Joe Vogel wrote a comment on my last post. This is my response to him that is also a partial response to election night.
Joe,
The final triumph of a white corporate power structure is to get a minority face to front for the continued racism of the white corporate power structure. The powerful know that the image of equality–the face of it–will have such a powerful affect on people that they won’t even think to ask about real equality.
Real solidarity means solidarity with the disenfranchised (racially and economically) no matter what. This includes solidarity against an aesthetic equality that has no basis in the real political economy. Real solidarity is not narrow, it is expansive. It’s echo chamber is the echo chamber of history. If it is purist, it is purist in only one thing: it will not abide the suffering of the weak at the hands of the powerful.
I do not believe Blacks won on November 4th, and so I will not rejoice. I believe the corporate power structure won. It won in several different ways. It won by manipulating racial despair for its own gain. It convinced millions of people, black and white, that they were witnessing a revolution. From all the available evidence, however, they were not. Whether you choose to look at advisers, contributors, or Obama’s own stated goals and policies, the disenfranchised were not getting the People’s President. You want me to say that they were, and rejoice alongside you. But I cannot and do not believe that, and so I won’t.
I believe that November 4th was an unprecedented triumph for brand democracy, a politics that trades the actuality of equality and revolution for its images. It is not surprising, then, that the architects of brand revolution used the ultimate political aesthetic–a cosmetic Blackness–to cover the advance of a structural and economic racism.
But the final victory is even more insidious. With the ascendancy of the first Black men to the presidency, the corporatists can now silence their critics by calling them racists. By putting a Black man between themselves and their crimes, they have virtually ensured themselves immunity from critique and breathed new life into a racist system that might otherwise have imploded.
It is a victory we should know well: take a country in crisis; whip them into an angry frenzy; cunningly divide the structural (economic) problem from the political solution and offer a highly-visible aesthetic antidote that in no way threatens the powers that be. We saw this in South Africa, when the corporatists used highly-visible political freedoms for Blacks to distract people from a continued policy of less-visible but devastating economic racism. And what was the result? A politically “free” South Africa that, for minorities, is no more free than before.
But we don’t want to learn from history.
When Ralph Nader appeared on Fox News, he used the phrase ‘Uncle Tom’. This is seen as a racist term. In fact, the term is used to criticize the white power structure. It is used pejoratively precisely because it sees Black subservience to a white power structure as deplorable and traitorous to Blacks as a whole. To quote from the Wikipedia definition, it is a term “used to describe black people whose political views or allegiances are considered by their critics as detrimental to blacks as a group.” The point of using the phrase is to criticize those whose opportunisim has led them to abandon their solidarity with the disenfranchised. In other words, it means exactly what Nader was suggesting, which was this: that Barack Obama has opportunistically allied himself with a largely white corpocracy at the expense of solidarity with the Blacks he has consistently claimed to represent and understand. The fact that this duplicity occurs under the banner of “unity,” “post-racialism,” and a “historical Black candidacy” is no accident. Those are the tools used by the powerful to distract the people from what they are losing.
All this should be obvious, unless you have come to believe that we have conquered structual racism and now need only to fight the battle against racial epithets. Americans’ response to Obama’s candidacy, along with their subsequent responses to Nader’s comments, indicates the depth of their delusion. They are willing to flay Nader relentlessy for making a racist statement, but they rejoice in the streets in the name of a Black candidate who–according to his own stated policies–will make people of color miserable all over the globe. All this, and you have the audacity to tell me that it is my job to drop my fight and join with you in happy delusion–that I must be racist or condescending or purist or something worse if I cannot abandon my principles to worship an image.
I am sorry. My thoughts are with Iraqis who will wake up tomorrow to more bombs. My thoughts are with Afghanis who will see an escalated war and more bloody wedding parties. My thoughts are with Palestinians who will see more walls and less food. My thoughts are with Mexican farmers who will starve for NAFTA’s sake. My thoughts are with the species that suffer when we drill them from their homes. My thoughts are with the thousands of people who will get sick and die because they can’t afford healthcare, and with the immigrants who do our work and receive only our slanders. If you can give me a reason for my thoughts to be elsewhere, let me know. Until then, I will not look away.
As for the Black community who supports Obama, I can only quote Malcom X: “You don’t stab a man in the back nine inches and pull it out six inches and say you’re making progress.” Or I could quote Martin Luther King, despite his posterity: “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies… A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ …The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
People always thought Malcom X went to far. Now we praise him. But what we don’t remember is that many people thought King had gone too far. They asked him to stop pushing it, to stop taking his critiques to their natural frontiers. They asked him to settle down and work with more moderate groups. But he wouldn’t. And that’s exactly why I admire him and exactly why I don’t admire Barack Obama. (I am sure you will say Obama is against wars. But Obama, in his own words, is only against “dumb” wars. Martin Luther King had the courage to say that all wars are stupid, and to connect war with a deeper economic imperialism. If Obama did these things, I would be with you in the streets. But he does not.)
