S-Salamu Ealykum

From Morocco!

Experiment and the White “Habitus”

I was out in the middle of nowhere Massachusetts yesterday.  I went to Middleborough to leave my dog with a wonderful dog trainer so I can pack this week and then head off to Morocco.

I was lucky enough to have Tom accompany me on this journey because the drive is long and boring and I was sad about having to say goodbye to my dog for three months.  On the way home Tom and I both got hungry and decided to stop at an Outback somewhere in between Middleborough and Springfield.

While talking over some appetizers I casually looked around the restaurant and realized that everyone was white. I mean every single person in the entire restaurant was white, apart from Tom who is Vietnamese.  I told him, and we both looked around and verify the accuracy of this statement.

True.

So Tom proposed a little experiment:  How about, he proposed, we ask the waitress if there are any non-white people here. Let’s tell her we’re uncomfortable by being around so many white people. So that was the game plan.  I suggested we wait until after our food came out so they couldn’t poison us or anything…

Observation 1: To perfectly honest I was really nervous about confronting this lady who was waiting on us. What if we make her really uncomfortable, what if she gets angry, what if we get thrown out. Food came and we ate and briefly talked about experiment logistics.  When the waitress brought the check Tom, very nicely asked if we could ask her a question.

So are there any non-white people here? We’re not really used to this (being around so many white people) and it’s making us kind of uncomfortable.

Observation 2:  The waitress giggled a little bit and looked around the restaurant.    Usually it isn’t like this, usually there are more of them. I’ve lived here my whole life and when I was young maybe there weren’t that many but now it’s much more.  There even were some working here.

If I’m remembering correctly I think maybe Tom interjected at that point and reiterated that we weren’t used to being around so many white people and that it was weird.  She went on to say something along the lines of:

Yea I don’t see any.  Maybe they’re all sitting on the other side and then giggled. You know I’ve lived here my whole life and it used to be really, you know, maybe like a few black people (whispered) but now it’s different and it’s good for my kids because my daughter is going to a school thats really, and now when she sees it out side she wont point and think that it’s weird like she used to.

Observation 3:  I felt like I was playing fill in the blanks.  She left out just about any word describing race except when she whispered ‘black people.’  She used words like “it” and “them” to describe people of color or just didn’t finish her sentences.  She also had just about the entire conversation with me,  not giving Tom much eye contact, even though he posed the question.

It was just so striking how uncomfortable she was, not by our question necessarily, but by having to discuss race.  She may have spoken more freely if Tom was white come to think of it.

It’s so interesting how isolated white people have become.  Eduado Bonilla Silva, in his book Racism Without Racists, calls white isolation from minorities  ”‘white habitus.”

A racialized, uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates  white’s racial tastes, perceptions, feelings and emotions and their views on racial matters.” (104)

In a survey conducted with a sample of 41 white students, only 4 indicated having lived in proximity to a person of color and only two of the people chose to associate with the people of color they lived closed to.  Bonilla-Silva explains that there is a lack of reflexivity among white people who remain highly segregated from people of color. In other words white people don’t usually think about why they live in areas that are all white or think about why this extreme isolation from people of color could be problematic.

White people tend to naturalized segregation or minimize it, or claim that they are not isolated when they are.  ”People just like to live by people that they have something in common with.”  Or, “It’s just the way things are.” Or white people just claim that they have a best friend of color.   Unfortunately, residential segregation is neither natural or something that should be minimized.

Despite the civil rights movement, whites, young and old, live a fundamentally segregated life that has attitudinal, emotional and political implications (125).

Segregation is not a result of slavery

Residential segregation plays an enormous role in creating racial isolation in the United States. Housing, as Nandinee Kitty writes in her book Segregation: The Rising Costs for America, is the centerpiece of opportunity in America. Housing is more than a shelter. Access to safe and affordable housing can be an individuals greatest asset. Housing increases net wealth, the neighborhood that you live in can determine your ability to stay safe, your ability to access productive social networks, to have transportation to and from work, and to provide quality education for your children. The nexus between quality housing and quality education is highly interconnected (24). 

In 1890 the average black person who lived in New York, lived in a neighborhood that was about 3.6% black.  In 1910, it was 6.7%.  By 1920 20.5%, and by 1930 the average black person that lived in New York lived in a neighborhood that was 41.8% black (44).  

