Beyond Black & White
By Manning Marable,
Verso Press, 2009, 319 pages
Review by Malik Miah
[April 2010]
Manning Marable's latest book, Beyond Black & White, is an update of
a valuable critique of Black and US politics first issued in 1995. He
revised it last year, adding new chapters covering the period from
1995 to 2008, including an analysis of the meaning of the election of
the first African-American president of the United States, Barack
Obama, in November 2008.
The closing chapter, "Barack Obama, the 2008 Presidential Election
and the Prospects for a 'Post Racial Politics", is a good place to
begin reading the collection of articles and essays. Marable's two
prefaces for the first and new edition outline his views on "Black
and white" and the evolution of how race impacts US political
conversations and the failure of leadership in the Black community.
While it is useful to read the book chronologically, it's not
necessary, since the articles were first published in various
magazines and papers. I do recommend, however, three particular
articles on "Affirmative Action and the Politics of Race", "Malcolm
as Messiah: Cultural Myth versus Historical Reality", and "The
Divided Mind of Black America: Race, Ideology and Politics in the
Post-Civil-Rights Era".
Relevant insights
The meaning of Obama's election as the first Black president, what's
happened since his election and its impact on the discussion of Black
leadership and racial politics and racism, US role in world affairs
and the significance of the rapid rise of white racist tea party
groups since Obama's election can't be separated from a general
backlash that has a clear racial smell. Marable's book, in that
context, offers some very useful background and insights. Many of his
points, even those made 20 years ago, are completely relevant to
current debates among Black leadership layers and in society as a whole.
The growth of the tea party movement and white supremacist militias
in particular cannot be ignored even though a majority of whites
don't subscribe to their extremist views. As a prominent anti-hate
group based in the southern state of Alabama, the Southern Poverty
Law Center, has noted in its research, there has been a 244 per cent
increase in hate groups since Obama's election. These groups are not
just anti-progressive or hard right, they are also openly racist
toward the first African-American president.
As with everything in domestic US politics "race does matter". There
is an undercurrent of race and racism beneath the surface of
conservative conversation, as shown by recent proclamations by two
state governors (Virginia and Mississippi) hailing the treasonous and
defeated Old Confederacy that fought to maintain "state rights" the
code words to keep chattel slavery.
As unique as it is that the country elected its first
African-American president, the bigotry among a sizable layer of
white Americans remains strong in parts of the country. The United
States is not a "post-racial society" as some like to proclaim. The
contradiction of some saying, "I'm not racist", while promoting
openly racist ideas, honouring slaveowners of the past, is more and
more common since Obama's election.
(I'm employed as an airline mechanic in San Francisco, for instance,
where I work with white co-workers who don't see themselves as having
racist positions but who accept the most outrageous racial smears of
Obama and the Black community. My reaction is not, "I understand your
sentiment since you hate big government and Wall Street." Instead I
say, "Racism is wrong no matter why you say it, and must be
repudiated." It is never acceptable to bend to backward attitudes
especially among fellow workers.)
Long history of activism
Marable has the credentials both as an academic who has published
numerous books and activist to write on the subjects of race and
racism and general politics. He is a professor of African American
studies and professor of public affairs, history and political
science at Columbia University in New York City. He has a long
history of activism and an insight into questions of debate within
the Black movement. I first met him at the first convention of the
National Black Independent Political Party convention in 1972 in
Gary, Indiana. Marable, like me and other activists, came to Gary to
advocate the formation of a new political party based on independent
Black politics. The party was formed, but never reached its potential.
Marable looks back at the main events of the Black movement, focusing
on the lessons of the civil rights movement. Many of the essays look
at the issues from the "prism of race" and racism in the country.
