racismreview.com

I have been reading a very interesting book by Benjamin Dennis and Anita Dennis called Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from America to Liberia. Professor Dennis was born in Africa, raised in Berlin as a diplomat’s son, and came to the U.S. in 1950, where he marched with Dr. King and was in a debate with Malcolm X. He got a Ph.D. in sociology/anthropology, then taught at several universities, including University of Michigan (Flint) and Michigan State. Anita Dennis, his wife, also has a degree in sociology and anthropology. They have recently summarized Benjamin Dennis’s research and eyewitness account of how white racist framing and action have spread globally, even among those who are not white, thus: (photo: jizagirre)

During the 1800s, the American Colonization Society enticed free Negroes to go to Africa. Slaves were freed on the condition they leave. These two groups that became the “Americo-Liberians” who ruled Liberia, carried with them the evils of racism and the limitations of slavery.

Racism inevitably reproduces itself in the minds of the oppressed in order to rise. In the “Imitation of Supremacy,” as victim becomes victimizer, the Americo-Liberians saw the natives the way whites saw them. Now that the Americo-Liberians were rulers, they mimicked white rule. They justified their exploitation of the natives on the basis of cultural inferiority just as whites used racism to justify slavery. In America, race trumped all other considerations. In Liberia, culture trumped race as the classification of inferiority.

In the “Imitation of Superiority,” [some? many?] Americo-Liberians mimicked and retained the culture of the antebellum South because they derived their cultural superiority from it. The vast majority of the Americo-Liberians were freed slaves, including slaves freed on the high seas. Because of the limitations of slavery, they were image rather than reality. What they evolved was a pseudo culture, a poor replication of what they didn’t really understand. As slaves they had had only a “taste” of Western culture.

Ironically, they replicated what they despised – oppression and discrimination based upon “inferiority.” Natives were disparaged and ridiculed as “country people.” The Americo-Liberians set up all the Jim Crow laws of the South in Liberia. There was social segregation in Monrovia, the capital city. Among other things, natives could not enter through the front door. They could not vote. They could not speak unless spoken to. There were sexual restrictions. No native man could marry or have a sexual relationship with an Americo-Liberian woman. Even when natives became educated, they were restricted from government positions. Only a token few were allowed to participate.

This research and eyewitness account of how U.S. racism affected, and infected, the minds of people of African descent is striking. Even as the racially oppressed, some number of them carried the structures and orientations of aspects of white racial oppression back to Africa. The idea of the white racial frame that we have used on this site, and I have developed in several books, clearly needs to be developed even more aggressively with regard to the international context and impact.

According to Dennis, these (it is unclear whether he means some or many?) Americo-Liberians carried this white racial framing–with its negative view of Africa and other non-Western peoples, and especially its view of white cultural superiority and white supremacy, back to the country of their ancestors. In several important ways, they became substitute or proxy whites in their actions and orientations. The global circulating impact of white racist framing–and of the thinking, ideology, and action that grows out of it—remains one of the world’s most fundamental structural problems.

photo credit: Corey Ann
Denying this country’s racist foundation and continuing racist reality pays some of the salaries for many in the mainstream media, as well as in academia. This election has given them new energy in what might be called “racism denial” propaganda. For example, the leading corporate newspaper, the Republican-oriented Wall Street Journal, has asserted that Obama’s election is a tribute to how open and democratic the United States now is:

A man of mixed race has now reached the pinnacle of U.S. power only two generations since the end of Jim Crow. This is a tribute to American opportunity, and it is something that has never happened in another Western democracy — notwithstanding European condescension about “racist” America.

After this crowing about U.S. moral superiority over European countries, the editorial added this:

While Mr. Obama lost among white voters, as most modern Democrats do, his success is due in part to the fact that he also muted any politics of racial grievance. We have had in recent years two black Secretaries of State, black CEOs of our largest corporations, black Governors and Generals — and now we will have a President. One promise of his victory is that perhaps we can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country. Mr. Obama has a special obligation to help do so.

Note that this conservative editorial writer is explicitly recognizing that Obama ran a successful campaign because he did not engage in the “politics of racial grievance.” That is, Obama ran to fit within a colorblind do-not-talk-about-race version of the dominant white racial frame, and this writer praises and values that effort. Numerous others are claiming we are now in a “post-racial” era.

