By Tim Wise

February 22, 2009

It was all too predictable that Attorney General Eric Holder would be attacked for his recent remarks about race in America. To suggest that the nation is still haunted by the specter of racism is unacceptable it seems, especially since, with the election of President Obama, we have ostensibly entered the "post-racial" era.

But in truth, the nation's chief law enforcement officer deserves criticism more for what he didn't say than for what he did.

Specifically, Holder blamed personal cowardice for our racial divide, rather than institutionalized inequities, thereby minimizing his own Department's role in solving the problem; and he blamed everyone (and thus no one in particular) for being cowards, thereby letting white Americans--who have always been the ones least willing to engage the subject--off our uniquely large hook.

This combination of power-obliviousness (ignoring discrimination and unequal access to resources, while focusing merely on attitudes) and color-blindness (suggesting that everyone is equally at fault and equivalently unwilling to discuss racism) is a popular lens through which to view these matters. Indeed, the Oscar-winning film "Crash" was based almost entirely on these two tropes. But such a lens distorts our vision, and obscures true understanding of the phenomenon being observed.

The racial divide about which Holder spoke, particularly in terms of the neighborhoods where people live, is not the result of some abstract cowardice to engage one another. Rather, it is about the racist fears of whites, who decades ago began leaving neighborhoods when blacks began to move in. They didn't move because of declining property values, as they often claimed (indeed economic logic dictates that the rapid white exodus, not the black demand for housing, would cause such an outcome), but because of racism.

And in their fears, these whites were assisted by government policy, which subsidized their flight via FHA and VA loans that were all but off limits to people of color. This is how (and why) the suburbs came to be. From the 1940s to the early 60s, over $120 billion in home loans were made to whites, preferentially, thanks to these government efforts, while blacks and other persons of color were excluded from the same. Indeed, about half of all homes purchased by white families during this time were financed thanks to these low-interest loans, while folks of color remained locked in cities, their dwellings and businesses often knocked down to make way for the very interstates that would shuttle their white counterparts to the suburbs where only they could live.

We remain residentially divided today because of the legacy of those apartheid-like policies, as well as ongoing race-based housing discrimination: between 2 million and 3.7 million incidents per year according to private estimates. It is the AG's job to do something about that by enforcing the Fair Housing Act, not pleading for more dialogue. As Elvis once said, albeit about a very different subject, we need "a little less conversation, a little more action, please."

Holder also pulled a punch by issuing his charge of personal cowardice indiscriminately, as if to say that everyone was equally averse to tackling the subject of racism. But people of color have always voiced their concerns about the matter. It is whites who have tended to shut down, to change the subject, or to minimize the problem by telling those who mention it to "get over it already," or by accusing them of "playing the race card."

As exhibit one for this charge, consider the way in which most of white America has reacted to the recent New York Post cartoon, in which police officers gun down a wild ape, meant to represent the author of the stimulus bill; and this, directly opposite a picture of President Obama signing that very piece of legislation. That such an image trades on longstanding racist stereotypes is apparent to most folks of color, and yet, most of white America has yawned through the controversy, or worse, accused blacks enraged by the image of hypersensitivity. Likewise, most whites reacted with unaffected diffidence at the New Year's day videotape from the Oakland subway, in which a white police officer coolly executed a black man by the name of Oscar Grant, despite Grant putting up no resistance, possessing no weapon, and posing no threat to the officer. On message boards in the Bay Area--supposedly filled with progressive types to hear locals tell it--whites regularly expressed more outrage at protesters demanding justice for the Grant family, than at officer Mehserle for committing cold-blooded murder.

Sadly, whites are rarely open to what black and brown folks have to say regarding their ongoing experiences with racist mistreatment. And we are especially reluctant to discuss what that mistreatment means for us as whites: namely that we end up with more and better opportunities as the flipside of discrimination. After all, there is no down without an up, no matter how much we'd like to believe otherwise.

It is white denial, as much as anything, which has allowed racial inequity to persist for so long, and it's nothing new. In the early 1960s, even before the passage of modern civil rights laws, two out of three whites said blacks were treated equally, and nearly 90 percent said black kids had equal educational opportunity. Matter of fact, white denial has a longer pedigree than that, reaching back at least as far as the 1860s, when southern slave-owners were literally stunned to see their human property abandon them after the Emancipation Proclamation. After all, to the semi-delusional white mind of the time, they had always treated their slaves "like family."

Until we address our nation's long history of white supremacy, come to terms with the legacy of that history, and confront the reality of ongoing discrimination (even in the "Age of Obama"), whatever dialogue we engage around the subject will only further confuse us, and stifle our efforts to one day emerge from the thick and oppressive fog of racism. For however much audacity may be tethered to the concept of hope, let us be mindful that truth is more audacious still. May we find the courage, some day soon, to tell it.

Sorry for the Inconvenience:
Race and the Power of Whiteness (Case Study #399)
By Tim Wise

Imagine if you will a 40 year old black male, coming through security at Boston's Logan airport. He's looking a bit younger than his middle-aged self, due in large measure to the clothes he's wearing: a black hoodie, jeans and sneakers. These seem, at least in his mind, to balance out the creases and crevices that occasionally appear on his face, hidden though most of them are beneath his beard. It isn't that he's trying, per se, to look younger. But to feel younger, oh sure, and wardrobe is a far less expensive and pathetic way to accomplish this end than say, botox or a lid lift.

He only has one bag with him, a briefcase, having checked his other luggage at the ticket counter. As the one carry-on makes its way through the x-ray machine, something anomalous strikes the screener's eye.

"Do you mind if we take a look inside your bag?" the young Latina TSA employee asks.

"Of course not," comes the reply. The black traveler thinks to himself, "probably those damned computer cords all jumbled up in there. I really ought to pack those more neatly next time."

He steps to the side, out of the way of the others coming through the line, and watches as the bag screener wipes a tiny cloth all around his briefcase. He knows the drill because he's been through it before, on other flights. Just a random dusting, perhaps for explosive residue, which has been a routine around the country ever since 9/11. Oh well, no biggie, he thinks, not having built any bombs lately, let alone stored them in his briefcase. He knows what's in his bag: a MacBook Pro, a day planner, a cell phone, an asthma inhaler, some pens, an iPod, pictures of his wife and kids, a bunch of business cards he's collected from people, meaning to neatly store them somewhere, but never getting around to it, and then there's...

The money.

Oh, this could get interesting, he thinks to himself.

Just as the thought enters his mind, he notices that the screener has unzipped the pocket on the top and front of the briefcase. Her right eyebrow raises a bit, as she stares at a fairly thick wad of cash, denominations as of yet unknown, overflowing a small white envelope inside.

The passenger, it should be understood at this point, is an author, and over the last several days has been on the road for speeches and book signings. During these events, he has sold about 100 copies of his latest work, and what the screener is looking at, though she doesn't know it, are the proceeds of those sales: approximately $1500 give or take.

His mind races, wondering how he can explain such a stash, and whether his explanation--though eminently verifiable and 100% true--will be believed. After all, he's vaguely aware of a study from a few years back, which found that black women were nine times more likely than white women to be stopped and searched for drugs coming through airport security, even though white women were twice as likely to actually have drugs on them. How much more likely might he be, as a black man, carrying this kind of cash, to trigger suspicion?

He begins to sweat a bit, nothing too visible he hopes, as the seconds seem to pass with all the speed of ketchup, flowing hesitantly from its bottle. He stares stoically into space, hoping to seem non-chalant. He's done nothing, but he knows it doesn't matter.

"Where are you heading tonight?" the screener asks, as she motions for her supervisor, an older white male, to come take a look.

"Chicago," the passenger replies, the word catching in his throat, cracking on the "ca" sound, betraying a nervousness that would be hard to miss. Damn, he thinks to himself, why'd my voice have to crack like that? Man, stay cool, stay cool!

He can't hear everything the screener and the older white guy are discussing, but he sees as she opens the pocket so the supervisor can spy the cash. The passenger hears the screener ask, "What do you think?"

Time stands still for what seems like hours. These four words, being asked by a woman of color to her white male boss, in effect, are more loaded with significance than any he has heard that day. They are, though he would rather not consider it, probably more significant than any he has written, and for which he has received the very payment that has, this evening, caused such a distraction.

"What. Do. You. Think?"

It's a simple, benign question, at least to some. But it is being asked of a white man, who has just been shown a bunch of cash--mostly twenties--in the bag of a black man, in a hoodie, traveling from one large urban area to another. That the black man is a fairly well-known author, with four books under his belt, several awards, a publicist and an agent may well mean nothing under the weight of those four words.

