[News] Are Black Politics Headed Toward the Graveyard

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/ford08132008.html

August 13, 2008


How the New York Times Gets It All Wrong


Are Black Politics Headed Toward the Graveyard

By GLEN FORD

The Sunday magazine of the New York Times 
predicts that black politics as we know it is 
headed for extinction, that Barack Obama's "brand 
of ‘race-neutrality' shows black politics is 
obsolete, and should be abandoned." Of course, 
that's wishful thinking from a hostile quarter, 
based on assumptions that all black politics is 
electoral, Blacks are becoming more conservative, 
and a generational crisis deeply divides black 
America - none of which is true. However, blacks 
have been set up for a fall. "To the extent that 
African Americans expect more from Barack Obama 
than they got from Bill Clinton, they will be devastatingly disappointed."

The New York Times has unabashedly called for the 
dissolution of independent black politics in the 
United States. Although the paper's Sunday 
magazine cover story may seem at first skim to be 
simply an overlong paean to Barack Obama, its 
intent goes way beyond the presidential race, and 
is embedded in the title: "Is Obama the End of 
Black Politics?" Author Matt Bai – whose mission 
this election in one silly piece after another 
has been to identify a new generational politics 
-- and his employers fervently hope the answer is, Yes.

The wishful headline sits atop a pile of false 
assumptions and outright untruths about 
contemporary and historical Black politics. 
Hardly a cogent set of facts can be found in the 
entire piece; it is comprised almost wholly of 
unsubstantiated assertions mixed with 
non-sequiturs in quotation marks. But the thrust 
is quite clear: African Americans have not only 
outgrown group politics, as supposedly proven by 
Obama's march to - rather than on - the White 
House, but Obama's brand of "race-neutrality" 
shows that Black politics is obsolete, and should be abandoned.

To arrive at such a racially presumptuous 
conclusion, Bai must build on several false or 
debatable premises that have nevertheless become 
accepted wisdom among the corporate media:

The only authentic Black politics is electoral 
politics. Mass movements, direct action and other 
non-electoral strategies are relics of the past, 
and rightly so. More Black faces in high places 
automatically equals Black progress, regardless 
of the political content of these office-holders' 
policies. It is an unquestionable sign of general 
Black progress when African American candidates gain white support.

Black solidarity must decline and ultimately fade 
away as a political motivator as opportunities 
for (some) African Americans expand. A growing 
Black middle class inevitably leads to increased 
Black political conservatism. Blacks have no 
legitimate reasons to pursue political solidarity 
except those directly related to the upward mobility of their class.

A unique and pronounced age gap exists in Black 
America, that stands in the way of "transition" 
to a less confrontational, more cooperative 
society. (Black elders are the bottleneck in this 
regard.) Young Blacks are politically more mature 
than older Blacks, since they are further removed 
from the events of the Sixties and thus are not plagued by disturbing memories.

Based on these assumptions, Times readers may 
conclude that African Americans who struggle for 
group rights and objectives are behaving like 
superannuated dodderers in their second 
childhoods. Matt Bai thinks so. The following 
sentence gives new meaning to the term, convoluted reasoning:

"For a lot of younger African-Americans, the 
resistance of the civil rights generation to 
Obama's candidacy signified the failure of their 
parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their 
lives, with the success of their own struggle - 
to embrace the idea that black politics might now 
be disappearing into American politics in the 
same way that the Irish and Italian machines long 
ago joined the political mainstream."

Amazing, isn't it, that Bai and his ilk purport 
to know more about Black youth and their elders 
than the two Black age cohorts know about each 
other? Indeed, if we are to follow Bai's logic to 
its natural conclusion, whites understand and 
communicate with young Blacks better than Black 
parents do. It all makes sense once you accept 
the assumption that young Blacks think more like 
whites than their parents, whose minds have been 
deformed by too close exposure to the nightmarish 
Sixties, during which time they became 
distrustful of white people, and have never recovered.

Fortunately, we can dismiss Bai's assault on 
Black elders out of hand, since it relies on 
facts nowhere in evidence. Where are the graying 
Black legions that are resisting Obama's 
candidacy as a bloc? Every Black demographic, no 
matter how you slice it, is overwhelmingly 
pro-Obama for president. How could it not be so, 
with the Black Obama vote in the late primaries 
hitting 90 - 95 percent! For every aging Black 
radical (like myself) who refuses to drink the 
Obama'Laid, there are eight of his peers with 
Obama signs on their front lawns, and three 
octogenarians thanking God they have lived long 
enough to vote for such an attractive, 
well-spoken young Black man who might actually become president.
Such is the near-irresistible pull of race, and 
race solidarity - the uncontainable pressure of 
the pent-up aspirations of centuries, finally 
finding vent - in this election cycle.

