Fallacy of Racial Continuity:
This is the idea that because races–or what Americans call races–exist unceasingly over time, then the injustices that one race can be said to commit or have committed against another in the past can be attributed to the component individuals who make up that race today. This is the basis of an idea that lies behind much race conversation in America: whites dominated, exploited and committed atrocities against nonwhites, especially blacks, and thus owe reparations, affirmative action, or some other compensation.
Advocates for justice for African Americans see a lot of sense in racial continuity arguments because so much of black inequality, as Ta-Nehisi points out here and Glenn has written about extensively, is the result of accumulated disadvantage with origins far back in history. But Obama pointed out that as a rhetorical strategy, or moral argumentation, emphasizing racial continuity does not work because whites are very sensitive to the Fallacy of Racial Continuity: because whiteness existed does not mean that today’s whites existed when the worst oppression or crimes were carried out. First, there is the simple matter of generations: no whites today were alive during slavery and those alive during Jim Crow are passing on. Second is the matter of immigration: millions of whites came to America after slavery ended and, as Obama noted, have their own narrative of overcoming oppression. A final factor–and one that Obama seemed to gloss over– is that many of the current injustices that blacks or other nonwhites face, and the ways whites now benefit from past injustices, are simply invisible to whites.
Fallacy of the Racist Mind:
This is the idea that everyone falls into two categories–either non-racist or racist–and the latter minds are either ill or incorrigibly evil or both. Racism in this view is thus the defining and all-consuming quality of the afflicted Racist Mind, and good people never say racist things.
Obama’s first striking move here was to not run from Reverend Wright while screaming that Wright is a racist. Instead, Obama endeavored to make White America understand where Wright and other blacks who think like him are coming from. He did not justify Wright’s outrageous comments, and he specifically stated that they represented a tragically wrong path. Wright’s comments were wrong, Obama explained, but they were not the product of a racist mind. They were wrong, but these comments could be put in an historical context, and Obama, speaking as an African American, explained how a history of racial injustice could make Wright say the things he did. As other commentators have noted, Obama humanized Wright rather than demonized him.
Most remarkably, Obama then spoke as a white man. He reminded whites that they have loved ones to whom they extend a moral generosity and acceptance because, as with Wright, there is far more to these individuals than some racist comments they might make. His arguments were powerful because Obama the white man could then talk about his beloved white grandmother. Obama could convincingly invoke the Fallacy of the Racist Mind because he is black and white, and he knows that both blacks and whites everyday forgive family and friends for racist words just as we forgive each other for other hurtful words or wrongs that we might commit.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIoC5o0LR1M]
via RaceWire.
We’re asking people to share some wisdom on race in America.
Update: Glenn Loury kicks things off:
At bottom, what is at stake here is a fight over the American historical narrative. Obama, a self-identifying black man running for the most powerful office on earth, does threaten some aspects of the conventional ‘white’ narrative. But, he also threatens the ‘black’ narrative — and powerfully so. In effect, he wants to put an end to (transcend, move beyond, overcome…) the anger, the disappointment and the subversive critique of America that arises from the painful experience of black people in this country.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9IldaegAB0]
Update: CG reminds me that I didn’t actually note who was voting in this chart. Young people. These are the trends of the young people!
Is it just me, or has this Spitzer business set off something of a trend of obsessing about sex workers (broadly construed).
This is a first draft of a proposal I’m writing for a panel discussion. Let me know what you think.
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Obama’s appeal to young Americans rests, I think, in two places: his cosmopolitan identity and his non-idealogical idealism.
America’s youth, especially the college-educated elite, have radically more complex experiences with identity that any previous American generation. Consider this number: over 58% of the students who will graduate from UC Berkeley this fall have two foreign born parents. A 2004 survey of students, almost one in four identified themselves as “multi-racial or multi-ethnic.” The disconnect between an experience in which this, and the cultural implications of it for music and language and all the rest, is the reality and the starched, white male political establishment is quite large. Obama’s way of speaking, his sense of humor, the way he understands and interacts with his identity, all speak to this experience more than any other presidential candidate we’ve seen.
His appeal is also connected to the non-idealogical idealism of millennials. We’re a pretty earnest bunch, rebelling against what we perceive as the narcissism of boomers and nihilism of Gen Xers. Our political identities have been formed by 9/11, Katrina and Iraq, so we’ve mostly seen politics at its most inept and cynical. As a result, our idealism has mostly remained in the private sphere: limited activism but an unprecedented amount of volunteerism. Obama, in this context, offers the first opportunity to reclaim the public sphere and emerge from our self-imposed exile in community service.
As Marc Ambinder put it, Obama is a “process radical” who views the problems we face not as a failure of ideology or party, but as a failure of democracy. We are too disorganized, too beholden to special interests, too spun in circles by a broken media, to digest and take action on even the most obvious issues. If we can engage the American people in politics again, this argument goes, by giving them an authentic vehicle like Obama through which to express a collective idealism, we reestablish some semblance of democracy and then start to have a conversation about the long-term philosophical questions of the direction of our country.
The result is that Obama will likely amplify an already existing trend toward more engagement in mainstream politics for the millennial generation. 2004 and 2006 saw huge gains in youth turnout. 2008 will likely continue this trend, especially with Obama on the ticket (despite all that was made of Howard Dean’s appeal to young voters this primary has seen youth vote double, triple and even quadruple that of 2004). Discussion of politics among college freshman is more prevalent now than any time in the last 41 years.
And in some ways more important than the pure voting numbers, Obama has mobilized and engaged an entirely new generation of activists. They’ve been trained to organize and have developed on the ground political infrastructure and social and political capital that will exist even after the election.
The challenge for the left is that while Obama’s cosmopolitanism and democratic radicalism have left-leaning implications, neither are stated in those terms and Obama argues that progress on each count should go through him, not a sustained left-leaning movement.
The opportunity, then, is to spell out the leftist implications of having a more complex understanding of identity–the politics of community and empathy– and having such a sharp-edged critique of democracy–the extension of democratic power analysis to the world and the economy. More importantly, we have to build the movement institutions to capture these sentiments and critiques and sustain them beyond the Obama campaign. If he is elected President, he will inevitably disappoint. The question is whether the people he’s energized will be able to keep building the momentum for their “Obamism” without him or whether they’ll support him as a politician regardless of his (inevitable) inability to live up to his own aspirations and arguments.
Update: I wrote this to an email list after someone asked what was so wrong w/ building a movement just around Obama himself.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong w/ building a movement around a candidate. In fact, I’ve been amazed and excited watching it.
The issue in my mind is this: if Obama gets elected, he’s going to have to confront the reality of every day politics: a congress, a media, a Republican Party, an economy, and a world that will define what he gets to do and when he gets to do it for him. He won’t be able to be, in the immortal words of Eliot Spitzer, “a fucking bulldozer” who gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it.
So, when Obama compromises and falls short — not because of anything but the best intentions but just because you can never govern as idealistically or aggressively as you campaign — will the Obama Movement say to itself “well, he did his best. Go Obama!”? Or will it say to itself “Obama is a politician, we need to keep organizing, keep arguing, keep fighting against this compromise and Obama himself to give Obama the political ability to deliver on his more ambitious goals.
And in the long-run for the American left, can we build out of the Obama Movement something that sustains and exists beyond the politician. Built on the ideals that so obviously resonated with young people, to be sure. But built as a movement for those ideas, not for Barack Obama.
There’s a story I’ve read a few places in which a bunch of reformists go to meet in the White House w/ FDR. They make their case on the merits, arguing passionately for their cause. He sits and listens. When they’re done, he nods his head. “You’ve convinced me,” he says, “now make me do it.”
The government should put C-SPAN out of business by videoing itself. Obama has said he wants to webcast agency meetings. I say the same should be the case for Congressional meetings and, yes, court sessions, including Supreme Court hearings. I’ve suggested that radio stations and newspapers should get citizens to record and podcast all their local government meetings.
All of government’s deliberations should be watchable. That doesn’t mean they’ll be watched, of course; this is sure to be the lowest rated video in the history of the camera. But that doesn’t matter. All it takes is for one Josh Marshall to get one of his readers to watch one hearing to catch that moment that’s newsworthy. And all the while, the government officials on the other side of the camera will know they are being watched.
Now one could argue that this will turn government into show biz, that politicians will preen for the camera as they have in big hearings and as judges have in televised trials. But the more everything is videoed, the less it becomes special. It becomes the eye of the people, always there: Big Brother, reversed.
Update: Government isn’t Little Brother’s only target, of course. We can already surveil each other w/ unprecedented ease.