Oh, he knows, or at least reasonably assumes, that in the end it will all work out. After all, there are no drugs in the bag, and if he has to, he can always open up the computer, log on to Amazon and show them his books, confirm his identity, and make it alright. And, he remembers, a few people in the past week had paid with personal checks, and even put "Book" in the memo line. Surely that will do it, he thinks. What drug dealer, after all, takes personal checks?

But none of that matters. Even though he feels certain things will be resolved in a favorable manner there is still this moment. This dread. This knowledge that even though he will no doubt be on the flight to Chicago, where he is scheduled to speak in the morning, he will yet have to endure the looks, the suspicion, and perhaps a full body search, in a way that few if any white men would have to experience.

And more, it's the looks he is garnering from other passengers that really sting. They see him, the black man in the hoodie, standing off to the side, the TSA staff looking at his bag, and then at him, with suspicion. What must they be thinking? No, even if it all turns out alright, it won't really all be alright. There will still be this moment, and the ponderousness of what it all means in sociological and psychological terms for everyone involved.

"What. Do. You. Think?"

He swears he hears her ask him the question again, but certainly she didn't. Surely it was but an echo in the chambers of his subconscious mind, repeating the four words that have placed, for at least a few more moments, his fate in the hands of someone who does not know him, but may very well think he does, and therein lies the problem.

What happens next is for you, the reader, to guess. Because what I've just described, though it happened, didn't happen to a black man at Boston's Logan airport last week. It happened, instead to me, minus the dread, the fear or the worry that I might be strip-searched on suspicion of nefarious activity. I knew, quite viscerally, in fact, that it would not go down that way, and indeed it did not, even though my voice did oddly crack when I told of my destination, and even though I was in a hoodie.

The question, "What do you think?" though asked by the screener was met rather quickly with a glance my way from the older white man, one final glance at the cash, and then the words, "It's nothing, you can give him back his bag."

The screener did as she was told, handed me back my property and said--and here is where things get especially weighty--"Sorry for the inconvenience."

"What do You Think?"

We think we are sorry for making you stand there, for all of three minutes.

We think we are sorry for even momentarily suspecting you of anything.

We think we are sorry for getting you confused--if only for a moment--with a black man.

We are sorry. For the. Inconvenience.

"No inconvenience," I replied. "You're just doing your job, as you should," I continued, wanting to make sure that this woman of color never would shrink from possible suspicion just because the bag in her hand belonged to a white man like me. She had done nothing wrong, and I had suffered no injury.

Because I was white.

Not only did my whiteness, in all probability allow me to escape unsearched and uninterrogated by the white male supervisor, it also meant that no one witnessing the exchange would likely read much into it. As such, the psychological burden of standing there, with many an eye on me, was virtually negligble. Sort of like when I get pulled out of line and "wanded" by security, as one of their random searches that any frequent traveler has experienced at some point. For me, the psychic cost of the process is so minimal as to be nonexistent, unlike the way it must feel, for instance, to my Arab, South Asian, North African, or Persian brothers and sisters right about now.

But whiteness also did something else for me that night, and it is something I lament even more than the rest, because it is something over which I could have taken control and used in a productive fashion, and yet failed to do so. See, even though I made the comment to the young Latina screener, letting her know it was all good, and confirming that she should be every bit as suspicious about white men as anyone else, when I turned to head to my gate and passed the white man who had issued my free pass that night, I was rendered mute, turned into a silent collaborator with the process by which white privilege is dispensed. Rather than express to him my gratitude for having been looked at, initially, just as oddly as a man of color likely would have been--in other words, rather than challenging his apparent presumption that suspecting me would have been silly--I said nothing, allowing him, in all likelihood to think nothing of the incident, and to never have to rethink his own assumptions, or perhaps develop the same kind of alertness that his younger, darker colleague had evinced that night. It was one thing to validate the underling, but it would have been quite another--and more important thing--to have challenged the boss.

Opportunity missed, I boarded my plane, vowing not to miss it again, were such a situation to present itself a second time. The plane lifted off, headed to O'Hare, with me still in search of this post-racial America I keep hearing about. For wherever that place is, one can rest assured that Boston's Logan airport lies well outside of its newly-drawn borders. And in that, it is not alone.

Tim Wise is the author of four books. His latest, "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama," was released in January 2009 by City Lights Books. He can be reached at timjwise@mac.com

Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, now available! Anti-Racist Essayist and Activist, Tim Wise, announces the release of his fourth book. ____________ According to The Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama's presidential victory means we "can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country." According to columnist Richard Cohen, Obama as President signifies that America is a "post-racial" nation, and that "we have overcome" the vestiges of racism and discrimination. And according to the Atlantic Monthly, Obama's ascent to the White House may well signify, "The End of White America," or at least the extent to which whiteness remains a privileged "norm." Yet, beneath the proclamations of achieved color-blindness and race-neutral ecumenism, the evidence of racism in employment, education, housing, health care and the justice system remains substantial. And white racial attitudes--not about Obama and those who, like him, "transcend race," but rather about the bulk of black and brown folks in the nation--continue to indicate substantial white racism at the personal level as well. In Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, author and activist, Tim Wise, explores what Obama's success means, and importantly what it doesn't mean for race and racism in the United States. Contrary to popular perception, Obama's victory says little about racism as a larger institutional phenomenon, and may well make the fight against racism more difficult than ever, by reinforcing longstanding white denial, reinforcing the myth of meritocracy that has long served as a justification for profound racial disparities, and by creating a new and limiting archetype of acceptable blackness, which although met by those like Obama, would erect higher obstacles than ever in the path of non-Obama-like persons of color. About the book, actor and human rights activist, Danny Glover says that Wise "provides an insightful and much-needed lens through which we can begin to navigate this current stage in our ongoing quest for a more inclusive definition of who we are as a nation. It's definitely a book for these times." And Bill Fletcher, long time activist and Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com says: "Tim Wise has looked behind the curtain...His book debunks any notion that the United States has entered a post-racial period...With this book, Wise hits the bull's eye." As we enter the Obama-era, it will be increasingly important to arm ourselves with the factual information and analysis needed to place the quest for racial justice in the forefront of public consciousness. With the media and the talking heads proclaiming that Obama signifies the virtual fulfillment of Dr. King's dream, piercing the veil of denial and deflection will become more difficult, but also more critical than ever. Between Barack and a Hard Place can help to re-claim the race discourse from those who prefer to paper over the ongoing presence of racism as a potent social force. Get your copy today from City Lights Books (the publisher), Amazon.com, or your local independent bookstore!

Holocaust Denial, American Style
By Tim Wise
November 26, 2008

Recently, after a presentation to teachers about racial bias in high school curricula, I got into a tiny spat with an instructor who objected to my using the word "holocaust" to describe the process by which nearly 99% of indigenous Americans perished from the 1400s to the present day. He also objected to the use of the term to describe the experience of Africans, forcibly kidnapped and enslaved throughout the hemisphere.

The teacher seemed especially concerned that as a fellow Jew I would suggest that our people had not been the greatest victims in world history, let alone sui generis in our suffering; that I would offer as a possibility the idea that others had also faced mass death, even extermination, and that there was no such thing as "The" Holocaust, but rather, several such events in history, including but not limited to the one perpetrated in the name of Hitlerism, which claimed millions of victims: Jews, Roma, homosexuals, communists and the disabled.

In defense of his position he averred that the definition of holocaust was "a genocidal program carried out with the intent of completely exterminating the target group." This, he insisted, was not what had happened to blacks or Indian folks. The former had been valued as forced labor, thus there had been no campaign of deliberate murder launched against them, and the latter had died mostly from disease (coincidentally one presumes). As such, the homicidal intentionality that motivated the Nazis could not be ascribed equally to the colonists, or the slavers of the West, and the term "holocaust" simply didn't apply.

There is much that could be said here, and I managed to say most of it at the time, concerned as I was that someone entrusted to fill the minds of young people should find himself in such a confused position as this.

First, before addressing the inaccuracy of the teacher's historical and etymological wisdom, there was the matter of why he had felt it necessary to rank oppressions in the first place, especially when the three cases being discussed had been of such magnitude as to make them among the gravest crimes in history. After all, there comes a point where tallying body counts, or trying to compare suffering of this scale approaches the threshold of mendacity, only to cross it violently on its way to obscenity. I queried as to the wisdom of his particular taxonomy of terrors, only to be met by a look of disdain, as if it should be quite apparent, without having to withstand scrutiny, that Jews had suffered worse than any others in the history of the cosmos: something he noted he made clear to his black students, so as to help them "put things in perspective" whenever they opted to focus on that which had been done to them. How nice.

