(Every status update/blog entry/tweet I write today will have the title of one of Prince’s songs in it in honor of his 51st birthday.)
If you’ve got about ten minutes of free time check out Davey D’s interview of Michael Eric Dyson below:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0mEzQMQd5s[/youtube]
Michael Eric Dyson is right to question Obama. Right to wonder whether and where his politics coincide with black politics. But his focus is off. WAY off. Dyson is considered one of our foremost black intellectuals and the best he can come up with is that Obama can’t say King’s name out loud? Ta-Nehisi Coates has weighed on this directly. In the wake of Tavis Smiley’s documentary “Stand” (Smiley took a group of black male intellectuals on a tour through the South in order to both tout his new book and to argue that Obama was dismissing King’s legacy) Melissa Harris-Lacewell weighed in indirectly (hat tip to Jelani Cobb) arguing that black politics has “grown up” and that while drawing a straight line from King to Cornel West is hard, drawing a straight line from King to Obama is not:
Smiley and his “soul patrol” seemed to have missed the intervening 40 years between the era of King and the election of Obama. African-Americans are no longer fully disfranchised subjects of an oppressive state.
African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.
The men of “Stand” yearned for an imagined racial past. By their accounting, this racial past had better music, more charismatic leaders and a more-involved black church.
Their romanticism ignores the cultural contributions of contemporary black youth, forgets the dangerous limitations of charismatic leadership and revises the fraught, complicated relationship of black churches to struggles for racial equality. And these men ignored the democratizing effect of new media forms, which revolutionized the 2008 election.
Black people were not duped by some slick, media-generated candidate. African-Americans were co-authors of the Obama campaign. Through social networks, YouTube videos, political blogs and new-media echo chambers, black people were equal partners in shaping the candidate and his campaign. There was no need for the entrenched pundit class to tell black voters what to think or how to behave; they figured it out for themselves.
Still, there is plenty to criticize in the young Obama administration: the refusal to prosecute those implicated in the torture memos, civilian casualties caused by drone attacks, bank bailouts and inadequate defense of gay rights to name a few. But black communities are already engaged in these critiques and many others. Black local organizers, elected officials, bloggers, pundits and columnists have taken substantive, specific positions on a broad range of issues.
Harris-Lacewell is more right than wrong here. The days of brokerage politics aren’t quite over but they’re dying on the vine. The only reason that Al Sharpton still has a job is because the media consistently quotes him, not because black people don’t have the ability to vote and take politics into their own hands. Whereas previous Democratic presidential candidates turned to a variety of black middle men to drum up the black vote, Obama (thankfully) ignored them.
Furthermore the most visible black intellectuals have some combination of job security/tenure (West, Glaude, herself, Dyson, Adolph Reed…who she doesn’t mention), or corporate sponsorship (Smiley, to a lesser extent Jackson and Sharpton), and can’t be said to really be “on the front lines”. It’s hard to claim to BE “hard/authentic” when you don’t really have a constituency to be accountable for or to, and when you don’t have to worry about loot or job security.
Finally she’s right to note that the substance of their critique and praxis is weak as water. Rather than hitting Obama hard on substance–on health reform for example as I am going to do in my next post–they settle. Again, Dyson asking that Obama say King’s name aloud is sick.
But two points stand out for me.
1. It isn’t about King.
Talking about whether King is or isn’t connected to Obama misses the point. And at the end it reads as nothing more than an intellectual version of “set-claiming.” Is Obama down with King (i.e. black people) or is he ain’t? King is dead. He isn’t coming back. We have no idea who or what he’d be down with if he were alive. We should dismiss attempts to say that Obama isn’t connected to King AND attempts to connect him as misdirection, as sleight of hand. “Watch the rabbit fall out of my hat.” They shift discussion to Obama’s place in black history as opposed to Obama’s work for black populations.