The racialized ghetto of the United States is not, despite popular belief, a direct result of slavery.  There are have been specific discriminatory policies and practices imposed by local and federal governments that have created the type of segregation we see today.  These policies and practices have nothing to do with the institution of slavery, and have everything to do with a racial ideology that has existed from the inception of this country. Large cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and Detroit were far less segregated in 1900 then they are today.  By 1960 black people who lived in Boston were likely to live in neighborhoods that were 84% black. Detroit 84%, Chicago, 92%. 

 Interestingly, we are rarely taught about the specific policies that have been put into place to oppress people of color.  When we learn about these policies and the actions that local and federal governments, as well as the actions of real estate professional institutional segregation, for better or for worse becomes much more tangible.  When white people take time to reflect on their own living situations and their own racial isolation from minorities, institutional segregation becomes much more personal.  

In 1892, 15 years after reconstruction officially ended, Homer Plessy was arrested  and jailed in Louisiana for sitting in a designated white section of a rail car.  That same year Louisiana  had passed the  Separate Car Act, making it legal to segregate rail cars according to race. To challenge the law, which violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the Constitution, Homer Plessy deliberately sat in the white rail cars. Homer Plessy was so light in complexion  he could have easily passed as white. Black civil rights organizations chose to fight the Separate Car Act and the case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. However the Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana Segregation Statute was Constitutional.

The Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision may have been one of the most significant and greatest blows to civil rights. This Supreme Court decision upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation and in turn  became the basis for the institutionalization of widespread segregation–separate lunch counters, separate restrooms, separate waiting rooms, separate residential neighborhoods, and separate schools.  Of course facilities were rarely if, ever equal.

After the 1900 and during the industrialization of the United States there was a huge surge of black migration from the South to the North.  Labor demands in northern cities could not be met only by “native whites.” (46)  Between 1910 and 1920 525,000 blacks moved from the South to the North.  This move was coined the Great Migration. With this wave of new black residents to northern cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York, white residents became increasingly threatened and met new-comers with increasing hostility (49).  Of course with the Great migration the black population also increased dramatically. During this time  there was a new, and dramatic resurgence of white racist ideologies at which point “scientific” evidence was sought to validate and justify such ideologies (49).  

First and foremost among the tools that whites used to construct the ghetto was violence.

 Homes occupied by blacks were “systemically” bombed or burned; black families faced extreme hostility and intimidation and individuals were targeted beaten and lynched, especially if families sought to move into neighborhoods where they were not welcome.

The cycle typically began with threatening letters, personal harassment and warnings of dire consequences to follow. Sometimes whites, through their churches, realtors, or neighborhood organizations, would take up a collection and offer to buy the black homeowner  out, hinting at  less civilized inducements to follow if the offer was refused. If theses entreaties failed to dislodge the resident, spontanious mobs, formed from neighborhood meetings or barroom discussions would surround the house , hurling rocks and insults and sometimes storming and ransacking it….If the escalating violence failed to produce the desired resulting, bombing ensured, a step guaranteed to attract the attention not only from the homeowner but of the entire black community. In Chicago, 58 black homes were bombed between 1917 and 1921, one every 20 days (50).

Because of the negative attention brought on by these acts of violence and the decrease in property values associated with bombings, death and legal battles, whites, after the 1920 began to use  more institutional strategies to keep blacks out of neighborhoods.  Oganizations like “The Hyde Park Improvement and Protection Club,” on the South side of Chicago, and “Harlem’s Property Owners’ Improvement Corporation,” in New York,  were specifically designed to ban blacks from entering these neighborhoods. 

In 1933 the federal government launched the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Programs like HOLC were designed to make homeownership more available to the American public. The HOLC provided funds for refinancing urban mortgages in danger of default. The HOLC granted low-interest loans to former home owners who had lost their homes due to foreclosure. Unfortunately the HOLC also developed a system of ratings designed to evaluate the risks associated with loans made to urban neighborhoods. Four categories were created and the lowest of which was marked red. Home Owners’ Loan Corporation institutionalized redlining and both integrated and black neighborhoods were designated as being in the least desirable category–red.  Homogeneous white neighborhoods were considered ‘new, homogenous and in demand in good times and bad.’ (69). Neighborhoods that were racially mixed rarely received HOLC backed loans. 

