On Friday's Barbershop I weighed in on the "controversy" over President Obama using Lincoln's Bible and Martin Luther King jr's Bible during his swearing in ceremony[foot]Listen here.[/foot]. I noted that King was dead, and if we want to make claims about racial inequality or class inequality we'd be better off focusing on the here and now and making claims about inequality rooted in the contemporary condition than in focusing on what King would've done. I then argued that Obama's choice of King–or rather the connections people make between Obama and King–fit if we look at the King of 1955 or so.
That King supported the market strongly.
That King had to be browbeaten to participate in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Then had to be browbeaten again to continue after it was found successful.
Several years later, that King arguably left Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party on the cutting room floor of the 1964 Democratic Convention, supporting the LBJ Compromise that gave them two symbolic seats in the convention while allowing the white supremacist Mississippi Democratic Party delegation to participate fully.
Now on the other hand if we look at the King of 1967, we find Obama wanting. And it isn't even close.
That King spent the last days of his life supporting a workers strike.
That King was largely on the outs with the civil rights establishment because he felt the Vietnam War was immoral.
That King argued that we needed a fusion of capitalism and socialism (if not communism) to bring together the wealth creating components of capitalism with the resource sharing components of socialism.
It's hard to see Obama in THIS King.
Now a strong argument can be made that civil rights leaders need to be incorporated into the national tapestry. That the symbolic choice of the King Bible along with the newly created King Monument in Washington D.C. help further embed the causes they fought for into the natural language we use to describe American democracy and American political values.
However the question becomes how are they incorporated? To what ends are they used? Are they used to moor a strong argument against inequality in that same fabric? Are they used to valiantly argue for a deeply American progressive vision of what America should be?
Or are they used to show how far we've come, to show how high we've lifted ourselves?
Particularly because Cornel West was one of the people making this argument–a little more than four years ago Cornel West, Julianne Malveaux, and other intellectuals blasted Obama for not mentioning King's name during the speech he gave when he formally accepted the Democratic nomination for President (on the anniversary of the March on Washington)–his comments sound shaky.
West is a deeply flawed vessel. He is an elitist. His vision of democratic pragmatism largely ignores the work of ACTUAL democratic activists. On more than one occasion he's turned on folk more for personal slights than for political ones[foot]Not only has he talked about Obama not inviting him to the first Inauguration, but his attacks against former Harvard President Larry Summer didn't begin until after Summer attacked West's productivity, not after Summer argued women might not have what it took to be scientists. And most recently he engaged in the most vicious attack against Melissa Harris-Perry I've ever seen him make.[/foot]. This doesn't mean his general critique is wrong. And in the absence of louder voices, I'll take his. Gladly.
Lester, I find your analysis interesting and provocative. But I completely disagree with your characterization of Cornel West. His vision of democracy does not ignore the work of actual activists: that reveals how profoundly you do not know the scope of his activism. We have to be more generous in engagement. Cornel is deeply flawed as we all are. But let’s give the brother his due.
Eddie this is worth a longer discussion…in print. Suffice it to say that I’m not referring to “the scope of his activism” but rather to his scholarship. While I see a clear appreciation for artistic production (Coltrane, Morrison, Whitman, Melville, etc.) in expanding our conception of democracy I don’t see the same appreciation for grassroots political work. This gap is particularly glaring in DEMOCRACY MATTERS, given the subject of the book. To be fair I find this flaw in all of the major works on pragmatism involving black folk.
We have to write about this. When we read Prophesy Deliverance, The Ethical Dimensions of Marxism or the Future of American Progressivism with Roberto Unger, a very different sense of Cornel comes into view. These books have to be read alongside his work with the Democratic Socialists of America (he was their honorary chair) and his grassroots work in churches and prisons (most folk don’t know of the work he did in Rikers). As for pragmatism generally, we will certainly have to take that up in a longer discussion…perhaps in print.
I’ve been following West’s work written and otherwise for over twenty years. I’ve got The Ethical Dimensions and the Future of American Progressivism on my laptop right now, OPEN. Cornel’s work with black and working class populations does not translate into an intellectual appreciation of their contribution to democracy. There’s nothing in these volumes to suggest otherwise. He isn’t alone here. A range of other scholars are guilty of this as well. But he’s one of the few attempting to engage in progressive political work.