2. There is a REASON why West, Dyson, and others are weak on Obama’s actual politics and hard on his cultural politics.
The three most prominent black male intellectuals are Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Tavis Smiley. Smiley is a journalist with limited training. Dyson and West are both trained theologians, though they have (limited) chops in political theory, philosophy, and black studies. (Black Studies as a discipline makes a hard humanities turn somewhere in the eighties, privileging professors like Dyson, West, Henry Louis Gates, and Houston Baker, at the expense of social scientists.) The reason they have no substantive political and economic critiques is because they do not have the skillset required to make them. Similarly, the reason why at least West and Dyson are now household names is because they have the preacher’s gift of gab. Finally it is hard as hell to do real intellectual work when you are on the road lecturing 52 weeks out of the year. It is hard enough to shift from humanities scholar to social science scholar. It is harder if you don’t have the time to sit and think because you’re giving lectures connecting Nas to Nietzsche at a different spot every week.
They fight over King then, rather than engaging in real discusion over Obama because while they can talk King for a million years without repeating a thought, they don’t know much about public opinion formation, public policy creation, federalism, health care, or any of the other detailed political decisions Obama has to make on a day to day basis.
This is a tragedy. I agree with Melissa that we need black intellectuals to deal with the present moment now more than ever. But what we really need are thoughtful social scientists with the ability to break down policy differences and ideological shifts in ways that every day people can understand. While Melissa’s presence on the airwaves is refreshing because she’s young, female, and a race-woman, her support for Obama precludes her from serving as one of the critical voices we really need here. Adolph Reed is brilliant but can’t “media” his way out of a paper bag. And the other political scientists I’d point to–Vincent Hutchings, Cathy Cohen, and Cedric Johnson stand out–are all deluged with too many professional responsibilities to even blog.
I changed the name of my blog from “Dr. lester k. spence” back to “Blacksmythe” sometime ago, because of my colleagues told me to stop blogging.
Maybe I’m the change I’ve been looking for.
Very well put Dr. Thought provoking.
amen.
So I've been invited to preview Soledad OBrien's deally and I'm now a bit tempted just to have an oppy to criticize as a witness rather than on principle. But what my thesis is goes a little something like this:
No Black News
The possible demise of local black news is my concern As I talk about in my blog post, I am convinced that working out a business model between local radio and local online communities is key to keep the very idea alive. There are definite synergies possible and the low cost model of online can extend the influence of radio if they make the right moves. Without that move, black news will become falsely “nationalized” with mainstream editors in national publications having all the media power in determining how America sees 'the black community'. There is no single black community and a great deal of effort was made during the 80s to expand and express black diversity. Hiphop is reducing that back to singularity, a useless singularity.
Secondarily I am interested in the ability of local online communities in partnership with local media to sustain a high quality discussion about political and economic events of primary interest to them. Participatory democracy at the local level needs to take place on line. Barack ain't answering your email, your blog, your facebook or your twitter. So how does that hookup get started? Have we done the black online dating thing enough yet?
So the question, aside from the money and practicality of establishing a 'BNN' in contrast to CNN is if any middle class actually needs one. What comes out of a BNN-informed constituency? Isn't that just the same thing as a FOX-informed constituency or a Olbermann-informed constituency? What, beyond the pride of me-too, and soapbox time, is the net benefit?
I've been thinking about the issues you've raised for years. The recent hubbub black radio folks made over the Performance Rights Act has brought this to the fore, as well as Ed Dunn's posts over at Dream and Hustle. For the first time blacks have the opportunity to actually be the media, to get rid of not only political brokers but media brokers. And as a result we could be looking at modern politics within black spaces for the first time.
In another post you noted that black politics was dead. Black politics is dead the same way Detroit is dead. The current form of black politics IS dying. But as long as black populations see themselves as black subjects, and are TREATED as black subjects, black politics will exist.
I should also state my bias against the cult of the public intellectual, which is a reversal for me since the Vision Circle days, but eating at me since 92 and Gwaltney. Perhaps there simply is no short-cut that 'public voices' can make without the materiality of institutions that people put money and time into. So 'speaking truth to power' now that it's so easy and cheap with the internet, is showing its ultimate uselessness.