In the wake of the National Housing Act passed in 1934 the Federal Housing Administration was formed.  The FHA was charged with guaranteeing long-term home mortgage loans and making homeownership affordable and accessible to more Americans. Although FHA made home ownership possible for more Americans, minority neighborhoods rarely received FHA-backed loans. FHA adopted the redlining system of the HOLC.  Its policies opposed racially integrated neighborhoods and urban neighbhoords and favored single family homes in surban locations. 

The FHA manual stated: 

If a neighborhood is to retain stability it is necessary that properties should continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes…

Private banks throughout the nation adopted the HOLC’s system to make their own loan decisions.  Thus redlining became institutionalized widespread.  By the time the United States entered into WWII,  FHA and the Veteran’s Association (VA) were recommending  racially restrictive housing covenants, meaning that loans that went to white neighborhoods kept minorities out.

FHA program initiatives were almost exclusively provided to white Americans buying suburban homes. By 1962, home loans worth more than $ 120 billion were backed by the FHA and VA, and of this, less then 2 percent went to “non-white” homebuyers and that too only in racially segregated neighborhoods.

 By the late 50′s, many cities were locked into a self perpetuating cycle of decline that was directly encouraged and largely supported by federal housing policies.  In turn residential racial segregation  in both northern and southern cities increased dramatically.

Coupled with redlining, minorities were kept out of white neighborhoods through a variety of means- redlining, racially restrictive covenants, hostility and intimidation, outright violence, the creation of “sundown towns” through statute, and practices of real estate professionals.  One study, conducted in the 1950′s found that in Chicago 80% of real estate agents refused to sell blacks property in white neighborhoods.

A manual stated in its code of ethics that”

…a realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood…members of any race or nationality…whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood…

The lack of loan capital flowing into minority areas made it impossible for owners to sell their homes which led to a steep decline of property values and in its place was “left a self-perpetuating cycle of despair, deterioration, vacancy and abandonment.” (74)

 During the 50′s and 60′s housing and urban renewal legislation carried about widespread “slum clearance in growing black neighborhoods that threatened white business districts.” (73) The Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 provided federal funds to local authorities to acquire slum properties, assemble them into large parcels, and clear existing structures to prepare for urban renewal. In order to qualify for funding local redevelopment, authorities had to guarantee that an adequate supply of replacement housing would be made available to displaced families. Local planning agencies turned to public housing (73)

In the end, urban renewal almost always destroyed more housing than it replaced.  Established black neighborhoods could not absorb all the families displaced by urban renewal and public housing construction. Low-density slums replaced with high-density towers of poor families also reduced class diversity and created a geographic concentration of poverty that was previously unimaginable. This was a direct result of collaboration between local and national government.

In the wake of escalating violence in most major U.S cities the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 which outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places and employment. However during 1967 127 U.S cities were hit with major racial violence. 

In 1967 President Johnson formed an 11 member national advisory commission on civil disorders in the wake of increasing violence in major U.S cities.

This clip is really amazing and probably much more interesting than what I would type on the Kerner Commission. So please take a look.

In 1968, after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. President Johnson signed into law Title 8 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, religion, national origin.

 The 1964 Civil Rights Act,the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Title 8 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 , collectively began to lift some of the institutional barriers that had previously systemically restricted minorities, families with children and the disabled from accessing quality housing, education and jobs. Research indicates that federally imposed affirmative action programs, contract compliance and the Fair Housing and Civil Rights Acts, significantly improved opportunities for protected categories of people.  However, during the 1980′s more conservative, specifically non-racial explanations of minorities’ social status began to gain popularity, and federally imposed race-based programs began to disappear.

Coupled with declining federal support for protected categories of, subprime and predatory lending were introduced into the lending market. Lenders began making large sums of money by selling loans and in turn subprime lending became very profitable. Lenders no longer assumed the risk of a loan default. They simply issued the loan and sold it to others who took the risk if payments stopped and made profit.  