In addition, this writer emphasizes that a few African Americans have recently served as tokens in highly visible political positions (only one elective), and this token reality can be viewed as an indication that white racism is no longer a barrier to high achievement. More than that, the writer calls aggressively on President-elect Obama to lead the effort to kill the “myth of racism.” This is an old effort that white leaders have engaged in for centuries, of ferreting out a few blacks to serve white interests and whitewash the reality of systemic racism.

The intensity of this denial of white racism’s continuing impact suggests that something racially significant is going on beneath the surface of this argument, in the white minds that run the Wall Street Journal. Is there a concern here that under Obama there might be a renewed discussion of U.S. racism and an aggressive enforcement of our weakly enforced civil rights laws? The irony of the argument about the “myth of racism” is lost on this writer, who earlier admitted that most whites did not vote for the first “mixed race” (not “black”!?) presidential candidate.

About the same time that I was reading this Journal article, I ran across an article in the South Florida Times (published in mid-October 2008) on Senator McCain’s major slaveholding ancestors—one that did not get much media attention at the time. Although he has so far been unwilling to acknowledge it, Senator McCain’s ancestors were major slaveholders, in a rural area community of Carroll County, Mississippi. Indeed, the white and black descendants of the McCain slaveholders now have a biannual Coming Home Reunion. McCain’s brother and other white relatives have attended, but Senator McCain has not attended or even acknowledged invitations to attend. Some of his distant black relatives have suggested strongly that McCain has tried to hide this family history. South Florida Times researchers discovered that McCain has many black relatives.

As the South Florida Times reports:

Sen. John McCain’s great, great grandfather, William Alexander McCain (1812-1863), fought for the Confederacy and owned a 2,000-acre plantation named Waverly in Teoc. The family dealt in the slave trade, and, according to official records, held at least 52 slaves on the family’s plantation. The enslaved Africans were likely used as servants, for labor, and for breeding more slaves. William McCain’s son, and Sen. John McCain’s great grandfather, John Sidney McCain (1851-1934), eventually assumed the duty of running the family’s plantation.

The paper also notes some of Senator McCain’s own racist history:

In addition to distancing himself from his black family members, John McCain has taken several positions on issues that have put him at odds with members of the larger black community. While running for the Republican Party nomination in 2000, he sided with protesters who were calling for the rebel battle flag to be removed from the South Carolina statehouse, only to alter that position later. “Some view it as a symbol of slavery. Others view it as a symbol of heritage,” John McCain said of the flag. “Personally, I see the battle flag as a symbol of heritage. I have ancestors who have fought for the Confederacy, none of whom owned slaves. I believe they fought honorably.’’

Well, actually his family did enslave lots of African Americans. The intimate connections of the US present to our highly racialized past must be constantly denied and ignored in order to maintain the post-racial ideology, a new spin on the old white racial frame that helps whites like the editors/writers in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal continue in their racism denial mode.

At Slate’s online site, Meghan O’Rourke, has a brief article reminding us that President-elect Obama has picked a prize-winning, provocative African American poet, Elizabeth Alexander, to read at his inauguration ceremony. He is one of few presidents ever to invite a poet for such a task.

O’Rourke notes that Yale Professor Alexander has four books,

the last, American Sublime, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A professor of African-American studies at Yale (from which she also matriculated), Alexander writes poems that are metaphorically and linguistically dense, layered, and subtle. Her work speaks about black experience. . . .But she can’t be said to privilege identity politics over aesthetics; her poems work more at being complex than didactic. In this sense, she’s an analogue to Obama, who doesn’t privilege identity politics over his strategy of inclusiveness.

Among other important works, Alexander has written a powerful poem about the extreme oppression visited on the enslaved African woman, Saartjie Baartman (1789-1815), whom virulently racist European whites termed the “The Venus Hottentot.” She was a Khoikhoi woman enticed by promises of splitting her earnings by the brother of her Dutch slaveowner in Africa if she would go to Europe to be physically exhibited to whites. Put on as a sideshow exhibit in Britain and France, she was forced to exhibit naked. After she died of illness in Europe in 1815, her remains– skeleton, genitals, and brain–were displayed by and for European “scientists” like an animal’s remains in a prominent Paris museum–even until the mid-1970s! Yet another aspect of the “Western civilization” some of our leading pundits like to brag about.

