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God damn America!
As a psychological phenomenon becomes sufficiently widespread, pointing out its specious reasoning, factual errors, and even moral shortcomings becomes progressively less useful as an analytical tool. The sentiment expressed above has met this threshold, and therefore merits a different kind of examination.
Most of the commentary on Rev. Jeremiah Wright has failed to understand this, especially in the days during which Wright has not only "jumped the reservation", but appears actively trying to sabotage the presidential candidacy of his erstwhile congregant. This is particularly true of liberal commentators, although it includes some, like Ross, who should know better. (Steve Sailer's commentary, in contrast, has been exemplary in its dispassion.) All of them unleash their righteous fury at Wright over his racism, his paranoia, his anti-Americanism, and most importantly, his bad manners at not keeping his big mouth shut for the rest of the campaign. All these criticisms are fairly made; indeed, Wright himself would happily plead guilty to many of them. But so what? The salient feature of Wright's preaching this sort of thing is that it carries a powerful resonance among American Blacks, not least with Barak Obama himself.
The liberal response to the progressive revelation of Wright's worldview has taken its cues from Obama, and has correspondingly shifted over time. A few weeks ago, back when Obama was urging understanding and tolerance for the Rev., liberals likewise justified it with the standard references to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. I am skeptical of this explanation--or rather, I doubt the culpability of America's pre-Civil Rights history in the sense in which liberals intend it. I don't have the numbers, but I would guess that "America" would have received a higher approval rating from American Blacks in 1950 than it does today. Hell, I bet that Blacks would have expressed more patriotism in 1850 than they presently do.
But a lot has happened since then. The Civil Rights movement came and went. Legal segregation passed away, and private discrimination (or anything that could be so construed) has been ruthlessly prosecuted. Affirmative action, quotas, and set-asides became de rigeur. A trillion dollars went to ministering to the needs of Blacks, often in the form of salaries to Black social workers in the civil service.
And what did America get for all this money and effort? Crime. Drugs. Gangs. Violence. Bastardy. Dependency. And, of course, resentment, ladled out by such as Jeremiah Wright to his cheering throng of ministrants.
What is a Black American to make of these developments?
On the one hand, Black conservatives have a ready answer that explains their higher resistance to anti-Americanism. They and others claim that the perverse incentives of the welfare state undermined Black virtue, especially the black family. There is certainly much truth here, but it is not the whole story.
Certainly there are extenuating circumstances surrounding the apparent under performance of Blacks on average, and I do not intend to ignore such factors as, for instance, that black emancipation occurred at precisely the moment that our manufacturing base began to erode, or that immigration has depressed the wages of the remaining low-skill work. Both of these factors have had an enormously negative impact on the remuneration potentially available to the low-skilled work for which American Blacks would qualify.
However, the evolutionary structure of race regrettably ensures that people of African origin, in the mean, will under perform people of European origin in a society constructed along European economic and social norms. As long as the expected end-state of our social policy is not taking steps to assist everyone in achieving their individual potential, or even creating social conditions in which even those with modest cognitive endowment can lead productive and fulfilling lives, but rather seeking racially proportionate representation in all fields of endeavor, then the "problem" will not be solved except by the crudest of quota systems. Yet this "solution" has proved politically intolerable to the White majority, and those people of any race who continue to invest their hopes in such an outcome will continue to have their expectations frustrated.
Again, what is a Black American to think?
Well, it beats Africa.
But nobody actually thinks like this. Gratitude is a virtue precisely because it takes effort and cultivation. Pride and Envy, in contrast, will ever be with us. The notion that Blacks would be grateful for their presence in America, and their enjoyment of greater peace and prosperity compared to Africa, would require them to see clearly their ancestral continent for what it actually is. That this hasn't happened--indeed, will never happen--is not a collective moral failing unique to American blacks; it is historically contingent on their collective circumstances.
It is in this context that Jeremiah Wright's message finds its audience. His paranoid vision of an America secretly undermining the lives and livelihoods of Blacks has the power that it does precisely because the condition of American Blacks predisposes them to believe it. His message that the lack of visible evidence of White racism only shows how insidiously embedded in the fabric of White society is met with cheers of approval because the alternative would be far to painful to accept. And nobody has fled that reality and embraced this fiction as has Barak Obama.