Lenders began to turn to customers they traditionally shunned-subprime borrowers or borrowers with low credit ratings who posed a high risk of defaulting on their loan.  Minorities, individuals who don’t speak English, and the elderly are some of the most popular targets for dishonest lenders.  Predatory lenders might automatically charge a higher interest rate to a minority applicant without regard for his or her credit history.  More than half of refinanced loans in predominantly black neighborhoods are subprime loans, compared to only 9% in white neighborhoods.  The result of predatory lending has been devastating, not only for the individual families but for the entire United States economy.  One in five subprime loans made during 2005 and 2006 will end in foreclosure.  When several houses in a neighborhood are foreclosed, the prices of the surrounding homes begin to drop quickly. The Center For Responsible Lending estimates that 44.5 million American homes will lose an average of $5,000 in value in the next few years due to nearby foreclosures.   

 That’s $233 billion of lost home equity. -Howstuffworks.com

Today over 4 million cases of housing discrimination occur each year.  According to many scholars, by the year 2050 minorities will make up half of the U.S population (2).  

The fastest growing population is disproportionatly impoverished, ill-housed, poorly educated and tenuously linked to labor markets. The first major step toward seriously addressing the substantial barriers to economic and social mobility for minorities is to eliminate disparate treatment from the housing markets.

For more information please reference Segregation; the rising costs for America by James H. Carr and Nandinee K. Kutty.  Also check out Segregation on the video page.  A video edited by Nadninee and myself.

Anger for a White Woman

I was taught as a child that expressions of anger were inappropriate. Especially for women. Even more so for white women. This wasn’t necessarily something that was told to me directly, but there were hundreds of little ways that I learned indirectly how I was supposed to express myself.

Growing up I rarely expressed anger if ever.  I grew up idolizing people like Belle (ok a cartoon) from Beauty and The Beast, Abraham Lincoln, and anyone who sung ballads during the 40′s.  Not much in the way of wild passion or intense emotions (Abraham Lincoln will be for another post, another time).

This is about as angry as Belle could get before she burst into chorus and did twirls in the field.

White women in particular are taught from such a young age what is appropriate in terms of expression and what is not. I don’t mean to be analyzing disney (this will also be another post) but it seems that the only women that are ever angry in children’s movies are the evil ones that want to skin puppies alive.

note the crazy women driver comment

I always thought that anger was bad and unproductive.   I thought the people that were angry didn’t have any control over their emotions.  I suppose in some cases this may be true.  There are a lot of angry hateful people out there.  But anger isn’t always a bad thing.  I think in some situations it’s absolutely necessary.

The first time I ever really allowed myself to be angry was probably in college.  I remember I was taking a class called the Psychology of racism my junior year.  I had just begun to delve into the concept of white privilege and it made me so mad.  I felt betrayed, and hurt because so  many things I learned growing up about race, and class, and sexuality just were not true.  Mostly though I was angry with myself for not seeing something that became so obvious in those classroom moments.

Anger like this was new to me and it’s still unknown. At present time anger and I have a less than intimate relationship with with one another.  I’ve become more familiar with expressing and recognizing how I feel when I’m alone.  The expression of anger when I’m with others is still kind of difficult.  When someone a.) says something/does something racist or sexist or b.) someone catches me on a bad day and they’re just being useless and doing nothing to actively eradicate either system; I feel like Cruella Deville on the inside but so many times catch myself acting like Belle on the outside and do something equivallent to singing a little song or running in a medow.  UGHSKLDFJLSD@#)$(@*#****

I think that’s what so many people expect from white women, and what white women learn to expect from themselves. To clarify this is probably not just white women.  Just speaking to what I know.

So how can we as white women make any kind of real change if we’re always under control, if we’re always whispering, or if we’re always so concerned about pleasing others and being liked.  White women really want to be liked by the way.   There is an association of “moral goodness” attached to white women identity that many try desperately to uphold.  We can do more harm than good, and oppress more than we liberate with this “moral goodness” mentality if it means that we’re quite when it matters the most.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

What I am endorsing is not hate or rage but rather the expression of how we really feel; Real emotion and specifically, direct, firm and even angry disapproval of the things that we disagree with most.  Obviously all white women to not have the same list of thing that make them mad.  Here are mine:

These things that make me really angry:

Racism: a.) The system it’s self b.)people who are just plain ignorant and who are either unwilling or too lazy to educate themselves.

Sexism: a.) The system itself  b.) men who feel more masculine by making women look or feel weaker or less able c.) trying to put me in a gendered category filled with gendered roles.  I don’t fit your stupid categories thank you.