In her poem Alexander attacks this extreme exploitation and its associated scientific racism more eloquently that we can ever put into prose. I recommend the portion of her poem posted on her website here. Her GrayWolf press collection, The Venus Hottentot is described here.

This is a brief letter that the savvy scholar of US racism, Steve Steinberg, had published in The Nation just recently. It shows how the left itself has trouble with thinking beyond the white racial framing of things.

His letter was in response to this article in the December 29, 2008 The Nation.

Colorblind? Your lead editorial, “The First 100 Days” [Dec. 1], issues a welcome list of ambitious initiatives that would “get a real start on repairing our nation,” including a renewed war on poverty. No mention, however, of race and racism, despite the fact that a mobilized black community provided the margin between victory and defeat. A colorblind approach will not address the distinct problems African-Americans confront: occupational apartheid that leaves almost half of black men in cities like Chicago and Washington without jobs; the evisceration of affirmative action by all branches of government; mass incarceration that exceeds 2 million, two-thirds of them black or Latino, often for violation of drug laws; rampant discrimination in housing; a scurrilous lack of enforcement of civil rights laws, especially Title VIII. Can we “repair our nation” without confronting the legacy of slavery? Is the colorblind left going to participate in the charade of using Obama to sidestep racial issues? And is the Democratic Party willing to risk a backlash from blacks who feel betrayed by the election of “the first black President”?  ~ Stephen Steinberg

Racism usually seems to be the elephant in the room that whites of all persuasions cannot see, or do not want to see ( photo credit: kimberlyfaye). Where is the concern with racial justice going to be put in this new administration? In the goals of progressive media and organizations?

The Secret Service, like the majority of government policing agencies everywhere, is mostly run by white men many of whom, apparently, still have not moved much beyond the hard version of the old white racial frame ( photo credit: troshy ). They claim to be colorblind, but have allowed in the last decades much overtly racist activity to go on within their confines, or done it themselves — and when they are caught and called out they usually do not take remedial action.

Well, a brave federal magistrate judge in DC handed down a decision sanctioning the U.S. Secret Service

for stonewalling plaintiffs in a race discrimination case against the agency. The judge concluded that the plaintiffs have “established a prima facie case of discriminatory non promotion” because of the agency’s repeated misconduct in not producing documents and that the agency must pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees for the related motions for sanctions.

This is, sadly, an old case involves more than 100 African American agents (a huge number for one such agency) that should have been resolved with quick anti-discrimination action long ago:

The lawsuit, filed nearly a decade ago against the service on behalf of more than 100 current and former black agents, alleges that managers discriminated against them when they considered promotions. . . . The suit has revealed that senior managers at the service circulated e-mails with apparently racist imagery and messages, which the plaintiffs claimed were a manifestation of the discriminatory culture of the agency. . . . Hogan & Hartson’s Melissa Henke, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement, “For years, the Secret Service has aggressively hidden the truth about the culture of pervasive racial discrimination at the agency. The court’s sanction is a positive step towards correcting the prejudice suffered by former and current African- American special agents as a result of the Secret Service’s misconduct in this lawsuit.”

Some readers may have seen or heard about the racist emails that some high-level managers circulated at the agency, action that is all too typical in white-controlled policing agencies across the country:

They included a video of an interracial couple confronted by Ku Klux Klan members with a burning cross, a message with a crude sexual joke about blacks and American Indians allegedly sent by an agent who served on the detail of President-elect Obama during his campaign and other e-mails that targeted prominent blacks, from activists to entertainers.

Ken Bolton and I did a book that involved interviews with fifty African American police officers in federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and this stuff is tame compared to the extraordinarily racist stuff many of these officers have seen and experienced. One example of the hostile racial climate in many agencies, generated by white fellow officers, is seen in this black trooper’s interview:

I reported and was told that I’d be riding with another [white] officer who was going to show me around. There was another [white] trooper in the [highway] median and as we, he pulled over into the median to see that trooper to talk, he looked over and saw, you know, that there was another new trooper there. And he said it as a joke, but it wasn’t funny at the time. He used the word “nigger.” “Oh, that’s just what we need, another fucking ‘nigger,’” you know, and laughed, and they laughed and carried on. And I looked, and they could see I wasn’t laughing.

