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.

Inside Looking Out

The sad thing about consumerism at the top, ie: American consumerism - is that it carries the weight of veracity. That is, we luxuriate under the grand illusion that afflicted the bio-racists, such as Binet, of colonialism's heyday: That rationalism, hard science, logic, and economics were proof of western (subtext/subliminally, white) culture being superior.

On the obvious level, well... there's just too many examples of how gross we are as a consumer society. I remember I saw an aerial shot of an industrial sized cattle and hog farm, which had huge swaths of brown running out of them.

Yes folks, they were rivers of crap. Shit rivers.

For those of you who aren't aware of the implications of this kind of food production, take my word for it: it's bad news on several fronts and all of them having to do with the environment, your health and animal cruelty.

Yes, we Amerikkans are the fattest, grossest, most wasteful and consuming-est... and as was true in "The Mysterious Orient" a fat kid was a sign of posterity.

Which serves as a weird prolegomena to this chain of events:

1. An article which appeared in Jezebel;

2. A solicited response of a Woman of Color by an editor at Racialicious; and,

3. My response below.

While I think the original Jezebel article speaks to all of the naive aspects of Amerikkkan culture/peeps, the thing that leaps out to me is Sarah's admitted ignorance; "I was not into interna'tl politics at ALL..." [sic] But there's a catch; she takes the usual colonialist's way out and places the onus on the Other: "I started wondering about Islam and why people hated the U.S. so much." Typical.

It reminds me of the time when a white gal asked Malcolm if there was anything she as a white person could do, and he hurt her by saying "No." While Malcolm wishes later he hadn't told her that, he then makes a very valid point: white peeps, instead of attempting to understand the Other, should FIRST understand themselves.

As the cliche' goes, there's two sides to every story, and as Rashomon points out, sometimes more. This means understanding history outside of the usual pablum we are fed via the US conglomerated news media. A good place to understanding why any Other peeps hate us is to look at ourselves, our foreign policies of invasion, installation, and yes, terror. Think about Korea, Japan, Vietnam, El Salvador, guns for hostages trading with Iran, the Janus-faced creation of Saddam and then his lynching... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, uncle scam LOVES to fuck with Others and then open his eyes wide and ask with upturned palms, "WHY do 'they' hate us?"

This is the main problem I have with Aaminah. Additionally, unless one is being entertaining or funny, I've grown a thick skin toward peeps who have to qualify their responses with a level of physicality. So she pukes because of Jezebel's transgression. Ok, you are sickened, literally, by such ignorance and flaunting of power. But unless you get white people in power to turn the mirror of reflection on themselves and away from the microscope of examining the Other, you can't possibly expect white people in power to "get it."

Empathy and self-reflection; two huge things missing in Amerikkkan consciousness. And yes, it all comes full circle folks. Remember our reality, those comfy two-car garages, our lattes and Sunday strolls on Malibu Beach or the barrio/ghetto where even mainstream news media is ignored, but yet the blaring spam of corporate consumerism is heard loud and clear? That's our psychological blanky, and we're like big babies, being fed pablum while told, "THIS is the life."

It isn't. It's OUR life. Rife with all of the Stepford Wives and their manicured lawns that reach their fingers into our brains and massage it - CONSTANTLY. And with that comfort comes the assurance that what we are doing must be right, otherwise things wouldn't be so good. What's dumbya's big tagline; "They hate our freedom."

Freedom to do what? Buy a $10 sweatshirt at Wal-Mart (China's largest consumer and therefore instigator of mass pollution. Take a look at Beijing's air sometime - it's disgusting) and feel like you got a deal while being blisffuly unaware that some Chinese person worked like a machine cranking those out in a sweat shop for a dime?

Wasn't it dumbya who said in 9/11's aftermath, "Go out shopping?"

This is why I say, Marx got it wrong. Religion isn't the opiate of the masses, it's that rectangular piece of plastic with "Mastercard" on it.

Aaminah concludes by saying that rags like Jezebel can't be expected to incorporate Other views. Well, news bulletin: YEAH. But by not calling them or even Sarah (whom she kinda lets off the hook) out to turn that reflection back on themselves, she misses the opportunity to get white peeps to do the most important thing in life: look at yourself. Clarification: pointing out their prejudice is fine, but relating it to the overall terrain of mass media and how they are no different from, say, the major broadcast networks in that regard.

The thing is not being surprised, or shocked, or even sickened. Ok, you can get sick, but to make that the lead in to your piece instead of calling out whites for their lack of self-understanding misses the boat. In so doing, you've made your revulsion the theme. It's like balling out a kid for leaving his computer on while his room's a mess. So ignorant white peeps, like little kids, don't wanna hear it, and keep on "leaving their rooms a mess."

So keep telling them their room's a mess.

That's your job, to point out their pathology, and not to stop until they get it, not to make it about you, and your revulsion, your shock. Is it tiring/wearying/a pain in the ass? Of course. But, seriously, who gives a flying fuck about your shock (or mine for that matter?) when powerful old white men are running amuck and giving Others plenty of reasons to hate us ... ? I mean, c'mon, check out Exxon-Mobil's profits over the past two years - records for any corporations in our entire history. (Save for Walmart who rose to number one this year, but Exxon-Mobil was right behind them) Think there's some connections to be made here?

It's like what Don Piri Thomas said his dad told him when he was a boy; that before attempting to smell other peep's caca (bullshit) that he should first start with himself and realize that he had plenty of his own.