Bai followed his assumptions off a cliff with the 
"old Black folks don't like Obama" idea. But he 
must maintain the fiction of a general age chasm 
dividing Black Americans, or the theory on the 
inevitable extinction of Black politics, does not 
work. And it must work, since Bai opens his piece 
with an attempt to prove that age was an 
important factor in the early, dead-even split in 
the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) between 
Clinton and Obama supporters. Presumably, the 15 
Clinton supporters were among those elders who 
"could not come to terms, at the dusk of their 
lives, with the success of their own struggle." 
An equal number were committed to Obama; the rest, undecided.

As it turned out, there was no chronological or 
ideological pattern in the CBC's Clinton/Obama 
lineup, in early January. Charles Rangel (NY), 
the oldest Member, was in the Clinton column. 
John Conyers (MI), the second-oldest, opted for 
Obama. Barbara Lee, among the most consistently 
progressive Members, backed Clinton, but so did 
David Scott (GA), once dubbed "The Worst Black 
Congressman" for his relatively rightwing voting 
habits. Bobby Rush, the former Black Panther who, 
according to Bai's reasoning, should have been 
the most "resistant" to Obama's neutralism on 
race, was in his fellow Chicagoan's corner.

The CBC presidential breakdown had little or 
nothing to do with age, or with any issues of 
deep substance, for that matter. Members aligned 
themselves at that early date based on 
considerations of money, petty faction, geography, and the betting odds.

Until Obama's victory in Iowa, polls showed the 
Black vote still very much in play. Only when 
African Americans were confident that large 
numbers of whites would vote for Obama did they 
massively align with the Black candidate - and 
then they quickly became a bloc. Nowhere is there 
evidence of a decisive schism - certainly not 
around age. No matter. The New York Times and its 
corporate sisters make up facts as they go along, 
to justify prefabricated theories on how Black folks behave.

Here's where Bai came closest to getting anything right:

"The generational transition that is reordering 
black politics didn't start this year. It has 
been happening, gradually and quietly, for at 
least a decade, as younger African-Americans, 
Barack Obama among them, have challenged their 
elders in traditionally black districts. What 
this year's Democratic nomination fight did was to accelerate that transition."

A change has come over Black politics in the last 
decade, and it does involve the entrance of a 
relatively young crop of Black politicians. 
However, the decisive factor here is not age, but 
money. Corporate America made a strategic 
decision to become active players in Black 
Democratic politics - an arena they had largely 
avoided in post-Sixties decades. In 2002, the 
corporate Right fielded and heavily funded three 
Black Democratic candidates for high profile 
offices in majority Black contests. Two of them, 
Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Alabama Congressman 
Artur Davis, are featured in Matt Bai's Times 
article. (No surprise there: the duo appear in 
every corporate media article celebrating the 
rise of the new, young, Black, corporate 
politician.) The third Big Business favorite, 
Denise Majette, has since slipped back into political obscurity.

Booker, then a first term city councilman, was 
(and remains) a darling of the political network 
centered around the far-right Bradley Foundation, 
of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. George Bush calls 
Bradley his "favorite foundation" - as well he 
should, since Bradley and its think tanks 
developed the GOP's faith-based initiatives and 
private school vouchers strategies. Booker became 
a star of the Bradley-subsidized vouchers 
"movement." (See "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree," 
Black Commentator, April 5, 2002.)

In his first, unsuccessful run for Newark City 
Hall, Booker far outspent four-term Mayor Sharpe 
James - the most powerful Black politician in the 
state - but was narrowly defeated when his ties 
to school vouchers and far-right money were 
revealed. Booker was endorsed by every corporate 
media outlet in the New York metropolitan area, 
thanks to the ministrations of Bradley's 
media-savvy think tank, the Manhattan Institute. 
Booker captured the office easily in 2006, after 
amassing an even bigger war chest, when Mayor 
James declined to run. (James was later convicted 
on corruption charges and sentenced to 27 months in prison.)

Less than a month later, former Birmingham 
prosecutor Artur Davis, then 34, made a second 
run against veteran Congressman Earl Hilliard, in 
a 62 percent Black district. Davis had been badly 
beaten by Hilliard in the Democratic primary in 
2000. This time, he outspent Hilliard by more 
than 50 percent - with the vast bulk of his funds 
raised outside the district. Davis won a minority 
of the Black vote to beat Hilliard.

Two months later, in August 2002, the 
corporate-funded juggernaut rolled into Atlanta, 
Georgia, where five-term Congresswoman Cynthia 
McKinney faced former Black Republican Denise 
Majette in an open Democratic primary. Majette's 
bankroll dwarfed McKinney's. Majette was also 
backed by every corporate media outlet in the region - and far beyond.