Or the commonplace discrimination in promotions (like at Secret Service) can be seen in this interview of another black officer:

I’ve faced a lot of opposition toward promotion. I’ve been up for lieutenant eleven times, and I’ve been passed over even though I’ve passed every exam. . . . I was just recently transferred back to [an old post] where I have [whites] who are my junior, people that I had recruited that have been promoted and that are now my supervisors. They have less education, they have less time in grade, they have less experience as an officer, but now they’re my supervisors. So, I’ve faced much opposition, simply because I’m very outspoken.

Or what happens if you protest systemic racism can be seen in this older, veteran black officer’s interview (also like at the Secret Service):

Some people used to say I was a troublemaker, I said, “Troublemaker, how? What have I done to cause trouble? Because I won’t let you say ‘nigger’ in front of me? That’s a troublemaker? Because I won’t let you treat people wrong, that’s a troublemaker?

The “people” who are the problem in regard to hostile racial climates in all too many law enforcement agencies are well-trained, educated white police officers, including those up in high management positions. The “good old boys” still are the problem well into the 21st century. And for each of these cases, our interviews have hundreds of other examples. (I have encountered many others in doing expert witness duty in policing cases too.) These examples are not isolated problems of bigots, but as in the Secret Service example are about systemic racism–about well-institutionalized racism few whites are willing to acknowledge, much less do something about ( photo credit: @ly$ in wonderland ).

Ah, it would be nice if we would in our lifetimes come close to the liberty and justice rhetoric that our white leaders have parroted now for centuries!

Dedrick Muhammad has an interesting publication, 40 Years Later: The Unfinished American Dream, out of the Institute for Policy Studies (April 2008) that provides strong challenges to the end-of-racism nonsense that we hear much about these days. In his summary he accents these points:

Since Dr. King’s death, the African American high school graduation rate has increased by over 214%. At this rate, African Americans will reach equality with white Americans by 2018.

It will take more than 537 more years for Blacks to reach income equality with whites if the income gap continues to close at the same rate it has since Dr. King was assassinated.

If the racial wealth divide continues to close as slowly as it has since 1983, it will take 634 years for Blacks to reach wealth equality with whites.

Forty years since Dr. King called for the abolition of poverty, the annual decline of poverty for Black children is about a quarter of a percentage point per year. At this rate it will take over a century to end poverty for Black children. Today a third of Black children live in poverty.

These facts about racial inequality are well-known to researchers and activists in this area.

photo credit: caboindex
Since not long after Dr. King spoke often about them, since the late 1960s, they just have not had much impact on public policy action, especially in recent years. We certainly are a country where such catastrophic racial inequalities, which reflect basically the past effects of hundreds of years of past and present systemic racism, somehow stay on the policy backburner while white-collar, almost all white male, criminals on Wall Street get their companies bailed out with a trillion or more–and usually get golden parachutes of millions personally—even as they have raped and destroyed our economy.

Muhammad also makes two points that you probably have never heard in the mainstream media or among social science researchers:

While the incarceration rate of African Americans is extraordinarily high, the probability of incarceration for white men has been increasing at a faster rate (268%) than for Black men (240%) since 1974.

The increase in the share of white children living in a single parent home has been much higher (229%) than for Black children (155%) since 1960.

So, there is, in terms of acceleration in recent decades, a very serious problem of increase in white crime and incarceration and in terms of white children living without two parents. Of course, the baselines for whites are relevant here to the percentage increases, but these percentages are in any event very sharp increases, to say the least.

I certainly have not heard ANY politician or media commentator (or other scholar for that matter) make a point out of either one of these white problems. Why isn’t the “problem of white families” and their “lack of family values” being discussed? Or the problem of “increasing white incarceration” being discussed? Maybe if they were we could start getting into deeper issues of why these might be seen as “problems,” and what “family” really means in this society. Or is that wishful thinking?

During the long electoral campaign, and now after the election, there has been continuing debate over how black President-elect Barack Obama is. Media reporters and pundits have recently, even excitedly, accented questions about whether he is black, white, biracial, or some other mix. Many like Associated Press reporter, Jesse Washington, have recently asserted that increased intermarriages and a “decline of racism” in the United States have been

dissolving ancient definitions. The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black.

