eternaltriangle
03-20-2008, 07:51 PM
So I just listened to Obama's speech, and, as much as it was good and cerebral, there was something missing, just as I think there is something missing in Obama's candidacy. I recognize that the issues I am going to talk about are sensitive ones, and as a Canadian (and an introvert) I may say something offensive, as I don't have as much experience talking about these sorts of issues - I really don't mean to slander anybody.
I mean, lets follow the logical (as opposed to the chronological) train of Obama's speech:
1. Somewhere around the middle of the speech, Obama gets to the point (and the motivation of the speech. He discusses, as the Wright video made evident, that racism exists in both white and black America.
2. Obama goes a bit deeper, pointing out that racism on both sides has roots in reality (eg. genuine fears of crime, genuine legacy of slavery and a zero-sum mentality for poor people).
3. So his next logical step is that America should fix those problems - and here he is fairly lacking. Obama has no substantive plan that any cookie-cutter Democrat would not also endorse. Spend more money on schools, maintain the status quo on just about everything. Obama promises transformative change on the race issue, but there isn't a lot there in terms of ideas.
4. But there is a more pernicious undertone to the speech, that you miss if you just follow it chronologically. Obama starts the speech by discussing his post-racial identity (it is because he is mixed, contrary to Ferraro, not because he is black that he is able to embody post-racial harmony). He doesn't link that to his ability to get to change, but I think the implication is there - and Obama is fully aware that his identity is at the core of his claim to be a harmonizer. The problem is that the one thing he gets from his identity, is palpable credibility to implement policies that WILL chafe entrenched interest groups, and his platform simply doesn't do that.
There are a lot of policy options that could at least help the situation. For instance, the Florida affirmative action model bases affirmative action in universities on income, not race. That approach will probably result in similar numbers of African American students in universities (since they are over-represented among poor people), while at the same time de-racializing affirmative action. It is a problem when white people assume that blacks are where they are due to affirmative action - one that exacerbates the zero-sum game Obama eloquently talked about.
Another idea worth talking about in my books is high school education vouchers exclusively for low income individuals (or even exclusively for African Americans, as kind of a free market version of busing). Vouchers for education have always struck me as a good policy because they offer parents choice, but a costly one, in that the major beneficiaries tend to be the rich parents (or religious parents, and I am not sure if subsidizing parochial education is a good raison d'etat - though at least it is just subsidizing, where I'm from the government actually runs a fully fledged Catholic school board) that already send their kids to private schools. Moreover, vouchers would create a market that would cater to the particular needs of African American and/or low income students (depending on how you set the policy) in education. There seem to have been some successes with charter schools, and past experiments like Harlem prep.
However there is this other problem I have noticed, living as a non-American in the United States. Black students and white students rarely talk to each other, and a lot of the liberal white folks I meet do have pretty racist attitudes behind closed doors. There is a fear down here (and I think I have it too, somewhat) that doesn't exist (or is at least less pervasive) in Canada. It isn't the fear of large black men lurking in the shadows (that exists too but is a symptom of the fear I am talking about). Rather it is a fear that in conversation you will say something that will be perceived as racist (the ultimate stigma for liberal white Americans). This, on top of the class divide, keeps blacks and whites apart. I was recently on Indianapolis public transit - now keep in mind that Indiana is about 90% white (according to wikipedia Indianapolis is 25% black), yet I was the only white person on the bus (greyhound is similar). When you consider America's environmental and infrastructure problems stemming from inadequate public transit and too many cars, after riding on that bus it is hard not to think of this as a racial issue (white Americans don't want to ride on the bus, therefore they drive cars - in Bloomington, which is mostly white, there is actually a pretty good transit system - albeit partly because it is a college town).
With respect to the lack of dialog, I think it has a lot to do with the American attitude to race and difference, which is purportedly "integrationist". eg. should make no assumptions about others, blacks should integrate into the white community, and people "shouldn't see colour". Colour-blindness, however, is too impossible a standard, that ultimately frightens off inter-racial dialog. Out of a fear of failing to live up to that standard, white Americans avoid blacks.
Living in Canada I was a skeptic of what Canadians call "multiculturalism" (which is less integrationist - it accepts that there will be different groups with different values, and the government subsidizes Ukrainian folk dances and that sort of thing), but I think I am being won over to that model. Our Canadian model sets a lower standard for interaction, but that lower standard enables dialog.
"So, what kind of food do people in your culture eat" etc. It is when you ask those sometimes patronizing and othering questions that you learn to think of other people as individuals, and not the sum of a set of stereotypes. Whites in America don't ask those questions out of fear, and have only Hollywood and P. Diddy to rely upon for their stereotypes about African Americans - all of which solidifies the "scary black man" mythos (I suppose a strange corollary of this notion is that Chris Rock is actually an agent of racial healing, by identifying differences that exist, but reducing their salience by laughing about them).
I mean, lets follow the logical (as opposed to the chronological) train of Obama's speech:
1. Somewhere around the middle of the speech, Obama gets to the point (and the motivation of the speech. He discusses, as the Wright video made evident, that racism exists in both white and black America.
2. Obama goes a bit deeper, pointing out that racism on both sides has roots in reality (eg. genuine fears of crime, genuine legacy of slavery and a zero-sum mentality for poor people).
3. So his next logical step is that America should fix those problems - and here he is fairly lacking. Obama has no substantive plan that any cookie-cutter Democrat would not also endorse. Spend more money on schools, maintain the status quo on just about everything. Obama promises transformative change on the race issue, but there isn't a lot there in terms of ideas.
4. But there is a more pernicious undertone to the speech, that you miss if you just follow it chronologically. Obama starts the speech by discussing his post-racial identity (it is because he is mixed, contrary to Ferraro, not because he is black that he is able to embody post-racial harmony). He doesn't link that to his ability to get to change, but I think the implication is there - and Obama is fully aware that his identity is at the core of his claim to be a harmonizer. The problem is that the one thing he gets from his identity, is palpable credibility to implement policies that WILL chafe entrenched interest groups, and his platform simply doesn't do that.
There are a lot of policy options that could at least help the situation. For instance, the Florida affirmative action model bases affirmative action in universities on income, not race. That approach will probably result in similar numbers of African American students in universities (since they are over-represented among poor people), while at the same time de-racializing affirmative action. It is a problem when white people assume that blacks are where they are due to affirmative action - one that exacerbates the zero-sum game Obama eloquently talked about.
Another idea worth talking about in my books is high school education vouchers exclusively for low income individuals (or even exclusively for African Americans, as kind of a free market version of busing). Vouchers for education have always struck me as a good policy because they offer parents choice, but a costly one, in that the major beneficiaries tend to be the rich parents (or religious parents, and I am not sure if subsidizing parochial education is a good raison d'etat - though at least it is just subsidizing, where I'm from the government actually runs a fully fledged Catholic school board) that already send their kids to private schools. Moreover, vouchers would create a market that would cater to the particular needs of African American and/or low income students (depending on how you set the policy) in education. There seem to have been some successes with charter schools, and past experiments like Harlem prep.
However there is this other problem I have noticed, living as a non-American in the United States. Black students and white students rarely talk to each other, and a lot of the liberal white folks I meet do have pretty racist attitudes behind closed doors. There is a fear down here (and I think I have it too, somewhat) that doesn't exist (or is at least less pervasive) in Canada. It isn't the fear of large black men lurking in the shadows (that exists too but is a symptom of the fear I am talking about). Rather it is a fear that in conversation you will say something that will be perceived as racist (the ultimate stigma for liberal white Americans). This, on top of the class divide, keeps blacks and whites apart. I was recently on Indianapolis public transit - now keep in mind that Indiana is about 90% white (according to wikipedia Indianapolis is 25% black), yet I was the only white person on the bus (greyhound is similar). When you consider America's environmental and infrastructure problems stemming from inadequate public transit and too many cars, after riding on that bus it is hard not to think of this as a racial issue (white Americans don't want to ride on the bus, therefore they drive cars - in Bloomington, which is mostly white, there is actually a pretty good transit system - albeit partly because it is a college town).
With respect to the lack of dialog, I think it has a lot to do with the American attitude to race and difference, which is purportedly "integrationist". eg. should make no assumptions about others, blacks should integrate into the white community, and people "shouldn't see colour". Colour-blindness, however, is too impossible a standard, that ultimately frightens off inter-racial dialog. Out of a fear of failing to live up to that standard, white Americans avoid blacks.
Living in Canada I was a skeptic of what Canadians call "multiculturalism" (which is less integrationist - it accepts that there will be different groups with different values, and the government subsidizes Ukrainian folk dances and that sort of thing), but I think I am being won over to that model. Our Canadian model sets a lower standard for interaction, but that lower standard enables dialog.
"So, what kind of food do people in your culture eat" etc. It is when you ask those sometimes patronizing and othering questions that you learn to think of other people as individuals, and not the sum of a set of stereotypes. Whites in America don't ask those questions out of fear, and have only Hollywood and P. Diddy to rely upon for their stereotypes about African Americans - all of which solidifies the "scary black man" mythos (I suppose a strange corollary of this notion is that Chris Rock is actually an agent of racial healing, by identifying differences that exist, but reducing their salience by laughing about them).