Lastly is the feeling of having to fear for my own safety because I’m a women. It makes me angry just typing those words.

So why should I act like a diplomatic princess when I’m boiling inside??

I had an interesting ah-ha moment when I saw this clip a few days ago of Tim Wise on CNN. My reaction to it really surprised me specifically because Tim Wise is someone I admire greatly. Take a look

Sorry the embedding didn’t work.

What surprised me most was my initial reaction to Tim’s discussion: Wow! Why is Tim being so rude!!

I watched the clip a few more times and kind of caught myself thinking: well if I was Tim I would have been quiet, or I would have waited for Joe Hicks to finish his thought.  I would want to appear as under control as possible.  I’m not sure how much this would have helped the situation, if any, but it was my knee-jerk reaction.  I don’t think that Tim was being rude, I do think that he was frustrated.  Even so, how do we distinguish between all the different facets of emotions: anger, hate, frustration, fear?

I think my experience as a white women has taught be to be uncomfortable when people disagree or become confrontational.  I think Tim did an excellent job though, even if my initial reaction would have been to do it differently.

Many of you may be thinking “anger isn’t productive,” or “raising your voice is silly.” While those things may be true in certain situations, there must be a time and a place for anger.   For any person with a heart and soul, there’s no way to see racism and feel sexism on a regular basis and not be angry. The Angry Black Woman said something on this very well, better than I could, so please, please refer to this page for more clarification.

So my question is, where is the time and place to be angry? When is it most productive and when is it self defeating?

As The Angry Black Woman clarified, anger does not necessarily mean hate which is a huge distinction to make.   I think that for some people unchecked anger can lead to hate for sure. And I think that too much anger can be too great of a burden on our souls. But just as there’s a place for passion and joy there has to be place for anger especially if the alternative is silence.

because humor is necessary

do we make it worse, or do we make it better, by calling attention to race?

I wanted to comment on an article I read recently about the way parents teach their children about racial prejudice.  Specifically about what they don’t do, which is talk to their children about race.

It’s interesting how white people often assume that by brining up race they are being racist. They think that if they somehow ignore that race exists or deny that it has any sort of real consequences they are doing society a huge service. I think parents want so badly to teach the concept of equality to their children that they avoid conversations about difference.  

Parents, equality is about acknowledging what makes us different; not practicing lazy tolerance but active understanding and compassion. 

This notion of not seeing race or being color-blind is probably one of the most significant and damaging mistakes that white people make.   What’s really interesting is that this kind of ideology has a deep seated history in the way we conceptualize race.  It’s functionality and purpose is the most disturbing element of all.

During the 1960′s civil rights movement a shift took place in the way Americans thought about and expressed racalized opinions.  Before the 1960′s and during the Jim Crow era, minorities’ status in society was explained as a biological and moral inferiority.  Jim crow era racist ideologies were adopted to defend an overt system of racial oppression. During civil rights and after, discussing race in public became taboo and expressing race-based feelings was no longer supported by a normative racial climate.  Eventually trying to appear non-racist became the overarching moral battle for white people.

While ideas about race and racism and social justice were changing during the 1960′s  new concepts of racial power and racism “excluded fundamental challenges to the status quo.”  Acts of racism eventually began to be perceived by the mainstream as irregular deviations from the norm of race relations in the united states.

So by the end of the 1960′s being racially conscious became synonymous with being racist.  People of color that fought for civil rights were accused by white people of being “racist,” because they “saw” color.  This argument is still used today usually when someone disagrees with federally race-based programs like affirmative action.  They say (and yes I’ve heard this before)…”Martin Luther King Jr. would be rolling over in his grave if he knew we used race as a factor for admissions!  It’s content of character that matters…this is RACIST!!!”  

Mm sorry no. Seeing race and accounting for racial inequalities is not racist. It’s the opposite.

For me all of this begs the question- how do you not see color? Do you really not see color when you walk into a store, or a class room or your office. Do really not notice. If you say no you’re either in complete denial or not telling the truth. It’s really not possible not to see race. I think we all notice color and just pretend not to see it. And if that’s the case, isn’t that kind of dysfunctional?