These post-election efforts by various people to make President Obama substantially or mostly white, not really black, fit well into a white racial framing that cannot accept a highly talented and successful black American for what he (or she) really is, but must find in him (or her) some white-like aspects in order to make him an “exception to his race”—to favor him, vote for him, or regard him with respect. Blackness is so negatively viewed within the dominant white frame that the majority of whites seem to feel it necessary to assert his whiteness (e.g., his light skin color or his mother and grandmother) over his blackness (e.g., his father or African relatives).

Washington notes later on that this new, mostly white (but some biracial) folks’ questioning of the blackness of Obama will create negative reactions from many black Americans

who feel that at their moment of triumph, the rules are being changed to steal what once was deemed worthless — blackness itself.

We also see in this reporter’s words more “decline of racism” talk that will curse us over the coming four years because it fits well into the contemporary “colorblind” version of the old white racial frame that, among other things, insists there have been shifts in numbers of individual actions such as blatant frontstage bigotry and hate crimes (which actually may not have decreased in the last fifteen years–we do not have good data), yet always ignores the continuing reality of institutional and systemic racism.

Over the next four years, how will President Obama be viewed by most whites? As fully black American, or as more white than black?

And will he be willing or able to act aggressively against racial discrimination in this society?

What is your take on all this?

How do we assess the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in the context of the long struggle for people of African descent for equality and social justice within the United States? A proper investigation of this question requires that we comprehend both the unity and diversity of the Black Freedom Struggle and its very conscious self-conception of itself as a segment of oppressed strata within the United States and within the larger world-system. I thus argue that the foundation of the Obama coalition is the historical strength of Black Solidarity against systemic racism in the United States and in the larger world-system.

Systemic racism was the foundation of the new world formed with the European conquest of the Americas and the capture of Africans to serve as slave labor in the colonial societies. It was at this time that the concept of race was introduced into scientific and public discourse as a means of naturalizing the relationship between the conquerors and the conquered, and was generalized to the entire world-economy during the subsequent European conquest of the rest of the world ( see here).

The enslaved Africans, unlike the indigenous populations, were a part of the newly formed United States of America, and were living contradictions to the “land of the free” rhetoric of the nation’s propagandists. While there were constant appeals to an international audience against the barbarity of enslavement, it was Du Bois’s announcement at the Pan African Conference in 1900 that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line that served notice of a rising arc of struggle against white world supremacy now joined by people of African descent within the United States.

Black Solidarity within the United States has taken a variety of political forms. This includes the liberal nationalism and anti-colonialism of the Pan African Conference and Dr. Du Bois at the turn of the century, the militant and assertive Black solidarity of the Niagara Movement of 1905, and the Race First nationalism of the New Negro radicals whose leaders included Marcus Garvey, Hubert Harrison, Cyril Briggs, Richard Moore, W.A. Domingo, and Claude McKay. Even the Class First radicals of the New Negro Movement (A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen) were firm practitioners of Black Solidarity. In the 1920s and 1930s W.E.B. Du Bois forcefully challenged the false universalism of both the Center and the Left within the U.S. American and Pan-European body politic while building alliances with Radical nationalist movements and independent governments in the Dark World, and beginning a dialogue with revolutionaries in the Soviet Union who were not quite white by the standards of that time. In the 1930s and 1940s many of these forces (Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, C.L.R. James, Angelo Herndon, Oliver Cromwell Cox, E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, Abram Harris, George Padmore, Shirley Graham, Claude Lightfoot, John Henrik Clarke) constituted a Black Popular Front which stood in the forefront of the struggle for defining the Black Freedom Struggle as one against racism and imperialism, and for U.S. involvement in the construction of Henry Wallace’s Century of the Common Man (as opposed to the imperialist project of an American Century). During the 1950s and early 1960s the continuing influence of the race first radicals influenced the move to the Left within the Nation of Islam under the leadership of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ahmed and others. During this same period remnants of the Black Popular Front connected with Dr. King and the civil rights movement (including young militants in both SNCC and the Nation of Islam). (see here)

Though Black particularity has often been a specter haunting the imaginations of the dominant social strata within U.S. American society, it has for the most part been a search for a wider and broader definition of the “we,” an attempt to widen instead of narrow the circle of humanity. It has not for the most part been about simple integration into the mainstream of U.S. American society. That is why the notorious exceptionality of the Black population has been the target not only of the color blind discourse introduced by President Reagan in 1980, but of a much more antagonistic political strategy that we forget at our own peril.

