Ok. So I'm watching the State of the Black Union now. (I wanted to watch something that would get me pissed enough to go off for 30 points in my first Y-league game tonight.) I appreciate what Tavis is trying to do but here's what I see from jump:
1. The power panel? The one with Long, Farrakhan, Fraser and the others? ONLY ONE ELECTED OFFICIAL.
As far as I'm concerned everything falls on its face right there. You can talk about economic development as long as the day is long. But the bottom line is political policy. Whether that policy is one that creates rules favorable to economic development, or a policy that deals with the growth of HIV/AIDS (or both), we need political policy. Furthermore, we need mechanisms of transparency and accountability. How the hell can you even begin to really grapple with these things if out of a 13 person panel only one has a visible viable constituency?
2. There are three issues that I think black people have a shared vested interest in fighting for. The protection of our civil rights. The promotion of policies designed to ensure equality of opportunity and/or results. The promotion of policies designed to deal with HIV/ADS.
Of those three two of them are HEAVILY CLASS BASED. No one is getting turned away from Eastern Iowa University because they are black. And on the other hand very very few students from East Saint Louis High are applying to Harvard or Michigan. Furthermore, working class black folk are much more worried about being brutalized than they are about being profiled.
The promotion of health policies help all black people. Given the way that HIV/AIDS spreads, combined with the fact that black people for the most part kick it and marry other black people, a sound HIV/AIDS policy would undoubtedly help all of us. But even here there are still problems to consider. The type of HIV/AIDS policy that would best fit MY needs, is NOT necessarily the type of policy that would best fit the needs of black sex workers. In as much as we're both black, and we cannot necessarily have a one-size-fits-all policy SOMEBODY'S GOT TO LOSE.
Take another example--education. I'm homeschooling my kids, but if Baltimore asked me to pay more taxes for their public schools I would. How many black homeschoolers feel similar? I don't know. So any "black policy" that deals with education is going to end up either stiffing the private school going folk, the growing homeschooling folk, or the public school folk. SOMEBODY'S GOT TO LOSE. And in both cases those somebodys will both be BLACK and be worthy of being CALLED black.
the first component of your sentence is the most important craig. policy and politics should be included in ANY mix of group aims....but if you could, do a quick review of the following events:
1. tavis' '05 state of the union
2. tavis' '04 state of the union
3. farrakhan's '95 million man march
4. ben chavis' '94 black leadership summit
5. ben chavis' '93 black leadership summit
(the last two were actually sponsored by the naacp and i might be getting the years wrong.)
fraser made a comment that got kudos from the crowd but was really idiotic. "we are the only people in history who fought for political power before we received economic power."
idiot. there is a kneejerk tendency to actually turn away from government as if this move were a radical/correct one. so looking at every event on that list you see two commonalities (more than two but i'm simplifying):
1. a lack of attention paid to elected officials who, even though they have problems, have identifiable constituencies and identifiable means of holding them accountable.
2. a lack of attention paid to political policies (other than pie in the sky ones). hell, farrakhan bragged that we didn't come to dc to ask government for anything. HELL, EVERYONE ELSE DOES! what? we don't pay taxes?
3. a marked preference for people with the gift of gab, and no identifiable elected constituency.
given these dynamics (did i say two? i meant three!) it behooves us to create policies that are favorable to our interests. organizing on our own in the short term is a necessity. but doing so in the long term is problematic.
Posted by: Lester Spence at March 9, 2005 05:03 PMI'm not feeling you on the Fraser/Farrakhan smackfest brah..., call me simple, but haven't religious, racial, and economic axis of organization proven hideously effective for jews?
I mean really dough, if I want something from a politician, I'd rather be in a position to buy him rather than go ask him for something. Absent an overt jewish congressional caucus, there appears to me to be a most impressive block of patronage coursing toward jewish interests.
I'm just thinking out loud here...., and like I said the first time, it's definitely not an either/or methodology or approach decision.
