half that, but it's also half something very different. And the idea that Obama's shtick is worse than Clinton or Cosby, that it goes "beyond" them -- I'm afraid that seems like exactly the kind of antiobamanian excess I've mentioned before: someone getting carried away by a negative flight of rhetoric just as obamanians get carried away with their positive flights.
This then brings us to the policy question, which is a completely open question, because Obama's got no professional record beyond the amateur leagues. If you read those pages I listed above in _Audacity_, and esp. 256-259, you'll see two different programs outlined one after the other. He starts with all the little victorian-sounding programs that aim at improving moral behavior (like programs to reduce teen pregancy). And then he ends ("Finally,..") with a page-long vision of a massive public jobs program. He says that basically the only way you can instill work habits in kids who never had them, who went from truancy to drugs to jail, is to give them jobs that pay and help them keep them. And the market won't do that, so the government will have to. Or rather, he put it in the subjunctive: the government "could" do this, and wouldn't it be inspiring.
Now you can read that three ways: (1) the "finally" part at the end is the main part; (2) he cares equally about both parts; and (3) the finally part at the end is an afterthought, a pious wish perfuming the first part. Basically IIUC correctly, Adolph believes (3) and Dyson believes mainly (1).
Now Adolph can certainly defend that position, and not merely on the general principle that you'll never go broke betting on disappointment. He could certainly argue that given the kind of economic advisors Obama has (like Austin Goolsbee) the odds are that even at best this vision of government providing jobs would probably turn out to be a set of wonky micro subsidies to small businesses, the kind that on paper seem clever and in reality turn out to be yet another microweight boondoggle.
Furthermore Adolph could and probably would cite the precedent of Bill Clinton. Clinton's campaign to "change welfare as we know" was a combination of carrot and stick that also drew from both these different ways of framing the problem. Along with kicking people off the roles, Clinton also spoke moving and at length about how this wasn't enough, about how poor mothers need child care and health care and education and training. Except that in the process of passing it through Congress, all of that good stuff was removed with raising much of a squeal from him and in the end all that was left was the stick.
I have a feeling that's exactly what Adolph using as a touchstone, because, to his credit, Adolph is one of the foremost public intellectuals who not only denounced that deal at the time, but who still keep bringing it up a decade later, and inserting it into all sorts of debates after even else has forgotten most of the details, and who can still get fired up about the minute details which he still has ready to hand in his head as if it happened yesterday.
And it's not merely an example he's taken personally to heart, he also has good justification in what Obama says. If you read the passage I keep citing, you'll see on page 256 that Obama praises the abolition of AFDC as a good thing in classical Clintonian (and originally neoconservative) terms, that it was a bad program because it sapped initiative and self-respect and so it's abolition was a step up. And the first thing he praises when he addresses how to remedy things is Clinton's EITC which, while better than a stick in the eye, both at the time and now, is exactly the kind of government that isn't a jobs program and which can't fix market failures because its essence is to be market conforming.
So is a perfectly fair enough argument as far as it goes, and like I said, you never go broke in politics betting the outcome will be shitty. But still and all, it's not fair to assert that that's the only way Obama's ambivalent rhetoric can work out. There are other possibilities. Slim perhaps -- but then, aren't chances for anything good every happening as the result of a presidential choice always slim?
If we base ourself simply in what Obama says, Dyson has just as much ground for his hope that things will turn out going in the other direction. I think he would probably say that this moral discourse that appals Adolphs appeals to most Americans, both black and white, because that's how most of us think in real life: that despite whatever the social causes are, individuals are still responsible for their personal failings, and somehow that has to be noted. And that combining that rhetoric with the discourse of social causes is the only way to sell a program based on the latter in this day and age. That it's the only way to convince people to do anything New Deal in our present conjuncture when the New Frontier faith is dead.
And lastly, I think Dyson would argue that Obama's rhetorical ability; his signature theme of Unity; and his race identification; are all things unique to him that give him at least the capacity to invoke a "we" that no other president has even been able to invoke -- and that finally assimilating poor black people into the national "we" for the first time in American history is the essential missing step if we're ever going to mobilize the country even a little bit on applying real money and effort to solving the problems of the inner cities as if it was "our" problem.
He might also point out that there really isn't much downside this time around -- that where with Clinton it was a combination of carrot and stick, and in the end all they mostly got was stick, with Obama even in the worst case there's no stick involved. If all we got was in the end is teenage girls being forced to listen to lectures in health class, it'll be a waste of time, but it won't make anyone worse off. So the stakes are not the same. It's not downside vs. upside -- it's all upside. The worst we'll get is nothing.
Dyson has also said that he's met O and feels he really cares about this stuff on the same kind of personal and intuitive grounds that makes Adolph think O's a big poseur. Having never met the man myself, I can't say, and I can't choose between these two impressions. Adolph, for all his brilliant qualities, seems to relish a well-worn prejudice against black bourgeoisie in general and buppies in particular; and Dyson by contrast seems almost professionaly dedicated to giving the benefit of the doubt to black youngsters in general. So for me that ground's a wash.
Lastly, FWIW, Dyson would say -- and here I'm on firm ground because I've heard him say it -- that if in the end none of what he hopes comes true, he (Dyson) will kick Obama's ass just like he'd kick anybody else's that was President.
Apropos, you can hear him say this and other things in the following 6 minute youtube of Dyson talking about Obama and Clinton at Tavis Smiley's _State of the Black Nation_ conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvZV-Ks5Zu0&feature=related
which people might enjoy on general grounds if they haven't seen it before. Dyson's shtick of combining hip-hop, preacher, comedic and academic performative mannerisms all at once can interesting and enjoyable if you're in the mood, and with this audience he is in full spate.
Michael