Folks should take note that Ralph Nader doesn't go away.
Now that he has officially tossed his hat into the ring of presidential politics, once again, he gets an opportunity to speak out on a national plaform to remind us of what he thinks in the long off-season.
Public Citizen, his years old organization is the author of some pretty decent white papers. I've referenced them on occasion in the past for issues like redlining. In the din of spin, Nader comes off as an anti-corporate crank (which isn't altogether untrue), and a spoiler for the Democrats (which is true, but not this year). But that doesn't change the fact that he has experience as a grass-roots organizer and is much more likely to have a firm grip on issues and policy than most of the front-runners. The problem is, of course, people don't vote for their permanent interests because their permanent interests aren't interesting to the press and the parties during the long off-season.
The Democrats are sounding like spoiled children. They are supposed to own the anti-corporate activism. They don't of course, but they want to appear to have a monopoly. Which only goes to highlight how foolish it is that a) we don't have a real third party and b) that there isn't much business between elections in the grass roots wonk department.
Black politics, however is more attuned to grass roots wonking. Or at least it ought to be considering how overwhelmed it is with its signature preoccupations: racism, civil rights and police brutality. Understanding that Nader is never going to win, just as Sharpton is never going to win reminds us that while the spotlight is always going to shine during presidential elections, it's what happens in the dark that matters. This is why Sharpton lasted longer than Mosely-Braun. Nobody knows what the ex-senator stands for when she's not running for office. Sharpton, on the other hand, can command attention at will.
The recent flap over Sharpton's back office staff being populated by Republicans illustrates how important it is to have something going on when elections are not happening. That means money.
This is something Nader evidently can do, can we?
I've been trying to wrap my thoughts around the idea that politics is marketing by other means. Around a paradigm in which we don't elect representatives so much as hire them (Bush as CEO). I can't roll with it for a number of substantive reasons, but at the same time there is something very appealing in moving the focus of black politics towards market oriented activity. My father says over and over again that if black people want to build economic power there is tons of money to be made in black spaces like Detroit. As these communities are largely underserved, this strategy makes a great deal of sense, and has single handedly propelled Magic from a million dollar man to a 700 million dollar man.
One of the benefits here is that such a strategy only requires "black consciousness" to the degree that the individuals are actually AWARE of black people. Understand the difference?
And this model is easily portable. I know both Covington and Sudarkasa from my years at Michigan. When Cobb is talking about the new black critical mass, these are the folk he's talking about.
Dutton directed Against the Ropes, the movie starring Meg Ryan. Ryan plays a boxing manager, and her character is loosely based on James Toney's old manager Jackie Kallen. I've got a lot of respect for Dutton, not only because he's so serious about his craft, but because of what he was able to do with Roc and the half-hour sitcom format. His work there places him in rare company...Bill Cosby, Debbie Allen, and Tim Reid are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head who've been able to instill a great deal of humanity and pathos into a half-hour meant to make people laugh.
There's a deep tension that his comments about hip-hop reveal. Acting is a rough job. You've got to deal with rejection after rejection, putting your heart and soul on the line for bit part after bit part, hoping that someone will recognize someone else in you. Of course it's ten times hard for black actors, who have another set of issues to wrestle with. While most sane folks recognize the types of inter-racial politics played in Hollywood is often nasty and brutal, what Dutton's words reflect is the hidden kernal within black life. There is often as much tension and competition for scarce resources within black spaces as there is between black spaces and non-black spaces. Now to be fair, I think Mos Def has got serious acting chops. And it's damn hard to take your eyes off of Tupac in the few movies he was able to make before his murder.
I wonder which side the NAACP would take here?
(From a recent online interview, I talk about my current focus and expectations).
