Cleansing History: Expectations and Actions in an Obama Presidency Por El Counterhegemonic
McCain’s insistent fear-mongering about Obama’s economic plan to “spread the wealth around” reflected a desperate campaign searching for a message that would tap into the assumed racial fears of whites. Indeed, the greatest fear among any oppressive racial grouping comes through “revenge-fantasies” about the diabolical capacities of those they oppress once the chains of oppression are loosened. Yesterday was, undoubtedly, an historic day as millions of Americans turned the voting lever in support of the first successful presidential campaign made by an African-American. These acts, viewed from both an individual and collective perspective may signal a desire among large sections of the population to move post-emancipation race-relations in a more progressive direction. Simply put, skin pigmentation did not prevent Barack Obama from being elected president of the United States of America. This symbolic victory is no small feat in a country whose history produced such racially motivated actors as the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), George Wallace and D. W. Griffith. Now, however, Americans face the even greater task of giving form to the expectations which drove millions to the voting booth. Pause for a moment and imagine what an Obama victory might have meant to someone such as W.E.B. DuBois. In his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903), DuBois, managed to capture the longing for freedom tempered by the bitter racial oppression imposed on post-Reconstruction African-American communities. “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American,” DuBois wrote, “without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.” Certainly, when Barack Obama rises for the swearing-in ceremony in January, an important hammer-blow will have been leveled to the double-consciousness of race and nation that DuBois described. Travel further back into the history of Reconstruction and you will find pioneer African-American politicians brave enough to contest for political office in the post-Civil War US South. After achieving some measure of success, they faced the full assault of resurgent white racism. Take for instance Abram Colby of Georgia. Colby was a leader in a local branch of the Equal Rights Association, a group dedicated to securing both black and female suffrage. In 1869, Klansmen forced him from his home, stripped him and administered a beating for three hours. An even worse fate was reserved for Richard Gray, a radical Black Republican leader from Mississippi. Gray was assassinated by the Klan after delivering a speech in which he accepted the nomination as Treasurer for the local Republican branch and encouraged his “fellow colored citizens” to never vote for a racist Democratic Party candidate. In total, historian Eric Foner calculated that one tenth of all Black members of the 1867-68 constitutional conventions were victims of some form of violence with seven having been murdered by the Klan. Obama’s victory needs to be placed within this longer-term view of American history in which race determined the boundaries of political activity. Obama has, in some measure, gained an amount of justice for victims of political violence such as Abram Colby and Richard Gray (not to mention more recently Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X). Yet, the terms of the presidential campaign itself also resonated out of the above described historical patterns. John McCain’s insistent fear-mongering about Obama’s economic plan to “spread the wealth around” reflected a desperate campaign searching for a message that would tap into the assumed racial fears of whites. Indeed, the greatest fear among any oppressive racial grouping comes through “revenge-fantasies” about the diabolical capacities of those they oppress once the chains of oppression are loosened. American whites are fully aware that African-American communities suffer a disproportionate amount of economic inequality. McCain’s angry white-man act, the trumpeting of the white-male Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin’s outright red-baiting campaign demonstrate the clear ways in which race and class serve to secure the status quo in American political and social life. The result is a society divided by race in which 5% of the population control 85% of the wealth. Herein is the challenge of an Obama presidency. The historic importance of this victory of representation will be given even more significance if a challenge is launched upon the very structure of class oppression. Dubois, for one, understood this quite well when he wrote, “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” A bit closer in historical time is Martin Luther King Jr. After winning historic battles for representation in the South, King turned his eye to the North and the nation as a whole and was confronted by the stark intersection between race and class oppression. King called on “the poor, the white and Negro” to “organize a revolution…against the structures through which society is refusing to…lift the load of poverty.” Near the ends of both their lives, one quite full and the other truncated, DuBois and King came to the conclusion that socialism offered the best opportunity for America to mount a serious challenge to racial and class oppression. So, today we can do honor to their legacy and bring a bit more meaning to history by celebrating the country’s ability to move beyond fear-mongering at the polls while re-dedicating our efforts to build a society organized around cooperation and solidarity. To do so will take more than a pull on a lever. Obama’s administration, if it has not already been compromised by corporate campaign donors, will be besieged by corporate lobbyists, pro-market officials and military hawks. It will therefore take the coming together of masses of people, once again willing to cast off fear to push forward demands for things like healthcare, education and peace to be treated as human rights instead of social privileges. This is the great, but not insurmountable, challenge presented by the election of Barack Obama. Can strong social movements muster the grassroots political force necessary to bridge the ever-widening gulf between expectations and actions? The answer to this question will determine how deeply the election of Barack Obama will impact American history. Por El Counterhegemonic http://counterhegemonic.blogspot.com/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. 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