"The biggest challenges we face right now in improving race relations have to do with the universal concerns of Americans across color lines," [Obama] said. "If we are creating jobs throughout this economy, then African-Americans and Latinos, who are disproportionately unemployed, are going to be swept up in that rising tide."The thing that I find so appealing about Obama on race is he spins the thing forward--he talks about it in a way that enrolls everyone in the sort of progressive agenda that will ultimately help black and brown people. It's rhetoric, I know, but it's important. The worst thing to happen to this ongoing conversation around race is the creation of a kind of zero-sum thinking. We debate over whether Affirmative Action takes jobs from hard-working whites. We argue over whether welfare allows lazy black women to leach off the system, or if lax crime policy leads to the rise of young superpredators.
"I think that more than anything is going to improve race relations," he said, "a sense of common purpose.''
Progressives need to stop fighting on their enemies' terrain. We need a paradigm that pitches our policies as in the self interest of all Americans. We have to start thinking of our drug laws as bad--not for black America--but for America. It may be true that the justice system is racist, but why are we fighting that battle? The bigger question is does it work? Are we comfortable being a world-leader in incarceration? How do we, as a country, want to allocate our resources. It can't be a matter of helping out the blacks--noble as that may be. I get the appeal toward social justice, and history. I just think it's a nonstarter. We have to argue from the perspective of patriotic self-interest, of doing what we need to do to compete in the world.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I agree - this is an integral part of Obama's political genius and, it seems, a genuine part of his thinking. Maybe it's generational and maybe it isn't, but he seems to really try at all times to move beyond any kind of thinking that is destructive. He's not denying the ugliness that exists in the past or present, he's trying to do something different to break the molds.
Great post, TNC.
His statement actually seems like a pretty conservative understanding of the problem.
More like pragmatic. I think he basically understands the limits of democracy. There's a great line in The Audacity of Hope where Obama says something like "rightly or wrongly, the well of good-will among white America has dried up." That's a butchering. But what he's saying is look we can argue all day about this shit, but what we need to focus on is what we can get done.
So many things which could help black folks are doable and no particularly controversial. Let's win the winnable games first, then we can talk about expanding the dialouge, if that's what's needed.
Yeah, that line from 'Audacity' is a pretty powerful statement. I don't know if I fully agree with it, but Obama's ability to look forward is inspiring. I'm glad he said it. A white dude could never say it.
We have to start thinking of our drug laws as bad--not for black America--but for America
I was thinking about this the other day. Now would be a great time for major reformation of our drug laws, it is a fight we can not afford. Money is tight and we can both cut government spending and increase revenue if done smartly. The sin taxes on drugs could probably clean up a lot of messes and legalization would hammer the underground economy.
I really like the "common purpose" framing. I've always been annoyed by the assumption that the only two reasons a white person like myself might have for caring about race relations are either guilt or pity. Both of those attitudes are so condescending and counter-productive. The racially fragmented society we live in is terrible for minorities, but also quite bad for the majority. I hope more people wake up to that fact and start acting in their own interests.
I could not agree more with you on this. O is very smart about the way he frames many issues important to progressives, race being one of his subtlest and most winning. He has also, with the help of the economic crisis, turned around discourse about people who work for a living and how they're getting shafted. It's an old lefty point, but in O's mouth defending the middle class is not "class warfare", but instead standing up for "hardworking Americans" and the rhetorical trump card of all trump cards, the "American Dream."
I don't know if you saw that 30 minute commercial that O bought the Tuesday before the election, but it was as much an advertisement for working people as it was for O himself. O's got enlightened self-interest down to a science! And as a progressive and a pragmatist, I couldn't be more pleased.
"It is in your own selfish best interest.", is always the most powerful political argument.
"It may be true that the justice system is racist, but why are we fighting that battle? The bigger question is does it work?"
Although part of the justice system working has a lot to do with who the justice system works for. If you've got the means to hire a good defense lawyer, your chances improve considerably. And if you're a minority, your chances, in some cases, diminish. You can't fix those problems without addressing the racism or the class discrepancy, etc.
That strikes me as naive, because it presumes that an eminently irrational practice is rooted in rational self-interest. If that were the case, racism would have ended long ago, because there is ample evidence of the futility and costliness of racist practices in economic terms. Americans who support anti-Black racism haven't supported it because they think it's beneficial to them personally. They support it because they've bought into the narrative that Black Americans are unworthy of support and respect that we accord to other human beings. They support it out of a sense of righteous indignation, and as a matter of principle. Every individual and organization who has framed the achievement of racial justice as a matter of economic necessity and rational self-interest (in other words a class issue), from Booker T. Washington to the CPUSA, has ultimately failed to accomplish their goal, because they failed to counter the anti-Black narrative, in all of its diverse forms. Humans being human, narrative trumps data every time.
As much as I get what he's saying, I think the thing that some folks are trying to point out is that there's a difference between race relations (managing the problem) and ending racism (solving the problem). I agree that its not Obama's job to do this. But when we conflate the two things with Obama, we abdicate our moral duty to solve the problem instead of JUST managing it.
There are elements of posts and commentary of this type that seems to say "hey - now we can stop dealing with the intracable because a black guy is speaking my language."
What Obama says here is dead on and I support it. But let's understand that this is not the same as ending racism. It is really just a bigger band-aid than we've used as a society before. The gash still needs something more.
Malik,
Good comment. I'd argue that there are many policies at work that people don't necessarily see as anti-black racism. Obviously my favorite is the drug war, which was pursued in the 80s with the support of the CBC. Better prisoner re-entry programs doesn't require a war against anti-black racism. Indeed it isn't a "race" issue. It's an American issue.
If black people disappeared today, the drug war would still be bad policy--and would still affect a lot of white people. The same wasn't true of, say, lynching or Jim Crow or Segregation or slavery. These policies directly attacked black people. It isn't the same today.
Ta-Nehisi,
As you know, just because the stated rationale of a policy isn't explicitly racist, that doesn't mean that the underlying motive isn't. Were it not for the disparate impact of current drug prohibition policies on poor Black Americans, those policies could never have survived. When the meth scourge erupted, the emphasis was on rehabilitation and prevention, because it was a drug problem that primarly affected white Americans. Had the government pursued the kinds of militarized "drug-war" tactics that are the norm for Black communities in white communities, there would have been a nationwide outcry, and rightly so. It is possible to drum up support for drug-war policy reform in the current economic climate because prison overcrowding is putting further strain on state budgets that are already distressed. In other words, the impact of drug-war policy is no longer disparate. But what happens when we're scapegoated for the collapse of the American economy, as has happened during this crisis? Where will the support for vital re-entry services come from? How will we prevent Black men from being forced back into the underground economy, just as happened in the wake of the early 80's recession? What alternatives to curbing underground economic activity will the U.S. government pursue? Given the prevalence and persistence of anti-Black attitudes, even among many Black Americans, I'm not counting on the answers to those questions to be just or rational ones.
About the "common purpose" phrasing:
All this was tested heavily OVER TEN YEARS AGO by Paul Sniderman (Stanford, that bastion of liberalism) and colleagues.
See, e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Reaching-beyond-Race-Paul-Sniderman/dp/0674145798/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229008321&sr=1-5
From the published review on Amazon:
"A fascinating analysis of white Americans' attitudes on race, by two political scientists who argue strenuously, though not entirely convincingly, that our leaders would be more effective in forging multiracial consensus and coalition to improve social and economic access for all citizens if they appealed to "moral principles that reach beyond race." The good news is that the resulting findings document not only a definitive decrease in overt bigotry among whites, but also an increase in good will and positive attitudes toward blacks. Nonetheless, the data also show an overwhelming rejection of race-conscious policies like affirmative action - even among whites who display the most racially tolerant attitudes. In fact, Sniderman and Carmines offer data showing that resistance to policies like affirmative action is linked not to latent or persistent prejudice, as many assume, but rather to a sense of its violation of American ideals of justice. As Americans try to forge a new consensus in a racially polarized society, this is a useful lesson in the reality that matters besides race often shape people's response to racial issues. But there is also the paradoxical correlative - which the authors underplay to the detriment of their argument - that unexamined racial attitudes are also played out in every aspect of daily life. This monograph's exploration of undisclosed racial attitudes among whites is challenging, but the analysis and conclusions about how to pull a racially fragmented society together are less impressive."
I guess my reply to the reviewer would be "Geez, and you expect the moon with that too?" Sniderman and Carmines (in this book, and with others) diagnosed the problem and figured out the initial steps. They did the market research, as it were. It took someone with Obama's life story and rhetorical skills to sell such a product. I have no clue if Obama or people influential to Obama read Sniderman, but they were tapping into the same insight, i.e., that things that were good for poor people in general would be good for poor people regardless of their race, and would get away from the zero-sum framing of the past.
This was blatantly obvious in the 2004 DNC keynote and it rang like the friggin' Liberty Bell to me when I heard it.
(No, I am not a former Paul Sniderman student.)
Malik-- isn't the best way to handle this problem of "narrative" to actually change the narrative? I agree with you that narrative is the most powerful part of convincing people. And that's just what Obama did in his speeches-- he changed the narrative to include all of the major parties involved.
This comes out most obviously in his speech in race that he made in the wake of the Rev. Wright dust-up, but throughout the election he effectively, time and again, paralleled the story of Black America with America itself. Just listen to the will i am song that publicized Obama's speech after he lost in New Hampshire:
"It was a creed written into the Founding Documents that set the course of a nation--yes, we can-- it was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they charted a course for freedom--yes we can-- it the voices of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot and a King that led us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land..."
This a narrative we can all relate to and this is why so many whites like my 89 year old grandma voted for Obama-- he made himself relevant to them.
You so hit the nail on the head w/ this statement
"We need a paradigm that pitches our policies as in the self interest of all Americans."
This is the problem of the argument from the "left" about Obama. Everything is seen from the prism of the "Party Line". It will unfortunately never end.
Lebecka,
Changing the subject doesn't change the narrative.