I'm trying to see my way through to the critical mass of upper-middle class and rich blackfolks doing something. I'm not sure what it will be, but I believe it will be tremendous. I recall the adjudication of the Taxman case in New Jersey. I seem to recall that some wealthy unnamed black individuals raised a small fortune and settled this Affirmative Action case out of court. This among other things alerted me to certain possibilities. Since I've done the Silicon Valley thing and proved myself capable of doing business way above the merchant level, I'm doing what I can to make a small fortune myself. I think that as black businessmen such as myself become more numerous and visible we will see a real change in American politics. The way I see it, there are millions of African Americans sitting on the fence because nobody is really in tune with what their lives are like, yet they bear the brunt of an interesting type of backhanded regard. It's the suburban middle-class black kid who everybody likes to say should never in a million years get Affirmative Action. All of those kids are in their 20s, 30s and 40s now. There is no name for them that anyone in the popular press can toss around, but I think I know who they are and I think I know their political pulse. Black new money and black old money are going to do something. I'd like to be in the middle of that.
Specifically I want to see the ways black businessmen will interact with the political parties which is substantially different than today's status quo. It might not be different at all, but I don't believe that. I think there is this presumption that 'the dream' of African Americans stops at the suburban middle class, and people ought to know that there's a lot more ambition out there. When you look at somebody like Ice Cube and his Barbershop movies - this is the working class blacks vision that America buys into - those blackfolks with a down-to-earth attitude on the verge of dysfunction and survival by motherwit. But there is a class of African Americans whose parents already are what Ice Cube's son promises to be. I believe that America keeps treating those people as isolated exceptions, but that they will network and begin to turn heads.
Attendant to that, I want to facilitate African American bipartisanship. That means Republican husbands and Democrat wives, playing both parties to feed the family which survives good times and bad. We're still breaking up monolithic visions. This is more about politics for social power as contrasted with liberation politics and the politics of civil rights and human rights. That means creating and sustaining places on the web where folks can talk about that kind of thing. That's what Cobb is from the personal perspective and that's what VisionCircle is from a more collaborative and serious perspective.
All that is avocation. I'm not a politician or a political science professor. I'm a businessman in the software industry. I think my business ambitions are fairly conventional, except that I'm a lot more in tune with the global marketplace than most small businessmen have ever had to be.
One day after I make enough money to stop worrying about making money, I'd like to build my XRepublic system. That's the deliberative space that the internet has yet to create. It, or something like it, will gather all of the Boohabs in the world into a virtual parliament and representative democracy will never be the same.
OK. A group of black contractors in Albany, Ga. are threatening to sue because they feel they've been locked out of contracts. Here's the original story. Jim's thinking the issue a bit overblown, and truly hopes that Jackson doesn't come rolling in to save the day. Dean chimes in by noting that when given a choice between reason and politics...folks will choose politics most of the time. Math makes people's head hurt. And of course, people chiming in on both sites are arguing that what black folks really want are guarenteed contracts, regardless of whether the bid is the lowest.
I'm thinking some context is in order.
First things first. I don't think Jim has anything to worry about as far as Jackson or Al are concerned. I'm pretty sure there's no loot in it for them, and no major press coverage. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
For some reason, I'm reminded of voting rights. When folks say that black people couldn't vote in the South, what they really mean is that MOST black people couldn't vote. There's an interesting story, or set of stories, to be told about the few black people that were allowed to participate. What did they agree to do in exchange for their participation? If they couldn't ever vote against the grain (voting in effect, AGAINST white supremacy) then why in the hell would they vote in the first place? Status plays an important role here most likely. Being able to SAY they could vote was more important than actually voting for their long term interests.
But I'm waxing nostalgic.
If we were to look at the number of registered black people in the deep south who actually voted, I'm betting that number would be fairly high. Taking a look at Hanes Walton's seminal INVISIBLE POLITICS for example I find that in Louisiana between 1900 and 1930, black voter registration hovered around 100. There's no typo there. Out of a black population of 200,000 only 100 were registered.
I'm betting if we looked at black voting in Louisiana as a percent of registration, it'd be around 70% or so. We'd be silly though to use this information as proof of African American political empowerment. Now of course the Albany case is nowhere close--I'm just using the Louisiana example to show that resource allocation should be studied in two stages. The first stage concerns access, the second stage concerns results.
While there is much about the Albany case we don't know, it is clear to me that an argument can at least be made that the first stage requirement of access hasn't been met. Black contractors in Albany probably don't need to know multivariate regression to know that.