The massed national corporate press turned the 
McKinney-Majette contest into a national story, 
an opportunity to refine their collective 
"analysis" of post-Sixties Black politics. 
Majette would win, they agreed, because 
McKinney's "Sixties-style" politics were unsuited 
to her suburban Atlanta district, the second most 
affluent Black district in the country. The 
corporate media declared with certainty (but with 
no facts to buttress the claim) that the African 
American middle class was becoming more 
conservative, and a younger generation yearned 
for a break from the confrontations of the past.

Majette won, but with only about 17 percent of 
the Black vote; she was the white choice. 
McKinney, the fiery progressive, was the 
overwhelming favorite among Blacks in a district 
that was the perfect test for the corporate 
media's theories on Black politics. They were 
proven wrong, but a useful lie trumps 
inconvenient facts. Through repetition in a 
monoculture corporate media, lies become truisms.

Matt Bai's Sunday Times article is based on the 
same fact-devoid theory of Black rightward 
political drift and a yawning age divide. Even 
before his national debut at the 2004 Democratic 
convention, Barack Obama joined Cory Booker, 
Artur Davis, and then Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (TN) - 
once George Bush's favorite Black congressperson 
- as exhibits in an endless series of "New Black 
Politics" articles, each one a clone of the last. 
This is what Bai mistakenly calls "the 
generational transition that is reordering black 
politics." It's not about age at all - other than 
that the young are hungrier and more malleable 
than their elders, and thus better prospects to 
march under the corporate colors.

Barack Obama does pose a dire threat to the 
coherence of Black politics, but not for Matt 
Bai's reasons. Obama's presidential bid is 
inseparable from the ongoing corporate 
money-and-media campaign to confuse and 
destabilize the Black polity - an offensive begun 
in earnest in 2002. Obama, a prescient and 
uncannily talented opportunist, understood which 
way the corporate wind was blowing at least a 
decade earlier, and methodically readied himself for the role of his life.

To the extent that African Americans expect more 
from Obama than they got from Bill Clinton, they 
will be devastatingly disappointed. His candidacy 
has at least temporarily caused Black folks to 
behave en masse as if there are no issues at 
stake in the election other than an Obama 
victory. It is altogether unclear how long this 
spell-like effect will last. The short-term 
prospects for rebuilding a coherent Black 
politics, are uncertain. But one thing we do 
know: the formation of a near-unanimous Black 
bloc for Obama - of which he is absolutely 
unworthy - is stunning evidence that the Black 
imperative to solidarity is undiminished. 
Unfortunately, the wrong guy is the beneficiary - 
but in a sense, that's beside the point. Black 
people are not working themselves into an 
election year frenzy just to commit political 
suicide by disbanding as a bloc, no matter what Matt Bai and his ilk say.

It is at least possible that a new era of 
agitation and militant organization might follow 
the monster come-down that must descend on Black 
folks, either from an Obama defeat in November 
or, if victorious, through his ultimate (and 
early) betrayal of Black self-generated hopes. 
But there is absolutely no reason to believe that 
African Americans will emerge from the experience 
in a mood to fold up their collective, 
consciously Black political tent. Matt Bai is 
only able to envision such an outcome because he 
refuses to admit that the racial problem in the 
United States is caused by white folks. 
Institutional racism is engrained white behavior. 
The Black prison Gulag is a white creation. 
Double unemployment and one-tenth wealth are the 
products of white privilege. White people 
constantly replenish Black aspirations for 
self-determination: for a Black politics.
Bai pretends that he is genuinely concerned about 
how Blacks will fare in the "transition" from Black politics:

"Several black operatives and politicians with 
whom I spoke worried, eloquently, that an Obama 
presidency might actually leave black Americans 
less well represented in Washington rather than 
more so - that, in fact, the end of black 
politics, if that is what we are witnessing, 
might also mean the precipitous decline of black influence.

"The argument here is that a President Obama, 
closely watched for signs of parochialism or 
racial resentment, would have less maneuvering 
room to champion spending on the urban poor, say, 
or to challenge racial injustice. What's more, 
his very presence in the Rose Garden might 
undermine the already tenuous case for 
affirmative action in hiring and school admissions."

First, African Americans should believe Obama 
when he repeatedly assures whites that he does 
not recognize Black claims to redress for past 
grievances, and has little tolerance for 
race-based remedies of any kind. There can be no 
expectation of a net increase in Blacks' ability 
to alter societal power relationships with Obama 
in the White House. (A Black president might make 
some difference, but not that Black president.)

And yes, there will be a white backlash - there 
always is - even though Blacks in general may 
materially gain nothing from Obama's change of 
address. White backlashes are beyond Black 
control. But they sometimes spur African 
Americans to greater organizational efforts. At 
any rate, Black don't need faux sympathy from 
Matt Bai and the New York Times. They're part of 
the reason there will always be Black politics.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted 
at Glen Ford is executive editor of 
<http://www.BlackAgendaReport.com>Black Agenda 
Report where this article appears. He can be 
contacted at 
<mailto:Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com>Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com.




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