Lessons in Privilege: Initiatives, Black Power Mixtape and Moneyball

credit: Meme generator. Funny stuff.

THOSE WHO KNOW

I'm helping a group of associates here in Berkeley investigate the initiative process toward participatory budgeting, whereby everyday people will have a direct say in where tax dollars will be spent, and, by implication, oversight of the process. Like the foregoing run-on sentence, it's a long slog, but that's the nature of the fight.

Recently, several of this group attended an event organized by Zocalo, who I know a thing or two about as they've been churning in LA for some time. When I learned of this event, I thought of my past experiences with Zocalo, a group given to theory and not unique in that respect, but with a fine veneer of polish.

The first thing that struck me upon looking at the Zocalo panel was they were all wonksters in one form or another.

I braced myself. Expectations were lowered, expectations were met. It's my own personal coping mechanism.

Subsequent to that event, a participatory budgeting group member forwarded an announcement about another event with the theme of "slow money", which piqued my interest, given my stake in researching and keeping abreast of EM08, the economic meltdown of '08. Then I noticed that the lowest entrance fee was about $600.

So, in light of these developments, I think keeping in mind the history of the way the so-called left has consistently been shot through with elitist values should be talked up.

Those "thought leaders" that are Zocalo or the slow money event permeate just about everything in our society, from new media to, yes, resistance movements. It's one of the reasons, for example, when someone starts waxing poetic about ted conferences I roll my interior eyes. Or when Esther Dyson begins one of her diatribes about the Net, let alone when Paul Krugman pontificates about economics.

NOTHING NEW
One key thing to remember is that this is nothing new. Power in whatever form obviously has a generative goal which implies surviving and prospering. The history of the left is ripe with internal strife and infiltration, but an important distinction must be made; just as the NOI or the BPP were infiltrated and disrupted, it's impossible for, say, my group of everyday people to infiltrate the board of Goldman or B of A, much less to monitor them at a level that would make us satisfied. Right now, a group of protesters is "occupying" Wall Street, and it's gone viral. Will it reach Goldman's board room? I'll give 3 to 1 on that not happening.

If it's one thing I've learned it's that framing conveys a lot, and I don't just mean rhetorically. The Zocalo event was a "serious" environment, just as any large college lecture hall is. "Real" thinking happens there, and if knowledge springs forth from the streets, well, how can those who "know" pontificate, theorize and profit? More, how can those who "know" take seriously those from the streets? Finally, why should those from the streets take what those who "know" seriously? It's an assumption at best to even think that those in the barrio take seriously those who "know", and yet, those "knowers" act as if it doesn't matter because of the privileged places they occupy. In other words, the "bubble of knowing" accords insulation; they have certainty that the evil empire they are (ostensibly) fighting up above is a noble if not strategically and morally correct fight, and since "they know" are only doing what's best for those who do not know below them.


BLACK POWER MIXTAPE & MONEYBALL
Over the weekend I saw both Black Power Mixtape and Moneyball, and the more I thought about it, the more I was impressed by the latter and just kind of indifferent toward the former. On the surface, BPM is the kind of flick right in the boomers' wheelhouse; big names, big times. And while the footage is great and in good condition, it's a pastiche, and I came away thinking it was just a walk down memory lane, nice in its nostalgia, but fairly tame stuff. Angela Davis, the poster child of the 60's black power movement, is given prominence, occupies the poster for the film, and yet was never involved with movement building. She was an intellectual, and very good at it, but never involved in the day to day work of building a grassroots movement the way the BPP was. It also comes off as contrived; having Talib Kweli, Eryka Badu and Questlove ruminating on the crucible of the 60's/70's is like Britney Spears talking about the merits of Steal This Book. Ok, maybe not like that, but....

Which brings me to a point; for progressives who are truly concerned with changing the system, if everyday people's voices aren't present in their diversity, run. This is embodied in Malcolm's words when he said:

There's one thing I want to make clear; no matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition whites show toward me, as far as I'm concerned, as long as that same respect and recognition is not shown toward every one of our people in this country it doesn't exist for me.

Moneyball, on the other hand, is ostensibly about as far from the progressive left this side of the skynet death star. It's "about" major league baseball general manager Billy Beane, but is about thinking but also about guts; how a mind can free itself from the societal strictures of tradition and pressure. It's about breaking through old hat.

Corporations love to say "think outside of the box", while doing everything to suppress it. Make no mistake, Major League Baseball's franchises are corporations, and in some ways, are arguably more pressurized than working for Citigroup. It was Noam Chomsky himself who famously pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are very smart and analytical, and as proof, just turn on sports talk radio and listen to the callers running down everything from the efficacy of man to man versus zone defense to matchups, coaching strategies, trades and their implications... any sports fan knows what he means. And it's true.

Amidst that comes Michael Lewis, about as good a writer as there is (on EM08 and other subjects, like being a dad), who just happens to be a sports nut. And he discovered something funny; that despite a payroll dwarfed by industry behemoths like the Yankees and Dodgers, the Oakland A's were doing something against all odds; they were winning.

What Lewis discovered is not just a great story, but a platinum lesson for those seeking change against the evil empire. Because Moneyball is really about the Godfather of Billy Beane's adopted approach (Sabermetrics), Bill James. And while Beane's story of struggling against convention is a great one, the fact is that Moneyball would never be without James, who first thought of the system of looking at baseball from outside of the box of tradition. And who is Bill James, a former player, a coach? Nope. He was an everyday joe who loved baseball, thought about it from a different angle, and went on a journey of discovery.

In a movie brimming with the lesson of breaking through, Beane himself is served up a cardinal lesson late in the movie. In about as contrived a scene as can be, and yet perfectly pitched, he's schooled in some of the greatest lessons of all; to see himself and the big picture. It works, but I'm a sucker for old Hollywood; I've seen Capra's opus, It's a Wonderful Life, countless times, and it never loses any of its power, in fact, like a fine wine, it only seems to get better. Moneyball is a throwback movie to that Golden Age of Hollywood, and for two hours, I was a little boy sitting in the Golden Gate Theater, enthralled. Thanks also to director Bennett Miller, for time well spent.

The fact of James being an everyday person who had such an enormous impact on a tradition over a century old whizzes right by the viewer in Jonah Hill's dialog and a short burst of James' photo, but listen and watch for it: It's the golden Easter egg, the moneyball within Moneyball.

See this movie.

At the game: The great Bill James

Response: Randall Kennedy on Obama's black critics

First, Kennedy's piece, then mine.


Why Obama's black critics are wrong
By Randall Kennedy, Special to CNN
September 19, 2011

Editor's note: Randall Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author, most recently, of "The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency" (Pantheon Books).

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Throughout President Barack Obama's political career, he has been dogged by insinuations or, indeed, accusations that he is not "black enough" to warrant strong support from African-Americans. Rep. Bobby Rush made that assertion when he successfully fended off Obama's effort to wrest from him his seat in the House of Representatives in the Democratic primary in 2000. Alan Keyes voiced that sentiment in his losing campaign against Obama for the U.S. Senate.

When Obama accepted the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, the celebrity scholar Cornel West groused that the first African-American standard-bearer for a major party had "run from history" by failing to mention explicitly the "black freedom movement."

Skepticism regarding Obama's racial bona fides has continued to surface since he moved into the White House. Rep. Maxine Waters, for instance, has recently chided him for failing to craft policies that would explicitly target black unemployment and for otherwise neglecting, in her view, to evince a proper acknowledgment of the baleful and disproportionate pain being experienced in black communities on account of the economic downturn. What is one to make of this critique?

First, it should not be at all surprising. Black America is ideologically diverse, just like other communities. Moreover, as I document in "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal," there exists in black America a special anxiety about the loyalties of high achievers, especially when their success is largely dependent on whites and others who are not black. Every prominent black in a predominantly white setting faces, at one time or another, claims from fellow blacks that he or she is "selling out." GOP slams 'Buffett Rule' to cut debt Obama: America can't 'wait 14 months'.

Second, Obama's black detractors receive a degree of attention in the news media that is far greater than their representativeness of black America or their influence within it. The great bulk of black American voters -- upward of 90% -- supported Obama in 2008 and do so today. They do so because of his party affiliation, his liberal policy preferences, his identification with the African-American community (the offspring of an interracial couple, he calls himself black and married a black woman), his personal attractiveness -- he is uncommonly articulate, handsome, knowledgeable and gracious -- and the fact that with all of the added burdens attendant to his blackness, he was still able to climb the Mount Everest of American politics. Unlike some of Obama's most vocal detractors, the black rank-and-file have a realistic appreciation of the limits of his authority and the power of the forces arrayed against him, including a large, albeit amorphous, strain of racial resentment. Pained by the economic recession, they refrain from blaming Obama and instead direct their ire at those who not only saddled the first black chief executive with such a harrowing task of cleanup but also obstruct him relentlessly and often with barely disguised contempt.

Third, even though Obama's black detractors constitute currently only a small sliver of African-American public opinion, their critique is nonetheless important in practical, electoral terms.
It is often the case that a vocal, motivated minority can exercise influence that far exceeds their numbers. Enthusiasm matters. A drumbeat of complaint calling into question Obama's attentiveness to blacks might well diminish the fervency of the support he will need for his re-election effort. Furthermore, certain actions he might take to respond to the racial critique might well alienate other, nonblack, potential supporters.

The race line will ensnare Obama no matter how he proceeds. It will not necessarily defeat him. His epochal victory in 2008 showed that, unlike previous eras, our own is one in which a black politician can overcome racial barriers to win the highest office in the land. Still, the sobering reality is that race remains an important, persistent force in American life despite the presence of a black family in the White House.

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True Color

A response to Prof. Randal Kennedy's
"Why Obama's black critics are wrong"

by JP Kaneshida

When then senator Obama was campaigning for president, he very vocally called for the largest welfare payments in history in the wake of Lehman's implosion and, unbeknownst to the general public, Merrill ready to go next. Then he voted for it - just as Clinton did, McCain did, Kerry did... just as they all did (save for the anomalies).

When he won the presidency, I became curious, and, taking a page from Watergate's Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, I followed the money. Here's the truth; of Obama's top 20 largest campaign contributors, the largest industry representation -- at 25% -- is banking; Goldman, JPMC, Citi, UBS, and Morgan Stanley.

In the face of this, for Kennedy to be trying to raise a debate about the topic of intra-black discussion on whether or not Obama is "black enough", while a real phenomenon, is a "folk argument" and only really given weight in the hands of a gifted mind like Malcolm's, when he broke down the house/field negro syndromes. Kennedy's take -- with a "Special" assist by CNN -- occupies valuable mainstream media real estate and mis-directs toward the tree while the forest is being clear-cut. In other words, to talk about race and the Obama presidency through the prism of anything other than Detroit having had a fall of 2008 H-bomb dropped on it isn't criminal, but it gives new meaning to ostriches putting their heads in holes; it's digging the holes.

And here's the money ball; those historic welfare payments to the banks are the direct result of racism. How? So called "liar's loans" and "predatory loans" -- notice how those terms correctly and accurately place responsibility upon the originators of the loans, to the chagrin of Rick Santelli -- were disproportionately aimed squarely at black and brown populations. The end result post EM08 -- Economic Meltdown 08 -- is, well, Detroit.

To be fair, most black intellectuals haven't stepped up to the plate and hit this hanging curve. But Barack's the prez. You know, the bully pulpit. The Weberian charismatic leader. The one who took bazillions of everyday peeps' hard-earned money in a landmark campaign noted for several things, but most shockingly, the sheer amount of money raised.

That record amount of money was everyday Americans hoping beyond hope, pleading, imploring... for someone to have their backs. Instead, in one of the most monumental "go eff yourselves" in history, questions about whether or not Obama's down, while legit, obscure the real allegiances he's made, nurtured and keeps. The old adage, "actions speak..." and Felt's "follow the money" should be the tattoos of our time.

The cue here and plainly evident in the three years since EM08? There haven't been any prosecutions let alone indictments of any of the major banksters, mortgage lenders, credit ratings agencies, or regulatory agencies, let alone hedge fund and other large fund managers to see if there was fraud, collusion or conflicts of interest. Hey, these are the largest, most pervasive and still ongoing financial crimes in history, that's all.

That the DOJ, SEC, congress, the senate, the president... haven't haven't lifted a finger against the evil empire, and if anything have given rewards to the welfare thugs while the world is on its knees, is the ultimate eff you. But it also flips off history; when the S & L fiasco went down, we prosecuted and jailed over 1,000 banksters; ask John McCain's criminal buddy no more, Chuckie Keating, who went rafting up the river. We took them into receivership, converted debt into equity and got on with life. This is sop and furthermore, the law - just ask professor William Black who speaks with authority on the subject as one of the regulators that took care of those criminals then. Don't like the official view from someone who was there and did it right? Then ask Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, who says the same thing.

Arguments over whether Obama's "black enough" are frankly insulting in the face of the most rampant criminality, fraud and conflicts of interests on a scale that makes Watergate look like a Comicon dork convention. The truth is that we live in the largest, most pervasive and entrenched criminal welfare state in world history. Depending upon the reader, whether Obama's black enough or not will of course vary and my point is that while they are sort of interesting polemical discussions, Obama's real pr magic is that he's shown his true color to be so deeply dark green that sometimes -- sometimes -- it looks black.