It may be pathological but all pathologies have some purpose.  A color-blind racial ideology has for many years warded off the moral implications associated with being  racist- it has allowed white people to assert that race itself doesn’t matter and that ‘people are just people’ or ‘everyone is equal,’ while still materially benefiting from a racially stratified social system. 

I guess ignoring racism (because that’s what white people do when they choose ignore color) is like ignoring cancer.  It would be utterly ridiculous and irresponsible to know someone had cancer for example and do nothing about it.  A color-blind racial ideology is supported by unawareness or the denial of the ongoing existence of institutional racism, white privilege and blatant racism in America.

Ultimately the belief that race should not matter or does not matter or affect peoples realities keeps white individuals powerful by allowing white advantage to go unexamined.  Choosing to deny racial difference actually supports a system or racial inequality.  We may eventually get to a post-racial society but not until we deal with the issues at hand first.

So parents, it’s time to start having conversations about race.

Here’s the article I read. I disagree with the idea that babies notice color. I think they notice a difference in facial features for sure. But other than that the article is fantastic! 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989

Making Whiteness Visible

Systemic Racism 101

So I went out on a limb here.  I made a video about systemic racism.  I’d love feedback, comments or suggestions.

Enjoy

“How Obama really isn’t a socialist misses the point”

An essay by Tim Wise

Red-Baiting and Racism: Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman
By Tim Wise
August 10, 2009

Throughout the first six months of his administration, President Obama–perhaps one of the most politically cautious leaders in contemporary history–has been routinely portrayed as a radical by his opponents on the far-right. In particular, persons who have apparently never actually studied Marxism (or if they did, managed to somehow find therein support for such things as bailing out banks and elite corporations) contend that Obama is indeed a socialist. Reducing all government action other than warmaking to part of a larger socialist conspiracy, the right contends that health care reform is socialist, capping greenhouse gas emissions is socialist, even providing

Tim Wise is the author of four books on race and racism. His latest is Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama. (City Lights: 2009).

incentives for driving fuel efficient cars is socialist. That the right insists upon Obama’s radical-left credentials, even as they push anObama=Hitler meme (something they apparently think is fair, since, after all the Nazis were National Socialists, albeit the kind who routinely murdered the genuine article) only speaks to the special brand of crazy currently in vogue among the nation’s reactionary forces.

As real socialists laugh at these clumsily made broadsides, and as scholars of actual socialist theory try and explain the absurdity of the analogies being drawn by conservative commentators, a key point seems to have been missed, and it is this point that best explains what the red-baiting is actually about.
It is not, and please make note of it, about socialism. Or capitalism. Or economics at all, per se. After all, President Bush was among the most profligate government spenders in recent memory, yet few ever referred to him in terms as derisive as those being hurled at Obama. Even when President Clinton proposed health care reform, those who opposed his efforts, though vociferous in their critique, rarely trotted out the dreaded s-word as part of their arsenal. They prattled on about “big government,” yes, but not socialism as such. Likewise, when Ronald Reagan helped craft the huge FICA tax hike in 1983, in a bipartisan attempt to save Social Security, few stalwart conservatives thought to call America’s cowboy-in-chief a closet communist. And many of the loudest voices at the recent town hall meetings–so many of which have been commandeered by angry minions ginned up by talk radio–are elderly folk whose own health care is government-provided, and whose first homes were purchased several decades ago with FHA and VA loans, underwritten by the government, for that matter. Many of them no doubt reaped the benefits of the GI Bill, either directly or indirectly through their own parents.
It is not, in other words, a simple belief in smaller government or lower taxes that animates the near-hysterical cries from the right about wanting “their country back,” from those who have presumably hijacked it: you know, those known lefties like Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel. No, what differentiates Obama from any of the other big spenders who have previously occupied the White House is principally one thing–his color. And it is his color that makes the bandying about of the “socialist” label especially effective and dangerous as a linguistic trope.

Indeed, I would suggest that at the present moment, socialism is little more than racist code for the longstanding white fear that black folks will steal from them, and covet everything they have. The fact that the fear may now be of a black president, and not just some random black burglar hardly changes the fact that it is fear nonetheless: a deep, abiding suspicion that African American folk can’t wait to take whitey’s stuff, as payback, as reparations, as a way to balance the historic scales of injustice that have so long tilted in our favor. In short, the current round of red-baiting is based on implicit (and perhaps even explicit) appeals to white racial resentment.

