The Way of the White Hispanic

The National Latino Institute for Policy is all over the latest neocon attempt to reassure America that predictions that a majority minority nation are overblown. First, they e-mailed me this anxious piece by long-time white-identified Hispanic (and former Reagan administration employee) Linda Chávez (bet she doesn't know her name takes an accent). The basis of her argument is that intermarriage will assure that Hispanics take their rightful place alongside Germans, Italians, Poles, etc. in the Great American Melting Pot and be erased from the rolls of the encroaching minority hordes. 

          Chávez, who proudly claims English and Irish ancestry, as well as being one of those "special" New Mexicans with an uninterrupted Spanish lineage, is the forerunner of neoliberal attempts to fetishize intermarriage as the solution to the Hispanic Problem championed by New America Foundation fellow Gregory Rodríguez (again, accent added).

       Today, Jeff Jacoby, who was suspended in 2000 by his newspaper, The Boston Globe, for "journalistic misconduct," has a whole new rationale. The census bureau's calculations are based on stats that don't count Hispanic whites as white! So take heart, white supremacists...oops, I mean, those who prefer an objective assessment of the total white population (by extrapolating from an unrelated observation by Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson), "of the 46.6 million Hispanics in the United States today, at least some 22 million are white."

          This of course, begs the question. If you think you're white, are you white? Or, if you think you're not a racist, are you not a racist?

          Obviously these are questions for minds far more powerful and exacting than mine. Perhaps I should take the advice, given by both Chávez and Jacoby, which I'll quote here.

First, Linda:

Isn't it time we quit obsessing about race and ethnicity? America has successfully integrated millions of people from every region of the world.

Then, Jeff:

With a little luck, common sense, and goodwill, it will seem as odd in 2050 to focus on "non-Hispanic whites" as it would today to insist only "non-German whites" are really white. Better still, perhaps by then we will have really progressed, and abandoned the pernicious notion of racial categories altogether.

I'm not even going to bring up the fact that neither commentator mentioned African Americans vis a vis assimilation, rates of intermarriage, or the Melting Pot.

What will Obama do with this talking point? Ignore at his own peril?

Obama Americana

Frank Rich's most recent column pointed out that "Americans" are tired of hearing about Obama, which is actually the McCain attack/deflect attention machine's fault. Possible subtext: Americans aren't just tired of hearing about Obama, but about "others" in general. After all, as leaked by Obama insiders, the plan seems to be to use the Democratic Convention to create an "all-American image" for Barack, to "tackle what members of both parties see as his greatest vulnerability with undecided voters: his 'otherness.'" 

                Speculation about his vice-presidential pick at the moment, center around two "normal" guys, Evan Bayh, Tom Kaine, and the slightly less normal Joe Biden, furthering the sense that otherness is next to un-electability-ness. Wonder about last week's reportage about "growing diversity in swing counties" could make a lot of this de-othering process not as necessary as his handlers think. 

                 

                 

           

Minority Majority

So it turns out that the minority will be the majority in the US of A even faster than previously thought. Now, if we can only make it to 2042, which could be right on schedule for the summer release of Tropic Thunder 10. Speaking of that devil, isn't it extraordinary how there is absolutely no serious discussion of Robert Downey's blackface role? Talk about the end of history. You have Manohla talking Jewface here, a guide to appreciating the "genuine humor and satiric intent underneath the unerring waves of bad taste and political incorrectness" there. How about the immortal David Edelstein in New York Ragazine proclaiming that Robert Downey, Jr. "makes a damn fine Negro." If he do say so himself.

          The only reason I even looked at New York was its cover subject, and about the only thing worth looking at there was this brilliant essay by Patricia Williams. And maybe the amazing photo of Obama's mama at his wedding to the fabulous Michelle.  

This is the picture that tells us more about the future of America than people like Jerome R. Corsi can bear to imagine. Corsi's new book represents yet another wave of paranoid ravings designed to keep the McCain-Obama race inexplicably close. Which it continues to be, for obvious reasons. Yep, it seems, "Obama has some problems, particularly with white voters." At the top of this Politico pundit's "seven worrisome signs for Obama" is, of course, race.

Not surprising, you think? It's not only a Republican problem. Those recently revealed internal memos from the Hillary campaign yielded this quote from Clinton strategist Mark Penn about Obama's race vulnerability:

All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050.

Or, at least, 2042.

The End of Black Politics? Ludacris!

Barack Obama has made it clear that he is not down with Ludacris's Clinton- and Bush-baiting pop-rap single, "Politics: Obama Is Here,"--an understandable political decision. As an ambivalent consumer of hiphop, Obama, like many other responsible African-American commentators and public figures, is loathe to endorse gangsta's crude excess. 

           Luda does use the "b-word" to describe Hillary, but given recent revelations that the Clinton campaign pushed to attack Obama's "alien" roots  it would seem that he was accurate in assessing the hate emanating from her aides. And calling George W. the "worst of 43 presidents" is hardly "outrageously offensive." But is Obama's distancing from harsh rhetoric a harbinger of a new era of "post-racial" politics? 

