So Much For Our 'Conversation' On Race
When everybody started saying "Let's have a conversation about race", I wrote a blog post saying "No, Let's Not." (see on Green Commons Let's Talk About Race? NO! Let's Not on January 26th). My first post was a reaction to Uzodinma Iweala's Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, "Racism in 'Post Racial' America" (with 'post racial' in quotes) criticizing the "media-concocted fiction" that "not speaking about race is the equivalent of making progress."
I still say: No! No! No!
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UPDATE:
MY COMMENTARY POSTED ON LOS ANGELES TIMES WEB SITE
Posted on The Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com, Wednesday, May 07, 2008
NO MORE RACE TALK
By Alex Walker
Enough about Obama and Wright. This election is about Bush. (Read More...)
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This week, the high-faluting New York Times published a lead editorial titled Mr. Obama and Mr. Wright asserting "This country needs a healthy and open discussion of race." The Los Angeles Times followed suit with "The Wright Choice", declaring race "which invokes fundamental questions about the role of government and the distribution of wealth, is something the candidates should be discussing."
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. We've been told we "need a dialogue about race" a dozen times:
- 1992 Rodney King violence.
- 1994 Anti-immigrant Proposition 187.
- 1995 O. J. Simpson case.
- 1996 Anti-affirmative action Proposition 209.
- 1998 President Clinton's "Conversation About Race."
- 1999 Unarmed innocent Amadou Diallo killed by 41-shots from N.Y.P.D.
- 1999 Ramparts scandal at L.A.P.D.
- 2000 Election in Florida - black disenfranchisement.
- 2001 September 11th attack --- Our slogan: "United We Stand."
- 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroys New Orleans.
- 2006 Immigration issue draws thousands into the streets.
- 2008 L.A.F.D. discrimination case; L.A.P.D. MacArthur Park police riot.
Each "dialogue" follows the same script. First, the good liberals allow victims of racism a precious few minutes to summarize years of grievances. Then, the mainstream media (MSM) temporarily lets Black separatist whackos out of their cages to rant against all "White Folks."
After these clowns succeed in alienating nearly everybody, the MSM brings on the slick reasonable-sounding "conservatives" from corporate-funded "institutes" proclaiming collective white innocence and collective Black/Latino guilt in the name of "color-blind" individualism.
Every time this produces a net gain for conservatives by reminding "Reagan Democrats" why they abandoned the party of F.D.R. for the party of George Bush.
If I am the only African-American progressive opposing this farce, so be it. U.S. politics has been stuck in this rut for more than thirty years and it is very hard to resist being pulled into it. I, like Barack, allowed myself to get suckered into defending Wright.
One reason I left the Democrats and joined the Green Party was because I am one African-American sick of "race" games. If Barack sincerely wanted to "transform" U.S. politics, it's already clear he cannot within the framework of our cursed Democrat-Republican politics where "social issues" always substitute for bringing up hard questions offending corporate interests. The Boston Globe editorial was more honest than most in Rev. Wright, the sequel: "The Illinois senator has made a career... of promoting common understanding among those who might distrust each other. To see those efforts bogging down in the same old swamp is just depressing."
That's the depressing "swamp" of Democratic-Republican politics.
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... and couldn't stand Obama's "racial dialogue" speech.
Race has actually been a red herring in the whole Wright contretemps. The spark was Wright's rude audacity in saying that US foreign policy may actually be connected to politically-motivated terrorist attacks against it. This "radical" (read: common-sensical) position can't be acknowledged, so it must be segregated as the views of a bitter irrational man and that strange, bitter, irrational minority (YOU know who THEY are) he represents, or whom the MSM claims he represents, or whatever.
So I see your argument against phony racial "dialogue" and raise an argument *for* a dialogue on the dangers of US global militarism.
Charlie Rose's guest last night was Fareed Zacharia, Editor: Newsweek International and author of the Subject book: The Post American World. That is one in which the US is no longer world power number one because we have abdicated our responsiblities to the world.
There were many things that could be argued in what he said, but the basic fact is that this country needs to re-examine most of the underlying assumption of it's poliltical philosophy. The Neo-Cons were wrong. Now even George Schulz, Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger are calling for US Nuclear Disarmment. What is it about being the change that you want to see in the world that we seem incapable of understanding? What is it that makes some of us want to behave like bullies on the playground?
Jay Bookman began his OpEd in today's San Francisco Chronicle with an apt description of America and Americans.
He concludes with a very good descrition of the current presidential campaign.
Greens use the phrase "telling truth to power" when they want to get in someones face. But how is it that this never leads to much. It is easy to see in the race issue. It is easier to see with the Clinton - McCain gas tax holiday solutino for $4 / gal. gasonline. We should borrow money from Oil Sheikdoms in order to not raise the prices on the oil that we need?
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente
to change the conversation, to challenge the conventional wisdom with some unconventional (as well as inconvenient) truths.
For all of those Christians who wear their religion like a gown on Sunday, remember that the word's of Christ were "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"
For all of those who would save our way to economic ruin, remember that the children being educated by the funds you are cutting, will be the ones who are making the rulse when we are old.
We live in an era of political hypocrisy that knows no bounds, when "W" can give a speech about our need to fight starvation and hunger around the world and then put the funding in the bill to fund the War in Iraq; when Hillary Clinton and John McCain would borrow money from Oil Rich Sheikdoms in order to cut the federal gas tax just to win a few votes; when Vanity Fair makes cultural news with their pictures of Miley Cyrus and the rest of the media treats this as if it were important.
Chutqpah knows no bounds.
However, you will not get to represent the Black Community, Alex. It will be the Rev. Sharpton who never saw a microphone he did not love.
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente
UPDATE:
MY COMMENTARY POSTED ON LOS ANGELES TIMES WEB SITE
Posted on The Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com, Wednesday, May 07, 2008
NO MORE RACE TALK
By Alex Walker
Enough about Obama and Wright. This election is about Bush. (Read More...)