If THE TRUTH were published on the web and 20 million people saw it, so what? What are you going to do, publish a survey?
This is a really thoughtful piece, and I've been thinking along the same lines about the severe limits of contemporary black intellectual thought about Obama, the general inability to either get beyond compulsory endorsement or senseless vitriol. But I fear that what you're calling for might end up equally as limiting as what we currently have. Maybe it's the poet-turned-historian in me, but the emphasis on broad fields (humanities versus social science) is a bit hard to accept. If part of what intellectuals do, though not only what they do, is to formulate complex ideas about society and social reality, offers suggestive and innovative visions for the future, ideas and visions that are hopefully crafted in a way so that a broad range of people can make sense of it, I don't see why such distinctions matter as much as whether someone stepping into a given field of concerns has done the work to make sense of what they're talking about. One of the dangers of limiting the potential voices capable of critically engaging Obama (or public policy more generally) to social scientists is it threatens to foreclose a range of critical discourse that can come from non-social scientists, or even people without formal academic training, and possibly leading to a monochromatic discussion. I'm just as interested in what you have to say as I would be in what Charles Mills or Toni Morrison thinks about Obama.
Minkah, the more (thoughtful) voices we have the better. I am not foreclosing the valuable work of poets, painters, and literature critics (among others). At their best they help us imagine new worlds, and open our eyes to new modes of being. But I AM saying we need more social scientists dealing with these issues than what we currently have. To the extent that this does become zero-sum, with each voice taking up space that cannot be filled by another, I'd rather have Adolph Reed than Toni Morrison. And this is not simply because my politics are close to Reed's.
I'm not sure about the social scientist part. New poets, painters, lit critics? Sure. Let them open our eyes. But let their inspiration be what it is, not be mediated to the masses through government programs. After all, where did social science come? It came from thinking about how the government plans its war on X, X needing a scientific explanation from those getting government grants to re-engineer society.
There shouldn't be any question that such central planning is inimical to black family independence and self-sufficiency, but it coincided with the opening up of civil service to black Americans. Separate the two.
Wow. Great Post. Will link tomorrow. What's up Minkah!!
Lester, one thing I'd ask, is how a critique of Obama's policy toward African-Americans, could be (or would be) differentiated from a critique of his policy toward working Americans and toward the poor. What I'm trying to get at is what policies should we be looking at that would black people specifically, but don't necessarily help anyone else.
That's a somewhat clumsy frame. But, for instance, the crack/cocaine disparity or the Rockerfeller drug laws. Obviously they have a disproportionately negative effect on black people. But that really is only a portion of the critique–they would be bad policy even if they didn't. In other words, while a drug war critique certainly has a racial component, and certainly has special importance for black communities, the policy, itself, affects all kinds of people and is bad overall.
I think there is room to go after that “rising tide lifts all boats” argument. But it seems to me that often the direct line is in questioning whether the tide is, in fact, rising at all.
Just a few thoughts. I'm still thinking my way through.
The difference is that people are demanding it to be. Black political constituents refuse to be addressed as Americans plain and simple. So when advocates for honest, working class Americans start pushing their agenda, partisans demand that the message be racialized.
If that weren't the case, black Americans would have sympathized with Sarah Palin.
Generally speaking I’ve always found Dr. Dyson to be lacking the Afrikan Deep Thought required of critical thinkers, but I disagree that his “focus is off…way off” in this interview. Dyson is on target regarding Obama’s handling of GM vs AIG. He’s on target regarding Obama’s willingness to sacrifice the interest of Afrikan Americans in deference to a concept of universalism. He’s on target when he says that he expects all presidents to deal with the issue of race. He’s on target when he says that we cannot be so grateful to have Obama in office that we make no demands on him. He’s on target when he says that we cannot put all of our political eggs in one basket. Finally, Dyson is most definitely correct when he says that Obama generalized his way around a specific and extremely relevant question posed by Andre Showell of BET: “The black unemployment rate, as you know, is in the double digits. And in New York City, for example, the black unemployment rate for men is near 50 percent. My question to you tonight is: given this unique and desperate circumstance, what specific policies can you point to that will target these communities and what's the timetable for us to see tangible results?”