I don’t pretend to know more about Black people than they know about themselves. But I will speak up when I think that any group’s despair is being manipulated so that the powerful can continue to harm, and that is precisely what I think is happening. I am not suggesting that Black people are not capable of thinking hard about their vote. I am suggesting that any self-identified group, particularly if they have suffered a good deal, is in danger of confusing that history of suffering with the intoxication of great change. I say this as a Mormon who sat and watched as droves of “my people” voted for a Mormon candidate who directly threatened the peaceful principles of their religion.
I would say that I believe we will look back in sorrow and regret on this election. The reality, however, is we won’t. Barack Obama will probably succeed at getting us to slide center a bit. He will not correct gross wrongs, or question the fundamental sociopathology of the modern nation-state. He will simply get us back to the pre-Bush years, in which our excesses were tidily contained in the philosophies that justified them and most people were politically bovine and satisfied. I am sure that most will look back on Obama’s presidency as a great success, a second Camelot of Kennedy-esque proportions. But that is no comfort to me precisely because I fear that the majority of people–political commentators and philosophers above all–are comfortable with an astounding degree of violence and terror. The problem with Bush was that he pushed the natural terror of the State out of invisibility–which it depends on–and into the light. If we can push it back so we do not have to see it, most of us will move on. And Barack Obama will help us do that. But I will not move on, and I hope other won’t either. I hope they won’t move on because there are millions of unvoiced others who, as direct recipients of the “acceptable” violence of the nation-state, will not have the luxury of that choice.
We have entered a catatonic kumbaya–the prayer of the deluded that is deaf to the howls of the excluded.
I leave with an image from election night. On a lighted street, crowds of screaming people banged pots and pans, hugged and kissed each other, and shouted: Everything is different! In the corner of the same street, seven black men slept on cardboard in front of a glassy store, pulling ratty blankets over their ears to avoid the noise.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:20 am
Ashley,
Thank you for your eloquent depiction of the sombering realities and challenges we have yet to face as a nation and which the power structure and an obliging public continues to ruthlessly ignore. Indeed, Ralph may have better avoided using the term “Uncle Tom” considering the immaturity of as crass a news network as Fox 13, which caters to a mostly uninformed public, and which delibeartely sound-bited his message . It is reprehensible that during his interview, Fox denied him any time to explain the implications of the term’s euphemism for proper clarification. But, we need to continue to spread this message and fight on… thanks again, Ashley! You are an inspiration.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Ashley,
Your righteous zeal blinds you to complexity. If I didn’t know better I would think your reading ended with Marx (supplemented perhaps with a few books by Chomsky, Zinn, Nader, and a collection of Green Party platitudes).You see abstract dualisms instead of multi-faceted people and the various forces that impact their identities, cultures, communities, and lives. Your condescending dismissal of 97% of the African American community (including people like Cornel West and Toni Morrison, writers that make you and me look like the amateurs we are) is not only patronizing, but destructive. By calling their vote (and mine, and millions of others) “happy delusion” YOU reduce them to a monolithic, mindless herd. You deny their humanity, their intelligence, and their agency.
How can you argue that because Obama’s election won’t make the world perfect in eight years it means nothing? Tell that to the 106 year old woman whose parents were slaves. Tell that to the millions that lived through segregation and Jim Crowe who were in tears as they cast their ballot. Tell that to the young boy who now believes anything is now possible for him. As an English major, Ashley, you should know: symbolism matters. Stories matter. The fact that you couldn’t look at a black family step out onto the stage last week and see the faces of millions responding with GENUINE hope and pride shows that your ideology has blinded you to the AUTHENTIC AND MEANINGFUL JOY of your fellow human beings.
You reduce Barack Obama himself to a caricature, even if that requires relying on Fox news or other dubious, inaccurate sources. Why? Because he can’t singlehandedly change the world in eight years. Because he’s intelligent enough to know what practical steps can be taken by someone IN THE WHITEHOUSE in conjunction with the house and senate.
Ashley, do you honestly believe a president can fix the world? If Nader were elected, would he be able to actualize all his positions? How much would you say he could get done in our system? 50%? 10%? 1%? If Nader were president, would all wars end? What would Nader do if mass genocide were taking place and the only way to stop it was to use force? Would his anti-war principles matter to the people who were slaughtered? Would Nader change capitalism in his first term or second term? How would that affect working families across the country?
The fact is, a president (and government) plays A ROLE, not THE role, in social change. We also need artists and non-profits and churches and activists. Even with everyone working, it won’t be enough. But it’s worth struggling for.