Black intellectuals and activists who have challenged the false universalism of the U.S. American intelligentsia and public discourse have suffered exile, repression, ostracism, and assassination.
President Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism was nominally anti-imperialist, but his eye was on the threat posed by the radical, left-wing anti-colonialism of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Despite Wilson’s rhetoric he failed to address colonial and minority questions in his own sphere and remained notoriously hostile to Blacks.

Wilson imposed rigid segregation in Washington, D.C. during his years in the White House. He regarded Black soldiers as an especially dangerous group, a fertile conduit for the spread of Bolshevism within the United States. This recalls the pronouncements about the threat of revolutionary internationalist politics and white racial degeneration by Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard in 1920s.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (The Disuniting of America) argues that race conscious Blacks, “nourishing prejudice, magnifying difference and stirring up antagonism” have come to represent a significant threat to what he views as the defining ethos of American nationhood. If this sounds suspiciously like the post-Reconstruction era attacks upon Blacks to achieve national reconciliation, this is by no means accidental.

It has not escaped the attention of U.S. American elites that the Black population in the United States has constituted the most consistent base and leadership of the U.S. Left since the time of the Great Migration (1910-1920). It should therefore not a surprise that as the nation moved to the Center Left, an African American politician would win the presidency. I learned this in part from Left leaning Black political leaders in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area in the early 1980s, some of whom talked about how they were concerned with being able to be both Black and Red.
If we construe the “Red” in this formulation as being broadly inclusive we can see that this is a consistent strain in Black political thought. Even the liberal centrist in the NAACP who separated from the Black Left in the late 1940s could be characterized as social democrats who practiced Black solidarity in much of their work. Though I agree with some of Cruse’s critique of the CPUSA’S dogmatism on the “national question,” I disagree with the oversimplifications of his accusation that much of the Black Left were simply integrationist wannabees. (see here)

With the exception of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam, most of the major organizations of the Black Freedom Struggle worked in coalitions with whites: the NAACP, the African Blood Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Negro National Congress, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

When Barack Obama entered onto the national stage he struck me as similar to Jesse Jackson during his Rainbow Coalition phase, though he was more careful than Jackson to avoid being labeled as simply a Black politician. He also moved strategically to capture a significant section of the political center, unlike the Rainbow Coalition which was much more Left in its stance. To do so he played the “race neutral card” with deliberateness and consistency in an environment where accusation of playing the race card would be used by the “color blind racists” of the Republican Party to neutralize one’s ability to appeal to the white electorate.

And of course there are some who want to use Obama’s success as an indication that the nation is overcoming its racial divisions. This is of course nonsense. Racism is systemic. And it is part of our commonsense. But I do think that the southern strategy is dead. Has been dying since 2000, but voter suppression has been used effectively to give us a sense that it is still in power. People of color are becoming too large a demographic to simply dismiss by demonizing Blacks, especially when Huntington and that crew are crying about the Hispanic threat, the Muslim threat, and the Chinese threat. The pushback against white world supremacy has been integral to the rise of oppressed strata throughout the 20th century. It is not separate from the increased power of working people, women, and increased opposition (or at least a relaxation of) hetero-normativity. The relations of force between the dominant forces and the subordinate forces within the world-system have been altered in favor of subordinate forces over the longue duree of the world-system. (see here)

Within the United States Black solidarity is a consequence of the systemic nature of racism which during the 20th century imparted an internal colonial status to the Black population (see here) It is not a national question in the way that the Communist International and the CPUSA envisioned during the early half of the 20th century (here I agree with Cruse’s critique, at least 70%). It consists of a need for decolonization of the U.S. Empire both internally and externally. This thrust will continue, whatever Obama does. But his election is a consequence of the slow change in relations of force both internally as people of color increase their numbers within U.S. society, and their strength within the world-system.

While there is great concerned among some Leftist intellectuals and activists about what Obama will do, the people that I met while doing GOTV in North Philadelphia on November 4th were very clear that this election represented a potential change in the country that would require continued struggle by the people themselves to advance the agenda toward the change that we need.