Posted by: cnulan at March 9, 2005 10:55 PMyou know why the jews can't be compared here. the political economy of racial difference is aeons removed from that of ETHNIC difference. but even given that we're fudging the degree to which jews actually slid under the radar. And continued to do so even in America. Stan's given last name wasn't Lee. Check out the origin of speed-dating while you're at it.
finally we're talking about the inner workings of democracies. the conceptions of citizenship, rights, and responsibilities, don't port well over generations. unless of course you consider the civilized africans...who gave their prisoners of war a significant degree of political rights that allowed them to both accumulate economic power and more importantly KEEP IT. this last point is particularly important given fraser's idiocy. yeah we may be the only group in history that fought for political power first....but we're the only group in history that had less rights (citizenship wise) than the damn table our social contract was written on.
You're talking about the inner working of democracy. That label hasn't stopped me for one moment from understanding precisely what we live in and by its very design, a democracy, it ain't!
That having been said, blackness is every bit as much an ethnicity as jewishness if you elect to reflect on its eclecsia and to consciously enter into its charter. What's more, it does not have a relation of mutual exclusion with Americanness, however, it must always be granted psychological priority over Americanness.
Again, isn't this fundamentally what Jews have done? Have the jews not grown powerful all out of proportion to their numbers by maintaining precisely such a charter? Surely this is worthy of emulation.
"In common with the possessors of wealth and power of every age, [the Founders] considered the maintenance of their privileges to be an integral part of any political organization established in the name of liberty.
"The Revolutionary leaders, therefore, were presented with two basic problems at the outset of the Revolution -- the protection of rights
against the arbitrary use of power, and the maintenance of their own superior position in the new state governments. The obvious solution
was to establish constitutions which would include as many of the safeguards as possible utilized in colonial government. A revival of
any semblance of the prerogative power was of course out of the question, but property qualifications for voting and officeholding
and the principle of bicameralism had not been discredited by identification with British tyranny. These defenses against mobs and
despots had been sanctioned by colonial experience and had become an integral part of the provincial governments; prudence dictated that they be included in the new state governments.
"A political science devoted in part to frustrating majority will might at first glance seem inconsistent with the political philosophy of the Revolutionary leaders. From a modern point of view property qualifications seem incompatible with the doctrine of government by consent; the popular sovereignty emblazoned upon the Declaration of Independence appears in some measure to be qualified by the checks and balances of the first state constitutions. The men of '76 did not feel any conflict between their guiding principles and their political practice, however, because their principles contained many conservative assumptions which are often overlooked today. The rights they proclaimed were what they believed to be the traditional rights of Englishmen, not new and unprecedented privileges. The vocabulary of natural rights used in the Declaration of Independence did not indicate a sudden change to a more radical philosophy but was rather, as Carl Becker has indicated, an attempt to rephrase English rights in such a way that they would appeal to contemporary European intellectuals. The assertion of equality was
not intended as a protest against the social distinctions, political privilege, and unequal distribution of wealth in the colonies but
was rather a repudiation of hereditary status and the privilege derived from it in Britain and on the Continent." [ p 6,7, REBELS AND DEMOCRATS, Elisha P. Douglas, 1955 ]
1. Last night I was just considering Steven Levitt's analysis of the economics of black street gang drug dealing in Chicago. What I think it would be very interesting to know is how it is that other ethnic groups may or may not have laundered their lives of crime into legitimacy. Open question.
http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.streetgangs.com/academic/gangfinance.pdf
2. The other piece is that I think comparison with Jews and Asians is definitely inappropriate because of one primary consideration - size. If there were only 4 million African Americans, like there are only 4 million Jews here, we would have been forced to have a great deal more cohesion. Secondly, Having attained a certain amount of social capital, any persecuted group can rise. How high they rise on the average I see as a function of how much aggregate weight must be lifted.
Posted by: Cobb at March 10, 2005 10:27 AMHere's the thing Mike, I sincerely doubt that any other group has practiced Pareto Optimal politics or economics on its own. Group size is less a factor than group self-love. As far as I'm concerned we simply lack the requisite degree of self-love and testicular fortitude to enter into binding social contracts with one another.
