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

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 16:23:53 PDT 2009


shag wrote:


> I was reminded that Dwayne mentioned a great
> interview on Doug's show awhile ago, in which the scholar, Preston Smith,
> argued that the hopes and dreams of a faction of black folk is in what
> Preston calls "racial democracy" which he counterposes to "social
> democracy. Basically, Smith is provided an historical sociology of what
> Adolph Reed calls, IIRC, assimilationist black nationalism. (someone
> correct me on that. I think that's his term.)
>

I think this has usually been the dominant ideology among American blacks. It's also been the dominant ideology among every immigrant group. Hence the U.S. model of integration: Every ethnic group aspires to become an upstanding pillar of American capitalist individualism, in return for which they get a parade, maybe a holiday, ritual pandering from local politicians, etc. What the French call communitarisme. Blacks have increasingly embraced this model, hence their strong belief in individual opportunity and success, as evinced by the Pew poll. For most of US history, this has been a rigged game for blacks since what every other ethnic group wanted to "assimilate" into was a society/culture whose fundamental ideology was based in part on stigmatizing blacks. But there's been some real change in this since the 1960's, so maybe that model is over with and assimilationist black nationalism has finally come into its own.

SA



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