              New York Times writer Matt Bai spent quite a few pages wondering if this were true. By assembling a series of interviews with prominent African-American politicians who presumably represent a "new generation" of lawmakers not "defined" by their blackness, Bai tries to make the case that Obama is not tied to an era of  "divisive" politics, when leaders were more likely "community activists" rather than Ivy League educated lawyers "comfortable inside the establishment."

               The idea that Obama is "not black enough," or speculation about just how black Obama is, has been with us since the early stages of the campaign. While many have suggested that such questions are insulting, and that the Illinois senator should be judged on the basis of his positions on and agendas for the pressing issues of the day, it is a delusional to think that race is not at the center of his candidacy.

                Obama has been careful not to associate himself with the progressive edge of black politics, as evidenced by his recent encounter with hecklers confronting him in St. Petersburg about sub-prime mortgage crisis, the Sean Bell and Jena 6 incidents, or his lack of commitment to reparations for slavery. This shouldn't be a surprise, since he has fallen short of progressive positions regarding issues like the Iraq war (he favors shifting the theater of the "war on terror" to Afghanistan) and energy (he favors increasing reliance on nuclear energy and is leaning toward allowing off-shore drilling). 

                This strategy is of course in line with corporate interests, and in the game of big-time electoral politics, would seem a winning one. But suggesting that the country is entering a "post-racial" era by comparing different generations of African-American politicians, as Bai does, is rather Ludacris.

                 The post-racial black politician, rather than being a sign of progressive change, is clearly a product of the relentless neo-con stranglehold on ideas that has afflicted the US since the age of Reagan. It is a form of discourse parallel to Fukuyama's famous "end of history" obfuscation, used to declare an end to grievances that galvanized the Civil Rights Era and a political constituency.

                Bai takes the "high" liberal road, suggesting that black politicians are tired of being "pigeonholed" as spokesmen for their race. After letting (white?) readers in on his embarrassment of recognizing the racist attitude of his hometown peers, he throws Newark mayor Cory Booker a bone. A Rhodes scholar who knows were the Middle East is on the map, Booker pleads that "I don't want to be the person that's turned to when CNN wants to talk about black leaders."

                  The fuel for this new black secularism is the notion that, finally, like so many immigrant groups who have long passed by African Americans on the affluence totem poll, blacks are showing statistical evidence that they are getting a grip on the American dream. "According to an analysis by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, almost 37 percent of black families fell into one of the three top income quintiles in 2005, compared with 23 percent in 1973," says Bai. 

               "At the same time," Bai continues, "these black leaders are constantly confronted in their own cities and districts by blighted neighborhoods that are predominately black, places where poverty collects like standing water, breeding a host of social contagions." Disease, contagion, stagnation. We've heard these metaphors before, haven't we?

               So, the essential post-racial dynamic is one of a burgeoning core of talented tenths grappling with their newfound freedom to be themselves and those--despite the efforts of a now-obsolete generation of activists--who are left behind. "For a lot of younger African-Americans," writes Bai, "the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama’s candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle." Then again, maybe their resistance was more symbolic of the national political pecking order and debts due to the Democratic political machine.

               Finally, it doesn't take much digging to reveal that the measure of "the success of their own struggle" is in question. If there was ever any momentum to the notion that we are at the "end of black politics," this recent study about the increasing instability of the black and Latino middle class, should put that to rest. Without strong footing in class-based educational opportunities, it would seem almost impossible for this generation of "post-racial" politicians to reproduce itself. 

                               

                

From the Bottom of the Deck

From the back of the bus, to dealing the race card "from the bottom of the deck." Our national pastime, awkwardly dancing around the specter of how we came to be America, shows no signs of abating as we approach the dog days of the campaign for President 2008. A recent House-issued apology for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow segregation," was all but obscured by another sordid race card flap.
          Of course the use of "race card"as a catchphrase to deflect mostly legitimate grievances about racial inequality is one of contemporary America's most efficient forms of doublespeak. It's on a par with "I want a yes or no answer" in the way that it attempts to silence discussion about our society's definitive elephant in the room. Its invocation is an abuse of language, a flattening of the intellect that purports to reduce the struggle to overcome deep and difficult divisions into a card game.

            This last exchange between McCain and Obama over the Paris Hilton/Brittney Spears attack ad (we're living in a more subtle world than the Swiftboat days) begs the rhetorical question: Was flashing images of Obama in synchronous crossfades with dysfunctional tabloid bad girlz the original sin here, or is McCain justified in divulging how hurt he is that anyone could think he was insinuating anything "colorful" about Barack?

          

               

             

This new "go-negative" strategy seems to be the brainchild of Steve Schmidt, a Rove protege otherwise known as "The Bullet." It also includes a bizarre new ad that uses Charlton Heston as Moses in an attempt to mock Obama's (media-designated) status as "messiah." The Rove imprint, i.e., nerd revenge par excellence is clearly visible here: Obama as the most popular guy in high school, likely to steal your prom date.  