It is Mau-Mauing in the truest sense of the term, and especially since Obama’s father was from the former colonial Kenya! Unless this is understood, left-progressive responses to the tactic will likely fall flat. After all, pointing out the absurdity of calling Obama a socialist, given his real policy agenda, will mean little if the people issuing the charge were never using the term in the literal sense, but rather, as a symbol for something else entirely.
To begin with, and this is something often under-appreciated by the white left, to the right and its leadership (if not necessarily its foot-soldiers), the battle between capitalism and communism/socialism has long been seen as a racialized conflict. First, of course, is the generally non-white hue of those who have raised the socialist or communist banner from a position of national leadership. Most such places and persons have been of color: China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, assorted places in Latin America from time to time, or the Caribbean, or in Africa. With the exception of the former Soviet Union and its immediate Eastern European satellites–which are understood as having had state socialism foisted upon them, rather than having it freely chosen through their own revolutions from below–Marxism in practice has been a pretty much exclusively non-white venture.

And even the Russians were seen through racialized lenses by some of America’s most vociferous cold warriors. To wit, consider what General Edward Rowney, who would become President Reagan’s chief arms negotiator with the Soviets, told Manning Marable in the late 1970s, and which Marable then recounted in his book, The Great Wells of Democracy:

“One day I asked Rowney about the prospects for peace, and he replied that meaningful negotiations with the Russian Communists were impossible. ‘The Russians,’ Rowney explained, never experienced the Renaissance, or took part in Western civilization or culture. I pressed the point, asking whether his real problem with Russia was its adherence to communism. Rowney snapped, ‘Communism has nothing to do with it!’ He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said simply, ‘The real problem with Russians is that they are Asiatics’.”

In the present day, the only remaining socialists in governance on the planet are of color: in places like Cuba or Venezuela, perhaps China (though to a more truncated extent, given their embrace of the market in recent decades) and, on the lunatic Stalinist fringe, North Korea. These are the last remaining standard-bearers, in leadership positions, who would actually use the term socialist to describe themselves. Given the color-coding of socialism in the 21st century, at the level of governance, to use the label to describe President Obama and his administration, has the effect of tying him to these “other” socialists in power. Although he has nearly nothing in common with them politically or in terms of his policy prescriptions, he is a man of color, so the connection is made, mentally, even if it carries no intellectual or factual truth.

Secondly, and even more to the point, we must remember what “socialism” is, especially in the eyes of its critics: it is, to them, a code for redistribution. Of course, some forms of socialism are more redistributive than others, and even late-stage capitalism tends to engage in some forms of very mild redistribution (as with the income tax code). But if you were to ask most who grow apoplectic at the mere mention of the word “socialism” for the first synonym that came to their mind, redistribution is likely the one they would choose. Surely it would be among their top two or three.
Now, given the almost instinctual connection made between socialism and redistribution, imagine what many white folks would naturally assume when told that this man, this black man, this black man with an African daddy, was a socialist. Even if those using the term didn’t intend it to push racial buttons (and that is a decidedly large “if”), the fact remains that for many, it would almost certainly prompt any number of racial fears and insecurities: as in, the black guy is going to take from those who work and give to those who don’t. And naturally, we all know (or at least our ill-informed prejudices tell us) who’s in the first group and who’s in the second one. Thus, the joke making the rounds on the internet, and likely in your workplace, about Obama planning on taxing aspirin “because it’s white and it works.” Or the guy with the sign at the April teabagger rally, which read, Obama’s Plan: White Slavery. Or others who have carried overtly racist signs to frame their message: signs suggesting that Obama hopes to provide care for all brown-skinned illegal immigrants, while simultaneously murdering the white elderly, or that cast the President in decidely simian imagery, and refer to him, crudely but clearly as a monkey. Or Glenn Beck’sparanoid screed from late July, which sought to link health care reform, and virtually every single piece of Obama’s political agenda to some kind of backdoor reparations scheme. This, coupled with Beck’s even more unhinged claim to have discovered acommunist/black nationalist conspiracy in the administration’s Green Jobs Initiative. All because the initiative is headed up by author and activist Van Jones: a guy whose recent book explains how to save capitalism through eco-friendly efforts at development and job creation. So even there, it isn’t about socialism, so much as the fact that Jones is black, and was once (for a couple of months) a nationalist, and has a goatee, and looks determined (read:mean) in some of his more contemplative press photos.