As he explains in the preface to the first edition, "The main thesis
of the book is that 'race' as it has been understood within American
society is being rapidly redefined, along with the basic structure of
the economy, with profound political consequences for all sectors and
classes... Because this social transformation is occurring at a
political conjuncture dominated by conservative ideology and a
retreat from welfare state politics, race relations and racial
discourse are reflected within an altered debate about the character
of discrimination, the nature of prejudice, and invented notions
about who the 'real victims' of inequality are. A new generation of
white Americans, born largely after the civil rights movement, felt
little or no historical responsibility or social guilt for being the
beneficiaries of institutional racism." (Page xi.)
As true as that statement was in 1995, it is more so today. Marable
points out in the second preface that he was too optimistic about the
true possibility of building a new, militant leadership and alliance
to take on institutional racism. The full integration of the Black
middle-class leadership into the government and corporate world still
had not run its course and still hasn't. The result is a
working-class and poor population without a viable leadership team on
a national scale to play the role that old leadership had did under
legal segregation.
Impact of Black elite
Marable explains in looking back nearly 15 years after the
publication of the first edition: "Beyond Black and White was overly
optimistic and strategically in error in its treatment of social
class as a factor in the development of social protest movements.
Despite my criticisms of the Black elite's comprador tendencies, its
support for gentrification, and its crass manipulation of racial
rhetoric to occasionally mobilize Blacks against their real material
interests, I overestimated the weight of historic racial solidarity
and Black identity as positive forces in shaping new black protests."
(Page xxvii.)
Marable indicates that the "bourgeoisification" of the Black elite
and its integration into the political and economic system led away
from protest politics. What he and many others had hoped for was a
vibrant left movement in the Black community that would create a new
leadership. One such formation was the Black Radical Congress (BRC)
that he helped found but did not survive.
As he clearly articulates in the second preface, "The new leadership
for democratic renewal would have to come from working class and
low-income women involved in neighborhood associations and networks,
from former prisoners, inmates and their families who were fighting
against the prison industrial complex, from liberal religious
activists inside faith-based institutions, and from the hip-hop
artistic community."
That didn't happen.
"What emerged instead", he explains, "given the vacuum on the Left,
was the Barack Obama mobilization, a movement led by an
African-American race-neutral, post-Black campaign that rarely made
references to the central American dilemma of race." (Page xxix.)
Obama's election as president
In the closing chapter on the significance of the Obama victory (the
book was completed soon after Obama's electoral victory and well
before evidence came in during his first year of office that he was a
continuing the policies of the ruling elites and thus doing very
little for the Black community), Marable observes that, "By the
twenty-first century, hundreds of race-neutral, pragmatic Black
officials had emerged, winning positions on city councils, state
legislatures and in the House of Representatives. Frequently they
distanced themselves from traditional liberal constituencies such as
unions, promoted gentrification and corporate investment in poor
urban neighborhoods, and favored funding charter schools as an
alternative to the failures of public school systems." (Page 301.)
Yet these "pragmatic promotions" did not lead to vast improvements
for the working poor. Less self-organisation and solidarity within
the community took place than Marable and others had expected. There
was not a rise of new Black Power-type leaders that was seen during
the 1960s when the civil rights movement won legal gains and sparked
left-wing radicalism in the Black community (e.g., the Black Panther
Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and Black
nationalist and pan-African currents).
Failure of the `new' pragmatism
What occurred instead was the convergence of the very tiny but
ideologically driven Black conservative layers with the new
pragmatism of the liberal Black elite. Both groups reject old-style
street protests as a strategy to influence government or bring
change. The policy of working within the system and seeking
cross-over votes from whites is seen as the way forward to eradicate
institutional discrimination and achieve full equality for Blacks.
Black conservatives go further by aligning themselves with the most
right-wing views that oppose affricative action and reject racial
identity politics and solidarity. These elements pretend to deny
their Blackness except when it can be used to attack liberalism or
when it serves their own self-interests when they themselves are under attack.
(The best example of the hypocritical stance of Black conservatives
was the case of Black Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas who
attacked his liberal critics as organising a "legal lynching" during
his nomination to the court some 20 years ago. Today the Black head
of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, is using the race card to
respond to his critics.)