                It seems both Obama and McCain were eager to engage in this sort of back-and-forth, each candidate believing that they could turn race-card fallout to their advantage. Obama no doubt thinks that painting McCain as a petty negative campaigner proves his point that he is part of the "past," while McCain hopes that Bradley-effect voters everywhere now feel even more justified to stand against Obama not because he is black, but because he is paranoid and vindictive.

              The first, crude attacks, the smear campaign about Obama's secret "Muslim" identity, have been streamlined into insinuations that he is "touchy" about race, a "creation of celebrity journalism" and suffering from "delusions of grandeur." By lumping in Obama with Hilton and Spears, the McCain Team is at once seeking to feminize Obama as well as reinforcing the idea that he belongs to a flaccid Hollywood-based liberal elite. If you think Al Gore is bad because he invented the Internet, here comes this black man who thinks he is a prophet. 

              But the new Bullet strategies, designed to eliminate "unforced errors" also symbolizes the Arizona senator's handlers' desperate fear that Obama's candidacy is most threatening because Barack is cool, attractive, perhaps the ultimate mass media candidate for the new millennium. 

                McCain and his people must realize that he will have difficulty winning a poll that asks who you'd rather have a beer with. The early Rovian attacks have been quick, stinging jabs, unlikely portents for the haymakers to come. 

YES (Change) WE CAN (Believe In)

Speaking on the night of his unexpected defeat, Barack Obama coined a new slogan, "Yes We Can." An Alternet piece by Stephen Rosenfeld cites psychologists and pundits who say Obama's use of "we" is an important derivation from Clinton and Edwards's use of "I" as in "I will work for you." Rosenfeld calls this magic, although if you read my previous post, the magic is embedded in the notion of "change." Still that term has been so overused that the magic is almost completely dissipated. All the more reason Obama, with his clearly best-of-the-field oratory style , went to the new slogan, which coincidentally has the same syllable count as "Let's Go Mets." (Sorry, I mean "Four More Years.") Anyway it was a nice, smooth delivery, and the speech (like a good screenplay) had a beginning, middle, and an end. "Something is going on in America," he intoned. But you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Media?

               There is a certain MLK + JFK formula at work here, and I like the linking of civil rights, the labor movement, and women's and immigrants rights movements under an umbrella that even non-minorities can huddle. But I couldn't help but remember that the three-word mantra was achieved by substituting "we" for the "I" in the title of Sammy Davis, Jr.'s 1965 autobiography, "Yes I Can." Hopefully, Barack can avoid someday posing for a picture like this:

But I guess it's also true that "Yes We Can" is English for "Si Se Puede," (syllable count = "Let's Go Yankees") and this was used quite extensively during the anti-anti-immigration marches of 2006 and I guess the labor movement in general. I'm not sure how Cesar Chavez and crew would have cottoned to Obama's intoning about "Yes We Can" being whispered by "pioneers forging across an unforgiving wilderness" (populated by unforgiving Native Americans including various tribes claimed by Luis Valdez and greater Californiaztlan), but maybe Chavez had read that Sammy Davis, Jr.'s mother was either Puerto Rican or Cuban, and decided that si se pudo.

Plus ça change

I'm a big fan of etymology, so when the week's political rhetoric was dominated by the word change, I decided to check things out. etymonline.com, what seems to be a useful online etymological dictionary, gives this background check on "change":

c.1225, from O.Fr. changier, from L.L. cambiare, from L. cambire "to exchange, barter," of Celtic origin, from kamb- "to bend, crook." The financial sense of "balance returned when something is paid for" is first recorded 1622.

I was intrigued when it became obvious that "change," the word we use to describe an action that brings about something different, has its roots in an economic transaction. "Change" is what you get when the value of one part of the exchange is subtracted from the larger value. But this happens only when transactions moved beyond mere barter into the widespread use of monetary currency. Still, the Latin cambire literally meant "barter," so, because all transactions, even bartered ones, can't be considered absolutely equal, then some value was always yielded over and above the value of the the two objects exchanged. So "kamb" symbolized how people "bended" or "crooked" the meaning of a transaction to make all things equal.

A Spanish etymological dictionary we have lying around here (Breve diccionario etimologico de la lengua castilla, ed. by Joan Corominas) takes this one step further. "Cambiar," it verifies, comes from the late Latin cambiare, whose synonym is listed as "trocar." "Trocar" is present in much of old Iberian languages, as well as Gascon, one of those French/Spanish fusions, and the dictionary speculates its more primitive meaning stems from "strike" or "clash" from the crash or squeezing of hands that is "symbolic of the moment of the sealing of a deal." I also see and hear in "trocar" a parallel to "trick" (the end result of a round of playing cards, and the economic transaction between a john and prostitute), and in trick I hear magic.

So change, then, is something of unknown, and sometimes magically determined value that is created during a clash of interests, a smoothing over of the violence that sometimes occurs in our political economy. For people like Obama, who suddenly finds himself perhaps the most viable candidate of all, and Hillary, the woman who would be king, the trick is to avoid the familiar French tautology:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: "the more things change, the more they stay the same."