Maybe it would be useful for a simple being from a whole 'nother epoch to write something general at this point. You can get mad at me if you like -- I'm extinct anyway. Still, I write with over 100 million years of collective experience in my bones, and the voices of many long-gone species traverse my tiny walnut brain. Your choice, humans and other SWASH creatures.
Let me start by honoring Flying Junior's contribution. Too often, we ignore our commenters. FJ, I like the point you make beneath Sheria's post about President Obama not really having a base in the strictest sense -- there isn't a 1984-style percentage of doubleplusgood duckspeakers for Obama who are going to agree with everything he does just because it's him doing it. That's more of a GOP phenomenon -- of some of Bush's most ardent supporters, one could say with Shakespeare's Casca, "if Caesar had / stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less."
This fact of life makes it difficult for any Democratic president -- whoever said dealing with Dems is like herding cats had it right. Meow, meow, meow! We are all cats, like it or not. The point that I've been trying to make, at least indirectly, is not dissimilar to FJ's about supporting Obama: that is, it's fine to criticize the man's actions, but we might try to do it in a constructive way that doesn't make him and us look foolish and marginalized.
I keep using the term DIALECTICAL and I'm not sure it's been getting through. One doesn't need to be a Hegelian or a Marxist or a deconstructionist or a flibbertygibbetist to get the force of that word: it can be understood generally to mean that one should try to speak in light of relevant historical and social factors. When we hear policy statements, assess rhetoric, and so forth, we should, to the best of our abilities, try to imagine the discursive and material universe within which they have been generated. What forces or pressures or experiences might have generated such remarks, stances, or actions? What pressures are likely to push against them in return? When we don't do this -- and it's unavoidable to fail in this regard sometimes -- we end up producing impoverished, unidimensional analyses and screeds. We end up generating thought that proceeds only along a single inadequate thread, at once sowing discord and blocking consideration of other vital lines of thought. "Historicize, historicize, historicize," said the Jurassic Dino Master, until you hear the sound of one tail thrashing. A poverty in our own philosophy, I mean, enables the philosophy of poverty supported by our real opponents.
I believe Sheria's initial post was generated by dialectical insight -- wasn't her point that the strain of criticism she dislikes is being put out there without the necessary historical and cultural insight? The idea isn't that white libs should all shut up and support the President blindly or else be content to be called "racists." If the criticizers had the necessary insight, they might still be offering criticisms, but their remarks would be more likely to lead to good results instead of sowing division that helps only the Right. They would aim their remarks at the real source of trouble: an intransigent and unpatriotic Right that makes doing anything even remotely constructive in this country a Herculean labor. The aim is to make it more possible for President Obama to get something done, not weaken and isolate him so that he cannot. Again, meow! So in my view, if we read such commentaries as Sheria's at this broad dialectical level instead of responding to them as if we were being personally labeled Grand Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan, good discussions will flow thereof. If we don't, it's just a waste of time.
Well said, Dino! I must say, you pack an awful lot of wisdom and understanding in that little walnut sized brain. :)
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm often accused of being a racist myself and mostly by those in their 30's or 40's who subscribe to a number of tests and proofs they learned in the propaganda steeped classrooms of the i980's. A box of Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben's in the kitchen is often sufficient and not long ago, an antique firecracker box with an innocuous black kid on it and the title "Dixie Boy" prompted an accusation of racism from one of my kids who ought to know better.
ReplyDeleteIs all criticism of Obamas gonads racially based? I don't think so, but considering the standard racist line it's a damned touchy subject and anyone ought to respect that.
An absence of any negative feelings based on race is hardly enough these days and yes, I tire of it and sometimes it seems like a witch hunt, only stupider, but if you're going to tell me I should be better at manipulating and infiltrating the banking system or collecting loans or overcharging customers - bigot or not, you're going to piss me off.
So I can understand the angry reaction when someone thinks he's being accused of something he is not, but frankly, I don't think any of this was warranted. Whether or not dissatisfaction with the President from any quarter is always racially charged, I know that it sometimes and often is and I know it for a fact. I still don't see that anyone here was accused of racism, but to mock the sensitivity of someone who has, after all, seen the ugly side of America all their lives is kinda ugly in itself.
You know, I didn't actually view Sheria's post as a personal insult, and certainly hope no one saw it that way. But I think she's wrong -- not that there is an "angry black man syndrome" out there in the political discourse, but in her conclusion that this somehow makes the President immune to certain criticisms, or that somehow liberals are wrong to criticize the president for lack of backbone or whatever it was.
ReplyDeleteAnd here's some "necessary historical and cultural insight" for you: liberals have been disparaged as "too angry" forever, too! Since well before the 1968 riots at the Democratic National Convention. Since progressives began as the labor movement, in fact. We're constantly to this very day disparaged as angry, and while it may not be used to prevent advancement of an entire race of people it certainly is used to stoke fear among the public to keep liberal candidates from office. Don't you remember the "Dean scream"? Matt Bai opining in the New York Times Magazine about how Dean was too angry? Ken Mehlman as RNC head telling everyone that no one votes for angry candidates?
This is classic right wing framing which has dogged liberals since forever and you don't counteract that by caving to every whim the Republican noise machine can cough up.
Thanks Rocky.
ReplyDeleteI do the best I can with so little RAM up there.
SoBe,
Yes, I know about the "angry lib" meme -- the thing is, it's always been a pretty ridiculous charge since liberals are so clearly motivated by idealism, not anger. I think that's been true for a long time. Wasn't "Happy Days Are Here Again" FDR's theme song back in '32? It's the Republicans, as we know, who are so often up in arms about some supposed threat to the foundations of civilized life. What people found odd about the Dean Scream, I think, wasn't "anger" but a kind of eccentricity that the GOP knew they could tout as "unpresidential," or something like that. That's all I remember about it. I like Howard Dean, scream or no scream. And he missed the boat on a great campaign slogan:
"I scream, you scream, we all scream for Dean's scream!"
YEEEEEeeeeehaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!
(Or however it went.)
Probably when it's aimed at Obama, the "anger" charge takes on a different meaning that isn't easily separable from the country's racial imaginary. I mean, nobody finds Howard Dean threatening, right?
Capt. Fogg,
Appreciated your reply, but you sort of lost me in those last two paragraphs. What's that about banking and such?
Anyhow -- I'm saying this generally and not in relation to anything we have written here on SWASH -- what makes race a tricky subject to talk about in part is the way our discussion of a writer or speaker's intention alters. Ordinarily, we're glad not to invoke some version of the cultural / political unconscious, but in racial matters that seems to change. We're less likely just to take people "at their word" about what they meant by this or that remark. (Words, after all, could not function if they only meant what the individual utterer insisted they meant -- basic structuralist point there! A private language doesn't "mean" anything, properly speaking.) Of course the invocation of extra-personal structures of significance can be too thorough-going and make people feel like it's impossible to say anything without getting slammed, but another "of course" is that sly, cynical S.O.B's know perfectly well there's a whole range of chicanery they can activate with a few clever word choices and gestures. Nothing's easy about race in these United States.
Man, you use some mightily big words for somebody who realistically shouldn't be more than a small puddle of oil getting leaked into the Gulf.
ReplyDeleteGood work, though.
Thanks dino, you get it exactly right. I really don't know why your people became extinct; you should be the ruling class.
ReplyDeleteSoBe, the part that you miss is the historical context. The emasculation of the black male is part and parcel of the racial discrimination that characterizes the foundations of this country. In fact, the whole point of my post is that far too often the most well meaning of people--white liberals-- evaluate the black experience only through the prism of their own beliefs. It goes like this,"I believe that all people are of value and I do not disparage anyone based on race; therefore, race is not a real issue any more." The first part is perfectly true and valid but the second part isn't.
The criticism of Obama in terms that disparage his masculinity hark back to the tradition of referring to black men of any age as boy. White men were always mister but black men were boy. Perhaps it seems insignificant but watching one's father, grandfather, uncles step aside, bow their heads, always act deferentially and be careful to never look a white person in the eye has an impact. That's the world that I grew up in because that was the world if you were black. Do you know that the number one reason for lynching a black person was the allegation that he or she had shown disrespect to a white person as in talking back or staring at them impudently or in the case of men, lewdly?
To have the first black president attacked in such a fashion is beyond insult and it also has nothing to do with the issues. To presume that he is afraid of confrontation is naive and insulting. Simply by being black he is presumed as threatening in many quarters.
What I mean by do not dismiss my perceptions because you don't share them is a simple request to step outside of what your experience is and appreciate that mine and that of many other black people has been vastly different. If I tell you what I feel, accept that it is different from what you feel but no less valid.
The imagery of the angry black man is powerful. Google "angry black man stereotype." I just did and got 131,000 hits. There's also an angry black woman stereotype. Our behavior is scrutinized at a different level than whites. I get what you you are saying SoBe, my point is that there is a significant difference in degree as to how black people are regarded than whites.
I also echo dino who points out that such disparaging attacks on the character of the president only feed the Right who have fully appropriate the concept that he is less than human. Their repeated use of ape and monkey imagery for him and Michelle is not accidental.
It's an ugly world out there and viewing it only through the lens of your own enlightened beliefs does not benefit anyone in the long run.
Sheria, I have a dear friend who some consider "difficult". She is a woman of color in our same age bracket and so grew up with some of the same inequalities you did. She also grew up with the same inequalities as a female we all did.
ReplyDeleteOccasionally she would go off the charts over something someone said that made no sense to others. But over the years,as she has shared some of her memories with me, I gained some insight. Things like her hard working father walking home from work being called bad names by white high school boys driving by him. When she couldn't go somewhere or buy something because of her color - things I'm sure you are painfully aware of.
Like some of the others here, I'm not sure if all remarks directed at our President are racially charged but we should be more cognizant of our language and how it is perceived. Your perceptions, like my friend's may not be my perceptions but they are just as valid. I don't think we need to walk on eggshells here but we do need to be considerate and thoughtful and perhaps think a little longer before opening our mouths or clicking keys.
Oh yes, "...but we do need to be considerate and thoughtful and perhaps think a little longer before opening our mouths or clicking keys."
ReplyDeleteThat's me! Boy, I get pissed off and make an absolute idiot of myself don't I?
Sorry..
Oh, yes, the right has really attacked Obama's race from a bunch of unique ways. Almost all of their attacks have been vieled racial attacks.
But, lets acknowledge that we painted GWB as one stupid, ignorant monkey also: I mean for eight years we went after that little ignorant pompous asshole viciously...
Oh, and we laughed at the ignorant natives on the right who could be fed anything and they would suck it up with a straw as long as it was fed to them by their handlers.
Oh, yes...we are just so much superior than those Tea Party idiots, those Ayn Rand and founding father quoting fools...
But somehow, we cannot seem to grasp the idea that health care reform is nothing more than an unfunded future liability...its nothing different than GWB's medicare prescription plan...
But somehow we want to argue and defend Obama for doing the best that he could with the current tax stimulus and that somehow this is different than politics as usual.
Somehow, we want to criticize GWB and his tax proposal and then argue that GWB and the republicans only care about white wealthy people and yet when Barack Obama proposes THE EXACT SAME POLICY we want to believe that it is somehow different.
Here is an article from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/13/zelizer.george.w.bush/index.html
Basically, you want to argue that because George Bush is white and I am white that we share something in common. Or that because George Bush cuts brush and I mow my lawn we have something in common. Or that because George Bush wears a cowboy hat and Charlie Pride wear a cowboy hat that they share a commonality.
Oh, I own a business so I must support the Chamber of Commerce.
We on the left spent eight years trashing GWB, his father, his mother, his wife, his kids...and now we want to concern ourselves with how we talk about Barack Obama because we do not want to succumb to the same dialetics....
Ah, TOO LATE!
We want to respect the life experiences of those who we support but by god, let a born again christian, anti abortion foe get our attention and by God, we have no respect for their "life experiences" do we?
Look at it this way: I don't know what its like to be a rich white guy...maybe being a recovering alcholic and cocaine user comes with being rich, being white, or being a guy. Maybe being "recovering" means to be "born again" I don't know. I don't even understand why guys who never served in the military are so demanding that others serve and that everyone respect them.
But then again, I have no idea why that when Obama supports the exact same policies that GWB proposed and we crucified him for it that why now I am to somehow tie Sheria's life experiences to Obama and no one asked me to use Sheria's life experiences to justify GWB's stupidity.
Now, I don't really know how to put that in liberal terms...but I did notice that Sheria praised Dino by claiming that he should be part of the "ruling class"
Hmmm...maybe "the ruling class" is post racial afterall....
Maybe Obama isn't a black man but rather a man of the ruling class?
Hey, I played and love basketball...so does Barack Obama...does that make me a member of the ruling class?
"Appreciated your reply, but you sort of lost me in those last two paragraphs. What's that about banking and such?"
ReplyDeleteAh, seems you haven't read the "protocols," but I'm Jewish you see, and some of the first things I learned in Kindergarten was that I killed some god I never heard of and that I somehow inherited an ability and desire to control the world through treachery and banking. What power for a 5 year old to contemplate! I had to memorize songs about "little lord Jesus" too, but that's another matter.
Years and years ago, I was a hotshot salesman for an industrial manufacturer's rep and had tripled sales in my department in the first year and was feeling pretty secure. I never made an issue of my ethnicity, but when it emerged after a while, I was immediately offered a new job in collections - which I'm really bad at, by the way. ( hey, let's give it to the Hymie - he'll squeeze blood out of a turnip!)
Small example, but I've had a lifetime of people thinking they know something about me because of some presumed ethnic characteristic with origins in religious bigotry.
I would suppose most any minority has to live with this kind of annoying shit and if I were the sensitive type, it might even make me cynical. ;-)
Anyway, I have a feeling this is all another case of people who essentially agree talking past each other and I'm quite uncomfortable since I like all parties concerned.
If I understand our Saurischian’s sense of Dialectics, then it must have something akin to a Connoisseurs Appreciation of Paradox.
ReplyDeleteIn some respects, liberals and progressives resemble right wing conservatives on the same scale of impatience that demands immediate gratification. Did you honestly, truly expect our POTUS to stop two wars on a dime, fill holes in our economy, and fix the country overnight … presto ... like that! We elected a man, not a Messiah; we tend to have unrealistic expectations of our presidents and require more than any man can feasibly deliver.
When speaking of Dialectics, the words “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis” also come to mind. In our system of government (meaning the real world of Congressional sausage making), we understand “synthesis” as a process of negotiation, compromise, and consensus. There is nothing pretty or pure about sausage making, but as our POTUS once said: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Or shall we all stamp our feet and whistle “No Compromise” as we lose our Congressional majority and face two more years of partisan gridlock?
Or should we just remain angry and tear ourselves to pieces, which is tantamount to total capitulation to the Dark Side. There is nothing more irrational and self-destructive than anger. Remember what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore. It gave us 8 years of GWB. Do you want a command performance?
"Man, you use some mightily big words for somebody who realistically shouldn't be more than a small puddle of oil getting leaked into the Gulf."
ReplyDeleteChoose your words carefully, Grasshopper, lest you be left behind when the Veloci-Rapture comes.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteOh, okay -- I get the reference. Remember, I don't have much RAM here, veloci-rapture or no.
TAO,
I would agree with you if I thought your characterizations of "us" were accurate. But I don't see that they are -- I didn't spend the previous eight years calling President Bush "chimpy" and whatnot. That just isn't the quality of the analysis on SWASH, either. I think you pretty consistently make the "pox on both their houses" argument, but I find that argument flawed and not a way to proceed productively. Obama just ain't the same as Bush 43. Not even close. You could make a case for the Af-Pak conflict showing a similarity or an acceptance of the basic Bush paradigm, but with regard to lots of domestic affairs, no, it won't fly: it's pretty clear, for example, that Obama isn't exactly delighted with keeping rates the same for the Bill Gateses and Mars Candy Fortune people out there. He's said as much many times going back several years. What I think we need is a bit of nuance in sizing up these situations. Just saying "they're all the same" isn't convincing.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteThanks, appreciate your insight here as always. Now if it weren't for that diabolical asteroid, the dinos would STILL be sitting pretty, and Plato might just as well have packed up and gone home with all that blather about the need for a human philosopher king. Greatest bunkum ever propagated! I say with a snort that could only come from a three-foot-long snout. Humans forget insistently that ee-vo-lu-shun does NOT equal "progress." It's just change. As Lord Tennyson -- a man who really gets the dinosaur stamp of approval -- saith in In Memoriam A.H.H.,
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There, where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands....
I thought I was the only one who still read Tennyson. Good show. 'tis just the many headed beast should know.
ReplyDeletePardon me, and this kitchen has become too hot for me, but did anyone really say that all white progressives or all even that most white people who criticize Obama and obsess about his his testicles as a metonym for his manhood are racists? If that was the case I'll shut up now, but in my own much examined and unpleasant experience, the people - and remember I live in a rather segregated, very southern place - who are directing bizarre and ridiculous claims of "tyranny" and "Marxist" and "Kenyan" and "Muslim" and "racist" and "terrorist" and such other baseless hysterical claims written all over both pick-up trucks and Cadillacs against Obama are blatantly racist. That's not an impression, it's personal knowledge. I see it, I hear it, I know it, I live with these people. Now why can't I testify to it without someone telling me I'm accusing all white people of bad things? I'm not and I don't see that Sheria is either.
No, I don't know precisely how it feels to have your manhood challenged when you're a black man, but I'm willing to believe it's a sore point and I've had plenty of "close enough" experiences to remember the rising nausea and empathize. That's not a race card, it's a humanity card.
Those making rational, supported arguments about the Presidents shortcomings or failings are not the people I'm talking about whether I agree with them or not. Can we have an end to that idea please?
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Obama is really afraid of anything, much less of appearing "uppity." The man worked pretty hard to get where he got and yet, half the campaign was about just how did a black man get through college - couldn't have been worthy on his own merits - must have sold out to Pakistani terrorists. . . but I do know that even being assertive to the extent of addressing school children as though he somehow really was the president of the United States and not just some catastrophic mistake made millions furious and sorry, guys and gals, I'm calling that racially motivated and I'm saying that the man knows or thinks he won't get anywhere by acting like the Terminator. Really, who in the White house ever did. As much as the public craves a Hollywood hero, real ones are usually confined to the USSR, North Korea and Uganda.
The Obaminator, Barack Who-saaaaaaayn, saying Baraaaaaachk while pretending to barf. Sorry, that's racism until proven otherwise.
Another Tennyson reader here! We could start a fan club.
ReplyDeleteNope Captain, not me, never said anyone was a racist, wssn't even my point. Reed's article was about racial insensitivity and assumptions made by some of the majority group about the minority group. I never debate with racists. It's like trying to teach a pig to sing; it's a waste of your time and it annoys the pig. The choral director at the high school where I taught had a sign with that sage advice posted on her wall.
I only spend my time talking about race with people that I don't believe to be racists.
Thank you. :)
Sheria - I never debate with racists. It's like trying to teach a pig to sing; it's a waste of your time and it annoys the pig.
ReplyDeleteBravo! Without a sense of humor, I would lose my sanity. Thanks.
Rocky, thanks for your insights. I definitely don' ant anyone to walk on eggshells. I never intended to suggest that with my post. I just thought that it was a matter that needed to see the light of day.
ReplyDeleteI'm with dino, I didn't characterize GWB as some mindless monkey when he was in office. I had plenty to say about his policies but I felt that accusations that he was intentionally leading the country to ruin were unfair. I can't imagine nefariously running for president for the soul purpose of ruining the country. Sounds like a plot from a James Bond movie.
Octo, I think you've hit on the basic flaw--I think that a lot of folks believed that change would be immediate. The political game in DC has been played for a long time and no one can waltz in and simply change the nature of the game. It's going to take a lot o time and change is going to be incremental. I do wonder if Obama doesn't share some of the blame for not realizing that the public is rather childlike and naive and took him literally at his word when he spoke of change. A lot of people thought he meant that he was going to clean house, and set those people in DC right, a remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington. Maybe someone should have told them that it was only a movie.
TAO, I don't understand where you're coming from and I don't know what type of response to make except that I never compared you to GWB, and I only used my life experiences to offer some insight into the commonalities of the black experience of my generation in this country. As for dino and the ruling class, I just think that dinosaurs should rule the earth.
That was supposed to read, "don't want."
ReplyDeleteSheria is on to something.
ReplyDeleteSo is Ishmael.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/opinion/12reed.html
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteActually TAO that comment you quoted wasn't directed at you but rather made as a broad statement in general.
ReplyDeleteWell, I now regret getting involved in this discussion as all involved here are making me feel far out of my league and silly.
ReplyDeleteI'm more impressed with you all than ever.