Many words that amount to, 'If they have a better alternative this time than the old left did in the 1930s -- if it's not only a capitalism=racism analysis but an actual political program that can win Americans' hearts -- I have a open heart and open ears.'

Responding in this way to a criticism is almost always intellectually dishonest. Why need the truth of the claim that capitalism depends on an engenders racism depend on the ability of those who offer a criticism to be able to produce an alternative to capitalism, much less an alternative that would be acceptable to Americans as they are right now? Why would the nature of a system of coordinating economic activity depend on contingent facts about the imaginative and rhetorical powers of a few people who critisize that system? If the leaders of the abolition movement had all died in a fire, would slaves have woken up the next day to a world in which slavery was no longer unjust? No, and I am not accusing Sleeper of actually thinking that. But I cannot see how this demand doesn't pressuppose such a ridiculous position. Unless of course he thinks that the criticism of capitalism, while true, should not be voiced by anyone who cannot convince the American people to abandon capitalism. So until the movement is victorious it cannot make a sound.

Obama does not connect racism to economics as much as a commitment to the truth would demand. To that extent his candidacy represents an important opportunity cost. Of coures there is reason to be concerned about a black man offering an analysis of racism on which white racists have been hoodwinked by the rich. The white racists won't listen. The non racist whites will take it as an attack on their lifestyle as implicated in racism and will resent it. A good criticism is why it should be Obama's job in particular to do this. Why not every other member of the party that is supposed to represent the people and defend civil rights. Can't do that if you aren't even honest about who the enemy is.

I suppose there was more than one point to this article. The other being 'He needs to get himself elected.' That is honest, and it might even be a good reason to accept his many policy shortcomings. But if Sleeper had restricted himself to that point, he might not have been able to write a full article.

I think that there are more than a few of us on the left who are not left sputtering at Obama's political ascendancy. We, in fact, welcome his candidacy and appreciate the peculiar challenges he and his campaign are facing. We understand that Obama cannot be elected or even capture the Democratic Party's nomination if he announces, for example, an intention to reconfigure American capitalism in a way that our colleagues desire. Those of us on the left who argue that Obama's candidacy falls short because he has not directly confronted the contradictions in American capitalism and how it feeds on and supports racism are not being realistic about the American political electorate and what is required to become president.

What motivates many of us to support Obama, despite these alleged shortcomings, is the simple fact that he and his campaign have succeeded in reaching out and capturing not just the support, but the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who had become disaffected or indifferent to the American political system.
Too many of our friends and colleagues on the left have forgotten that if folks are not in motion, i.e., if they are not actively engaged in an organized movement, then the likelihood of even making incremental changes in the current system is next door to nil. Those of us on the left who support Obama see his campaign as the best electoral vehicle in more than a generation for addressing many of the domestic and international issues facing our nation.

Some may see our position as little more than a variant form of political opportunism. They may be correct in a sense but our view is that we are simply trying to practice what we preach. If the folks we see as being essential players in a movement for social change are out in the streets, so to speak, then it would be foolish for us to stand on the sidewalks pointing out how their movement and candidate falls short of being ideal. We have to enter the fray and lend our support because the alternatives are so much worse.

BTW, Mr. Sleeper, we do not regard Saul Alinsky as a hero or a role model but that is an issue for another time and place. Thanks for the piece. More folks should read and discuss it.

Thanks for your response, Jim. I hate to disappointment you, however, but the "angels of noble black dissent" in America are not going to fade away. Not now and not in the foreseeable future. In fact, the more that we see blacks running military machines, defending war as "birth pangs" and assuming control of various corrupt and incompetent urban political regimes the more necessary it will become for those voices to be speak out and be heard.

If Americans truly desire to turn down the volume of noble black dissent then they will have to work a little harder at ameliorating the conditions that give credence to that dissent. White Americans really do need to understand, whether they agree or not, that black folks are not going to give them thanks for what we already have got. Nobody has given us anything that we had not already earned the right to possess.

Tom Wright, thank you for that bracing mind-rinse.
I was thinking: once you get paid by the word and tenured by the output, all is lost.

"What Obama is offering within the constraints of a campaign in a liberal capitalist republic is a foothold against capitalist excesses that's more reliable than anything offered by any scholar of the left I've ever read, listened to, or followed into activism."

While I agree with some things you've written above and disagree with other, I simply see no truth in the above statement whatsoever. I've seen no indication that Obama is offering this "foothold agsint capitalist excesses" you refer to. Far from it in fact. Beyond his soaring rhetoric, Obama never even discusses such things except in the most general way.

Obama is not offering anything to Americans beyond the exact same boilerplate corporate Democratic responses to our nation's plight that we've seen now for nearly 40 years except that most of the best and most effective portions of that boilerplate has been removed! He's steering a middle of the road course to win the election just like Hillary and he's promising more of the same ineffective half measures Democrats have offered before that might provide some temporary relief to a few, but that will have no lasting effect on the lives of our people. That's all. Everything Obama does, like almost anyone else running for office, is done to make sure he gets elected and that's all there is to it. He really no different than the others and, in fariness to him, should be evaluated in no different way.

I don't dislike Obama and believe his race is a double edged sword in many, many ways. One of the negative ways is all this obsession about his race and his statements on race and his supposed obligation to address racial issues and so on is nothing but a distraction. He's a politician running for President. In the end, his race matters only as a symbol and perhaps it will help him to be more sensitive in some of his decision-making if he is elected (which is far from a certainty)but it isn't and shouldn't be the factor people are making it into. I think he would agree with that. Everyone's race in America significantly impacts their view of the world, but it is no less so for a white politician than it is for a black one except we apply a completely different set of standards to the black politician. It's nearly absurd at times how our society does this.

Frankly, I don't care about all the self-important white, liberal chatter about race here at TPM or elsewhere, particularly when it is focused on a single personality as this is on Obama. Clearly, the problem is far greater than that and focusing it all on one personality (no matter who that happens to be) necessarily skews the discussion in many ways, none of which produce better outcomes. This kind of chatter isn't leading to anything just as it has lead to nothing over the past 40-60 years.

What we need is action because that is what produces results. The bottom line question is: what actions will help to speed the end of the inequalities and genuinely brutal consequences of those inequalities found in American society as we know it? As I see it, the obsession with race in addressing this often is a distraction, at least insofar as Americans have typically been going about it.

I believe the most effective actions we can take to diminish and eliminate the inequities and injustices in our soceity are those that help bring and end to poverty in America. By simply eliminating as much poverty as possible we will put increasing amounts of power into the hands of those who have been the victims of all kinds of inequities in our society including, quite importantly, racism. That power will allow them to fight for themselves which is far more effective than someone else fighting on their behalf.

Each of us, as citizens, can and must demand that every poor person be given not only opportunities, but training and other kinds of supports in order to obtain not just the basics in life, but the realistic chance of leaving poverty behind for good and not falling below a certain acceptable floor of living standards. We do not have that, yet his is how it is done throughout the world except in our backward, mean-spirited, outdated, socially and governmentally stunted nation for God's sake!

The problem of povery is not a mystery that cannot be solved. It isn't a new problem that only we face. In point of fact, it is a problem that all industrialized nations have faced and, unlike the US, they have met with far more successful in dealing with these inequitites for many reasons particularly funding, but they have also achieved those successes in part because they are not constantly sidetracked by obsessing about race as we are or in the same we that we are.

By increasing the power of those who otherwise have been powerless, they will be able to stand up by themselves and for themselves thank you very much and they won't need the help of the more fortunate to do so. Who doesn't prefer to take care of themselves and have no one to thank for it? The poor are no different.

Let us, as a nation, concentrate on lifting them up so that they have the opportunity to take care of themselves and we won't have to worry about these issues of inequity in our society in the same way. In point of fact, eliminating poverty will enrish the entire society in remarkable ways including greater prosperity for every citizen, not just the poor. One of the great ironies in American resistance to allocating resources to the elimination of poverty is the foolish, shortsighted belief that it is a waste of money. Eliminating poverty is one of the best, most lucrative investments in the future that we could possibly make.

Racism is just one of the many forms of inequities that plague American society. It is one of the central and oldest of them all here in America, but while an organic piece of the puzzle, it is not the whole puzzle. Racism cannot be destroyed without destroying poverty. They go hand in hand in our society. Does it really matter why they go hand in hand if we understand that by eliminating poverty we also eliminate some of the worst and harshest elements of racism in America?

But not all those who are poor are also victims of racism which is important to remember. Despite the disproportionate amount of racial minorities who are poor, the majority of the poor in America have traditionally and still are white. Also, it is important to remember that the African-American population has always been the most negatively effected by racsim as it is to this day. The hugely disproportionate levels of poverty in the black community is a direct consequence of slavery, segregation and ongoing racism. Doing the right thing by all the poor in the country also happens to be the most effective thing we can do to beat back some of the worst apsects the oppression of racist American society has perpetuated for centuries.

Racism in America and elsewhere thrives in part on the myth of superiority of one group over another or all others. The attitudes of the nonpoor in America toward the poor are also deeply rooted in a mythological and completely false belief that somehow the poor are not as worthy as the rest of us "good" people who are not (at the moment anyway) poor. Fortunate is a more accurate word than good, but we would be light years ahead of where we are now socially and economically as a people if that is what people truly believed. This undeserved sense of superiority and not caring about what happens to one's fellow human beings is quite similar whether displayed as racism or disdain/hostility toward the poor. Poor black people get it all in huge, unending doses from their self-appointed "betters" and they are acutely aware of it.

Poverty literally is violence and destroys human beings no less effectively than does war. The difference between the two is the difference between a tsunami versus the more subtle, unseen, corrosive long term power of a river that erodes soil, slices through the hardest rock and moves tons of silt grain by grain from the northernmost waters of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Those who experience the most brutal effects of racism in America typically are also poor. So by eliminating poverty we will do more to undermine racism and destroy it than almost anything else we can do. When we liberate people from poverty we also liberate them from the largesse of others including our self-satisfied, well-educated liberal selves. When we make taxpayers out of nontaxpayers we also produce men and women who become better fathers and mothers, people who can afford to build their communities, their churches and their schools. When we make taxpayers out of nontaxpayers we give people a stake in society they didn't have before, we make it possible for them to have a greater sense of self-worth and dignity, pride, and their own ability.

That's why Martin Luther King was leading "The Poor People's Campaign" in 1968. It was not an easy fight then, but when he was gunned down that movement which, unlike the "movement" for Obama was a real one, came to a nearly complete halt. For the past 40 years we have wandered in the desert, flailing about for shortcuts, other remedies and have, at best, gotten mixed results while ignoring the elephant in the room which is poverty. But the answer to solving the problem of America's inequitites is quite clear as it has been all along. The truth that Martin Luther King saw then is absolutely the same today. If we want to eliminate racism we must eliminate poverty. That surely is not the only thing we have to do to eliminate racism, but it is the most important thing we can do now.

It isn't cheap and it will require the sustained support of the majority of our people for many years in order to succeed. But we know beyond question that it does work and it pays real, ongoing benefits down the line to us all. That is how and why the New Deal succeeded: sustained support for decades for helping the poor and "underpriveleged" lift themselves out of poverty. It was the anti-poverty programs of the New Deal are what allowed most of today's affluent white families to escape poverty. The people who fought for and demanded those policies back then new this, as time went on their experienced it, and the benefits were/are ongoing.

Every effective, important and long-lasting New Deal program is an anti-poverty program from pro-union labor laws to Social Security, to Unemployment insurance, to the GI Bill, expanding educational opportunities by making them affordable and more. Medicare too is simply an expansion of New Deal programing to the elderly and it's success is completely undeniable. Those investments were the best our nation ever made and did more to lift the poor out of poverty than anything else one can cite.

The most success Democrats ever had at the ballot box was by fighting poverty successfully for 50 years! That is where our success lays in the future if we'll only realize that we will have to fight to implement the measures we know are necessary. Among those measures are national health care for every citizen of the United States just like everywhere else in the industrialized world, expansion of income supports of various kinds to ensure a national minimum income that not only keeps one alive, but allows for the acceptable support of a family which includes decent food, housing and education--not just enough to survive, but at a decent level that supports the efforts of the poor to improve their situation and eliminate the desperate and complete destitution so many of the poor experience in our country.

IMHO the most important action we, as citizens, can take is to ensure we have a government that is actively and agressively attacking two things: global warming and poverty. Our focus must remain on those things. Global warming must be a priority or else everything else is pointless. We cannot destroy the earth and make it inhabitable. We know what we need to do to address global warming but we have yet to take action. So too is the case with the symbiotic relationship between racism and poverty.

We know how to eliminate poverty. There's no legitimate debate about whether or not it can be done. We, as a nation, have the resources. There is only debate about whether we should do what we know needs to be done and whether or not we can somehow substantially reduce or eliminate poverty without paying what we know it will require because the demands of the more powerful in society i the short run will win out over the long term interest of the common people of our nation.

Yes, race has often been used as a weapon by the right to delay or kill antipoverty programs but they have only succeeded because those who have the power to implement those programs have been moral and political cowards who have paid no political price at all for throwing the poor under the bus over and over and over and, quite frankly, it is primarily white moderates and liberals who keep electing those people (almost all of them Democrats) and handing them that power and who continue to support them despite their failure to do what we sent them to Washington to do. The corporate Democrats who run the show in DC are more interested in maintaining their position and their place in the social hierarchy of the capitol than they do in relieving the pain and suffering of the poor and few voters demand that they do so. Besides, their corporate buddies throw better receptions and can gather more contributions for their reelections. So they get away with being "not as bad as the Republicans or Bush" while doing little or nothing to change the inequities facing every poor person in America and holding our nation back in every way. As long as the powerful are happy we don't even hear about the poor. Remember how suddently the poor returned to the radar screen only because of Katrina?

Obama is simply another one in a long line of politicians going for the brass ring of power (an observation of reality not necessarily a special condemnation of him). Like most corporate semi-liberal Democrats, he rarely discusses poverty at all, let alone how we need to take extraordinary action to eliminate it, which will strengthen the nation and buttress the position of the middle classes and that it will be a major undertaking that will take decades to fully realize. He doesn't talk about it much because there aren't many votes in it for him. Of course, it is a chicken and egg problem. There is a strong correlation between poor people's declining electoral participation over the past 40 years and the decline of political support by elected Democrats for programs that give the poor a stake in our society.

Please don't get me wrong here, I don't at all think Obama has any greater obligation to address these problems than any other Democrat running for Congress or President as a result of his race or anything else about who he is. They have all dropped the ball morally and politically. I think he, like Hillary and most elected Congressional Democrats have failed in the past and will continue to fail to do much, if anything, to even marginally (not to mention dramatically)reduce poverty in America. There is no reason to believe it will be otherwise by listening to him speak. He offers nothing beyond "yes we can". That's just the truth of the matter. He doesn't pretend otherwise, he simply let's people believe that yes we can means whatever they want it to mean. It's a great marketing campaign. Thus, little will be done to diminish the harsh inequities of our society in general and racism's corrosive, immoral presence will be given yet more time to hurt America and her people.

There is no "movement" behind Obama. The use of that phrase by his supporters elicits only mordant laughter from me because I am amazed that they have convinced themselves that it is real based on no evidence I have seen. It's a marketing ploy plain and simple which, by the way, is fine because that's what campaigns are: marketing. It just happens to be a very effective aspect of Obama's marketing for the moment and it has been very successful, particularly in attracting the young, and the previously uninvolved.

Because he is who he is, it cannot be debated that Obama's understanding and appreciation of America's racist past and present is keener and deeper than most others. However, I think it foolish to assume, particularly given the boilerplate platform he is running on, that because of who he is we will see anything like dramatic or effective action on the most important issues facing our people which are mostly economic issues. Foremost among them is the elimination of poverty, because, among other benefits, if we do that, those who are not in poverty no longer have to worry that they will become poor as they now do and always have.

Obama isn't claiming he's going to do much very different about any of the pressing problems that face our nation except lend his personal, magical, leadership to the mix. His discussions of the issues does not portend any significant new initiatives to end poverty and the racism that goes with it, and he does not pretend that it does. We shouldn't either.

In order to strike our most effective blow against racism and to generally make the country we love a better place to live, we should demand of all our elected representatives that they support a practical, long term program of eliminating poverty in America. The rest of it is all just academic. I say, let's quit talking and start acting.

Oleeb - I agreed with much of what you wrote. Not everything but most of it. One of the things I disagree with you about is your dismissal of the Obama Campaign as not being a movement.

I suspect that you are paying far too much attention to what the candidate is doing and saying or not doing and saying, and not enough attention to what is going on at the grassroots level of the campaign. An overwhelming majority of the young people I am coming in contact with as a result of our involvement in the Obama Campaign are deeply committed to social justice issues. What has been lacking through much of their lives were the vehicles, levers or means, if you will, to directly influence public policy.

I do not see their support for Obama as a case of one stop shopping. They do believe it is important that he be elected but I think they also see that it is as important to elect people to Congress who would support efforts to eliminate poverty and address other important issues.

Forty years ago, we paid less attention to electing people to office who shared our agenda than we did toward trying to influence those in office to support our agenda. In some cases. we won. In others, we lost. And in too many, perhaps, we had to choose between the two and be satisfied with our choice.

Electing Obama president of the United States is not a panacea for all that ails our country but we should not lose sight of the folks down here on the ground who are part of this effort. I think the lessons and skills they are acquiring in this process, including the belief that non-violent political activity is a force for good, will pay dividends for years to come.

I don't see this current crop of activists as yoking their concerns about social justice to, for example, the future of the Democratic Party. What I see is that if the Democratic Party tries to coopt them and does not push for progressive changes then they will look elsewhere. I think Obama's rise is due in great part to their looking elsewhere for a candidate who they feel expresses their concerns. (At a certain point, you can't keep arguing that what Obama says doesn't matter unless you actually have real contempt and disdain for his supporters.) The prospect of electing Hillary Clinton never appealed at all to them. They could see her calculating every move she made and her aura of inevitability only invoked their suspicions and distaste for politics as usual.

Obama's candidacy offered them something different and, believe it or not, more tangible than what they had seen and heard from Hillary Clinton or even Al Gore and John Kerry. And, no, it really doesn't matter down here on the ground how much of Obama's appeal is related to his blackness, soaring rhetoric and other qualities that the Democratic Leadership Conference and its corporate allies seem so obsessed and angry about.

The reality is that many of the people involved in the Obama Campaign are part of a movement. Folks may not be ready to accept that characterization because this movement differs from what they have experienced in the past or have hoped would arise in the future. Well, okay, contingency can be a bitch but these are the cards being dealt right now. If you don't want to shuffle, that's okay. If, however, you do want to shuffle, then you have to deal. The Obama Campaign is the only real game in town right now. The other two are just make believe.

The tired backlash narrative ignores the complex but very real and continuous reconstruction of racial rhetoric that took place among racial conservatives (in the very strict sense of the word, as they were seeking to conserve racial hierarchies) over the entire twentieth century. Racial conservatives established Jim Crow and transformed it over time to try to maintain it as it became increasingly less viable politically -- for instance, this brought poll tax reform in the 40s and 50s, though major extensions of voting rights for blacks would not come until the Voting Rights Act. When the federal government, through a united executive, legislative, and judicial agenda, made it clear that de jure segregation would no longer be tolerated, tactics shifted. And this happened -- quite demonstrably -- before the late 1960s and early 1970s.

To claim that "the" contemporary left in the US's analysis of the relationship between class and race is reducible to the street slogan of capitalism=racism is disingenuous. Several left scholars have, in different ways, done extensive and careful work to show how late capitalist practices developed in dialogue with structural racial subordination. And as I have said before, class and race are not irreducible and are entwined developmentally. Can a capitalism not intertwined with racial subordination exist? Sure. But that's not what we have in the United States right now in 2008, because of the way that our contemporary institutions have developed in the context of racial subordination. Every major institution in the US is marked by race in some way, and to acknowledge this should not frighten us.

Either political development has consequences or it doesn't.

Here is a liberal critique of Obama:

Obama is a moderate, luke-warm, mediocre conservative whose performance to date would be an embarassment to Eisenhower Republicans. Only the shift of both major parties toward solidly recessivist philosophies gives Obama any appearance of liberalism.

IF any liberal is not criticizing Obama, it is because Clinton and McCain are both fear-mongering, fascist plutocrats who can't wait to start handing out corporate handjobs and strap on a few readily manufactured war powers.

Only individuals wallowing in rightwing world meme are hamstrung by race and gender issue. Literate and educated folk have plenty of ways to point out that Obama is not the correct choice for the Oval Office . . . Unfortunately, the other two choices make Obama the least offensive choice.

Stop living in response to winger's backward-ass taunts and focus on generating a progressive framework in which to communicate. Blow the dust off your copy of Lakoff's "Moral Politics" and spend a couple of nights doing what the 'liberal elite' do best . . . Wallow in some 'book-learning'.

This article had me so bored, I couldn't finish it. As a white person who grew up in a housing project in the 1960s, I can tell you EXACTLY how to bring about "racial and economic equality"----you force MEN (particularly a large number of minority men) to marry the mothers of the children they produce and/or support the children they produce. Period. If they won't work, then you require them to work (and garnish wages), as is done in the welfare-to-work program today. If we can do it with women, we can do it with men. Men are far overdue for being held to account in this country. (It's funny that Obama, who should know something about this, hasn't touched the subject---if he wins, I sorely hope he offers a Cabinet post to Bill Cosby.)

What was true in the 1960s (when I was impoverished and the child of a single mother) is sadly still true today, but in much greater numbers. Show me the upper middle class blacks who are "unequal" today! There aren't any. Blacks have a much better chance of getting into colleges than whites and a much better chance of getting financial aid.

Children need TWO parents, a stable and healthy home environment, and a certain minimum level of resources in order to thrive. Children with these basics rarely become members of the "underclass" later in life.

This is so simple. So elegant. So true.
But while we continue to nominate less-than-creative standard politicians like the three we have (I agree with "oleeb" above on that), we won't get any of these elegantly simple resolutions to society's problems. Our best bets for candidates with PROVEN track records for creative and practical solutions that worked were Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, who were unfortunately eaten up by the schizophrenic primary system and rabidly liberal media.

Maybe the first step is to reform the primary system and ignore the media. Can't hurt.

Ellen, I really encourage you to read the work of Reva Siegel and Ira Katznelson. I think that will help to explain in much more historical depth and theoretical sophistication the dynamics that are difficult to compress into digestible sound bites for you.