Bursting the Elite Bubble
Glad to see Jim Sleeper joining the conversation on Obama and the future of this great conversation on race. I have to say though, that it put me in the mind of another conflict in the 1990s—the rupture of the black-Jewish coalition. The intellectualizing around the fracturing of this venerable coalition always struck me as weird, mostly because it seemed some distant from my, admittedly bias, on the ground reality. I don't mean to trivialize Crown Heights or Farrakhan, but I think the hot debates went right over the heads of lot of blacks and Jews. It took me coming to New York to understand that "The Split" was a quasi-local story—a narrative born of a few patchwork incidents and then foisted on millions of people, who basically had no idea.
In those days I was a lazy student, half-assing my way through Baltimore city public schools and then, miraculously, into college. Still, even then, I had some interest in these matters, and was always taken aback by how much energy was expended on some of the issues Jim addresses—affirmative action, racially demarcated voter districts, the merits of "diversity." Had you asked me, or I'd say any black kid in West Baltimore, about race we would have talked about crack, prisons, the murder rate, poverty and teen pregnancy. I didn't even know what "identity politics" meant until circa 2002. Of course now I can sling the term around like a pro.
All jokes aside, I don't want to demean such discussion, but I think issues like affirmative action took up way too much space in the 90s, and more reflected who was having the debate as opposed to its effects on the broader America. Like a large portion of black folks who now find themselves flailing their way through middle and creative class, I went to a historically black school, Howard University. I spent the 90s daily debating race, and while affirmative action may have been the topic du jour at the Ivies, it ranked relatively low on our list of priorities.
Much like the "blacks and Jews" discussion, I detect in some of Jim's points a narrowing of the dialogue toward issues that tend to bubble up in elite quarters. I make no brief for, or against, affirmative action and diversity at Ivy League institutions. But we should put these debates in the proper context, and guard against ignoring large swaths of the population. I don't want to bash the Ivies, but I think this is a central problem with the culture wars of the 90s. It distorted the dialogue by focusing on extremes, on small voluble pockets and then subbing them in for the millions of people, themselves replete with their own diverse opinions.
If I am talking to you about the problems of race, I'm going to talk about crime, criminal justice, black fathers, employment discrimination, disproportionate health care and public schools. I'm going to talk to you about the wealth gap, and the expanding the EITC to non-custodial parents. I'm also going to avoid Shelby Steele, like the plague. Not because he's a conservative, but because his life mission seems to involve shrink-wrapping black folks into cartoons like "Bargainer" and "Challenger," then selling those stereotypes to people who have only limited encounters with black folks
As a black person, I have to say that this is the beauty of Obama. He refuses to be reduced, and thus given his popularity amongst black folks, refuses to allow us to be reduced. Moreover, his support in unlikely quarters ultimately shows the complexity of white America. I don't much care that Idaho is a red state, which no Democrat can win in the general. No black voter thought that any black candidate could win there, ever, period. As a friend of mine said, we thought there was nothing in Idaho but white supremacists. How thrilling to be proven prejudiced and wrong.
If I am talking to you about . . . I'm going to talk to you about . . . .
But are you going to talk about Buppie guilt?
April 2, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you!!
April 2, 2008 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it may have been useful, although only because you and Jim Sleeper raised the issue, to point out that the alleged fracturing of the coalition between African Americans and Jews was not only confined to a specific geographical location but that there was no historical basis to claim that such a coalition had ever existed! There were certainly significant coalitions and bonds that existed between certain groups of blacks and Jews but these relationships, although important and influential, did not and could not constitute a basis for claiming that there was an historical alliance between African Americans and Jews.
The fracturing of this particular alliance did not begin with the Crown Heights debacle or the rise of the Black Power movement or Louis Farrakhan's arrival on the national political scene. The dissolution began quietly and almost imperceptibly in the aftermath of World War II when the full horror of the Nazi's crimes against humanity and against the Jews in particular emerged.
Some Jewish intellectuals began advancing the argument, albeit quietly, that the extent of Nazis' crimes against the Jews (The Nazis and their European allies murdered more than a third of the world's Jews.) was so horrific that the demands for justice on the part of American blacks should be placed in a secondary role until the issue of Jewish suffering was more fully addressed by the United States and the world. Many black and Jewish intellectuals and artists disagreed strongly with their position and over time the two groups grew apart socially and politically.
I think it is important to keep in mind, however, that these arguments took place primarily in the salons, parties, political clubs and cultural associations that existed at the time in New York City. The great majority of blacks and Jews - even in New York City - did not participate in these debates and probably were not even aware of their existence. Anti-semitism and anti-black racism should be resisted whenever they make an appearance but it is an historical error, at a much lower frequency of effect, to lament the passing of a coalition that never existed in the first place.
April 2, 2008 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting historical insight into some early strains in the black-Jewish coalition. However, you overstate the case suggesting that it did not exist. Liberal and left Jewish political individuals and organizations were extremely important supporters of the post war civil rights movement. To say this was a coalition is not to deny that there may have been right wing Jews that opposed this movement.
April 2, 2008 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enjoyed this perspective. It does seem to me that arguments about things such as affirmative action, or crime, etc., have led us all too often into a rabbit warren of theological and philosophical quandries and relativities.
Which was worse: slavery, or the Holocaust, or gender discrimination?
Attempting to 'prove' one position of the other leads to trying to establish some sort of hierarchy of evil, and when we do that we end up in warring camps, each feeling righteous and exclusive in our moral certitude.
That's not to say that these issues are trivial, it's just that we can't get anywhere by focusing exclusively on what are, in the end, philosophical abstracts. As an old friend who was used to say, "can't we stop circling at 50,000 feet and land this conversation?"
I share your sense that Obama is offering something different. I'm white, but like you, I think it's a whole lot more interesting to deal with more tangible issues, such as crime, hunger, the percentage of Americans who are in prison, etc.
In his own person, he offers a way to forgive the warring factions of our society, and that's the first step in healing the divide. He's done it with his own personal story. His grandparents and mother are almost never (unless someone forces him to do it) referred to as white people: they're just grandpa, grandmother and mother. And his father is just his father. And he sees them with all their flaws and loves them anyway. They're family. Period.
It's not such a bad way to do things.
April 2, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
More likely, productive and practical.
It seems to me if we look at these problems with an ounce of common sense, we'll come up with ways to solve them.
I think maybe we need more AA judges, and less AA Felons. I think there should be some oversight and judges should be called out for their obvious racist decisions.
Maybe putting some AA Lawyers on a fast track to becoming Judges would help to chip away at the inequity. How? I don't know. It seems to me such programs have been done before with success. Replicate them.
Maybe it's a stupid idea, but I humbly submit there is nothing we the people can't overcome if we work together.
I think people like Sleeper minimize the problems by getting tied up in the minutia and emotion of them.
I think Ta-Nehisi (vera cool name) has it right. Maybe if we start looking at problems as problems we can solve, the nuts and bolts, we'll do better.
Agonizing over the idea of the problems of race inequity isn't helping us move forward.
How about we just start with making our justice system more equitable, expanding educational opportunities, and making sure there are plenty of "hands up" social programs.
A lot of the problems of the AA community has now, used to be the problems of other communities. We've solved them with "New Deal" type hand up programs. We can do the same for disadvantaged minorities that we did for the returning GIs in World War II.
All ANYONE needs, really, is a chance.
April 2, 2008 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Talk about narrowing the discussion!
The point of my column is that Shelby Steele and remnants of the "identity politics" left try to narrow the discussion and that they resent Obama because he is broadening it. I don't recall mentioning affirmative action or "Jewish intellectuals" in this column. Moreover, when someone begins an observation with "As a black person," I'm not sure who's part of the solution and who's part of the problem.
I certainly did mention elite liberals at colleges like the ones Obama and his wife and I attended, and why not? Does every column have to be about the whole world? The point of mine was to protest what Ta-Nehisi Coates rightly calls "a narrowing of the dialogue toward issues that tend to bubble up in elite quarters." Elite liberals who do that certainly are a part of the problem in this country, and they're a big part of Steele's argument.
We all know that Steele had a point; perhaps Ta-Nehisi's column reinforces Steele's point, in how it plays to its TPM audience. Perhaps I wasn't so wrong to consider Steele's argument after all. In a forum like this, with many people expressing many views about many dimensions of the racial landscape which Obama has to confront, let's not try to narrow the dialogue by saying that some of the problems aren't worthy of attention.
April 2, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with much of what you wrote in your piece about Obama's speech especially about Shelby Steele's lack of candor and understanding of his own role as special pleader and race broker. Some of your points that I disagree with are relatively minor but others are large enough to effectively block the road leading to that proverbial conversation about American race relations and its racial history.
I don't want to address all of those points in this forum but I do want take up at least one of them now because it is consistently overlooked by white and other non-black Americans. Black political capital was used over and over again by elected leaders like FDR to promote aspects of the New Deal but African Americans, by and large, were not allowed to benefit from these programs despite the fact that their political capital was used to leverage the passage of these measures.