[This reflective post was written by three college student researchers, Amanda, Dave, and Hannah]

Much like Jessie and Adia, this election has been a momentous event for young people, many voting for the first time. The three of us (Amanda, Dave, and Hannah) grew up in white, middle class neighborhoods and were taught a white-washed version of history. Since entering college and realizing the gaping holes in our education, we have taken deliberate steps to learn the complete history of America. This compounds the significance of Obama’s run for President for us.

At the daycare where Hannah works, one of the few black students said to her on the day after the election, “Barack Obama has a haircut like me.” This sentiment coming from a five-year-old boy marks the significance of the election for us. Obama and his family are constant reminders to all Americans that “Joe the Plumber” is not and never was the true face of America. We hope this is the beginning of a time in our country where whites never ignore the true faces of America. We are proud of this America, the one that has elected Barack Obama, and not the white-washed one of our past, that teachers taught to us by glazing over reality. We agree with Michelle Obama, this is the first time we have felt proud of our country.

We decided to talk with white students and community members to see how they viewed this historic election. We found many people were unsure of Obama’s religion and expressed fear at the possibility of electing a Muslim president. Some respondents wanted Obama to openly declare his religion and others were explicitly hostile towards Muslims. The prevailing excuse for this overt prejudice was the 9/11 attack and President Bush’s “War on Terror.” We found that both conservatives and liberals shared this sentiment.

People often hid their racist comments to distance themselves from appearing prejudiced. This is a front stage technique and is not surprising since we interviewed people in coffee houses and other public settings.

We also found people held contradictory views about Obama as both a radical Christian and a potential Islamic terrorist. When confronted with this inconsistency, they were unable to express both views clearly. Some were confused and ended their statement in uncertainty.

As Joe has stated, many felt that Obama’s victory spelled the end of racism in America. But we found the open prejudice towards Muslims contradicts this. In addition, Obama and his family were seen by many as “white” and therefore “an exception to the race.” This statement reveals the prevalence of racism because it implies that African Americans need an exception, and it also plays into the idea that whiteness equals goodness. It attempts to minimize the significance of electing a man of color as president.

As we move forward, we must not overlook the importance of Obama’s presidency. He is our first black president and a symbol of racial progress. The election of Obama is a strong foundation for addressing our racist history but this event does not signal the end of racism or the beginning of a “color-blind” American society.

While going over the exit polling from Mississippi for the Election, something jumped out at me when observing the cross-tabs for race and gender: the fact that the gender gap in voter turnout for blacks was double that of whites. The gender gap regardless of race exists likely for several reasons, including women’s longer life expectancies. With the 2000 Election debacle in mind (along with Gov. Crist’s rather surprising push to reform the law), I looked here to see which states have the most stringent (i.e., repressive and racist; see here) anti-felon voting laws, and the bulk of them are ex-slave states.

Anti-felon voting laws are part of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation in this country because they disproportionately affect black men’s ability to vote. The following is a chart examining the gender gap for blacks and whites in selected states with the toughest voting laws regarding felons (note: each number listed represents the percentage of the total voter turnout for the state; women are listed first for each category):

ST/WHITES/BLACKS

AL— 33-32% 18-11%

AR— 45-37 7-6

GA— 32-33 19-11

KY— 44-41 7-4

LA— 36-30 19-10

MS— 33-29 21-13

MO— 44-38 7-5

NC— 37-35 14-9

SC— 37-34 14-11

TN— 42-42 9-3

VA— 38-32 10-10

So in Mississippi, for example, where “many” felons can never vote again in the state, black men made-up 13 percent of the total vote, eight points below that of black women. Although white women also made-up a higher percentage of the total vote than white men, the difference was only four percent. Meanwhile, the gender gaps in states like Louisiana and Tennessee were even higher. There are some disparities in the data, perhaps based on other factors (e.g., Obama’s time and money spent in the state, such as Virginia) or the variations in the anti-felon laws (e.g., the laws are less restrictive in the Carolinas than in Tennessee, Mississippi or Alabama).

Still, the important analysis put forth by Charles Franklin (see here) may shed light on the issue of white fear and its relationship to the percentage of blacks in the population. It appears that the higher the proportion of the black population, the more severe the anti-felon voting laws are in that state. Imagine if the gender gap for blacks had not existed in this election…in a state like Mississippi (where Obama won the black vote 98-2), perhaps that increased black turnout could have made the difference in the outcome. What do you think?