[lbo-talk] Adolph Reed on the politics of the crisis

[James Straub]

>
I wonder why African-Americans are supporting Obama, then?  At a  
greater rate than supported Jesse Jackson or any other politician  
since?  When I was helping out with an SEIU campaign in LA this  
summer, I asked one of my fellow organizers--- a queer black woman in  
her late 20s with a background in radical politics--- what she thought  
about the things Obama's said on this topic.  Her response was, "He's  
not saying anything working-class black people aren't saying to each  
other, in churches and at home. If another politician were to say  
those things, people would be angry. But because of his background,  
alot of people are actually kind of happy to hear a mainstream  
politician they don't have to oppose saying this kind of thing."

I agree that rhetoric about the 'black underclass' is right-wing  
messaging 101. But there are also real issues at play in that  
community, and whether they get examined by Obama or the Wire of  
Julius Wilson or Dyson, my impression is that the black community has  
mixed feelings about this stuff.  A ton of black voters in  
Philadelphia voted for Micahel Nutter over Chaka Fatah because Nutter  
promised to start a stop and frisk cop policy that would obviously  
profile young black men, because the homicide rate is so high between  
young black men that people are desperate to support anything that  
gets rid of some of the plethora of handguns.  The surge in violence  
in the hood, especially in declining cities, isn't imaginary, and it  
kills more poor young men than police brutality does by a huge factor.  
My housemate Brian (a kitchen worker from a teamster family who has no  
health insurance) was mugged by a couple corner boys the other night,  
and after knocking him out they still beat him while he was  
unconscious, till he was unrecognizably disfigured.  The same night  
another friend of mine in Cinci was mugged and pistol-whipped until  
she lost a bunch of teeth. The black folks over 30 on the block are  
really pretty outspoken about the extremes the violence has been  
getting to lately.  Some 14 year olds on this street somehow got some  
semi-automatic pistols, and they've been using them to play 'tag' from  
opposite sides of the street.

Certainly, I myself would support the sorts of social measures a  
scholar like Elijah Anderson proposes, instead of Nutter's stop and  
frisk program and Obama's opportunistic focus on poor blacks' supposed  
failings of responsibility.  But I think the attitudes reflected by  
Obama's comments on this subject are more complex than Adolph Reed's  
anti-Obama narrative can acknowledge.


>
>>
>>
>> Obama has repeated the right wing talking points on "personal
>> responsibility", which are absolute garbage, on many occasions.
>> This is an attack on all poor people and Reed is accurate on this  
>> point.
>>
>> John Thornton
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> Why? How many poor people do you know who never make dumb decisions,  
> even if
> the biggest dumb decision is to believe all the crap being fed to  
> them about
> how their situation is all their own fault?