Again, this should not surprise us. It is the entirely predictable arc of all minority groups. Sure, there are exceptions, Obama's brother Mark prominently among them. But rootless cosmopolitanism doesn't come naturally to many people. Obama chose to passionately identify with an idealized version of the Black American experience that was otherwise alien to his actual upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia. The "post-racial" Obama to whom America, up until about six weeks ago, had become accustomed was entirely a creation of the Obama campaign and its media sycophants.
What's in this for me?
That we should understand, and even sympathize, with Wright's and Obama's embrace of a narrative they clearly find so appealing should not disarm us in our contemplation of the consequences of an Obama presidency. White Americans are not used to asking this question of themselves quite this directly, but it is nonetheless a question that we must face--or, more specifically, a question that the average swing voter in Ohio and Pennsylvania must face: what's in this for us? More specifically, how does an Obama presidency: (1) Reduce crime; (2) Protect from terrorism; (3) Take less of our money; (4) Secure our children's access to opportunity based on their demonstrated ability, not their race; (5) in general, allow us to live under a government that represents our collective interests.
14 comments:
I don't actually agree with all I'm about to say here, but I'll take a swing at what you think people ought to be considering.
1) When I think of reducing crime, I don't think of the President. By and large, that's local politics. Arguably education should be that way, too, though the current president disagrees.
2) The current administration's efforts have arguably been less than successful and not because he's been too squishy on the issue. No major terrorist attacks since 9/11 in the US, to be sure, but there weren't any 9/11's prior to 9/11 either. Many would be willing to trade Clinton's eight years in office for Bush's (even if you subtract 9/11 itself) in an exchange of the climate of fear.
3) What's the next president going to do to make health care more accessible to people that can't afford it? That's a bigger question on the mind of the swing voter than another round of tax cuts or even tax increases.
4) I have my doubts that this is a particularly high-priority issue either. I think that the whole "equality of opportunity" is geared more in economic terms as in going to good K-12 schools and being able to afford college. One can try to make this a racial issue ("minorities are stealing our scholarships"), but I don't think it's the primary basis for decision-making. Nor should it be as there are bigger issues on the table.
5) That's a vague enough statement that anyone can use it to support any candidate that they already like for any reason.
Overall) These questions are specifically asked to skew the person away from the liberal point of view. One can just as easily ask about access to health care, the budget deficit (Obama and Clinton may or may not be good on it, but there's not much reason to believe that they'll be worse than Bush or McCain), restricting trade, and so on. Republicans of course have their responses to each and every one of these, but so do Democrats to the issues that you raise. The result is the usual back-and-forth about whose policies are better. Right now, the public seems to think that it's the Democrats'.
What's an 'evolutionary structure of race'?
When you say: "And what did America get for all this money and effort? Crime. Drugs. Gangs. Violence. Bastardy. Dependency" get the feeling-perhaps mistakenly-that you are talking as if america was one thing, and the black people another.
In any case, it seems strange to say that crime, drugs, bastardy can simply be attributed to the "effort" -as if these aren't wider social problems, and as if, perhaps, they are partly down to deeper rooted causes. I mean, it is hard to imagine a people that were brutalized in the way that whites brutalized them all of a sudden picking themselves up and leading productive, sound lives.
sorry, that should have been "aren't partly down to deeper..."
Trumwill: Well said. There are indeed a lot of issues other than the ones I mention, and Bush's record is far from exemplary in any case.
But the point of my particular list was not that we should prefer a generic conservative to a generic liberal. It was to highlight particular policy areas in which Obama--a man who has spent the bulk of his adult life building an Afro-centric identity and worldview--can cause a great deal of mischief.
You are correct that the last one needs more specificity; but then, who really knows what issues will rumble down the road? At some point, I want the sense that the people dealing with these as-yet-unknown issues are on my side! Crude, yes, and it no doubt leaves me open to all sorts of identity politics appeals. But I am not alone in this, as our primary voting pattern demographics indicate.