But in addition to the strange psychology, by which some folks apparently need to be the biggest and most sympathetic victims, the teacher that day simply had it wrong. His definition of holocaust was purely fabricated, comporting with no actual dictionary version upon which he could truthfully claim reliance, and had been offered up without the slightest regard for the term's actual and easily discovered origins. As it turns out, the word holocaust is defined in most dictionaries as "destruction or slaughter on a mass scale," and derives from a Greek term for a sacrifice made upon a burnt altar.

This somewhat theological etymology probably explains why the term preferred by many Jews to describe Hitler's FInal Solution is not Holocaust at all, but rather the Hebrew term, shoah, since to equate the killing of millions of Jews with a sacrifical offering to God carries with it fairly obvious and disturbing connotations and places Hitler's maniacal practices on a par with ancient religious rites.

Shoah, in comparison, means any "catastrophe, calamity or disaster," and, as with holocaust, relies not at all upon deliberate extermination as a necessary component to the term's factual fulfillment.

That clarified, the only issue then should be whether or not the indigenous of the Americas or those enslaved here experienced large-scale death: a point requiring little debate or deliberation, as the historical record on this point is clear. The Middle Passage, without which enslavement in the Americas could not have progressed, claimed millions of lives, and as many as 93 million indigenous persons perished in the Americas following the onset of European conquest. That such facts as these suggest a Holocaust, a genocide of monumental proportions, should be obvious. Sadly, it is not.

And so this Thanksgiving morning, I awoke to discover a nationally-syndicated column in my local paper by Mona Charen, who felt as though the best use of her weekly 700 word-limit would be to deny that which history tells us is apparent: that the native persons whose conquering we are in effect celebrating today did indeed suffer a genocidal extermination. Such a claim as this, to hear Charen tell it is not only factually false, but a left-wing conspiratorial calumny placed upon the nation's head by radicals intent on warping the views of children and turning them into America-haters.

Charen, borrowing from conservative talk-show host Michael Medved's recent book The 10 Big Lies About America, argues that the charge of genocide leveled against our nation's founders "cannot withstand scrutiny," because Indian deaths were not principally the result of overt extermination campaigns. As Charen explains it, Indian depopulation was merely the happenstance consequence of diseases against which the natives had, sadly, no immunity (Charen calls this a "tragedy, but not a crime"), and the fact that the Europeans were technologically superior.

That the superior and "more advanced" civilization should prevail in such an instance has nothing to do with the desire by that bunch to destructively press its advantage against others, according to Charen, and nothing to do with greed or the maniacal desire to enrich oneself at all costs, but is simply the "usual course in human affairs." In other words, we should presume that the clash of civilizations in the Americas had been inevitable, as if the Europeans had had no choice but to take to the high seas, in search of riches and land; as if the North American continental shelf had possessed some kind of literal magnet, the pull of which simply could not be physically resisted by the white man, who then, amid tears and anguish, had no recourse but to spread throughout the western hemisphere. Reducing a half-millennium long process of displacement and destruction to the equivalent of a "Shit Happens" bumper sticker, Charen suggests we should happily consume our annual turkey and dressing absent so much as a twinge of remorse.

Of course, as with the previously mentioned teacher, Charen's position (and that of Medved, whose shtick she was pushing in this latest column) lacks even a rudimentary flirtation with intellectual honesty.

To begin, Medved and Charen suggest that to qualify as genocide, an action must, according to the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, be carried out with the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group." As with the teacher who insisted that Indians died of disease and thus were hardly the victims of a holocaust, so too these professional atrocity-deniers, who claim the deaths of millions of indigenous persons was virtually an accident. Yet the specific acts carried out against native peoples here are all mentioned explicitly in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, and as such fall under its aegis. According to the UN, such acts include:

a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and/or,
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Any of those things alone would qualify as an act of genocide, and yet each one of them has been part of the treatment received by indigenous persons at the hands of the U.S. government, or the pre-nationhood colonists. Indians were indeed killed, with the intent of destroying entire bands of natives, in whole or in part. Serious bodily and mental harm was surely inflicted, quite deliberately. Indians were removed from their homes and relocated in large numbers on reservations, which meets both clause b and c of the definition. Indian women were forcibly sterilized--as many as 100,000 during the twentieth century, and even as many as 3000 a year into the early 1970s--thereby satisfying clause d; and as many as 80% of all Indian children were forcibly removed from their homes and families and sent to boarding schools, while others were forcibly adopted-out to white families, and in both cases, stripped of native language, culture and religion during the 1900s, thereby meeting the final clause of the very definition Charen and Medved use to suggest that no genocide occurred.

Both Charen and Medved insist that since most Indians died of disease, rather than direct violence, they cannot be the victims of genocide, but seeing as how the definition of genocide fails to require mass death at all, this argument holds disturbingly little weight. Not to mention, had it not been for conquest, those diseases to which Indians had no resistance--and which colonists praised as the "work of God," clearing the land for them--wouldn't have ravaged the native populations as they did. To imply that such deaths were merely accidental or incidental would be like saying the Nazis bore no responsibility for the 1.6 million or so Jews who died of disease and starvation in the camps, rather than having been gassed or shot. But try saying that at your local neighborhood synagogue and see how far you get, with good reason.

Of course, there is more than enough evidence of the intentionality of Indian-killing to suggest that genocide occurred, even if we were to accept the inaccurate interpretation of the term's definition put forward by Charen and Medved.

And so we have George Washington in 1779, sending a letter to Major General John Sullivan, that he should "lay waste" to all Iroquois settlements, so that their lands may not be "merely overrun but destroyed."

And we have Thomas Jefferson telling his Secretary of War that any tribe that resisted the taking of their land by the United States must be met with force, and that once the hatchet of war had been raised, "we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi...in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them."

And we have Andrew Jackson overseeing the scalping of as many as 800 slaughtered Creek Indians at Tohopeka (Horseshoe Bend), and bragging of preserving the "sculps" of those he killed in battle. And then, during the Second Seminole War, we have Jackson admonishing the troops to "capture or destroy" all the nation's women and children.

Open and deliberate calls for mass murder and destruction of entire Indian peoples were common. So, for instance, during the laying of the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Montana territory, the area's chief of Indian affairs noted that if the Sioux (Lakota and Dakota) peoples continued to "molest" the laying of the track and the progress symbolized by it, a military force should be sent to punish them "even to annihilation."

In other words, that widespread death of indigenous peoples was the desired (thus intended) outcome of conquest is hard to deny. To suggest that no such intent existed, simply because so many millions succumbed to disease ignores not only that such diseases were welcomed and celebrated (and occasionally spread deliberately), but also implies that had Indian folk not died from disease, they would have been allowed to live and remain on their lands. Yet we know this is not true, any more than the Nazis would have allowed those Jews who died in the camps from typhus to live, had the disease never taken its toll. That disease made the land-clearing and conquest easier--and relieved the white man of the burden of having to actually fight for their spoils in many cases--hardly relieves the beneficiaries of the moral weight of such an end.

What is especially sad is that by excusing genocide, Charen and Medved (and others) perpetuate our identification with those who did the killing and thieving, rather than either the victims, or even the members of the dominant culture who stood against such depravities. Modern-day whites, for instance, could choose to identify with those persons of European descent who stood up against the taking of indigenous land and lives: people like Bartolome de las Casas, Jeremiah Evarts, or Helen Hunt Jackson, just to name a few. But we can hardly feel a kinship with such folks if we know nothing of them--and we know nothing of them, or little, because our schools have been so busy telling us of the heroism and greatness of the architects of genocide, rather than encouraging a connection with those who stood up and said no. That such whites have existed however, in all times and places during the spread of white supremacy, suggests there has always been a different path that we of European background could have chosen.

If we are to be thankful at this time of year, we should be thankful for their example. We should be thankful that within us resides the spark of decency that animated their resistance to the plans of the colonial elite, and later the Washingtons, Jeffersons and Jacksons of their day. We are capable of so much better than they, and we deserve far better role models than we have been offered up to now, by our teachers, or by syndicated columnists and talk-show hosts more interested in covering up evil than celebrating true bravery.

Here is my latest: a satirical riff on the whole "post-racial America" stuff we've been hearing lately, ever since the election. Please pass it around!


In Search of Post-Racial America
By Tim Wise
November 21, 2008

I have to admit, I was disappointed. After all, to hear lots of folks tell it we are now living in "post-racial America," all because Barack Obama is to become the nation's 44th president in a couple of months. So, imagine my surprise when I contacted the labor department, in search of evidence to sustain the post-racial America thesis, only to discover that blacks, Latinos, and indigenous folks are still three times as likely as whites to be poor and twice as likely to be unemployed, and that black men with college degrees were still earning 30% less than their white counterparts--exactly the same as was the case on November 3rd! When they told me that black men with high school diplomas were still more likely to be out of work than white male dropouts, well, I damn near fell out of my seat.

