[lbo-talk] Adolph Reed's latest

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu May 8 10:57:59 PDT 2008


On Thu, 8 May 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:


> [Nice touch, getting Manning Marable to do the defensive work here. But
> this is typical Obama - water it down, try to have it both ways. But
> there's a lot of Cosby in this.]

Yeah, there's a lot, but you're missing the whole point here, or more like 3 points, all of which Manning makes pretty well:

1) The vital diffference is whether this call-out stuff is a substitute for structural analysis -- and with Obama it clearly is not. It's a both/and, not an either/or. There's no programmatic downside to it. It's explicitly *not* a means to divide people into the deserving and the undeserving (explicitly in that he uses exactly those terms in his stump speech). On the contrary, it's a means of making the structural recommendations sound more serious and more salable precisely because no one can accuse him of being a bleeding heart liberal;

2) This call-out stuff is incredibly popular in the black community. Cosby himself is up there with Oprah as the blacks tell pollsters they most respect (both above Obama). This speech of his now like a rock concert he's taking on a tour in parallel.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article on Cosby for the Atlantic called "This is How We Lost to the White Man." But he then gave a fascinating interview a couple of days ago on the subject where he revealed that even he chuckled at this line of talk -- including at the poundcake joke, which I thought was beyond the pale. Well, it's turns out it is beyond the pale, but in a different sense: it's a joke white people can't hear because they've never felt embarasssed and embarassed to be embarassed about exactly this thing. I recommend it, it was an ear opener to me:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/02/midmorning1/

3) So essentially there's no reason for Obama to give this up. It's popular with the vast majority of blacks; it's popular with non-liberal whites *for completely different reasons* from a completely different perspective (what Ta-Nehisis Coates calls the "double play"); and, most importantly, it's meant to -- and there's no reason to think it can't -- advance his ability to pass strutural programs to help the ghetto. It's not being used to advance punitive programs. He's using it in the opposite way from the way every previous white man has used it. And it's being received in the black community in the opposite way from the way every previous white man has used it.

4) Authenticity and perspective. As Marable sez, it's different when Clinton says it and when Obama says it. One sez it from within, one sez it from without. This is identity politics, there's no two ways about that.

This whole shtick is like the word n-word, which has an entirely different meaning and reception depending depending on who's saying it. And like the word n-word, it makes white liberals like you and me uncomfortable because we can't say it. Because for us it's a taboo. Because if we said it -- we who fail the "dinner with five black families rule" -- it would be so wrong, and we would so ashamed of ourselves, we cringe to hear it and wish no one would.

I totally sympathize with that feeling. I have that feeling. I wish this shtick didn't exist. It makes me uncomfortable as hell. I hate all the white people who like it. I wish there were no sensible black people who did. I would never, ever say it.

But the way's Obama's deploying it -- the combination of this shtick with a strutural analysis, and the identification from within -- does not seem to me to be a bad thing for America despite the fact it makes me cringe.

I mean, what's the problem we're worried about here -- that he's pandering to racists? It's not like after he's gone we're going to have to worry that he made the cryto-racist version of this shtick more respectable among white people. It can't get any more respectable. Underclass and predator are terms you find in social science (gag). This shtick has been here literally since before slavery ended. (I read it in an 1823 New York newspaper at the Slavery in New York exhibition). It's not going anyway soon.

And in the meantime, when he says it, it's not a crypto-racist shtick. And it's not an excuse to ignore the structural problems. Rather it's the opposite, a means of building support for structural approaches.

Or at least that's how he's presenting, and IMHO it's a plausible argument. Again, he has no real record, I have no idea what he'll really do, and maybe I'm wrong. But all we've got to go on so far is his presentation. And to appreciate that shtick, you've got to listen to both sides of it. If you extract the one half, and then abstract from the fact that it's a black guy saying it, you end up with something very distasteful -- but which isn't what exists.

Michael



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