One of the small but extremely relevant failures of the Civil Rights Movement, for example, was that blacks neglected to include as part of their pleadings for redress the fact that for generations the value of the taxes and fees that blacks had paid to every level of government in this nation had been expropriated and used disproportionately solely for the benefit of others. Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Kenneth Clarke may have been right on when they argued that public schools segregated by race could not avoid sending a message that blacks were inferior to whites but the more palpable reality is that the black schools were only given a relative pittance of resources they needed to provide a comparable and quality education to their black students.
This process of expropriation was not confined just to public education. Look at how blacks were denied, for example, full participation in programs that benefited veterans and first-time homebuyers despite the fact that blacks as much as whites paid for the creation of these programs. It is too late now to reset the clock in order to ameliorate these injustices but, by the same token, it is not appropriate to continually throw up the word "compromise" and other similar terms to blacks as though their demands and pleadings have no basis in fact.
Black Americans have continually compromised throughout their existence in this nation. Their sacrifices have been no less costly to them than whatever sacrifices the residents of South Boston and Charlestown have made to secure their place in America. People of good will need to begin acknowledging this fact instead of glossing over it or asking blacks to let it go. It has not gone anywhere. If it had we would not be where we are today. That is, looking for a way out of this racial morass.
April 2, 2008 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree, and I think we can take those ideas and make them work for those they didn't work for.
They were solid ideas.
April 2, 2008 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
",,,you overstate the case suggesting that it did not exist."
No, I did not overstate the case at all. I did not deny or make light of the fact that some Jews and some black folks worked together on various issues. These are historical facts that only a fool would deny. These facts, however, do not constitute a black-Jewish coalition unless one is specifically referring to a group composed only of blacks and Jews that joined together either on an ad hoc or more permanent basis to address certain issues. The Civil Rights Movement is not an example of a black-Jewish coalition although a large number of Jews and blacks participated in and supported the goals of the movement. We don't have to claim relationships that did not exist in order to give thanks and show appreciation for the work and sacrifices that some people made on behalf of social justice issues.
April 2, 2008 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the response Jim. My apologies. I took your reference to cookie-cutter diversity in higher ed as an implicit reference to Affirmative Action. I also agree that we shouldn't brand certain problems as unworthy of attention. I'm only arguing that we keep them in context and proportion with all the other dimensions of the racial landscape.
As for beginning one of my comments, "as a black person," what can I say? It's who I am. I never thought of it as a part of a problem or part of a solution. It's just who I am. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Ta-Nehisi
April 2, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're lucky to have this guy writing for you. He's got insight and spirit.
April 2, 2008 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
My memory of a somewhat earlier time predating Crown Heights, goes back to the deliberate use by John V. Lindsay to break up city unions. Lindsay was supposedly a liberal Republican; he saw the potential of using the black underclass as a way to bring down the powerful city unions. His first act was to take on the Transit Union, forcing a strike that paralyzed the city. Then he jumped into the fray on city schools; here he backed local control of local school districts, giving (with the support of Nick Kristof type liberals) local districts the right to hire and fire teachers in direct contrast to the negotiated and traditional guarantees of the union workers. As this policy was designed it put white, often Jewish, school teachers under attack by local councils. Certainly there were issues on both sides (I am not talking about the provocative Lindsay)...but the deliberate policy of divide and conquer created racial tensions that have lasted several generations and underline a lot of the racial faultlines in NYC and even nationally.
April 2, 2008 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't like the description, myself, Ishmael Reed used the term Yoruba American; this is a bit much. An assumption is that one speaks for the whole of folks of African diaspora or some odd ball represents the whole or majority.
Your contrast of West Baltimore to Idaho says all about you that is necessary; i.e., the ability to see beyond your nose or as is stated in these quarters beyond your personal narrative.
Hell, given your apparent age,folks like you should be in big demand. Given the context your reference was appropriate; it is no difference than a person from Texas, Italy, or Kenya speaking on issues relevant to themselves and their respective lives.
To paraphrase Oscar Brown Jr. as regard Sleeper's last paragraph "what we"..... Their is not much to the "cookie cutter" debates, keep on looking for the dough.
April 2, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't owe me an apology, Ta-Nehisi; I may owe you one for misreading your post.
All I was trying to say in my own post was that there are holdouts against Obama on both the left and the right and that that's because they're commmitted to analyses -- or ideologies -- that his ascendancy doesn't fit. Those on the left are convinced that Obama is really a closet neo-liberal who, instead of addressing the real, capitalist and racist roots of our society's travails, is finesssing or glossing those problems, and appealing to a vacuous American Dream, in order to become President, even though he'll turn out to have no solutions that get to the root problems. In short, both Steele and the leftist academics think that Obama is fudging.
My response to Obama's critics is that not only doesn't he have a choice, but that this country hasn't any better alternative.
I do argue, in my post, that some liberals back Obama for the wrong reasons -- they're using him as a symbolic, "feel-good" way to dodge their real responsibility to tackle the deep inequities that divide not only blacks from whites but these days, blacks from blacks as well as whites from whites.
Unlike those "feel-good" liberals, I'm totally with you when you say, "If I am talking to you about the problems of race, I'm going to talk about crime, criminal justice, black fathers, employment discrimination, disproportionate health care and public schools. I'm going to talk to you about the wealth gap, and the expanding the EITC to non-custodial parents. I'm also going to avoid Shelby Steele, like the plague."
That's what I've spent most of my time writing about as a journalist, so we're on the same page there. You're right that Shelby Steele is off that page, but I just felt that somebody had to say what I did about him, and about leftists who don't recognize that just talkinga about racism isn't going to get beyond it.
April 2, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
So talk about talking about racism instead?
I saw no possible solutions in your complaint. Try writing about solutions. Otherwise...
It's merely more hot air, and "feel good" tortured gluts of vacuous drivel.
April 2, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Everyone -
I'm an older white woman who loves Hillary, but voted in California for Barack.
I was a teenager in the 60s, when the drive toward the civil rights legislation made me ashamed, proud, aware, made me a citizen of this place, with a sincere desire to rectify the damage we'd done to this nation by attempting to undo the wrong of the founders: creating an imperfect union.
When my own children couldn't get college scholarships, we said "OK, we've got some work to do," assuming as we hoped, that some of those scholarships we're going to kids who had a greater financial need.
Barack's appeal to me, has been his mantra: that all kids are our kids.
If you watched the Bill Moyer's special on the Kerner report and were reminded of the dire misery still existing in this country, did it take you to the Reagan years?
While we watched, jaws hanging down, a whole generation of people bought into the theory that enabling business to conduct itself virtually without restriction, was appropriate. This fostered a national selfishness that made us ignore the problems of the less fortunate.
When I scroll down through California ballot measures, I vote against the ones which are supported by the (Howard Jarvis) Taxpayer Coalitions. Jarvis is gone, but the coalitions live on.
We won't pay for roads. We won't pay for improvements. We won't pay for schools. Add to this the lunacy of the "faith based" drivel by Bush (who really stands out, drivel-wise). HIS approach says that the government should support faith-based organizations that do ----- the work the American government has abnegated ----- mental health care, social services, before and after school care, educational enrichment.
I've spent a lifetime working for nonprofits, and they offer lean and modest, knee-jerk solutions to crawling, invasive and overwhelmeing social problems.
We need a government that will admit that all kids are our kids. Actually, we need someone to say, "Let's raise taxes." It's part of Reagan's clever evil that he managed to turn "taxes" into a word no politician could say.
We need to create new industries, re-employ our people, educate our children, and there's nothing about it that's racial, although the failure to do this has hurt the people who are in need, the most. And many of those people, are people who are black.
We can't change this until we agree to make the financial sacrifices necessary to bolster our society in its most important missions. And if this generation agrees to do that, under Barack's leadership, then the financial parity once supported by our society, would go a long, long way towards curing what ails us.
If the person at the next desk over, at work or at school, is a different color, you'll relate to him and make friends with him, because you're in the room together, tackling the same problems. If he can't sit at the next desk because we won't support him getting there, then we will never get to know him, and share something with him, and our reality will be immeasurably harmed.
April 2, 2008 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read Shelby Steele's hit piece on History News Network (HNN) at the beginning of the campaign. This was shortly after seeing Steele on Bill Moyers Journal. I think Steele and his cohort have resentment towards Obama. I agree that Steele's construct of "Bargainer" and "Challenger," is very last century. I think, as Mr. Sleeper said in his article, Steele has become exactly what he fantasizes about in his ivory tower.
April 2, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
great post, charity; "all kids are our kids"
but it seems it brought to an abrupt halt the interesting discussion of Ta-Nehisi's contribution
maybe when people realized where the talk on solidarity might lead (i.e. higher taxes), they decided to move on?
April 2, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I recently discussed affirmative action with a class of mostly 22- to 25-year-olds. They just do not seem as exercised about it as people that age (my age, then) did in the early/mid-nineties. And I think that's a really good thing.
They seem much less attached to the idea that, absent affirmative action, economic goodies would be distributed on a "merit"-based system that works fairly for everyone. (We've probably got eight years of Republican rule to thank for disabusing most young people of the meritocracy illusion.) And they did not seem to take for granted that the minorities who benefit from affirmative action are inferior to the whites who would, or do, get in without it. I found that whole discussion heartening.
April 2, 2008 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink