Letters to the Editor
OhioPlayer
Published Letters: 31
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Elaboration on Thrasher comments - Intersection: Meaning of the 1960s and Race & Gender
[Read the article: Update: Michelle Obama disagrees with me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the 2001 book “The Metaphysical Club” author Louis Menand writing on the development of Pragmatism in the late 19th century by William James and John Dewey writes “For many white Americans after 1865, the abolitionists were the century’s villains - not only because they were thought to have been responsible for the war, but because they and their heirs were thought to have been responsible for the humiliation of the South during Reconstruction….In a time when the chance of another civil war did not seem remote, a philosophy that warned against the idolatry of ideas was possibly the only philosophy on which a progressive politics could have been successfully mounted.”
He continues “It is possible to go a little farther, and to say that the price of reform in the United States between 1898 and 1917 was the REMOVAL (emphasis added) of the issue of race from the table. When the Populist Party was founded in 1892 with a platform that included demands for an income tax, government ownership of the railroads, and laws to protect unions, its leaders set out to recruit black voters. By 1906 the Populists had become the party of white supremacy.” He continues, “White Americans were free to appropriate the rhetoric of abolition and emancipation, but they were not free to apply it to the situation of black Americans. This was a fact of life Debs (Eugene) knew perfectly well; for although all Pullman sleeping car porters were African-American, none of them participated in the boycott, because the American Railway Union, Deb’s own organization, did not admit blacks.”
The Populist Party platform went on to become dominant, implemented by Democratic presidents from Woodrow Wilson and FDR, through LBJ. It was also in this formative period that the South developed a MYTHOLOGY best expressed in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” just a stylized version of “Birth of a Nation.” And not coincidentally, during this same period, Ida B. Wells had NO success in persuading white women organizations - primarily Northern and middle-class in nature; precursors to the modern feminist movement - to speak out against the rampant lynching of black men going on in the South. And not coincidentally, in present times, just as many Northern women look to the main character of GWTW, Scarlet O’Hara, as an archetypal heroine, e.g. role Clinton’s “emotional” response in café played in her New Hampshire victory.
As great as MLK was, the primary problem with his rhetoric was that it did not address the economic aspect of racism, this more central than the political; Jim Crow was a political system established to reinforce the economic system of sharecropping. Bayard Rustin constantly took King to task over his lack of focus on economic issues. In fact, the March on Washington was initially planned to express concern over poverty. And of course King was just beginning to address economic issues when he was assassinated; indeed, he was in Memphis to support garbage workers unionization effort, comprised of many blacks. Further, in years subsequent to 1968, identity groups, in particular feminists, APPROPRIATED the Civil Rights movement’s rhetorical approach, especially that of King’s “Dream” speech, which while great in concept, served to cover deep fissures in the progressive coalition with the sanguine feel of “unity”. (And lest we forget, it was King's opposition to the Vietnam War that gave moral authority (and cover) to young white folks of the same mind.)
Fissures that are now on display in the tension between Obama and Clinton. For example, Clinton and her supporters’ argument that Obama is not “experienced” is grounded in the thinking - not openly expressed in a straightforward manner but intimated nonetheless - that Obama should “wait his turn”. Because when you really analyze their experience, Clinton has only a MARGINAL edge and this is only because she is older and her “experience” has been on a national stage. This also links up with Bill Clinton's assertion that John Lewis and Andrew Young endorsement of Hillary, two black men who "marched and risked their lives", somehow gives her unquestioned Civil Rights movement "credentials". Yet she really knows nothing of how later generations have attempted to balance respect for those who came before with how to implement same goals under new circumstances. And recall that Young asserted that Bill Clinton is "just as black" as Obama. Also, on this "experience" issue folks should check out Nicholas Kristof NY Times piece "Hillary, Barack, Experience".
Obama way exceeds her in judgment, leadership that inspires, and most importantly honesty, integrity, and character; all of which are more central than “experience” in what it takes to be an effective president. Further, Clinton’s schtick of “triangulation” - a euphemism for duplicity - only serves to turn off the Independent voters any Democratic candidate needs to win the general election, especially here in Ohio. (Nixon said "Presidential elections come down to one word - Ohio." But lot of folks, especially Baby Boomer women – and their allies amongst the remaining “elders” of the Civil Rights movement – do not want to deal with this issue straight-up because that would entail performing critical analysis that would invalidate their worldview. Specifically, there is no way that sexism, albeit oppressive, remotely approaches the racism black folks have endured in this country. Even more to the point, that white feminist m.o. has always been to ask, even expect, black women for support of their concerns but have a very poor history of reciprocity.