In order for blacks to continue progressing within America, we'll either get about the serious bidnis of forging wagontrain charters and living up to the terms of those social contracts with one another, or, diminishing few pigment rich individuals will continue to play pareto optimal politics and economics on the black mass, while certain others pigment rich individuals will continue to eschew interpersonal blackness in favor of Americaness and the attenuated blackness *enjoyed* by isolated luminaries like Dr. Condoleeza Rice etc.., {I wonder if she had a strong black man in her life, and children of her own to whom she exemplify all that she signifies, would she get her daily recommended allowance of *blackness* through Jack and Jill?}
Personally I believe that blackness as a unique historical interpersonal construct born of racism in America is worthy of preservation and has enduring value that will prove itself in the impending years and decades of economic and thermodynamic contraction underway in America even as we speak. I believe it is imperative for qualified and capable black folk to formally circle the wagons in ways we haven't had to do for a generation or three. [I tend to keep it conservatively real like that]
America's political system is explicitly based on the political ideology of "Social Darwinism". Having previously pointed you - up a bit in this thread - to the nature of privilege in the architecture this republic of *ours* we can move on to other features of the American operating system structurally and factually antithetical to most of okey dokey labels we're taught about our democratic republic.
The reason the American political system works as it does, is because it is based on ruthless socio-economic competition.
When economists use the term "economic efficiency", they aren't using it like an engineer does. To an economist "efficient" means "Pareto Optimal", which IS identical to "Social Darwinism".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
The Founders were truly CALCULATING men who devised a political system that, first and foremost, tended to satisfy the imperatives of a preferred class of citizens.
Workers were contented with ELECTING the levers of government. The rich were satisfied because they got to PULL those levers of government. The Founders created a remarkably stable "melting pot" of different cultures and religions. Indeed, unlike the old country, the American road to the top was (and still is) open to anyone of the *preferred class* of citizens possessing the drive, ruthlessness, and opportunity.
"In 1884, one of the wealthiest men of his time, Henry B. Payne, wanted to become the next United States senator from Ohio. Payne's son Oliver, the treasurer of Standard Oil, did his best to help. Just before the election for Ohio's seat, son Oliver "sat at a desk in a Columbus hotel with a stack of bills in front of him, paying for the votes of the state legislators," who then elected U.S. senators. [ p. 12, THE MAXIMUM WAGE, Sam Pizzigati; Apex, 1992;
ECONOMIC SOCIAL DARWINISM [My definition] The doctrine that holds that government interference with natural process in markets makes them less fit to compete.
PARETO OPTIMUM
"When the economy's resources and output are allocated in such a way that no reallocation can make anyone better off without making at least one other person worse off then a Pareto optimum is said to exist." [ p. 324, THE MIT DICTIONARY OF MODERN ECONOMICS: Fourth Edition; MIT, 1996 ]
==========================================================
"In common with the possessors of wealth and power of every age, [the Founders] considered the maintenance of their privileges to be an integral part of any political organization established in the name of liberty.
"The Revolutionary leaders, therefore, were presented with two basic problems at the outset of the Revolution -- the protection of rights against the arbitrary use of power, and the maintenance of their own superior position in the new state governments. The obvious solution was to establish constitutions which would include as many of the safeguards as possible utilized in colonial government. A revival of any semblance of the prerogative power was of course out of the question, but property qualifications for voting and officeholding and the principle of bicameralism had not been discredited by identification with British tyranny. These defenses against mobs and despots had been sanctioned by colonial experience and had become an integral part of the provincial governments; prudence dictated that they be included in the new state governments.
"A political science devoted in part to frustrating majority will might at first glance seem inconsistent with the political philosophy of the Revolutionary leaders. From a modern point of view property qualifications seem incompatible with the doctrine of government by consent; the popular sovereignty emblazoned upon the Declaration of Independence appears in some measure to be qualified by the checks and balances of the first state constitutions. The men of '76 did not feel any conflict between their guiding principles and their political practice, however, because their principles contained many conservative assumptions which are often overlooked today. The rights they proclaimed were what they believed to be the traditional rights of Englishmen, not new and unprecedented privileges. The vocabulary of natural rights used in the Declaration of Independence did not indicate a sudden change to a more radical philosophy but was rather, as Carl Becker has indicated, an attempt to rephrase English rights in such a way that they would appeal to contemporary European intellectuals. The assertion of equality was not intended as a protest against the social distinctions, political privilege, and unequal distribution of wealth in the colonies but was rather a repudiation of hereditary status and the privilege derived from it in Britain and on the Continent." p6,7, REBELS AND DEMOCRATS, Elisha P. Douglas, 1955,
Posted by: cnulan at March 10, 2005 01:57 PM
OK, I hate to cut you off when you get going, but how's about we start doing some means tested proposals for black polities? We can complain about the way the US works, or we can leverage our social capital to take advantage. It seems to me that we can posit 'blackness' as a success of a different sort, which is not socially darwinistic. If we take that route, then we've already won by being losers in the American formula.
I say we're in the belly of the beast with a common destiny and some clawing and scratching is required. I mean, it's about taking a stand where you stand. We could all hop on a slow boat to Brazil, join that diasporic minority and cruise, by American standards. We could head back to Ghana and get into the textile industry. Hell we could go to Cote D'Ivoire and jump into the cacao business.
But I think if something of our aggregation is going to happen here, it's going to be a continuation of the Black Mecca theory, and Stone Mountain GA is a good example. A solid black middle class has to kick out another ethnic group.
But here's what I believe. The black upper middle class that survives the social darwinism of America, will be black enough - and that black will be the black of the future whether or not Cosby's nemeses survive. It's all about *do*, it's not all about *be*.
Posted by: Cobb at March 10, 2005 05:07 PMIt's all about *do*, it's not all about *be*.
Near total concurrence.
It IS absolutely about *do*.
HOWEVER
I believe that under the narcotizing influence of the American way of life, folks got to either come with a culturally disciplined way of life, or, undergo some serious rehabilitation.
The army doesn't promise to help you *be* all that you can *be* without first putting you through some basic training.
I don't know anything at all about the Stone Mountain GA example you cite, if you got urls, please share. But I know that the overwhelming majority of middle class black folk I know, are utterly dependant sararimen/women or consultants who serve at the pleasure of others.
Not many autodidactic shot callers in the bunch. Not many providing life's necessities, just a lot of personal and professional services and ephemera.
I'm not complaining about the way America works, I'm just through with any pretense or continuing dissimulation about how America works and how we work in it. If we're going to get about the serious bidnis of Work on the wagontrain, then we've gotta get down to the serious quantification and qualification of roles and responsibilities required to effectively, collectively *do*.
Please kick a brutha as much additional *do*-centric data as you deem suitable to illustrate your point, and I'll try my best to reciprocate. One of my wagontrain projects is in the process of transitioning to a self-funding status - and it's fascinating as hell to watch how folks act as it rounds the bend from philanthropic dependant to potentially self-funding and autonomous institution.
I'm learning lots each week about what it must have been like to have been a wagonmaster on the 19th century American wagontrails.
Also, please tell me in crystal clear terms what you mean by *social capital* and how we leverage it? Lastly, I dunno jack about Cosby's nemeses.., I do, however, know for certain that the extent to which I exemplify with and for poor young black kids is the extent to which their chances of success on the trail improve exponentially. You can call me Jedediah Nightlinger Andersen and I'll wear that as a badge of poundcake snatching, afrostocratic-ridiculing honor...,
sigh....,
while recognizing that it should never be an either/or proposition, i.e., that policy and politics should be included in any mix of group aims, you mean to tell me that ALL of our priority collective vested interests have in common the necessity of going to "ask somebody"?
dayyum....,
me an the drop squad'll now quietly go back to cleaning our rifles. (o:
Posted by: cnulan at March 9, 2005 03:46 PM