And imagine my shock when, upon contacting the Border Patrol, in an attempt to determine when they would be re-deploying large segments of their force to the Canadian border (since, in a post-racial America, we wouldn't want to concentrate all our anti-immigrant efforts on brown-skinned folks), my query was met with a laugh, and an assurance that no such redeployment would be taking place.

And imagine how stunned I was upon getting off the phone with a staffer at the Commerce Department, who informed me that, just as was the case prior to November 4, businesses owned by white men were still receiving about 91% of all government contracts. I had argued with him, insisting that surely huge chunks of that money had been redistributed to black and brown-owned firms now that Obama was president-elect, but they stuck to their story. Nope, they promised. Nothing had changed.

Still convinced we were living in a post-racial America (after all, why would they say it on the TV if it weren't the case?), I hopped in my car and headed out to the suburbs, confident that I would find evidence of our post-raciality in such places as these.

First, I stopped off at the nearest Home Depot, figuring that I would encounter a veritable flood of dark-skinned citizenry, newly relocated to these previously white spaces, and intent on gathering the materials needed for their latest home improvement project. But nope, as far as the eye could see it was white folks with the lumber, and the paint swatches, and the energy-efficient halogen lighting, and the shiny gas grills.

Undaunted, I drove to a brand new subdivision, got out of my car, walked over to one of the just-finished homes, and began scraping little bits of paint from the Hardie-Board siding.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" came the angry contractor's voice from behind me.

Startled, but confident in my mission, I explained myself happily. "Just getting a few paint flecks from the house here," I offered. "No big deal, you won't even miss them."

"What for?" he asked.

"Well, I'm gathering evidence to prove that we're living in a post-racial America. If it's true--and I'm sure it is, I mean, look at all the Obama stickers in the neighborhood--then I expect to find really large levels of lead in this paint, just like in urban neighborhoods where most of the residents are poor folks of color!"

"Hey now, whoa, there is no lead in this paint, I assure you," he spat back, insulted at my insinuation. "In fact," he continued, "this is hypo-allergenic, non-toxic, recycled, tofu-based paint with absolutely no volatile organic compounds."

"No VOCs?" I replied. "Ok, but then, if you're not using any toxic materials for this housing, what are you putting in the hazardous waste incinerator?"

"What hazardous waste incinerator?" he asked, with a screwed-up look on his face.

"Hah," I answered. "That was almost convincing how you said that. Like you don't know! Good one."

The contractor turned around and walked off, acting confused. But I knew there had to be an incinerator around there somewhere. I mean, this is post-racial America! In racial America, pretty much all the waste sites--dumps and incinerators--were in communities of color, and the typical host neighborhood for such sites had twice as many people of color as the typical neighborhood without one. But now, with Obama runnin' things, I just knew they had started putting some of them out here where the white and more affluent folks lived.

Maybe it's over in the strip mall, behind the Applebees, I thought to myself, and headed out to uncover the truth.

On my way there, I decided to further test out the post-racial America theory by driving through the bucolic neighborhood real slow-like, bumpin' some L'il Wayne from the speakers, figuring that in a post-racial America, the local cops would want to pull me over, ask me what I was doin' out there, maybe search my trunk and throw me across the hood of the car just for fun. Ya know, the way they used to do black men. But strangely, nothing happened. Pure coincidence, I thought to myself. I'm sure that if I had some spinnin' rims, they'd have stopped me. I mean, damn, this is post-racial America.

About half-way to the Applebees, (aka the incinerator), my car ran out of gas. I had been so excited about unearthing the proof of our new racial nirvana, that I'd forgotten to pay attention to how low the fuel gauge was before I left the city. Upset, but undeterred, I decided to walk over to the busiest intersection and see if I could wave down a taxi. I knew it might be tough, both because there aren't that many taxis in the 'burbs, and, let's face it, in post-racial America, it might prove tough getting a cab when you're a white guy, but honestly, what choice did I have?

In what I'm sure was just a spot of really good luck, the first cab pulled over.

"To the incinerator please," I asked.

"The what?" he replied.

"The incinera-" I started to explain, but then I realized that the driver appeared to be a fairly recent immigrant, who spoke somewhat halting English, and maybe wasn't up on our waste disposal habits here in the states.

"Applebees would be fine, thank you." I finished.

As we drove I noticed that he had a small Somali flag on his dashboard. Seeing a great opportunity to discuss the whole post-racial thing with a person of color--and a newly-arrived one at that--I took advantage of the opening.

"So, you're originally from Somalia, huh?" I asked.

"Yes I am," he replied. "I just came to America five months ago."

"Wow, great timing!" I shot back.

"What do you mean?" he asked, appearing stumped.

"Well," I replied, "I mean, you only had to live in racial America for like, half a year--not even--and now, bam, it's like, we're all post-racial and stuff. Pretty cool."

The look on his face suggested he hadn't gotten the news about our newfound racial ecumenism.

"Oh snap!" I said (because see, in post-racial America, white guys can say things like oh snap and it's all good), "You hadn't heard? Oh yeah, hundreds of years of straight-up oppression? Done! Even-Steven! Man, you picked a great time to come. Oh, and are you Muslim?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, seemingly worried about where I was going with all this.

"That rocks!" I noted. "So, did your flowers get delivered yet?"

"Flowers? What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Oh yeah, see, in the new America, we've also moved past that whole religious bigotry thing, and the whole racialization of Muslims thing. Yep, so now, instead of being accused of terrorism, y'all are gonna get a dozen roses each week, and two dozen during Ramadan."

"Get out of my cab, you're a crazy man!" the driver shouted.

I felt bad that I'd upset him, but I don't blame him for thinking I was crazy. He'd probably never heard anyone say "y'all" before.

I walked the rest of the way to the Applebees, and never did find that pesky incinerator. But my time in the burbs wasn't totally wasted. There was still one more way to prove we were living in a post-racial society, and I intended to take advantage of it.

So I walked into Applebees, and immediately began filling out a job application. See, in the pre-November 4th America, job applicants with white-sounding names were 50% more likely to get called back for an interview than those with black-sounding names, according to a huge study by economists at MIT and the University of Chicago. But that was ancient history now: so pre-Obama. A newfound confidence washed over me as I put the finishing touches on my app. Yessir, Jamal Washington is ready and willing to be the best damned waiter in Applebees entire history!

After getting gas for my car I headed home to check the answering machine, certain that the restaurant's shift manager would already have called, excited about the chance to hire anyone named Jamal. But there were no messages.

Just then I heard a knock at the door. It was the mail carrier, who informed me that an envelope had fallen out on his route, and since it was addressed to me, he wanted to make sure I got it. It was a little beaten up, but the content was clear. It was a solicitation from a local mortgage lender, encouraging me to take out a sub-prime equity loan.

"Honey, come quick!" I shouted to my wife.

"What is it dear?" she asked in reply.

"See," I shot back confidently. "I told you we were living in a post-racial America. They're even pushing predatory loans to white folks now!"

Though my wife is not convinced, I for one am sleeping better at night.

Are Words (and History) That Hard to Understand?
A Final Response to the More-Radical-Than-Thou Critique of Obama Supporters
By Tim Wise
November 11, 2008

Maybe it's my fault. I think I write pretty clearly, but perhaps I don't. In the last few days, ever since I counseled both excitement at the post-election possibilities for progressive activism, and caution at the risk of over-exuberance, it seems as though some on the left with a heavy investment in their self-righteous sense of radicalism have allowed their personal hatred of all things Democrat and all-things-mainstream-politics to get in the way of deciphering words on a page.

So although I made it very clear that Obama's election by itself would change very little, and that it was up to us to steer Obama's supporters into progressive activism, to hear some tell it, I am a starry-eyed bourgeois liberal who refuses to see the inherent evil of Barack Obama. Whatever. I haven't the time or inclination to play a game of who's the bigger radical with some of these folks: people who have told me that rather than voting, voluntary dumpster-diving is a revolutionary act (or who miss how whites who do it are abusing their privilege, since folks of color who do that shit are prosecuted for trespassing), or who still use words like bourgeois, and yet can't understand why regular folks can't figure out what the hell they're talking about.

Anyway, I never suggested that Obama was likely to usher in much in the way of progressive reforms or changes. I do believe he will be nominally liberal, and far preferable to McCain/Palin. But ultimately, I am of the opinion that he (as with any president) will only move left if forced to do so. That work is ours to do, but instead of reaching out and speaking to Obama supporters in a way that recognizes their exuberance, honors it, and tries to move them into more productive activity than mere electoral campaigning, these folks would prefer to mock them, suggest their stupidity, and call them names, such as "listless hipsters" (my favorite), "cultists," "Obamaniacs," "Limousine LIberals," or "shills" for the system. Good move: insult millions of people who--like it or not--have been inspired by Obama, and expect them to join your movement for real social transformation. Good luck with that. Just because we on the left haven't been able to inspire much lately is no reason to hate on those who have, just because they aren't sufficiently down with our view of the world.