President Obama does not deny his Blackness or any of the other Black
officials (in the recent US census form, Obama self-identified
himself as "Black" even though he is of mixed parentage).
The new generation of pragmatic leaders see the for-profit system as
the solution to institutional racism something the assassinated
civil rights hero Martin Luther King himself began to reject before
his murder in Memphis, Tennessee, while supporting striking
sanitation workers in 1968.
As Marable explains in his closing chapter on Obama, "In fairness,
Obama never claimed to be an ideologue of the left. He promoted a
post-partisan government and a leadership style that incorporated the
views of conservatives and liberals alike." (Page 309.)
The reality of Black politics in 2010 is that there is no serious
left challenge to Obama and the Black elite's perspectives. Only a
few voices can be heard urging a return to past tactics to advance
the interests of the oppressed in the era of Obama.
Politics of protests
Tavis Smiley, a nationally syndicated radio and television host,
recently produced a documentary on Martin Luther King's famous speech
given at Riverside Church in New York City in 1967. King pointedly
rejected the policy of the US government and the argument of other
civil rights leaders and his organisation's own board not to speak
out on non-civil rights issues such as the war in Vietnam. He also
criticised the so-called free market system that puts profit before
human rights. (Go to http://links.org.au/node/336 to view the video.)
The steady decline of extralegal actions by the left and the Black
community (including against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) also
gives the far right the streets as it raises the banner of being
against "big government" while its leaders are in bed with Wall Street.
The Black community, in this context, is left on the sidelines
waiting to see what Obama and the new pragmatists can do for them
instead of taking to the streets to defend their own interests. This
inaction flies in the face of African-American history.
During WWII, for example, the mainstream Black leadership planned the
March on Washington to demand equality, jobs, and spoke out against
the racism of the war effort. It didn't matter that Blacks were
charged with aiding the enemy and being unpatriotic for doing so. The
march never happened after the government agreed to make some concessions.
The high unemployment during the current "Great Recession" would seem
to be a time to go back to the streets. Yet the significant up-tick
of white militia groups and open bigotry since Obama's election has
become the new excuse by self-proclaimed leaders not to respond with
mass action. The Obama proponents continue to push a legislative
response instead of using extra-legal actions as occurred in the
past. While this weak response to a Democrat Party president is not
new historically speaking, the demobilisation and lack of action is
far greater today among African Americans because of the Obama
factor, who still receives 90 per cent support in Black communities
across the country.
Call for a new leadership
Marable, remaining true to his long-time radicalism, argues for
building a "new, antiracist" leadership. "A new antiracist
leadership", he states, "must be constructed to the left of the Obama
government that draws upon representatives of the most oppressed and
marginalized social groups within our communities: former prisoners,
women activists in community-based, civic organizations, youth
groups, from homeless coalitions, and the like. Change must occur not
from the top down, as some Obama proponents would have it, but from
the bottom up."
While I agree with Marable's "bottom-up" strategy, what's ultimately
needed is a powerful independent political movement that directly
challenges the ideology of the for-profit status quo, including the
two-party system that runs the United States.
The creation of a mass-based working-class party is still a long-term
strategic objective for the left. We are not in a period of left
political radicalism but a bottom-up protest movement is not enough
either. The left needs to openly proclaim as its goal of building a
new political party.
It's not surprising that the policies of Obama on Black issues are
actually to the right of the last two Democrat presidents, Bill
Clinton and James Carter. The social protest movements are small and
ineffective. Until that changes, the weak trade unions and civil
rights groups are not likely to be revitalised, and there will
continue to be as steady shift to the right in general and among the
Black elites.
--
[Malik Miah is an editor of the US socialist organisation
Solidarity's magazine Against The Current. He is a long-time activist
in trade unions and a campaigner for Black rights.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment