Wright & Obama
No way to stay out of this one, so I’m linking a piece by Illinois resident, political scientist, and writer Adolph Reed. Wright, of course, is being subjected to a one-sided vilification-fest by the media. They hate uppity Negroes; they hate anyone who is tainted by a whiff of Black nationalism; and they really hate anyone who doesn’t go along with the cherished white delusion that race is no longer an issue here.
Obama, as I predicted, is throwing Wright under the bus.
I’ve taken plenty of time out to beat up on Senator Clinton for her phony-baloney perception management campaign; and since I’d rather eat shit than endorse either one of these opportunists, I’m linking Reed’s piece on Obama (even thougth I have disagree with Reed a time or two in the past (on the role of Black nationalism, eg).
Nationalism is what Wright elicits, by the way, because he insists on bringing up the evidence of the colonial relation Black America is subjected to by white America. This is his cardinal sin… reminding us that we are not a melting pot, that we are not equal, that it is not all in the past, and that all the prophets of working class unity can’t conceal the fact — except by rhetoric — that the white working class in the US is complicit in the colonial subjection of African America, because as in all imperial relations the white working class gets a cut. The ruling class hasn;t had to divide white and Black workers since the 18th Century. Since then, the white working class was in the vanguard of whtie supremacy.
That’s why Clinton’s veiled appeals to racism work. That’s also why Obama is trying to play an opportunist’s (and a fool’s) game: talking racial reconciliation and unity as if it were a fact to whites and hoping he can mobilize phenotype authenticity for African Americans (as a righteous reaction to Clinton’s race-baiting, imo).
THIS is why some of us insist that elections can only be engaged tactially, and why we should place no hope in them.
I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.
His political repertoire has always included the repugnant stratagem of using connection with black audiences in exactly the same way Bill Clinton did—i.e., getting props both for emoting with the black crowd and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming “tough love” message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black communities. Because he’s able to claim racial insider standing, he actually goes beyond Clinton and rehearses the scurrilous and ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made infamous.
It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.
The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain. This fabrication, along with those embroideries of the candidate’s own biography, may be standard fare, the typical log cabin narrative. However, in Obama’s case, the license taken not only underscores Obama’s more complex relationship to insider politics in Daley’s Chicago; it also underscores how much this campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance.
There is also something disturbingly ritualistic and superficial in the Obama camp’s young minions’ enthusiasm. Paul Krugman noted months ago that the Obamistas display a cultish quality in the sense that they treat others’ criticism or failure to support their icon as a character flaw or sin. The campaign even has a stock conversion narrative, which has been recycled in print by such normally clear-headed columnists as…
DeAnander:
A Canadian acquaintance asked me whether I favoured Hillary or Barack for the next Prez. I shrugged and said “Pepsi, Coke… but still, Pepsi or Coke is marginally preferable to rat poison.” That was mostly rhetorical flourish — I’m not sure that I actually regard McCain as quite as scary as rat poison — but he does seem scarier than the Dembots (in an unhinged, Strangelovian way, vs the predictable finance-capitalist-puppet scariness of th other two). My ticket I guess would have been McKinney/Kucinich, with Nader as head of EPA… and heck why not M Gravel, J Edwards, B Lee, B Sanders, A Gore all somewhere in the cabinet… if that’s the best we can manage for now. It’s really sad, how impossible that sounds.
29 April 2008, 7:54 pmchidy:
gosh i wish progressives would see the truth about nader. he regularly meets, and has taken money from, republicans. he’s done exactly nothing to build an alternative third party, you know, the hard work of actually getting one active and serious in all 50 states. he perpetually makes himself, and not the issues, the center of discussion.
i like what you said a lot, DeAnder, and i agree with most of it. but people have got to let go of the myth of nader, and see the man in truth.
as for wright/obama, all i can say is that i hope various dem strategists are doing the numbers here. i have argued for a long time as a black woman that white america is just not ready to elect a black man. that the media can make so much out of this wright thing is supportive of that theory. in a nonracist country, people would be turning off all news about it, even protesting and taking action at such racist coverage. the silence and acceptance on the part of most of wright’s villification is proof that they more or less agree with it. and to people like that, there isn’t a difference between wright and obama; all that matters is that they are Scary Black Men.
30 April 2008, 12:05 amG.:
What was that old axiom? Beware of false idols?
30 April 2008, 9:21 amnasrudin:
Neoliberal imperialists — supporters and practitioners of what MLK,Jr called the triple evils — don’t get a pass based on their race, gender, disability, or anything else. I don’t want O-bomb-a in the Senate, let alone the White House; same goes for Hillary. And McCain. Joe Bageant said it well:
“For me, listening to politicians talk, then listening to the media talk about politicians talking, rates right up there with swapping spit with a gingivitis victim. I do not like nor trust nor much listen to Hillary, McCain or Obama. And I wouldn’t vote for any of the three even if they knocked on my door bearing a bucket of smoked pork ribs and a bottle of Jack Daniels.”
30 April 2008, 11:42 amjack:
i’ve gotten to the point where i see this election as a fight to be america’s gorbichev. i once thought that oboma might (like 1-5% chance) turn around and be the next FDR, not that i particularly admire FDR. i did indeed feel just a slight glimmer in my jaded heart that he might shake things up if even just a little. i never gave him a free pass, but i saw nothing inspiring or even really admirable in clinton, so i felt he might be ok to vote for. now i feel like who ever wins will only have the privilege of piloting the titanic. mccain will just push the throttle to full steam ahead, and rip out the pilot wheel. oboma or clinton will try to make a good show of it, but between the economy, energy, war, failing infrastructure,along with all the other fun things going to hell in this country, well i only see iceburgs ahead for us all. guess its time for some community organizing of our own.
30 April 2008, 5:53 pmStan:
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report
What does it tell us about power when Barack Obama has to become white to be viable and Hillary Clinton has to become a man (incinerating Iran)?
30 April 2008, 6:17 pmDeAnander:
it tells us what we already knew, I guess.
30 April 2008, 9:36 pmpeggy:
Anybody seen “The Daily Show” of April 30? It comes complete with multiple recitations and variations of “under the bus.”
1 May 2008, 5:35 amWinston Warfield:
I gotta weigh in this Obama thing has got me so worked up. So what did Wright say that was so out-of-line (actually the problem was that it was “out of line”). Unlike Obama’s zombies, I actually live in da geto and have black friends, mostly through coaching (baseball) tough-ass kids from struggling families who have to put up with starved public schools, minimal opportunities for healthy play, hostile cops, and a racially balkanized Boston where segregation is cheek-to-jowl, social and by-neighborhood. My head coach and I are a salt and peppa team (I’m the salt), and we discuss what interests us (urban youth, and politics) all the time. He’s got no problem with what Wright said, at all (even though he supports Obama). We argue the contradictions therein. I drive my two sons to school every day through areas of geto Dorchester (think Boston’s Sadr City) where our short-cut route lets us “take the pulse” by observing the Obama political sign-count in front yards. These are stressed areas, where parents stand with their kids at bus stops, because its sort of a combat zone. THERE ARE NEXT TO NO OBAMA SIGNS, NONE. Funny. You would expect a groundswell of support, wouldn’t you? Sounds like a poll to me.
1 May 2008, 7:14 amStan:
FULL
5 May 2008, 11:24 amCharles:
http://www.manningmarable.net/works/pdf/peacemakers.pdf
8 May 2008, 3:23 pmStan:
Black Commentator just summed this up pretty well. I myself voted Obama in the NC primary, because the barely-concealed race-baiting of the Clinton camp has become so obscene.
The Wright controversy was likely a Clinton tactic, and one that worked well enough. Obama knows what every other politico knows nowadays… there is no viability outside certain boundaries. So they forced the “uppity” poltician to denounce the “uppity” preacher… again and again and again. The system works, eh…
Critical support (that is, support without stopping criticism) for Obama is now inescapable, in my own view. Clinton turned this into a referendum on race; and forced us all to answer that old labor question: which side are you on? Doesn’t take away the complexities and contradictions. Doesn’t change the fact that Obama is likely to disappoint nearly everyone, or that he is Wall Street’s creature.
Not only is John McCain a scary lunatic; it is really true on one level that the attacks on Obama (from DEMOCRATS) are attacks against African America.
9 May 2008, 6:39 amsteve:
I just hope folks take advantage of this moment to organize at the base. I could care less about the campaign for the White House. I do note however, the people in motion who have rarely if ever been engaged in any type of political activity that devoted time and energy to the Obama campaign.In the carefully bounded political sphere of the contemporary US, electoral politics is often the first point of engagement.If Obama is elected president, I think those people expecting real change will be sadly dissapointed.A clearly articulated counter-narrative about Imperialism, Patriarchy, Capitalism, National Oppression etc is an absolute neccessity.Surfing through White Supremist and Neo-Nazi web sites, browsing the Southern Poverty Law Center KKK watch page makes it very evident that the powers that be have extra-legal options to exert control.A look at the diminished availability of reproductive choice illustrates how extra-legal action compliments the agitational efforts of more respectable outfits.The anti-abortion movement was the programatic glue holding together fascist currents in the US body politic, today anti-immigrant organizing plays the same role. I would assume that after an Obama victory, extra-legal direct action will increase, much as it did during the Clinton years, with the net result of curtailed civil liberties for progressive movements. Several weeks ago, I observed a neo-nazi march and rally in Washington DC.I was struck by the level of security provided them by DC`s finest. No matter what the circumstances,the police always turn the riot shields at the progressives–unlike Nazis.
10 May 2008, 1:28 pmpeggy:
yo no comprende
11 May 2008, 1:42 amSTacia Tolman:
Uppity women come in for as much abuse as uppity blacks. For many years, Hillary has been subjected to a stream of virulence (backed by implicit violence as a message to the rest of us); all because she has dared seek power in this macho land of ours. A lot of the discussions about her focus on the body—her laugh, for instance: it used to be her hair. A lot of the things that have been thrown at her—that she’s ‘a monster’ was one I read on this site—imply that for a woman to seek power is physically unnatural, that it turns her into a beast, a subhuman. Comparing oppressions—racism vs. sexism—is a degenerate and counter-productive activity: the answer to ‘Is it worse to be hit by an east-bound bus or a west-bound bus?’ has to be that it’s better not to be hit by a bus.
12 May 2008, 10:41 amOf all the shit we’ve had to swallow over the course of this election, the one that sticks in my throat the most at this point is the political blackmail to which we’re subjected by the Democrats—either vote for us or get something much worse. From the local level to the presidential, they all think we HAVE to vote for them!
We don’t!
Charles:
I got no problem with Clinton being uppity. I got big probems with her trying to bring out votes by appeals to racism. Big problems.
She needs to read Sojourner Truth, bel hooks or Angela Davis.
12 May 2008, 4:13 pmDanielle Zora:
interesting- i have never seen evidence of her being uppity in any kind of anti-authority or pro-people way. she is a member of a conservative dc prayer group and went out of her way to pour coffee for her fellow male senators-she demeaned tammy wynette while actually standing by her no good lying cheating husband- she has never fought for women- one internship and some political friendships do not make a fighter for women or children or the family or anything.
12 May 2008, 8:49 pmi find her to be a monster-i am a women who respected sister souljah and lani guarnier- speak of people that got thrown under the bus. which women did she defend or promote?
Stan:
De and I have been here before. The issue that Stacia brings up is legitimate (so no reason to take it personally or get defenseive). Neither Senator Clinton’s policy positions nor her religious affiliations nor her amoral brand of politics hs anything to do with it, when we are talking about special maltreatments that target er for her gender (her clothing, hair, weight, “harpiness”, etc, et al.
Some time back, there was a nasty bit of prose ciruclating around the internet on Ann Coulter, one of the most morally repugnant political commentators we might find in the US.
Part 1 and Part 2 are linked, written by “The Liberal Avenger.”
When we disapprove of public figures, it is still okay, by librul-boiz standards, to gender an attack on them… another example is the picture that had Osama bin Laden anally raping George W. Bush… or in film — as pointed out here — for the protag in Man on Fire to symbolically anally-rape a terrorist with explosives.
The irony of our time, now apparent in presidential politics, is that Clinton has to run “like a man,” and Obama has to run “like a white man.” This just tells us who is still in charge in our culture.
Constructing sex as a form of revenge, or demeaning someone because of her gender, even when it is deployed against “enemy women”, is still a reflection of our cultural misogyny (and its attendant homophobia).
13 May 2008, 5:55 amDeAnander:
Yep this gets us back to the theme of “Enemy Women” which we’ve explored to some extent before — how in conflicts between gangs of men, the “other guy’s women” come under attack *as women*, i.e. become licensed targets for misogyny even more virulent than that which is expressed against the boyz’ “own” women. Obviously campaigns of mass rape in warfare are one reflection of this behaviour, a big obvious one. But gendered attacks on political/ideological opponents are so normal, so everyday in political discourse, that we almost don’t hear them. The misogyny is so fully embedded in phatic utterance and colloquial discourse that when the one set of boyz calls the other set of boyz “sissies” or “girly-men”, it’s just “the rough and tumble of public debate” and we are not supposed to attach any significance to it.
Almost as ubiquitous is targeting “the other guys’ women” as a surrogate for targeting the other guys, or as a provocation to the other guys. In public discourse in modern times I always think of the many US Cold War Era political cartoons featuring large, ugly, ill-dressed Russian women — “hey, their women are fat and ugly and ours are pretty and young and stylish, neener neener.” This theme ran deep enough to get encoded in feature length movies — the humourless, unattractive Soviet female was a stock figure in US spy movies for decades, and often her “conversion” into a “normal” woman who (a) falls for a handsome US fellow and/or (b) is seduced by feminine consumer goods from the capitalist system (Ninotchka, or Silk Stockings) was a surrogate narrative for the triumph of capitalism over socialism, the triumph of trophy womanhood over feminism, and the triumph of male power over female self-respect… [Capitalism here being anthropomorphised or embodied as the powerful wealthy male with cash and trade goods in hand who can entice any woman to prostitute herself, abandoning her principles and learning to conform to his expectations…?] Similarly we might recall Left cartoons and lit that embody/personify wealth and decadence as a “spoilt rich woman” (”Swept Away” anyone?), or Eldridge Cleaver’s notorious call for angry Black men to commit violence specifically against Anglo women to advance the struggle against white supremacy.
Cleaver’s Obit, CNN
For a feminist, there’s an obvious partisan line — gender — crossing these various politics-among-men; the fractures and enmities between men create a license to hate specific women (the other guys’ women, Enemy Women) openly.
And this is a pattern that permeates patriarchal politics. While imputations of imperfect masculinity are common currency in political mudslinging and cartooning directed at male public figures, direct and virulent misogyny is dumped on those few women whose heads are visible above the Kinder/Kirche/Küche parapet. Photoshopped porn pics grafting politically visible women’s heads onto porn models’ bodies in humiliating or ridiculous poses are common fare, as are more elaborate text-based pornoganda efforts like the one linked (reluctantly) above; and even at the less intense end of the scale, “catty” attacks on publicly visible women for imperfect femininity — i.e. not being beautiful or stylish or motherly or sexy or sweet or quiet or decorous or thin or pleasant or whatever enough to suit the intrinsically contradictory and unattainable state of Perfect Woman-ness — are heard and seen non-stop.
I see this as the “handy half-brick” gambit. When it might take a slight amount of mental/intellectual effort to engage with the reasons why a pol or public figure is wrong or misguided or untrustworthy, it’s easier and quicker to heave the handiest half-brick of misogyny or racism instead. The object is simply attack, rather than engagement — mockery and ridicule rather than reasoned opposition. The reasons for hostility and anger may be perfectly sound — I dislike Condi Rice as much as the next person — but the tools that get pulled out of the toolbox are the blunt objects of bigotry. Basically, we’re back to the schoolyard and the refuge of the inarticulate in “you’re ugly and your mama dresses you funny” when incapable of explaining the real reasons for dislike; or (also back to the schoolyard) the hostility really is unreasoned and consists in a mere chauvinistic hatred for the other team — a sporting or war mentality in which party affiliation (or colour of headscarf) is the deciding factor in whether to hate or admire a visible figure.
One of the complex and daunting things about us humans is that we seem to enjoy hating people — there’s some kind of reward mechanism at work in the brain when hatefests are indulged in (like tantrums). Party politics offers an ostensible excuse for indulging in hatefests. Men do obviously get some kind of jollies out of misogyny — a feeling of superiority? a release of endorphins? an adrenalin high? a sexual buzz? — and so, I think, in the case of partisan/misogynist attacks on Ann C, Hillary C, Condi R, etc we see politics as an excuse for enjoying the buzz of a “legitimate” fit of misogynist vitriol. Same goes — for those still naif enough to display open enjoyment of their own bigotry — for race-based attacks on Black public figures, anti-semitic fits over Jewish public figures, etc.
I think naming the Enemy Women behaviour and recognising it would go far to undermining it as an acceptable form of public discourse. But maybe that makes me a hopeless optimist.
13 May 2008, 3:26 pmStan:
Here is something that exposes a jillion contradictions, and one glaring fact: the accepted condition of women is to be reviled and humiliated. This article on sexual humiliation as a torture technique (it is) doesn’t mention that sexual humiliation is an integral part of the lives of most women.
13 May 2008, 6:13 pmpeggy:
Word has it (this is a current Anglophone stereotype) that Russian women are generally gorgeous and desirable in every respect whereas Russian men are generally louts. Don’t know how current that stereotype is in the U.S.
Eldridge Cleaver was a very brave man, imho, and exceptionally self-knowing, to write as he did. But he hurt black men a lot, by telling his own truth.
” . . . and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman.” Profoundly insightful, De. I mean it. Not being sarcastic. That phrase hit me between the eyes. Makes me think about how I feel, being a woman. But I definitely would not want to be a man. So what do I want? Freud’s old question. I know rather specifically what I want. But few people ask me, and of those who do, the greater percentage would rather I not have what I want.
Hillary has finally found her role in life - to play the role of a stereotypical uneducated beer-swilling racist et cetera white man. A ballsy woman. That’s a type in itself. Wonder how many working class men will buy into that. Wonder how it will play in Minneapolis. I fear that particular mask will crack pretty soon.
14 May 2008, 6:59 ampeggy:
Sorry, it was not De’s quote, it was someone else quoting Dhia al-Shweiri, a man. Puts the whole quote in a whole different light. Some men find it the ultimate insult to be made to feel like women. Doesn’t mean that a woman would necessarily feel insulted to be made to “feel like a woman.” My mistake.
The feelings of men are diverse, as are the feelings of women. There are quite a few men who like to feel like women. Of course they are reviled by many, but they have also strongly resisted, fought against the revilement, and won many important battles. Perhaps more attention and honor should be accorded to them.
14 May 2008, 7:17 amkathy miriam:
Stan,
14 May 2008, 7:41 amI NOTICED this article- I didn’t even open your link and know which one you’re talking about. It’s APPALLING–I COULDN’T EVEN READ IT, I SKIMMED. I can’t add anything to what you’ve just said, but thanks for bringing it up.
kathy miriam:
re: “enemy women” behavior. YES. De, this analysis is so incisive– This phenomenon has irked and disgusted me for so long and I never quite put it together as you did here. It’s especially important in terms of seeing the hatred coming from different “poles” of the political spectrum.
about the “half brick”- Yes, it’s easier to hate, to simplify the world into us and them, to avoid the complexity and challenge of thinking, and avoid- some basic fears about co-existing with others, with one’s self.. It’s a massive form of self-deception. I don’t know how to get at it..
But more specifically and concretely-(re the misogyny) this is hatred towards women, and in the context of both left and right- hatred towards feminism, towards any woman that “crosses the line”… And you’ve put your finger on how - as “woman of the enemy” a vehicle is provided for this hatred that few people see, because they hide behind it has hatred for “the enemy” period. and that is always legitimate, of course. left and right. And this “enemy woman behavior” — you should write a piece about this and circulate it!!! — shores up the basic heterosexual presumption, woman belong to men, are appendages of men.
14 May 2008, 7:51 amI really think this analysis is IMPORTANT- please write an article about it and send to Counterpunch!
Bruce F:
I came across a site that you might find interesting.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174931/ann_jones_changing_the_world_one_shot_at_a_time
I’m the first to admit that there might be/are problems with Americans going off to save the world with the latest piece of technology. That said, this seems to fit in with what you guys do here.
14 May 2008, 11:39 amCharles:
Well, the most common , everyday exhibit of the “enemy women” concept might be calling a boy or man a “son of a __”, putting some fault of the male on his mother.
Gender and race are on the mass consciousness writ large at this concrete moment in the Presidential campaign with a woman and a Black person (running as a Black person !) as candidates. As far as representations of feminist issues and Black freedom issues to the vast majority of the People, women and Black acivists are stuck with the Presidential campaign as the main way that these issues are raised in the public’s mind.
“Enemy women” concepts don’t have much to do with this Presidential campaign. There’s nobody doiny any “enemy woman” rhetoric in the context of the current Presidential campaign , so raising _that_ is more like the defeniveness on this thread.
14 May 2008, 1:42 pmThe issue of feminists and Black activists in the campaign is the classic problem of a woman carrying the issue of advancing women falling deep into racism, besmirching the feminist banner big time, as critiqued by Black _feminists_ from Sojouner Truth, to Angela Davis, to all the Black women supporting Barry and criticizing Clinton in this campaign. What conscientious feminists need to deal with in this concrete , real world situation is the “Margaret Sanger” problem ( See _Women , Race and Class_ by Angela Davis).
Stan:
Huh?
When news commentators say “I can see Hillary’s adams apple,” what is that? And the fact is, when Bill Clinton was race-baiting, he was called everything from pragmatic to racist, but not monster (unnatural).
It’s “defensiveness” to bring forward the issue of “enemy women”? Have you read anything written above?
15 May 2008, 5:38 amkathy miriam:
There is now “favorite website of the day” on Counter-punch which equates CLinton with Hitler- it inserts an English language script into a scene from the German movie, Downfall–called the Downfall of Hillary Clinton (also on U Tube). It’s unfortunately very clever. Feminazi anyone?
15 May 2008, 7:29 amDeAnander:
@km I think this — and a lot these Enemy Women gambits — fall under a broader category of Taint-tagging. Hitler is one of the ultimate Taint memes in US culture, so comparing someone to Hitler is like a Taint-tag (Taintball?), his bad mojo is supposed to rub off by association on the person being put in the frame with him…
Hitler has been a Handy Halfbrick ever since the real horror of WWII receded into pop pabulum history.
it also compares her (again) to a man, thus reinforcing the gender kapu slur… I wonder why a leftyboy web site would not hit closer to the mark and compare her to Maggie Thatcher, who also ran on an “iron lady” neolib/authoritarian strategy…
15 May 2008, 10:45 amRequired:
Yeah, it’s definitely got some political potency for anti-women forces, but I would hazard a guess that the real reason that film was chosen was because about 50 thousand parodies of that scene have recently hit the internet. With Hitler getting furious over everything from not getting a PS3 to his baseball team losing. It’s like the Chris Crocker thing when every moron with a bed sheet and some eye-liner thought they were hilarious. Including the painfully embarrassing late entry from the US Greens Party saying “leave Ralph Nader alone.” It’s so cringe worthy when old people try to co-opt pop culture and fuck it up. It’s even worse when old progressives do it.
15 May 2008, 9:15 pm