I've written a number of entries at this point about black politics, particularly about outmoded conceptions of black leadership. A brother I play ball with (thanks Brian!) dropped Steve Hahn's work A Nation Under Our Feet on me. I haven't picked it up yet but I will soon.
Its basic argument is that even as they were beset upon by mass technologies of terror, enslaved African Americans fought for and sometimes won political victories. These victories were often short-lived, and were gained at the expense of flesh, bone, and blood, but they were victories nonetheless. Furthermore they were won not by porkchop reverends, or charismatic speakers, but by black men and women who met with purpose, in secret.
A couple of times this past week I've been called a conservative by my boys largely because of my critiques against Tavis Smiley's recent tour, and Al Sharpton. And you know what? On this they aren't wrong. I take a very old school position on the ability of black people to mobilize on behalf of their own interests without having to get someone from on high to come down and tell them what they need, whether that someone is Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, or Ice Cube's Barbershop 2 character. Hahn's work justifies my position.
(like i needed it.)
The Black Commentator is a site I don't read often. When i do read it, I find its candor somewhat refreshing. But in this most recent edition, they goofed...making an error common in Black Politics, basically arguing that Al Sharpton was a boon to the Democratic Primaries without substantially offering any proof of the fact. The first snip knocked me over the head:
Rev. Al Sharpton’s race for the Democratic presidential nomination should be considered a resounding success – for just about everyone except the candidate himself.
Now given that Al Sharpton's been working closely with Republican operatives I think the last part is on point...MAYBE. That is, given the pass that Sharpton's been given in elite circles, I don't know whether this factoid will stick. But I'm not sure where the "resounding success" part comes in.
Now I think I might be somewhat alone on this. I remember talking to a social worker I play ball with about Sharpton just last week. He talked about how he didn't think that Sharpton would win, but he thought that Sharpton brought up issues that no one else brought up. And this is the basic argument of the Black Commentator right?
“Big Al” was truly large on the stage, a daunting deterrent to the intrusion of the usual coded racial rhetoric into the Democratic debates or on the stump: Don’t even think about it, said Al, without having to move his lips. Sharpton gave voice – at times, brilliantly – to the core progressive principles of the Black political consensus, causing big-footed white men to step lightly and in the right general direction.
But this is and has always been my point. Al Sharpton had the best critique going on Bush up until folks got rolling, largely because he is very intelligent, quick on his feet, and an excellent orator. But exactly WHAT issues did Sharpton bring up that no one else brought up?
Two come to mind. The first was when Sharpton roasted Dean for not having any black staffpersons. The second was when Sharpton noted that the city that hosted the South Carolina debates did not celebrate Martin Luther King jr.'s birthday. The Black Commentator talks about how Sharpton's campaign "sent a message" but it is hard to tell exactly HOW this happened. I've got no problem sounding like a curmudgeon here--if you can't give me a theoretical mechanism that details how this phenomenon happened, then what you're giving me is pablum. Was there a before/after dynamic that I missed? Did the White Six (Kerry, Dean, etc.) dramatically change their policy proposals after Sharpton got in the race? Did they talk about race one way...then talk about it another way when Sharpton was around? Did they make dramatic new proposals because of Sharpton's presence?
I'm not seeing it.
I noted above that they made a standard mistake in black politics. This is actually wrong. Most of the folks that study black politics recognize this is a sham. This is a standard mistake made by Ron Walters and others of his ilk in black politics. Symbols are everything. Sharpton's symbolic presence led somehow (don't ask us how) to a sea change in the way black voters were treated, and black issues dealt with.
It could be I'm missing something. Like I told my boy, I didn't see most of the debates. But I don't think I missed much.
With Cobb's previous musing from his January 28, 2004 posting of Class, two things stand out to this signifier...what is to come of this "gulf" between the so-called "progressives" and the "envelope-pushers" of black politics?
This will be a fun topic. I'll pick that one up in the near future.
The next matter is, how do we get Black folk to start accomplishing some of the things that we measure ourselves by? "Whitefolks do this," or "Latinos stick together," and other whatnot...how do we get there from here?
One of the challenges is bridging the wealth gap between African Americans and whites.
Another in the legion of challenges that working-class and poor Black folk face is the problem of debt through predatory lending.
An essential tool to bridge the "racial" gap of wealth, and help Black families "jump classes" within the span of one to two generations, is a sound plan to eliminate debt, curtail discretionary spending by delaying instant gratification, and saving. One of the best methods for Black folk to do this, in my opinion, can be found here.
If Black families would start eliminating their debt, stop their use of credit cards, and begin to save, the wealth gap between "races" could be wiped out (yes, I said wiped out, ) in one, two generations tops.
Continued education and will, the everpresent challenge. It will require a sea change in thought about money and what we do with it.
Today in Public Opinion I talked about the meme of electabillity that dammed and jammed Dean, and catapulted Kerry into the driver's seat. I also had my students watch an old Bill Moyers video about the evils of polling. It was filmed in 1989, and its age showed.
Anyone remember BehaviorScan?
The low light of the story was Willie Horton...the ad that single handedly relegated Dukakis to a Trivial Pursuit question. Non-blacks didn't recognize how racist the ad campaign was until much later...the best Moyers could do was utter something about pandering to our fears.
But a couple of swatches make me think we don't have to worry about that if Kerry wins the primary.
"Their tired old G.O.P. attack dog just won't hunt," Mr. Wade said, adding that Republicans would be running against "a Democrat who fought for his country in war, put criminals behind bars as a prosecutor, stood up for balanced budgets in the Senate," and "kept faith with America's veterans."Another Kerry adviser was more blunt. "This is not the Dukakis campaign," the adviser said. "We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything."
And:
Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot called on the Democratic front-runner, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) to repudiate the attack on the president. But Lindlaw writes that Kerry's campaign dismissed that contention."'It is up to President Bush whether he wants to answer these questions that continue to persist about the year missing from his National Guard service,' said spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "John Kerry will stand up to the slanderous tactics of the Bush attack machine, and if the president wants a debate on patriotism and national security, we welcome that debate.'"
I'm really starting to warm up to the idea. This is going to be GOOD.
I can't stand it anymore. I told my students they should watch Henry Louis Gates' series on PBS tracing the lives of black Americans some forty years after the dream. And I could get through the first hour and a half without gagging. Then, when Gates began to interview a brother from Chicago stuck in the joint I lost it.
Gerald Early wrote a review about The End of Blackness. Cobb wrote about it. You've got to know Gerald to know what that last paragraph (quoted by Cobb) means. See...Gerald has got to be one of the most humble and straightlaced men I've met. I've never heard him utter a cross word...never seen him take out someone in print. Reading that last paragraph I...I think I shouted out loud. Damn.
"The author does not know enough, has not researched enough..."
This is how I feel watching Gates. When was the last time a white English Lit professor was asked to comment on the budget deficit as if he were an authority? Better yet...when was the last time Paul Krugman was asked to speak on Shakesphere?
So what we have are half baked analyses told "by the people" as if it were more authentic to hear poor men and women talk about how their friends are poor because "they don't want to do nothing." At least in Dickerson's case she can come up with an excuse. She didn't know better.
Gates?
I've been meaning to write on this for a bit, but other things have been calling my name.
According to Joe Conason and the Village Voice, Al Sharpton's main man Robert Stone is a Republican fundraiser. A snippet:
Although Stone himself gave $2,000 to Bush-Cheney 2004 last June -- and has made no recorded donation to Sharpton -- the Voice article also alleges that he has subsidized Sharpton's travels with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to the minister's nonprofit National Action Network. Political activist Randy Credico, an associate of both Sharpton and Stone, told Barrett that the Republican consultant allowed NAN to charge campaign expenses to Stone's personal credit card. Such commingling of funds and unrecorded donations may both be violations of federal election law.
Now I recall when Corey Booker ran for Mayor in Newark. Booker had a number of connections with conservative institutions such as the Manhattan Institute, and many of his policies reeked of neo-liberalism. Booker is a strong supporter of school vouchers for example. When he ran against Sharpe James (old school Newark mayor in the vein of a Coleman Young or a non-crack addicted Marion Barry), James, the black commentator, and a number of black elites pulled out all the stops. Booker was a "puppet." Booker didn't really represent "the community." Booker is an "outsider." Booker is a "trojan horse."