The only thing that I would say is that I don’t know why Dyson or anyone else would be surprised by Obama’s performance in the “race arena.” Candidate Obama did everything possible to present himself to white America as race neutral. Did anyone really expect President Obama to be any different, regardless of the obvious responsibility to tackle the specifics of that difficult issue?
I did not see the Smiley documentary, so I’m in no position to critique Dr. Harris-Lacewell’s analysis of the program. I will however challenge this statement by the Princeton professor:
“African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.”
What measurable outcomes can Harris-Lacewell identify to validate that statement? Growth is not equal to positive development. Simply holding office does not necessarily equate to holding power—the capacity to positively impact the material conditions of those you represent.
Black politicians were asleep at the switch while sub-prime lenders wrecked thousands of Afrikan American families as Pam Martens noted:
[According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion, for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in mod¬ern history:
“According to federal data, people of color are three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites”.
If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. “This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism.”
Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.]
Based on the real unemployment statistics Afrikan America is in an economic depression. What strategies have Black politicians developed to remediate this crisis?
The reality is that Black politics in America, with all but a few exceptions is just another form of neo-colonialism.
Well said, makheru bradley.
I think there is no clearer evidence of a racial spoils politics than that which shows the devastation you quote. The reason that subprime loans hit black families proportionately higher was that black families were specific targets of this liberalization of lending. It's really as simple as that – the unintended consequences of bending the rules for the sake of inclusion is that if the new rules are a bad idea, the newly included suffer disproportionately.
In the case of lending liberalization, the new rules were an adequate idea but the implementation was sloppy and stupid. I wrote about that here in December. http://cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2008/12/cra-the-re… They didn't help people earn chips, they lowered the ante, and that ruined the game for everyone. On the other hand, it's a political non-starter to hand out free chips to blacks.
That doesn't change the fact that so long as you demand separate targeted political solutions by race, you will never have equality. They are incompatible. In this regard, the non-racial initiatives of people like Ward Connerly make perfect, logical sense. However we all know that non-racialism is also a political non-starter, but that's because 'black politics' refuses to distinguish between civil rights defense and economic stimulus. As much as I like John Hope Bryant, his 'silver rights' rhetoric is part of that problem.
The equitable distribution of subprime loans and all other economic goods and services begins when black advocates allow blackness to disappear as a political consideration.
Let me ask you this Makheru. What did you get from Dyson’s rant that you hadn’t gotten anywhere else? What did he say that caused you to think differently? What did he say that you did not know?
“The reason they have no substantive political and economic critiques is because they do not have the skillset required to make them.” LKS, can you discuss your thoughts on the role of non-specialists engaging in public discussion, including at the authorial level, of the weighty issues you raise? Do you preclude such a role–or are you specifically and exclusively referring to skills rather than academic credentials? Noam Chomsky, for instance, is a linguist, not a political scientist or historian. Where and how do you draw your lines on who gets to comment? Please don't infer a combative tone on my part; I mean these questions in a non-rhetorical, answer-gathering manner.
Thanks for asking. I'd suggest that we aren't really talking about public discussions, which any and everyone should participate in. What we're talking about is media punditry, an act that by its nature excludes most people in part because of the credentials required to allow one access in the first place.
So given this, what should the requirement be for black media pundits? I argue that at the very least if the discussion substantively deals with politics and economics the individual “punditting” should have the ability to speak clearly and confidently about the issue particularly when offering alternatives, without resorting to bromides. I believe this is more likely to occur when the individual is formally trained, but this doesn't preclude the modern equivalent of a James Boggs or Harold Cruse (neither of whom was formally trained).
Black intellectual Obama wars off-kilter. “Controversy.” #prince http://t.co/ZgJAYljv