Sometimes those who have harshly condemned my position on this matter prove themselves to be rank hypocrites as well. So, for instance, consider writer and activist Paul Street, who has said my criticism of those who see no difference between McCain and Obama is evidence of my being "increasingly unglued." This, coming from a guy who four years ago penned a piece in which he warned the left about making arguments of equivalence between Bush and Kerry. In other words, in 2004, Paul Street thought the left should recognize the real differences between the two parties, even though he (and I) both know those differences are not large enough, but apparently that recognition is no longer valuable. Street even suggested back then that the reason the left should be careful about equivalizing the two candidates in 2004 was because doing so would royally piss off black folks, who were quite clear that there was a difference. Oh, but acting like there is no difference between McCain and the black guy should play well with them Paul. Thanks for that clarification. Moving on.

In my previous pieces I made the point that just as JFK was center-right in orientation, and yet, young people inspired by him moved much further to the left over the next fifteen years and made a huge difference in this nation, so too could that happen now. No one who has criticized my previous pieces has seen fit to respond to that. Because they can't. It is historically inarguable and so they must ignore it. Rather, they point out that when Bill Clinton was president the left didn't sufficiently pressure him to do very much (and even caved on some things). While this is true, they ignore both the possibility that we may have learned something from that sorry capitulation, and that Obama is far more like JFK in his effect on the public than he is like Clinton. Clinton never inspired this much enthusiasm, which is likely why he seemed so bitter on the campaign trail, even on those few occasions when he managed to say nice things about Barack Obama. He knows the difference quite well, apparently, and that's why he's angry.

More to the point, I find this line of argument--that the liberals and progressives will just fold up like a cheap tent in the face of Obama because he promises "change"--to be not only condescending but problematic in terms of where it leads us. If that position is followed to its logical conclusion, one would then have to support only the most right-wing, even fascist forces for president, just on the hope that the obvious clarity of their pernicious plans would "wake up" the masses, as opposed to how they will be lulled to sleep by a well-spoken liberal. In other words, this thinking leads to the classically stupid and venal position that things have to get worse before they get better, and that any reformism is bad because it only props up the system. Not only has this position not been vindicated even once in history--not even once--but it is flatly contradicted by it. When things get worse, they just get worse. People don't become revolutionaries when things are really bad. They are too busy trying to stay alive at that point. Of course, the kinds of people who make up the more-radical-than-thou part of the left tend to be well-educated, and if poor, only so as a lifestyle choice, rather than as a result of systemic oppression. So they won't be the ones impacted most by the kinds of leaders they seem to think will be best, if only because they will highlight for all to see the horrors of the system. It will be someone else who suffers for the fulfillment of their dialectic. How convenient.

And what's especially funny about this "Oh now the libs will all go to sleep and movements will be weaker than ever" routine is that those performing it seem to be suggesting that activism is much bolder and more effective when the enemy is clear. But is that so? Have I missed the ass-kicking that the left has given to Bush these past eight years? Exactly what have we accomplished against this very obvious enemy of the Constitution, and economic justice, and a just foreign policy, which couldn't have been accomplished against, say, Al Gore or John Kerry? Nothing, absolutely nothing. There is virtually nothing on which he has not gotten his way, and none of our epic and redundant (and predictable) antiwar protests have done a thing to change the course of these wars we're in. That Obama may not be pressured any more effectively than W has been (though that remains to be seen) isn't the point. The point is, we haven't built a mass movement in the repressive and reactionary environment that has existed since 2000, so how could it get much worse?

If these barbiturate leftists would take even a momentary glance at history they would notice that the most effective organizing in this country's past occurred in the '30s when a relatively liberal administration was in power, and in the early-to-mid-'60s, when the same thing was true. And why? Because of an uptick in hope, which allowed people to believe that pressure might pay off for once. It's called rising expectations theory: when expectations begin to rise, people become more active, not less so, and even if those expectations are somewhat dashed, this can often lead to positive outcomes, as frustration mounts, the gap between aspiration and ultimate achievement becomes obvious, and folks decide to ratchet up the protest even more than before. This is why the left was stronger in the moderately liberal '60s than the relatively repressive '50s, for instance.

What is most fascinating to me is that the leftists who rail on Obama seem to be making two oddly inconsistent arguments: on the one hand, that Obama is a shill because he doesn't embrace a left agenda, but on the other, that real change comes not from presidents but from the people. The last of these is correct, but to the extent it is, there is no point in making a big deal of Obama's inadequacies. If it's not about him in the first place, then all that remains is for us to get busy, and meet liberal Democrats where they are. Or, we can preen as moral superiors because we've read Bakunin, and Zerzan, and Chomsky, or because we once called a cop a pig to his face in Seattle or some such thing.

Here's something for the Obama-bashers on the left to ponder: old-line civil rights activists (who have put their life on the line for justice far more often than the critics have in most cases) believe Obama's win is meaningful. Many black nationalists and Afrocentric scholars believe it to be meaningful. Radical scholars in the black community think it's significant. Community organizers in oppressed communities, even though they know that the real work is yet to be done, are overwhelmingly saying it matters, all over the country. Perhaps they're all suckers. Perhaps they, and the millions of folks of color in particular who are excited about this moment, are just stupid. Perhaps the Greens are just smarter, perhaps the white radical anarchist or other left collective down the road has figured it all out in ways the silly folks of color just can't manage to accomplish, or perhaps the Revolutionary Communist Party is every bit as brilliant as they believe themselves to be. But I doubt it.

I just wish that I knew what the barbiturate left's strategy was for building the movement. Hell, at this point, I'd be glad just to know what the hell they even think the movement is fighting for. It doesn't appear to me that even this little detail has been figured out yet. And we wonder why the right has been getting the better of us for years?

Some things just aren't that difficult to understand.

Some Cyanide to Go With That Whine?
Obama's Victory and The Rage of the Barbiturate Left
By Tim Wise
November 10, 2008

My political entry into the left (and by this I mean the real left, beyond the Democratic Party) came a little more than twenty years ago in New Orleans, when, as a college student I became involved in the fight against U.S. intervention in Central America. In particular, the groups of which I was a part sought to end military aid to the death squad governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, and to block support for the contra thugs our nation was arming in Nicaragua, who by that time had already killed about 30,000 civilians in their war with the nominally socialist Sandinista government.

It was the first place where I came into contact with folks who defined themselves as radicals (I had grown up in Nashville, after all, where at that time, even finding "out" liberals was sometimes a challenge), and where I got to experience all the fascinating permutations of Marxism that the left had to offer. In addition to unaffiliated socialists (which I considered myself to be at the time), there were Trotskyites, old-line Leninists, Maoists, and even some bizarre Stalinists in the bunch. Excluding from consideration those among this number who turned out to be FBI spies, there were still plenty of real and interesting ideologues who had valuable insights to offer, even for those of us who didn't swallow their particular party line.

But despite being interesting, these folks also managed, at least for me, to demonstrate one of the key problems with the left in the U.S. Namely, for the sake of ideological purity few within the professional left expressed any joy about life, or any emotion whatsoever that wasn't rooted in negativity. They were like the political equivalent of quaaludes: guaranteed to bring you down from whatever partly optimistic place you might find yourself from time to time.

This was never so evident as the day I hopped into a car with one of the Stalinoids (a member of something called the Albanian Liberation League, which viewed the brutal regime of Enver Hoxha as a worker's paradise), and headed downtown for a rally to protest Contra aid. Once in the car, I asked about the music playing from his stereo. What was it? I wanted to know. He quickly explained that it was Albanian folk music, and the only music he listened to. I made some joke about how strange it was to be living in one of the greatest musical towns on Earth and yet to restrict oneself to a single genre of music (especially that favored by Albanian sheepherders), to which my revolutionary friend responded with a grunt and a scowl. Of course, because Comrade Stalin never much liked jazz.

The humorlessness of the far left--to which I remain connected ideologically if not organizationally--has always struck me as one of its greatest weaknesses. People like to laugh, they like to smile, they like to be joyful, and an awful lot of hardened leftists seem almost utterly incapable of doing any of these things. It's as if they have all taken a pledge that there should be no laughter until the revolution, or some such shit. No positivity, no hope, no happiness so long as people are still poor and exploited and being murdered by cops, and victimized by United States militarism, or performing as wage slaves for global capital, or eating meat, or driving cars. And they wonder why the left is so weak?

