Ta-Nehisi Coates

Interesting post here at Slate's XX Factor.  Melinda Henneberger tries to understand why black women and white women struggle to find common ground. The obvious reason, to my mind, is segregation. Black women live around, and in most cases with, other black men or boys. They have fathers (not enough), they have husbands (not enough), and they have sons (maybe too many, hehe). But they don't have these sorts of close relationships with white women, under any circumstances.

The same, I suspect, is true of white women, which is what explains Gloria Stienem and Geraldine Ferarro. I'm just going to guess that neither of them know many black women. I'd bet money that if you ask them to name three different black families they'd sat to dinner with, they'd probably have to reach back a decade for each equation. Without some tangible understanding of each other, it seems to me it's going to hard to find much transracial unity. Until segregation falls, sadly, I think this will always be the case.

I meant to post on this piece in the Times yesterday, which I think perfectly captured what, exactly, Obama brings to the table. Basically, the piece contrasts Obama's bipartisan pitch with the old Clinton "New Democratic" pitch. The Essence:

In many ways, the Obama campaign is challenging the fundamental political premise that has prevailed in Washington for more than a generation: that any majority coalition must be carefully centrist, if not center-right. Bill Clinton ran in 1992 as a candidate willing to break with liberal orthodoxy on many issues, including crime and welfare, and eager to move the party — which had lost five of the six previous presidential elections — to the middle. Mr. Clinton’s New Democrats assumed a certain level of conservatism among voters.

Mr. Obama and his allies are basing his campaign on a different bet: that the right-leaning political landscape Mr. Clinton confronted has changed. Several major Democratic strategists, and outside analysts as well, argue that the country has shifted to the left because of the Iraq war, the economy and seven-plus years of President Bush, and that it has become open to a new progressive majority.

This is basically the reason I'm an Obama supporter. I believe that the progressive agenda, unfreighted by empty identity politics, can actually work. We deserve a candidate who does not condescend to people, but at the same time is deft enough as a politician to communicate and not be boxed into anyone's caricature. Anyway, it's a good piece. Check it out.

Drum has mostly defended Hillary from some of the more outrageous attacks, and granted, they've been a few. At any rate, Hillary's latest tactics seem to have pushed him a bit too far. Also check out Josh Marshall's take on Hill's resurrection of the Wright flap.

In my piece over at The Root I put out the following challenge:

I saw no picket signs when Toby Keith declared himself—on his sixth album—White Trash With Money. I'm still looking for the white Al Sharpton, who'll deign to protest Jeff Foxworthy for his album, You Might Be A Redneck If…While we were hemming and hawing over potty-mouthed MCs, Steven Spielberg was backing a magazine called Heeb.

Challenge accepted. A commenter over there linked to an absolutely fascinating article on the word "Redneck." In the piece the writer, Will Campbell, basically argues that Redneck is a racial slur. I think that's pretty inarguable. But he actually goes further and parrellels many of the argumunets that people make about nigger. The Essence:

I am growing weary of people like Jeff Foxworthy making millions of dollars with their "You may be a redneck if..." books and television shows.  If what?  You may be a redneck if you eat fried squirrel and Moonpies for breakfast, for example.  Well I ate fried squirrel for breakfast of necessity, sir, but Moon pies were a delicacy for the more affluent. We didn't have the nickel the Moon pie cost in

Amite   County

,

Mississippi

in those days.  You may be a redneck if you mix Jack Daniels with butterscotch malted milks.  Don't knock it if you ain't tried it, Mr. Foxworthy, but those of the poor, rural, working class of the South of my youth had neither a surplus of Jack Daniels nor butterscotch ice cream around the house to mix.  You may be a redneck if you hang around the bus station all day and pick your nose.  Very funny.  But put those putdowns in front of the epithets used to describe and insult African-Americans, women, Jews, people of Polish, Italian, Japanese or Chinese extraction, or any other ethnic, racial, or gender minority and see how many of your politically correct friends laugh. But redneck isn't indexed yet. Well, let's index it.  There comes a time when a body gets weary.

There seems to be a subtle difference in that if feels like Campbell's beef is that people are basically making fun of poor Southern whites, not that it's been reinvented with a measure of cool. Anyway, it's a fairly interesting piece. Worth taking a look.

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From Mclatchy, a depressing accounting of Mexico's attempt to overtake America as the world's fattest country:

Some Mexicans say there's less space on an already crowded Mexico City subway because riders are getting larger. At a flea market in the south of the city, vendors hawk clothes brought from the United States made for overweight individuals.

Francisco Princegali knew he was eating too much junk food when he bent down last week and heard a tear.

"I ripped my pants because of the fat," said Princegali, who's 20, crumbling up a wrapper of sweetened bread he'd purchased from a vendor. "I think I'm addicted to junk food."

Princegali, sucking in his stomach, said that many of his pants were too tight these days. Some people are addicted to alcohol and smoking, he said: "My problem is I love fried chicken — Kentucky Fried Chicken."

A much needed rhetorical beat-down. The one thing that amazes me is how this thing hasn't really been an issue, except amongst black bloggers. It's amazing this cat can spread this foolishness and still be on a major network.

..But Sullivan did a better job than anything I was thinking.

I've been thinking about this as I've watched this campaign unfold. There's this standard narrative which holds that Bill Clinton is the greatest politician in a generation, and that the Clinton machine is a juggernaut, the likes of which  have not been seen in the Democratic party in decades. And yet, in the midst of the War years, Hillary Clinton is loosing to a first term African-American senator with a Muslim name and a black nationalist pastor. On a paper, can you think of a plausibly worse mixture for a candidate? The daily feed of information and controversies blinds us to this essential narrative--the Clintons are getting their clocks cleaned by a rookie who's damn near straight out the state legislature.

How can this be? I think in large measure, the Clintons are basically running a campaign which depends heavily on smoke and mirrors, spin and narrative, and various other optical illusion. Whenever the discussion turns to Clinton, I keep hearing vague political-speak like "inevitability," "momentum," or "change the narrative." Remember at the start of the year when her campaign switched their slogan damn near every week? Meanwhile Obama has run a fact-based campaign that focuses on delegates. Clintonistas can crow all day that Obama has yet to win a big state, but that doesn't make it true. No narrative can alter the basics of delegate math.

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By way of commenter over at Jack and Jill. Man, is there something in the water? About three minutes in, it gets very uncomfortable in the MSNBC studios.

From Baratunde. The following is hilarious. Her name is Erin Jackson, by the way.

Fascinating deconstruction here of white working class racism. Peter Dreier exposes the lie that working class whites are Obama's biggest problem.

So here is something I did on the word "nigger," and why I love it. I recognize I'm going to loose half of my minuscule readership over this mess, but please bear with me guys. The Essence:

When I consider nigger, I think of Doug E. Fresh pulling the funk of an old Inspector Gadget ditty. I think of the kids I used to watch in Chocolate City who could take a few buckets and turn them into a percussive orchestra. I think of my father, after work, dog-tired in the kitchen making cans of beans do things that they were not meant for. This is what we do.

As I said, this is about first impressions. How would I feel if my introduction came from a group of menacing troglodytes in the backwoods of some Confederate state? Writer or not, I don't think I'd ever be able to hear anything more than evil from the word. Thus to those who refuse to say nigger, and don't want it used in reference to them, I say, Respect Due. But it's another thing entirely to seek to restrict the vocab of a group who've come up completely different. There is something essentialist about it all, a spirit of "blacker-than-thou" in the word-police who claim that only they may decide how and when to use the allegedly abominable word.

Anyway. Read the whole piece. And holla back, if you dare.

Guys, it's time to stop claiming that the government injected blacks men with syphilis. They did not. They refused to treat them, and prevented them from getting a cure. I know it's only a minor difference, but it's an important one. We don't have to embellish, folks. The truth is horrid enough.

I really don't want to give Pat Buchanan any attention at all. There are  a list of people in this country--most of whom talk for a living--who stand to loose a lot if Barack Obama's take on race and racism bears out. Buchanan's stock and trade is ancient and straight out of Mississippi circa 1919. He peddles in anger and plays to that shrinking contingent of America that believes that their biggest problem is people who don't look like them. Nevertheless, the following bears comment. Here is what Pat Buchanan thinks of you.

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Wow. There is a lot wrong here, but one central thread of errant logic undergirds it all. Buchanan, like most racists, doesn't actually believe that African-Americans are Americans. This isn't an interpretation, Buchanan's argument that white Americans, in the form of social programs, have done more for black people than any group (including presumably the entire Civil Rights Movement!) assumes that black people have never paid any taxes for those programs. He quite literally doesn't categorize black people as Americans, but useless layabouts who've never contributed anything to the country. All those charities that Buchanan lays out, presumably none of them were run by black folks.

It goes without saying that Buchanan ignores Jim Crow, the epoch of lynching and housing discrimination. That's what bigots do. And Buchanan's rhetoric shouldn't make us angry. He's always been a racist. That said, it's always frustrating to see rank neanderthals, half-wits, and fools making the argument that black people should be thankful to them. Intellectually, Pat Buchanan can't carry Barack Obama's unwashed boxers--from last week. I just got done jogging down Lenox Ave and passed no less than five brothers that would smash Buchanan in any debate.

But Buchanan has always been big media's favorite bigot. And unlike the unsavvy racist (like say Steve Sailer), Buchanan is tolerated among polite society. He's not worth a full fisking. But anyone looking for a primer on Buchanan's thoughts regarding blacks and Jews should check out Jacob Weisberg's  piece from a few years back over at Slate. Among Buchanan's greatest hits? Supporting apartheid and dabbling in Holocaust denial. Man--makes me glad I'm cutting off my cable.

I tell you these days, it almost feels cliche to cite the X-Men as an influence. But what can I say? I don't think I'd have much of a memoir, without them. If it's true, it's true. I mentioned in one of my other posts that absence of religion in my house caused me to search for god-like figures in other places. The X-Men seemed cut right out of what you'd expect from Greek mythology, but with a twist--they were like us. I think in some respect all kids feel alienated. I just knew it was my destiny to be living out in Columbia or Randallstown, going to a school where every day I wasn't thinking about how to not catch a bad one. I just knew there'd been some horrible mix-up. And I just knew I was possessed with something that the wider world wasn't recognizing. Later I discovered what that was--a huge ego.But in those days, when I was trapped in a victim narrative, the X-Men were an allegory for my life--or at least how I wished my life was.

Here it was--It's not because of jacked-up fade, my NBA kicks (Next time Buy Adidas), my ashy knees or big lips that I got teased. It's because I can walk through walls, because my bones don't break, and eyes shoot that sort of darts that punch through steel. Later, as I got older, and became conscious, I developed a more mature interpretation and came to see the X-Men, and all mutants, as like a stand-in for West Baltimore, the South Bronx, and North Philly. In other words, the X-Men repped for anyone in the grand scheme who was under pressure.

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Uhm, Ouch...

It's worth checking this out. I gotta say there ain't much I disagree with here. Hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan. Yeah, I've come almost full circle...

Very nice piece from my old editor Stephanie Mencimer on the inherent racism of the Second Amendment. What you didn't know? I'm telling you, it poisons everything. The Essence:

Last week at an American Constitution Society briefing on the Heller case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton explained the ugly history behind the gun lobby's favorite amendment. "That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldn’t use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery.

This is pretty well-documented history, thanks to the work of Roger Williams School of Law professor Carl T. Bogus. In a 1998 law-review article based on a close analysis of James Madison’s original writings, Bogus explained the South’s obsession with militias during the ratification fights over the Constitution. “The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population,” Bogus writes. “Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats.” He goes on to document how anti-Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason used the fear of slave rebellions as a way of drumming up opposition to the Constitution and how Madison eventually deployed the promise of the Second Amendment to placate Virginians and win their support for ratification.

The more I read about this, the more depressed I become. This is from Andrew. I know I took a pretty hard line on Jeremiah Wright from jump. Increasingly I feel that was presumptious. Maybe I'd watched too much MSNBC? And also, i did disagree with much of what he was saying--I think it's a bad idea to blame AIDS on the government. That said, this is pretty revolutionary:

He started one of the first AIDS ministries on the South Side and a singles group for Trinity gays and lesbians—a subject that still rankles some of the more conservative Trinity members, says Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a church member.

I have never really bought the whole "blacks, all things being equal, are more homophobic than whites" argument. But I do buy the whole "blacks on the South Side of Chicago are more hompophobic than whites on the Upper West Side of Manhattan." My point is that this was a pretty brave thing to do, given the enviorenment as compared to other places where it usually happens. The problem of course is that the same people who aren't going to vote for Obama because of his pastor, probably hate gays also. Sad.

I just finished Chris Hayes excellent take on Jeremiah Wright. Amidst many, many good points in the piece, there was one in particular that caught my eye:

And if, of all things, it is his pastor's heated denunciation of American injustice that undoes the candidacy of an African American with a legitimate chance at the White House, any conscientious observer could be forgiven for thinking: God damn America indeed.

Basically. But I don't think people understand what this really means. For years we've watched as black leaders and white liberals have presented the fight against racism as a battle of morals and justice, not as one of self-preservation. What people fail to understand is that the final victims of racism are always white.

Virtually every pundit who's spent the last week commenting on Rev. Wright has taken the position that Wright's views are likely not Barack Obama's. And yet many of them still believe that it is--and evidently should be--a tremendous hurdle for him to the presidency. This, to me, is the equivalent of standing in the middle of the street while a tractor trailer is barreling down on you, and getting pissed because the people telling you to get out the way happen to be yelling.

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