[lbo-talk] Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency

Philip Pilkington pilkingtonphil at gmail.com
Wed Apr 1 07:38:27 PDT 2009


On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


>
> I used to subscribe to this line of argument, but now I think it is
> willfull and a bit perverse (in the nonmoral sense of the term, of course).
>
> The existence of a (relatively) large black middle class has changed
> nothing -- __except for the fact of the (relatively) large black middle
> class itself__. Which is rather a big change. Now if you are a certain type
> of person you may guide everything according to the lodestone of Destroying
> the Capitalist Enemy this may be a mere sideshow, but the overwhelming
> majority of people in the universe do not think this way, being sane.
>
> BTW I'm about 99% sure that King would have voted for Obama. ;)
>

Bit of a problem there though.

First of all, if you took my premises seriously your argument would, ironically enough, be racist. It would assume that the existence of a black middle-class is due to affirmative action and not through the hard work and struggles of many black people to go to university, assert themselves socially etc. That was actually the variant I gave for the "racist" as opposed to the "progressive" ideology. I'm not actually accusing you of subscribing to this, you may have simply not thought through what you were implying, but if you were to take your argument as a criticism of mine this is where it would lead.

Secondly, I was putting forward a political argument for today, I wasn't casting a judgement on the politics of yesterday. Certain approaches may have worked in the past but these may have stagnated today. Incidentally, this has nothing to do with Capitalist Enemies - I don't think I've ever waived any black Anarchist flags around here - this has to do with the observation that blacks in the US still suffer from massive ghettoisation even though the State no longer actually pursues it. If King were alive today I'm sure he'd be more concerned about this than about Obama.

By the way, those who do go around lauding Obama, a question: did you do the same thing when Rice was announced Secretary of State? Or did you focus more so on the important things, like her approach to policy. I'm not sure the Obama phenomenon is as simple as people like to think. All this "hope" stuff has gotten to people in my opinion, and not just in the US.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list