Now, in the wake of Barack Obama's victory these barbiturate leftists are back in full effect, lecturing the rest of us about how naive we are for having any confidence whatsoever in him, or for voting at all, since "the Democrats and Republicans are all the same," and he supports FISA and the war with Afghanistan, and all kinds of other messed up policies just like many on the right. Those of us who find any significance in the election of a man of color in a nation founded on white supremacy are fools who "drank the kool-aid," unlike they, whose clear-headed radical consciousness leads them to recognize the superior morality of Ralph Nader, or the pure "scientific wisdom of chairman Bob Avakian," or the intellectual profundity of their favorite graffiti bomb: "If voting changed anything it would be illegal." Yeah, and if body piercings and anarchy tats changed anything, they would be too, and then what would some folks do to be "different?" (Note: there is nothing wrong with either type of adornment, but getting either or both doesn't make you a revolutionary, any more than voting, that's all I'm saying).

These are people who think being agitators is about pissing people off more than reaching out to them. So they pull out their "Buck Fush" signs at their repetitively irrelevant antiwar demonstrations, or their posters with W sporting a Hitler mustache, because that tends to work so well at convincing folks to oppose the slaughter in Iraq. But effectiveness isn't what matters to them. What matters to them is raging against the machine for the sake of rage itself. Their message is simple: everything sucks, the earth is doomed, all cops are brutal, all soldiers are baby-killers, all people who work for corporations are evil, blah, blah, blah, right on down the line. It's as if much of the left has become co-dependent with despondency, addicted to its own isolation, and enamored of its moral purity and unwillingness to work with mere liberals. In the name of ideological asceticism, they spurn the hard work of movement building and inspiring others to join the struggle, snicker at those foolish enough to not understand or appreciate their superior philosophical constructs, and then act shocked when their movements and groups accomplish exactly nothing. But honestly, who wants to join a movement filled with people who look down on you as a sucker?

If we on the left want those liberals to join the struggle for social justice and liberation, we're going to have to meet people where they are, not where Bakunin would want them to be. For those who can't get excited about Obama, so be it, but at least realize that there are millions of people who, for whatever reason, are; people who are mobilized and active, and that energy is looking for an outlet. Odds are, that outlet won't be the Obama administration, since few of them will actually land jobs with it. So that leaves activist formations, community groups and grass-roots struggles. That leaves, in short, us. Just as young people inspired by the center-right JFK candidacy in 1960 ultimately moved well beyond him on their way to the left and made up many of the most committed and effective activists of the 60s and early 70s, so too can such growth occur now among the Obama faithful. But not if we write them off.

At some point, the left will have to relinquish its love affair with marginalization. We'll have to stop behaving like those people who have a favorite band they love, and even damn near worship, until that day when the band actually begins to sell a lot of records and gain a measure of popularity, at which point they now suck and have obviously sold out: the idea being that if people like you, you must not be doing anything important, and that obscurity is the true measure of integrity. Deconstructing the psychological issues at the root of such a pose is well above my pay grade, but I'm sure would prove fascinating.

The simple fact is, people are inspired by Obama not because they view him as especially progressive per se (except in relation to some of the more retrograde policies of the current president, and in relation to where they feel, rightly, McCain/Palin would have led us), but because most folks respond to optimism, however ill-defined it may be. This is what the Reaganites understood, and for that matter it's what Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement knew too. It wasn't anger and pessimism that broke the back of formal apartheid in the south, but rather, hope, and a belief in the fundamental decency of people to make a change if confronted by the yawning chasm between their professed national ideals and the bleak national reality.

In other words, what the 60s freedom struggle took for granted, but which the cynical barbiturate left refuses to concede, is the basic goodness of the people of this nation, and the ability of the nation, for all of its faults (and they are legion) to change. Look at pictures of the freedom riders in 1961, or the volunteers during Freedom Summer of 1964 and notice the dramatic difference between them and some of the seething radicals of today--whose radicalism is almost entirely about style and image more than actual analysis and movement building. In the case of the former, even as they stared down mobs intent on injuring or killing them, and even as they knew they might be murdered, they smiled, they laughed, they sang, they found joy. In the case of the latter, one most often notices an almost permanent scowl, a dour and depressing affect devoid of happiness, unable to appreciate life until the state is smashed altogether and everyone is subsisting on a diet of wheatgrass, bean curd and tempeh.

Hell, maybe I'm just missing the strategic value of calling people "useful idiots," or likening them to members of a cult, the way some leftists have done recently with regard to Obama supporters. Or maybe it's just that being a father, I have to temper my contempt for this system and its managers with hope. After all, as a dad (for me at least), it's hard to look at my children every day and think, "Gee, it sucks that the world is so screwed up, and will probably end in a few years from resource exploitation...Oh well, I sure hope my daughters have a great day at school!"

Fatherhood hasn't made me any less radical in my analysis or desire to see change. In fact, if anything, it has made me more so. I am as angry now as I've ever been about injustice, because I can see how it affects these children I helped to create, and for whom I am now responsible. But anger and cynicism do not make good dance partners. Anger without hope, without a certain faith in the capacity of we the people to change our world is a sickness unto death. It is consuming, like a flesh-eating disease, and whose first victim is human compassion. While I would never counsel too much confidence in far-right types to join the struggle for justice--and there, I think skepticism is well-warranted--if we can't conjure at least a little optimism for the ability of liberals and Democrats to come along for the ride and to do the work, then what is the point? Under such a weighty and pessimistic load as this, life simply becomes unbearable. And if there is one thing we cannot afford to do now--especially now--it is to give up the will to live and to fight, another day.

Good, and Now Back to Work:
Avoiding Both Cynicism and Overconfidence in the Age of Obama
By Tim Wise
November 5, 2008

Tonight, after Barack Obama was confirmed as the nation's president-elect, I looked in on my children, as they lay sleeping. Though they are about as politically astute as kids can be, having reached only the ages of 7 and 5, there is no way they will be able to truly appreciate what has just happened in the land they call home. They do not possess the sense of history, or indeed, even a clear understanding of what history means, so as to adequately process what happened this evening, as they slumbered. Even as our oldest cast her first grade vote for Obama in school today, and even as our youngest has become somewhat notorious for pointing to pictures of Sarah Palin on magazines and saying, "There's that crazy lady who hates polar bears," they remain, still, naive as to the nation they have inherited. They do not really understand the tortured history of this place, especially as regards race. Oh they know more than most--to live as my children makes it hard not to--but still, the magnitude of this occasion will likely not catch up to them until Barack Obama is finishing at least his first, if not his second term as president.

But that's OK. Because I know what it means, and will make sure to tell them.

And before detailing what I perceive that meaning to be (both its expansiveness and limitations) let me say this, to some of those on the left--some of my friends and longtime compatriots in the struggle for social justice--who yet insist that there is no difference between Obama and McCain, between Democrats and Republicans, between Biden and Palin: Screw you.

If you are incapable of mustering pride in this moment, and if you cannot appreciate how meaningful this day is for millions of black folks who stood in lines for up to seven hours to vote, then your cynicism has become such an encumbrance as to render you all but useless to the liberation movement. Indeed, those who cannot appreciate what has just transpired are so eaten up with nihilistic rage and hopelessness that I cannot but think that they are a waste of carbon, and actively thieving oxygen that could be put to better use by others.

This election does indeed matter. No, it is not the same as victory against the forces of injustice, and yes, Obama is a heavily compromised candidate, and yes, we will have to work hard to hold him accountable. But it matters nonetheless that he, and not the bloodthirsty bomber McCain, or the Christo-fascist, Palin, managed to emerge victorious.

Those who say it doesn't matter weren't with me on the south side of Chicago this past week, surrounded by a collection of amazing community organizers who go out and do the hard work every day of trying to help create a way out of no way for the marginalized. All of them know that an election is but a part of the solution, a tactic really, in a larger struggle of which they are a daily part; and none of them are so naive as to think that their jobs are now to become a cakewalk because of the election of Barack Obama. But all of them were looking forward to this moment. They haven't the luxury of believing in the quixotic campaigns of Dennis Kucinich, or waiting around for the Green Party to get its act together and become something other than a pathetic caricature, symbolized by the utterly irrelevant and increasingly narcissistic presence of Ralph Nader on the electoral scene. And while Cynthia McKinney remains a pivotal figure in the struggle, the party to which she was tethered this year shows no more ability to sustain movement activity than it was eight years ago, and most everyone working in oppressed communities in this nation knows it.

It's like this y'all: Jesse Jackson was weeping openly on national television. This is a man who was with Dr. King when he was murdered and he was bawling like a baby. So don't tell me this doesn't matter.

John Lewis--who had his head cracked open, has been arrested more times, and has probably spilled far more blood for the cause of justice than all the white, dreadlocked, self-proclaimed anarchists in this country combined--couldn't be more thrilled at what has happened. If he can see it, then frankly, who the hell are we not to?