In four years, I believe I will be able to point to concrete, progressive changes in America and throughout the world because of Obama’s leadership. Accessible, affordable health care (and universal for children) may not be good enough for you, but it will make a difference for millions of families. So will tax breaks and better teacher pay and support. Ending the war in Iraq, even if residual forces are left to prevent chaos and others are sent to stop terrorism in Afghanistan, may not be good enough for you, but it matters to the mother whose son will be coming home alive. A $4,000 grant to go to college for doing community service matters to those who thought they would never be able to afford it. Having a president who is competent and decent, who can communicate and inspire matters. (Ralph Nader could learn a thing or two about organizing and mobilizing from Barack)
But apparently none of this matters to you. You want your precious ideology or nothing. You see no complexity in politics or power or society. It’s black and white. Barack doesn’t have utopian platforms, therefore he is an Uncle Tom, a pawn of the white, corporate power structure. Give me a break. This is not “solidarity,” Ashley. This is small thinking. This is elitism. This is reductive. This is fundamentalism.
We live in a dangerous, complicated, tragic and troubled world. But there is no easy solution. Obama can’t fix it by himself. Neither can Nader. But whether you recognize it or not, November 4th, 2008 was a step forward, a moment that mattered to more people for more reasons than you’ll ever know.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:27 am
One more thing. You say:
“The final triumph of a white corporate power structure is to get a minority face to front for the continued racism of the white corporate power structure. The powerful know that the image of equality–the face of it–will have such a powerful affect on people that they won’t even think to ask about real equality.”
This is one of the most cynical, arrogant, misguidedly speculative statements I’ve read this entire election cycle (and that’s saying a lot). Honestly, have you read any postcolonial writers? Anything on race, representation, identity, and voice? Do you understand how condescending it is for a white woman of relative privilege to not only speak for poor black people, but to condemn them for their own delusional stupidity and “Uncle Tom” leader?
November 13th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Well said, Joe. Well said.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I agree with Joe on pretty much everything he said.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Ashley, thank you so much for your words.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I agree with Joe.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
My interpretation of the point of this post isn’t that Obama will do nothing to help the problem. As so many people that voted for him have said, he is the lesser of two evils. Hence, he WILL do more than McCain would have done. He will work to improve the health care system, the education system, etc. But the problem is that he won’t take it far enough. He will go as far (or perhaps even slightly farther) than presidents like Clinton, but he WON’T stray far from his party’s traditional boundaries. He proves that by continuing the same old “Our alliance with Israel is sacrosanct, Iran’s pursuance of nuclear technology is unacceptable” talk. It seems to me that he IS willing to institute change, but a change for the better from the previous administration–or the previous several administrations–is not necessarily that great of a change. Nobody thinks that Nader could put an end to war, end starvation, cure cancer. But until a president comes along who is willing to work towards DRASTIC change, we will continue in the less-than-mediocre cycle of Republican president-Democrat president-Republican president-Democrat president that we’ve been stuck in for ages. It’s a cycle that lacks the ability to bring real reform and solution to the issues of war, poverty, hunger, inequality. Yet we get excited because Obama will end the stupidity of the CHENEY/bush era. I am also eager for that, but more than that I wan’t us to free ourselves from the progressionless cycle of rep-dem-rep-dem and move on to a more humane, truly progressive system. Why do we accept kind-of-good by saying “America’s a big place and you can’t please everyone? We’re doing the best we can.” Man, we’re lazy. It’s like as long as reality tv shows, Costco, and sort-of-a-little-bit progressive programs exist, then we’re happy and complacent. I also cannot accept brand politics, and won’t be satisfied by the fact that Obama is better than Bush. I’d rather eat grass than eat feces, but either way, if that’s all I eat, I’ll starve to death in the end.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I see Ashley’s comments primarily in response to the levels of virtue and education had by the American public, and their inverse relationship with the success of Gadianton & Co. (Book of Mormon reference: Ether Ch. 8). Our servants, the government, can only be as virtuous and educated as we are. Usually they are less; and never are they more.
Joe, (and I assume I don’t know you, correct me if I’m wrong) you seem to be interpreting Ashley’s comments to be primarily in criticism of President-elect Obama. While the criticism is there, it being the primary focus is not, in my estimation, intended by the author. To assume that her lack of praise for Obama somehow constitutes disdain for the man that he is, would be jumping to a conclusion. You appear to be trained, as Ashley alludes to in her commentary, to see philosophical difference as personal difference.
Ashley, I’ve been thinking deeply lately about how to correct our political system. We should talk soon.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Well said, Ash. If there is any “hope” that came out of this election, it is my “hope” that people like you and I can inspire real change for human beings. Loves.
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