Now I wouldn't have voted for Booker as far as I could throw him. His policies WERE neo-liberal policies that simply don't have much traction in improving the lives of black folk. But if the "sellout" claim has any value with Booker, WHY DOESN'T IT HAVE VALUE HERE?? If indeed Sharpton's campaign relies heavily on a strong Bush-CHaney supporter, why are black elites pitching a fit?
This double standard reeks of deal cutting, and of pork chop reverends.
This is an earlier entry I wrote when the site was Old School Republicans...and given my recent post about Michigan (and an excellent question by Juliette) I thought I'd bring it up again.
.....
Ok. We've been given a 25 year window to make due with Affirmative Action before the doors close.
Assuming that someone doesn't pull the rug out from under us, it now behooves us to ask a question that we haven't really begun to grapple with on a significant national level. What can we do between now and 2028 to abrogate the need for Affirmative Action in higher education?
Of course there is no one right answer...although there are probably several wrong ones. "Nothing" for example is a sure fire wrong answer.
Thinking about the civil rights movement, scholars like Charles Payne (author of the brilliant I'VE GOT THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM) argue persuasively that there were at least three modes of civil rights activism. One mode was largely legalistic...sue, get your case before the Supreme Court, and get the SC to change the law. The other mode was the large scale use of nonviolent protest. The third mode was door to door organizing.
The first two modes are what most of us think of when we think of the Civil Rights Movement, and its victories. Brown v. Board, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the student sponsored sit-ins...
But it's that third mode that really helped blacks and whites make the turn to a better democracy. Because they were about getting regular folks to recognize their rights and their full responsibility as citizens. This task was thankless. There were no cameras documenting these actions for prosperity. There was no cushy Supreme Court Justice job awaiting.
Bob Moses and the Student Nonviolent (later National) Coordinating Committee was one of the thankless heroes of this movement. He's now working on teaching kids in Mississippi math. HIs ideas are worth serious discussion.
For Moses the key wasn't simply changing the system, it was giving individuals the capacity to realize their OWN ability to change the system. So it wasn't just about giving someone a voter registration form, asking them to fill it out and turning it in, it was about educating people about citizenship itself. About educating them about the role of regular people in maintaining and growing a living democracy.
He now believes that the best way to continue this mission is to take the same principles and teach them to grade school kids in the south. By using their lived environment as a template by which to not only teach them higher mathmatical principles, but to teach them the value of teaching others like themselves, Moses is hoping to build a new cadre of intellectual-activists. The book that descibes this project is called RADICAL EQUATIONS.
Our first steps should be to institute programs in school that will both give kids the ability to understand and change their lived reality, and the ability to succeed at whatever mechanism colleges use to sort kids into niches. Like getting people in Mississippi to vote, this is a thankless job. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will never be a part of it. Tavis Smiley will probably never want to interview you about it. And you won't be recruited to join Cornel West at Princeton after you do it.
But I'm fully convinced that at the end of those 25 years, you'll be able to see a tremendous change that will make all the thankless work worth it.
Now this doesn't absolve government from responsibility or blame. As hypersegregation is the product of a confluence of local, state, and federal policies, government is very much involved in perpetuating educational disparities. As I've said before I personally think that what we need is a new jack Blair Bill. But since that's not coming, we have to do the work.
Historically speaking, many cities like Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. had hidden societies largely populated by upper crust African Americans. Though WEB Dubois was talking about these cats when he came up with (and later discarded) the idea of a "Talented Tenth" and the first black fraternities and sororities were largely populated with their progeny, for much of the twentieth century these men and women operated in a world of their own. We can (rightly) critique them for the degree to which many of them placed skin tone (cafe au lait vs. ebony) above character. We can also rightly critique them for their unwillingness (in many though not all cases) to deeply engage the problems of black America (Dubois jettisoned the idea of a Talented Tenth largely because the Tenth was so damn trifling and random).
But in today's Washington Post we can get a glimpse of their majesty and power. Perhaps some would argue they were mimicing or aping their non-black peers, I'm thinking that's giving the forces of white supremacy wayy too much power.