Fact is, the longstanding association in white minds between social program spending and racial redistribution has been well-established, by scholars such asMartin Gilens, Kenneth Neubeck, Noel Cazenave, and Jill Quadagno, among others. Indeed, it was only the willingness of past presidents like FDR to all but cut blacks out of income support programs that convinced white lawmakers and the public to sign on to any form of American welfare system in the first place: a willingness that waned as soon as people of color finally gained access to these programs beginning in the 50s and 60s. But even as strong as the social program/black folks association has been in the past, it has, until now, never had a black face to put with the effort. With a man of color in the position of president, it becomes far more convincing to those given to fear black predation already. It isn’t just that the government will tax you, white people. It’s that the black guy will. And for people like him. At your expense.

Much as the white right blew a gasket at the thought of bailing out homeowners with sub-prime and exploding mortgages a few months back (and if you listened to the rhetoric on the radio it was hard to miss the racial animosity that undergirded much of the conservative hostility to the idea, since they seemed to think only persons of color would be helped by such a plan), they now too often view Obama’s moves to more comprehensive health care as simply another way to take from those whites who have “played by the rules” and give to those folks of color who haven’t. Even as millions of whites would stand to benefit from health care reform–and all whites, as with people of color would enjoy greater choices with the very public option that has drawn the most fire–the imagery of the recipients has remained black and brown, as with all social programs; and the imagery of the persons who would be taxed for the effort has remained hard-working white folks.

By allowing the right to throw around terms like socialist to describe the President and socialism to describe his incredibly watered-down, generally big business friendly approach to health care, while not recognizing the memetic purpose of such arguments is to ensure that the right will succeed in their demonization campaign. To respond by pointing out how the plan really isn’t socialist, or how Obama really isn’t a socialist misses the point, which was never, in the end, about economic systems or philosophies: none of which the folks on the right raising the most hell show any signs of understanding anyway. This noise is about race. It is about “othering” a President who is seen as a symbol of white dispossession: dispossession of white hegemony, white entitlement, white expectation, and white power, unquestioned and unchallenged from the darker skinned other. This is what animates the every move of the angry masses, individual exceptions notwithstanding. Unless the left begins pushing back, and insisting that yes, the old days are gone, white hegemony is dead, and deserved its demise, and that we will all be better off for it, the chorus of white backlash will only grow louder. So too will it grow more effective at dividing and conquering the working people who would benefit–all of them–from a new direction.

Don’t tread on me Rosa Parks

Sorry for posting yet another video.  I think this one is important though because it’s a good reminder that we don’t usually get the full story.  And hopefully it’s motivation to keep questioning what we’re told and keep searching for what’s true.

 

“The McCaskill Town Hall Incident: told from every angle

User BluePearOnline, also known as Peter Glickert, posted this video to YouTube yesterday, entitled: “Full Story of Poster Altercation at McCaskill Event: by Peter Glickert.” In this video, Glickert reconstructs what happened at a town hall meeting held by Senator Claire McCaskill in Hillsboro, Missouri by piecing together different sources of footage all taken at the event from different angles.   

Here’s a summary, though we strongly encourage you to watch the video, in which Glickert gives an account of each scene in the story. 

CNN and other television news outlets reported that a black woman in the audience at a town hall was being escorted against her will while Senator McCaskill is talking. The woman is physically resisting against the policemen, and the crowd cheers as Senator McCaskill stops the meeting to interject while the police force the distraught woman to leave. Glickert follows this clip with a piece of footage captured by another citizen attending the town hall, who caught the entire thing from a different angle. This piece includes what happened before the woman was approached by the police. Here you can clearly see that the woman was provoked by a man who stole her poster, but the mainstream media outlets that covered the incident didn’t capture or report on this part of the exchange.

Glickert continues his narrative with footage taken by others present, who documented conversations held afterwards between police officers and citizens in attendance, as well as an angry exchange between the woman who was kicked out and other town hall attendees outside of the venue. 

All in all, it’s a fascinating work of citizen reporting that illustrates the power of a crowd to tell a story in full.”