Biloo: My primary point was not that the programs of the Great Society caused the problems that I list, although I think it has been fairly shown that these policies made the problems worse, especially among Black Americans.
My point was that it is precisely the failure of these efforts that have lead to the worldview displayed by such as Rev. Wright.
Thanks for the clarification.
But when you say : "And what did America get for all this money and effort? Crime. Drugs. Gangs. Violence. Bastardy. Dependency. And, of course, resentment, ladled out by such as Jeremiah Wright to his cheering throng of ministrants. "
I don't think it makes much sense (if you excuse me for putting it so bluntly) unless you make a comparison with what would have happened without it.
Secondly, when you say what did America get out of it you seem to be ignoring that what black people got out of it: drugs, crime etc (since they seem to be the most affected people by crime and drugs..correct me if I'm wrong). It *seems* to set up this division between 'America' and 'Blacks'.
Thirdly, "all this effort" was not , I presume , something 'given' to them but something fought for, against the entrenched view of some whites.
As for black people not being so anti-american in 1850 ..I wonder. I wonder if they even cared about a thing called 'america'. I think they'd be more concerned about the white man's boot on his neck.
I'm still trying to work out where you're coming from. Unless I've missed somethign you have not talked about the century of slavery and the century of segregation and what this would do to a people.
And I'd still love to know what is meant by an "evolutionary structure of race".
As a practical matter, the Great Society and its offspring would have not been possible without either the acquiesence of a majority of whites (as expressed in legislation) or the energetic efforts of a handful of highly placed whites (as expressed in judicial and bureacratic fiat).
But let's accept the formulation that blacks "fought" for them: this, and your well-taken point that blacks were the primary casualties of their own social dysfunction, actually strengthen my point that blacks take this policy failure all the more personally. And from this failure grew a paranoid worldview in which every bad thing that happens to them is a function of insidious white machination.
[Y]ou have not talked about the century of slavery and the century of segregation and what this would do to a people.
Indeed, I have not talked about them. I do not believe them to be especially relevant to the behavior we currently observe, at least not in the straightforward way to which it is often attributed.
By "evolutionary structure of race," I mean nothing more than what you would read in a typical Steve Sailer piece on the subject. And because it is here that I find the locus of responsibility for our present difficulty, I am skeptical of alternative histories of the last 150 years in which these difficulties were to be much avoided. The "legacy of slavery" is that blacks are here; all else, to one degree or another, follows.
And now for my obligatory disclaimer: I am not advocating that we attempt to "solve" this problem by genocide, forcible repatriation, or bringing back slavery or Jim Crow. I am not advocating that we do anything other than what we are in fact doing: muddling along as best we can.
I understand your point about the paranoid view and it is well made. But I think to ignore -at a practical level (not as a matter of scoring points or beating oneself up)-is equally dangerous.
I think one has to recognize the tremendous social and psychological damage that years of slavery and segregation have on human beings. I mean, even the constitution didn't consider them fully human.
to say that it is not "relevant" is, for me,a form of denial. In fact, it's much easier to say: "it's about *their* paranoia than face up to the brutality that 'one's own' have inflicted on other people. As the kid says in lord of the flies: "maybe the beast was within"
( i make this as a general point: in some parts of the so-called muslim world there is a similar denial of the atrocities that muslims have inflicted on other people and instead a form of delusion: it is always the paranoia of others: jews, the west...)
I don't think the legcay is simply that they are here. The legacy is that *you* are also there. Being 'here' is not important; what is is *how* one lives: essence precedes existence, so to speak.
oh yes, I'm all for muddling and fudging. But what I do find slightly odd is that you fail to recognize that whites have been *part* of the problem.
Biloo: I did not intend to ignore the psychological effects of slavery and segregation. Nor ought we ignore the psychological effects of welfare and affirmative action.
The difference is that no American blacks today have experienced slavery (unless they are refugees from Sudan), and an ever decreasing fraction of them have experienced segregation. This history has passed from legend into mythology.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not against mythology per se. But mythology is by its nature a selective and tendentious reading of history, all for the purpose of creating a compelling narrative.
Two generations ago, that narrative would have told the story of continuing social progress in the integration of American Blacks into full citizenship. To its credit, this is roughly the official narrative of the Obama campaign.
The revelations of Rev. Wright have brought to public attention that this narrative is not, or was not always, what Obama himself actually believes.
The central point of my post--one in which I take no pleasure--is that the abandonment of the progressive narrative in favor of the paranoid narrative was inevitable given the structural realities. The expectations of the Civil Rights movement of two generations ago--that blacks would be fully integrated into American society--were certain to be disappointed, and it is from this disappointment that the paranoid worldview springs.
The secondary point was that there is no earthly reason why we should want to empower this worldview with the American presidency.
I'm not sure what "essence precedes existence" means, but my point about the legacy of slavery is only the obvious one that Africans would never have been admitted to these shores in anything close to the numbers that they were brought here as slaves.
"The difference is that no American blacks today have experienced slavery "
But they HAVE experienced segregation and/or a large number of their parents have. You'd agree to that, at least?
I agree, the aspirations may have been unrealistic, but I think it is equally unrealistic on the part of white people to expect that you can throw money at people (what you call "the effort") and think that years of being told you're worthless, of being beaten down, can suddenly be reversed.
In any case, I don't think it is just about direct experience; I think there is something like a cultural memory. If George Bush says he's leading a crusade one does not have to had a direct expereice of the crusades for those words to have some resonance. Or, if one has no direct expereice of the holocaust one could still find some Nazi imagery deeply hurtful if one is jewish
I don't understand your point about being "admitted". White people would never have been "admitted" to America if they hadn't used violence and deceit to destroy the Red Man.
But I agree with you, empowering views of hate are never right. I'm not sure if one can ever understand hate or where it is coming from but, having said that, I don't think turning a blind eye to it or wishing it away by blaming it on paranoia is very productive either.
You talk about social progress, phi. I would be very interested on reading anything you have on , say, the life expectancy of black people or their likelihood of going to prison, family structure, drug dependency and so on. If you have any links please do pass them along. Thanks.
Billoo: Per the comments policy, at some point I will have to insist that you trouble yourself to read what I actually write.
I already wrote that, yes, there are some blacks still alive that did experience segregation.
I already wrote that what you call "cultural history" and what I call "mythology" does, in fact, influence the way people perceive the present.
Actually, I'm not even sure that we disagree on my central points: that there is no plausible alternative history of the last 50 years in which we would be far from where we presently are; and that it is not in white America's interest to empower people that hate us.
But your remark about social progress betrays your own lack of knowledge of history. Rates of incarceration, illegitimacy, and drug abuse among blacks have all gotten WORSE since segregation ended. (I would be surprised to learn that black life expectancy has declined; perhaps you have stats?) They have gotten WORSE since America started trying to "help" with welfare and affirmative action. It is simply not plausible to blame these recent developments on the "psychological effects" of slavery that nobody alive actually experienced, much more plausible to blame them on the perverse incentives of welfare and slack law enforcement.
There are two separate issues that perhaps need disentangling: the social dysfunction of the black community, and the paranoid worldview. I have argued that the interaction of the dysfunction and the mythology (which, I will admit, is based on a true story) have conspired to produce the paranoia. In contrast, it is the perverse social policy of the last 40-50 years, interacting with their own biology, that have produced the dysfunction. I am not much persuaded that the "psychological effects" of segregation, and even less so of slavery, are especially involved. I will allow that the mythology/paranoia probably have not helped them, but then, the Jewish mythology of suffering (again, based on a true story) has some paranoid elements, and they have succeeded anyway, so it's hard for me to find much influence here.
You still seem to be struggling with the "legacy of slavery", so let me try again. In its crudest expression, if there hadn't been slavery, there wouldn't be American blacks, and if there weren't American blacks, we wouldn't have American black problems. Your analogy to American Indians, even were I to concede it (and I do, for the most part), does not change this basic logic.
Looking at my last comment, I realized that I was becoming frustrated, and had allowed that to come through my in writing. I apologize.
I also should clarify that I don't think that the dysfunction I wrote about is the sum total of our social history of the last 40 years. There has, in fact, been progress by other measures; indeed, the fact that we are as close as we are to electing Obama president counts as progress in its way.
Yes, you're right phi, I am ignorant of the history which is why I asked for links if you had any.
i'm not sure I agree with "empower people who hate us". This just seems too expreme-to my mind at least. One might say the same about *some* white people who hate black people. doesn't get one very far.
my main point is this, though: to say that the policy after segregation has been *the* factor (or the major factor) in the dysfunctionality would surely, to make any sense, have to be compared to the situation where there were alternative policies.
It really boils down to the assertion-and it is just that-that there is no plausible alternative history.
Yes, I am struggling with the legacy. I guess we'll just have to differ here. I do not think it is psychlogically "plausible" that after centuries after being treated unfairly and unjustly a people can just turn things around-even if the incentives are geared to help them.
Of course, I should also add that this is not a criticism of America since she obviously offers a lot more opportunities to many, many countries around the world.
No need to apologize phui. I probably was not making my points very clearly.
keep well,
K.
I would be happy to hear you sketch out a superior alternative policy set that would have avoided our present problems.
I suppose we could create an alternative history--no affirmative action, no racial quotas, no AFDC, no hamstrung law enforcement--in which everything would be better. Certainly, many neoconservatives write as if they believe this.
But I incline toward skepticism. A lot of the social changes of the last 40 years have their own internal logic, quite apart from anything that was done to "help" blacks.
So take AFDC. Certainly its expansion was a significant factor in driving up the illegitimacy rate among blacks to the (around?) 70% it is. But this rate was already in the (around?) 25% range in the mid-sixties. (It may have been less; I'm too lazy to look up the exact numbers.) The sexual revolution was bound to drive this rate up.
Ditto law enforcement. I have a vague sense that considerations of race had little to do with the explosion in procedural ways by which criminals could escape justice. Again, the concern for scrupulous attention to individual rights was driven by white concerns and were bound to happen.
The immigration explosion, too, and the downward pressure they put on wages for unskilled labor, were not driven by black concerns.
But let's suppose that the black family remained relatively intact, that it was kept relatively law-abiding, and that its wages were higher. Let's even take affirmative action off the table and spare ourselves the particular bitterness and insecurity of such as Michelle Obama.
Blacks would still not have achieved parity with whites.
I say this for a couple of reasons. First, whatever else welfare and diversity make-work have done, they did provide job opportunities--as social workers and such--for college educated blacks, which did help propel a lot of them into middle-class earning power.
Second, as our economy has become more knowledge intensive, blacks have inevitably faced a competitive disadvantage.
Only a scenario in which the U.S. did not de-industrialize would have brought about anything close to economic parity between the races. But the social disparity--one in which whites specialized in knowledge work while blacks specialized in manual work--would still be with us, even if the monetary compensation was much closer than it currently is.
Bottom line: this alternative history becomes increasingly speculative. A whole lot of things would have to have happened differently that they actually did. And we still couldn't guarantee that the remaining social disparities wouldn't convince blacks that whites were out to do them dirty at every turn.
You are correct that "hate" is extreme and overbroad. I just needed a shorthand.
Yes, I take on board what you're saying phi..reminds me of Daniel Bell's great 'Cultural contradictions of capitalism'.
Which is why I think the race part is being conflated with wider/deeper socio-economic changes (my intitial post). And within those changes it is fair to assume that the intitally disadvantaged (black people) would not do as well. [this is not to shift "blame"..it's not about "blame"]
The same sort of discussion is taking place in Europe. Of course, there are very real and genuine concerns about the change in core values. But I think race/immigration is often used as a red herring because it tends to ignore the underlying changes in norms/culture/family structure that are really more related to what Bauman calls 'liquid modernity'. It is far more difficult and troubling to think that the real problems are being (partly) generated by capitalism itself.
Tawney was right,after all, I think.
What surprises me in these discussions is the lack of compassion to others, the stranger. Am I not my brother's keeper?
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