(By way of comparison check out Matt Birkhold’s work on James Boggs. http://www.academia.edu/993895/Doing_for_Our_TIme_What_Marx_Did_for_His_Constituting_the_Boggsian_Challenge_to_Marxist_Praxis)
This is just an odd claim. What you consider progressive political work and intellectual appreciation of the contributions of every day folks is obviously specialized and limited.
What’s odd is that I only deal with West in a couple of sentences here and in my comments on NPR…but you’ve chosen to focus on West (and on him getting “his due”) rather than on the larger critique.
As to the claim of being “specialized and limited”…given our contemporary condition I think it important we take great care in developing, testing, and studying political phenomenon. Most scholars of black politics feel the same way. Your point of view is obviously a bit different.
And most recently he engaged in the most vicious attack against Melissa Harris-Perry I’ve ever seen him make.
Was this in response to her husband’s preposterous libel against the Tuskeegee nurses? You know the one in which a comparison was drawn between the Hon.Nurse.Sistas and Tavis Smiley?
But Bossip/TMZ errata aside, and please gently bow to ease us with some of that elite JSTOR special sauce, was King as much the product of elite patronage as is Obama?
If so, did King betray his patrons during the final, shining manhood, truth-to-power stage of his career?
Finally, is there even one iota of grassroots genuineness in Stephen Obama, or is he simply the marquee blackface on predatory militarism and parasitic banksterism?
In order:
1. I don’t have any idea. This is the first I’ve heard of it.
2. No. King benefitted from patronage, but not the type or the level of patronage Obama received.
3. King moved in a direction few expected him to move, and in response he left a LOT of people behind.
4. does it matter?
1. Here you go.
2. Ergo, King hazarded and overcame genuine personal risk until the moment when that personal risk overcame him, while the Hon.Bro.Preznit is simply Beyonce’ing his way through a figurehead engagement.
3. King evolved into ever increasing levels of righteousness. Stephen doesn’t even rise to the level of a false Rorschach test, people see what they want to see, but the fact of the matter is that his whole and entire play is prescripted.
4. Does the fact of whether or not there’s anything genuine or people-centric about Obama matter?
To precisely the same extent and in exactly the same way that it matters whether black church pastors are ethical servant leaders or self-serving pimps.
I think that is an absolute disgrace that the Bible of Dr. King was desecrated by the hypocritical warmongering Barack Obama—the primary facilitator of racist forces who lynched Black people in Libya. It was not enough for these diabolical forces to assassinate Dr. King. They have to continuously defame his character while
exploiting his legacy.
Barack Obama is policing the world with the same mentality
police officers have towards young Black males in urban America.
[When President Obama first took office, he was briefed
on this by the then-director—the outgoing director of the CIA, Michael Hayden.
And he described to him this policy that they had developed called
“signature strikes,” where they were looking at patterns of life. If
an individual had contact with certain other individuals, if they were
traveling in a certain area at certain times, if they were gathering with a
certain number of people, that there was a presumption that they must be up to
no good, that they are suspected militants or suspected terrorists and that the
U.S. could take preemptive action against those people—and by “preemptive
action,” I mean killing them with a missile—that there was authorization
to do that. In some cases, the president has actually pre-cleared the CIA to
authorize these strikes without being directly notified.]
Barack “Stephen” Obama represents the absolute antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”
I admire Dr. West but he needs to control his emotions and stay out of the gutter Lacewell Harris-Perry has lured him into. This back and forth cheapens his moral authority. He can learn a lesson from Dr. King regarding dealing with critics. Let them go and focus on positive action.
Nevertheless as much as I respect Dr. West I was deeply disappointed he chose to sacrifice truth on an altar of rationalizations and vote for Barack Obama. I understand those who have been seduced by “spiritual wickedness in high places,” but Cornel West is a self-proclaimed “revolutionary Christian” yet for him political strategy trumped moral conscience. The tragedy is Dr. West thought that he was voting to prevent a right-wing coup. He was actually enabling sophisticated subterranean fascism.
I don’t know how we will ever build a world based on truth, justice, and righteousness, as long as people who clearly know better allow themselves to be mentally incarcerated by the limited parameters of a corrupt system. The scripture says, “Righteousness exalts a nation,” not a lesser evil. Surely Dr. West, if anyone, knows this.
Prof Spence –
Why not look at BOTH the Lincoln and King bible – make note that they are exactly the same inside – and then make a comment as to the response made by large segments of the “Obama base” IF President Obama was to crack open either of these blessed books and read the II Chronicles 7:14 – including himself within the set of people needing such guidance?