Those who say this election means nothing, who insist that Obama, because he cozied up to Wall Street, or big business, is just another kind of evil no different than any other, are in serious risk of political self-immolation, and it is a burning they will richly deserve. That the victorious presidential candidate is actually a capitalist (contrary to the fevered imaginations of the right) is no more newsworthy than the fact that rain falls down and grass grows skyward. It is to be properly placed in the "no shit Sherlock," file. That anyone would think it possible for someone who didn't raise hundreds of millions of dollars to win--at this time in our history at least--only suggests that some on the left would prefer to engage politics from a place of aspirational innocence, rather than in the real world, where battles are won or lost.

So let us be clear as to what tonight meant:

It was a defeat for the right-wing echo chamber and its rhetorical stormtroopers, foremost among them Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.

It was a defeat for the crazed mobs ever-present at McCain/Palin rallies, what with their venomous libels against Obama, their hate-addled brains spewing forth one after another racist and religiously chauvinistic calumny upon his head and those of his supporters.

It was a defeat for the internet rumor-pimps who insisted to all they could reach with a functioning e-mail address that Obama was not really a citizen. Or perhaps he was, but he was a Muslim, or perhaps not a Muslim, but probably a black supremacist, or maybe not that either, but surely the anti-christ, and most definitely a baby-killer.

It was a defeat for those who believed McCain and Palin would be delivered the victory by the hand of almighty God, because their theological and eschatological vacuity so regularly gets in the way of their ability to think. As such, it was a setback for the religious fascists in the far-right Christian community whose belief that God is on their side has always made them especially dangerous. Now, having lost, perhaps at least some of these will be forced to ponder what went wrong. If we're lucky, perhaps some will suffer the kind of crisis of faith that often prefaces a complete nervous breakdown. Either way, it's nice just to ruin their Young-Earth-Creationist-I-Have-an-Angel-on-My-Shoulder day.

It was a defeat for the demagogues who tried in so many ways to push the buttons of white racism--the old-fashioned kind, or what I call Racism 1.0--by using thinly-veiled racialized language throughout the campaign. Appeals to Joe Six-Pack, "values voters," blue-collar voters, or hockey moms, though never explicitly racialized, were transparent to all but the most obtuse, as were terms like "terrorist" when used to describe Obama. Likewise, the attempt to race-bait the economic crisis by blaming it on loans to poor folks of color through the Community Reinvestment Act, or community activists like the folks at ACORN, failed, and this matters. No, it doesn't mean that white America has rejected racism. Indeed, I have been quite deliberate for months about pointing out the way that racism 1.0 may be traded in only to be replaced by racism 2.0 (which allows whites to still view most folks of color negatively but carve out exceptions for those few who make us feel comfortable and who we see as "different"). And yet, that tonight was a drubbing for that 1.0 version of racism still matters.

And tonight was a victory for a few things too.

It was a victory for youth, and their social and political sensibilities. It was the young, casting away the politics of their parents and even grandparents, and turning the corner to a new day, perhaps naively, and too optimistic about the road from here, but nonetheless in a way that has historically almost always been good for the country. Much as youth were inspired by a relatively moderate John F. Kennedy (who was, on balance, far less progressive than Obama in many ways), and much as they then formed the frontline troops for so much of the social justice activism of the following fifteen years, so too can such a thing be forseen now. That Kennedy may have been quite restrained in his social justice sensibilities did not matter: the young people whose energy he helped unleash took things in their own direction and outgrew him rather quickly in their progression to the left.

Tonight was also a victory for the possibility of greater cross-racial alliance building. Although Obama failed to win most white votes, and although it is no doubt true that many of the whites who did vote for him nonetheless hold to any number of negative and racist stereotypes about the larger black and brown communities of this nation, it it still the case that black, brown and white worked together in this effort as they have rarely done before. And many whites who worked for Obama, precisely because they got to see, and hear, and feel the racist vitriol still animating far too many of our nation's people, will now be wiser for the experience when it comes to understanding how much more work remains to be done on the racial justice front. Let us build on that newfound knowledge, and that newfound energy, and create real white allyship with community-based leaders of color as we move forward in the years to come.

But now for the other side of things.

First and foremost, please know that none of these victories will amount to much unless we do that which needs to be done so as to turn a singular event about one man, into a true social movement (which, despite what some claim, it is not yet and has never been).

And so it is back to work. Oh yes, we can savor the moment for a while, for a few days, perhaps a week. But well before inauguration day we will need to be back on the job, in the community, in the streets, where democracy is made, demanding equity and justice in places where it hasn't been seen in decades, if ever. Because for all the talk of hope and change, there is nothing--absolutely, positively nothing--about real change that is inevitable. And hope, absent real pressure and forward motion to actualize one's dreams, is sterile and even dangerous. Hope, absent commitment is the enemy of change, capable of translating to a giving away of one's agency, to a relinquishing of the need to do more than just show up every few years and push a button or pull a lever.

This means hooking up now with the grass roots organizations in the communities where we live, prioritizing their struggles, joining and serving with their constituents, following leaders grounded in the community who are accountable not to Barack Obama, but the people who helped elect him. Let Obama follow, while the people lead, in other words.

For we who are white it means going back into our white spaces and challenging our brothers and sisters, parents, neighbors, colleagues and friends--and ourselves--on the racial biases that still too often permeate their and our lives, and making sure they know that the success of one man of color does not equate to the eradication of systemic racial inequity.

So are we ready for the heavy lifting? This was, after all, merely the warmup exercise, somewhat akin to stretching before a really long run. Or perhaps it was the first lap, but either way, now the baton has been handed to you, to us. We must not, cannot, afford to drop it. There is too much at stake.

The worst thing that could happen now would be for us to go back to sleep; to allow the cool poise of Obama's prose to lull us into slumber like the cool on the underside of the pillow. For in the light of day, when fully awake, it becomes impossible not to see the incompleteness of the task so far.

So let us begin.

PLEASE PASS THIS AROUND TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE!!!
___________


An Open Letter to the Undecided:
You're Better Than This and You Know It
By Tim Wise

To Whom It May Concern,

With so little time remaining before election day, and with so many things running through my mind--things that I'm hoping might, if presented correctly, somehow influence your vote--I hardly know where to begin. I guess I could speak to you about one or another public policy issue--perhaps health care, or education--and try to convince you that Barack Obama is the better choice. But I'm not going to do that. Not because I doubt that it's true, but because there's something more important to think about. It's about you, and who you are, and what you want to stand for and associate with come election day.

I won't try and change your mind about issues. My own ideological commitments are decidedly to the left, far more so than Barack Obama by the way (which is why I actually find it funny when folks suggest he's some far-out radical or socialist). I actually wish Obama were more bold in his progressivism, but many years ago I learned that when it came to presidential elections, I'd likely have to settle for voting for the candidate who I felt was better, even if they were far from my own ideal. I could spend the other 364 days fighting for what I believed in, without apology or compromise. Election day, for me, has always come to be about harm reduction: a political equivalent of the hippocratic oath. And that's OK.

I'm asking you now to make that same leap: to relinquish the need to be totally behind the person you vote for, and instead to make the best out of a situation that you may see as less than ideal, but which nonetheless posits a very serious choice in terms of which direction this nation travels, less so in terms of policy than in terms of tone, demeanor, and its overall political culture.

Because this election isn't just about taxes, or the war in Iraq, or energy policy, though it is all of those things. Honest and decent people can disagree about those subjects, as with any political issue. But this election is about the public face of the United States of America in the early twenty-first century. And when it comes to such a matter as this, the difference between an Obama and McCain vote couldn't be clearer.

If you don't believe me, I implore you to take a look at the numerous video clips of McCain and Palin's hardcore supporters (links embedded at the end of this letter) as they scream words of anger and hatred at Obama supporters who are merely standing with signs announcing their preference outside one or another McCain rally. These mobs, and that is what they are, are not merely people who disagree about issues with Senator Obama--which would be fine--but rather, they are persons who seem incapable of even seeing the humanity of their opponent, or his supporters. They are people whose vitriol and venom know few if any bounds. They are people who call him names that are only thinly-veiled racial slurs, who threaten him with violence, and who suggest that he is a "baby killer" whose election would destroy America. These are dangerous people, and what's important here, is that they are not like you.

If you agreed with this kind of rhetoric, I suspect you wouldn't be undecided, or perhaps merely leaning towards McCain. You would be a full-blown acolyte. That you are not suggests that you are trying to avoid the trap of overblown emotionalism. For that, I thank you. And for that reason I am asking you to consider that if you vote for McCain, you will not merely be voting for policies that you may prefer, but you will also be empowering some of these very forces visible in the videos. You will be casting your lot with them, making common cause with persons whose anger and rage threatens to tear the country apart at a time when we desperately need to come together to solve common problems. These forces, if victorious, would think their triumph a signal event, one that would give them a green light to ramp up the volume of their hatred even louder.

Although most McCain supporters are not like the thugs attending these rallies, surely it must give you pause to think that you could vote as they vote, that you might contribute to the election of a man whose base includes such persons as these. People who have verbally abused Obama campaigners canvassing door-to-door or on the phone, who suggest that we should "Bomb Obama," and who have spread vicious rumors about the candidate with no basis in fact. And through it all, Obama himself has sucked it up, smiled through it and tried to take the higher ground.

And so we return to that notion of the public face of our nation, which is on the line in two days. Do you want this nation to elect a man whose victory would be dependent on the kind of persons as you can see in these videos? People whose sole commodity is fear, contrasted with Obama supporters whose mantra of hope--however simplistic you may think it, and however vague it may indeed be--at least appeals to the better angels of our natures, and to the positive, constructive impulses that have animated the nation's people in their better moments.

Perhaps you think it unfair to link John McCain to the yahoos attending many of his events. Perhaps you feel that his status (self-proclaimed at least) as a maverick, would mean that, if elected, he would clearly distance himself from fringe wingnuts such as these. But you know what a real maverick would have done by now? A real maverick would already have distanced himself, clearly and repeatedly, from these folks. And John McCain has not. These videos have been bouncing around for weeks, and with the exception of one tepid comment about how both sides need to tone down the hostile rhetoric--which seemed to imply an equivalence between Obama supporters and the folks on those tapes that simply doesn't exist--McCain and Palin have said nothing. Rather, McCain said he was "proud" of the people at his rallies, including, apparently the kinds of people we can all witness spewing their bigotry for the world to see.

A real maverick would have said the following: "My friends, I want your vote, and I sincerely believe that I am the best man for this job. But if you are supporting me because you are afraid of having a black president, or because you believe my opponent to be a terrorist, or a Muslim (and you believe Muslims are evil and unqualified to hold office), or because you believe the long-since discredited rumors about him that have been bouncing around the internet, or if you wish him harm, either now or in the future, I am asking you not to vote for me. More than that, I am telling you not to. I am asking you to stay home on election day, because I don't want the support of people like you. If the only way I can win the presidency is on the backs of bigots, I'd rather not win."

Now THAT would have been a maverick move. It would have been a bold move, one filled with courage and honor and character. It would have cemented McCain's place in history as a man of principle. But he never said this, or anything remotely like it. He knows he can't win without the support of two groups: the crazies, and the undecideds. The first of these he feels confident he can hold. The second of these? Well, that's for you to decide. But for my money, I think you are not only smarter, but fundamentally more decent than that. On election day, please show the nation and the world that my faith in you was not misplaced.

Sincerely,

Tim Wise

LINKS TO McCAIN RALLIES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL20TdHjX2s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fbpZXivv-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLuI1NHpQnc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjxzmaXAg9E&feature=related

This is How Fascism Comes:
Reflections on the Cost of Silence
By Tim Wise
October 12, 2008

For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week--what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America--please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy.

If it comes--and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage has been so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will--this is how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers, but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortable shoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands. It will be heralded by up-dos, designer glasses, you-betcha folksiness and a disdain for big words or hard consonants.

If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America, from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, from simple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is better labeled ignorance, from "all-American" types whose patriotism is a dagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it so forsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded, choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country's origins.

If fascism comes, it will be ushered in by tailgaters at the big football game, by Joe Six Pack, who, upon finishing his sixth beer and belching forth the stench of a mediocre life lived, will gladly announce its arrival, so long as it comes with a steady supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon and hot dogs on the grill, and giant foam hands with a "We're Number 1" finger, some Mardi Gras beads and a good titty bar.

If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago.

If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said "grow good people," and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones.

If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the Left Behind series, several different copies of the Bible, and a plethora of romance novels.

If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel by persons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whose son they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapture them all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, after which point all those who don't think as they think will be burned in an eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itself fascistic--to love a God who would do such a thing is to love an abusive, sadistic and evil deity after all--so it should come as little surprise that their conception of the state would be equally authoritarian or worse.

If fascism comes it will be at the behest of those who hold a contempt for what they call "book learnin," who prefer Presidents who mispronounce basic words because they make them feel smarter, and who are looking for nothing so much as a commander-in-chief with whom they would enjoy having a beer, or two, or twelve at some backyard barbecue.

If fascism comes it will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio, by hosts whose cerebral inadequacies are more than made up for by their bellicosity, their bombast, their willingness to shout down those with whom they cannot argue, for argument requires knowledge, and this is a commodity with which they have not even a passing familiarity.

If fascism comes it will come wrapped in red,white and blue, carrying a crucifix and a shotgun, projecting its own sexual confusion and insecurity onto others, substituting volume for veracity and rage for reason, and landing on the New York Times best-seller list as a result.

If fascism comes it will have a pajama party at Ann Coulter's house, pop pills with Rush Limbaugh, and go gay-bashing with Michael Savage, all in the same weekend. And it will refuse to learn another language or get a passport, because doing either of those would make one cosmopolitan--which is just another word for "faggot."

If fascism comes it will come because a lot of people who aren't like the folks I'm talking about here, won't stand up to the ones who are. Because we're too busy, don't want to make waves, don't want to lose friends, or alienate family. It will come, in other words, because those who know better are cowards, more concerned with getting along, making nice, and being liked than with telling the truth, calling out evil and saving their country.

If fascism comes it will come because of the silence, and thus, collaboration of those who think themselves good, and certainly superior to the knuckle-draggers they can see on YouTube at the McCain rallies, but who in the end are no better and in some ways worse than they: after all, at least fascists stand up for what they believe in. They are telling us, in no uncertain terms what kind of United States they want and are willing to fight for, and maybe even to kill for. But many "progressives," many liberals, many of the so-called enlightened are doing nothing at all.

If fascism comes it will come because those liberals thought voting for Barack Obama was all they needed to do; it will come because they allowed themselves to believe that politics is what a person does every four years, but not at work, and not in the neighborhood, and not at the dinner table. Meanwhile, know-nothings filled with hate, nurtured on racial and religious bigotry and who have overdosed on the kind of hypernationalism that has always proved fatal to those places foolish or craven enough to allow it a foothold, talk of their visions for America at every opportunity. They raise their kids on that sickness, they build churches whose very foundation is rooted in that cancerous rot, and they will think nothing of steamrolling those who get in their way.

So when, exactly, do we fight back? When do we say enough? When do we stand up to our relative or friend who sends us the e-mail about Obama being a Manchurian Candidate or al-Qaeda sympathizer, or the one about the decency of Midwestern flood victims as opposed to those stranded after Katrina, or about how God was punishing New Orleans because of its tolerance of homosexuality, and tell them what we think: namely, that they are a bunch of racist, heterosexist loons, whose friendship or familial connection we neither want nor intend to pursue unless they get help. When do we decide that we love our country and humanity too much to allow these people one more day of decent sleep, one more day of self-assured confidence in their craziness and the willingness of the rest of us to just take it? When do we decide that every irrational, Jeezoid, racist thing that comes from their mouths will be attacked, will be rebutted, until they can no longer take for granted the ability to say any of it in mixed company without being called out?

Why, in the face of the fascism they would surely introduce if given the chance, are we intent on being so nice? Why are we not more offended? Offended not merely at what such persons say about others--like Obama, or Latino immigrants, or whatever--but even about we who look like them? After all, their open exhortations of racism presuppose that they are speaking for us, and that this kind of brain-dead ventilation is something to which all white folks should aspire as though it were virtually the essence of enlightenment.

If fascism comes it will come because we did not see in their actions a sufficient threat, or because we allowed ourselves to believe that it couldn't come, that our institutions were too strong, our people too good, for that to happen. If it comes it will come because we allowed ourselves to believe the rosy and optimistic version of America spun by Obama, without tempering that optimism with a clear-headed appraisal of the way that (sadly) a still huge number of Americans actually think: because we allowed the vehicle of our hopes to outrun the headlights of truth; because we convinced ourselves that we actually lived in the country of our aspirations, rather than the nation we have at present.

And if fascism doesn't come--if, rather, democracy does--it will come because good people said no. It will come because we saw in this moment the opportunity to demand the full measure of our humanity and to pour it forth upon the national soil. It will be because we understood that democracy isn't what you have, it's what you do. But if we are to issue that demand, if we are to stand straight and fulfill the potential we possess to do justice, we had best exercise the option quickly, for the opponents of justice are on the move. They are preparing to enter on the winds of our silence and indifference, and complacency. Let them find no quarter here.