The two worlds of race revisited: A meditation on race in the age of Obama

Daedalus

Volumn 140, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 11-27

  Early, Gerald ^a  

^a University in St Louis   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AFRICAN AMERICAN; ARTICLE; CULTURAL FACTOR; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNIC AND RACIAL GROUPS; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL PROBLEM; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL STATUS; UNITED STATES;

AFRICAN AMERICANS; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HUMANS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; POPULATION GROUPS; PREJUDICE; RACE RELATIONS; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; SOCIAL PROBLEMS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 79551599001     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/DAED_a_00055     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Liberalism and the Negro: A Round-Table Discussion," Commentary, March 1964, 27. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage International, 1990), 59; originally published in 1952.
2. Joe Klein, "Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President," Time, October 23, 2006.
3. A 2005 Gallup poll showed that despite the fact that con1/2dence in the police to protect citizens from crime had dropped across all demographics, a huge gulf still remained between blacks and whites: only 32 percent of blacks expressed con1/2dence in the police compared to 57 percent of whites.
4. Murder: New York City" (Murder Map), The New York Times, November 1, 2010.
5. The concern about crimes committed against members of the group might be best reflected in the numbers from a 2009 Gallup poll that showed only 42 percent of blacks thought their neighbor would return a lost wallet with whatever money it contained whereas 75 percent of whites thought their neighbor would.
6. Quoted in David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (New York: Knopf, 2010), 274.
7. John Hope Franklin, "The Two Worlds of Race: A Historical View," Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965), and reprinted in the present volume, pages 28-43.
8. Ibid.,899; reference is to the 1965 publication.
9. Daniel Patrick Moynihan feared that integration done too rapidly-a policy that would, in effect, be tantamount to an aggressive af1/2rmative action-would simply exacerbate racial relations by highlighsting how blacks lagged far behind whites. For instance, consider this passage from a letter Moynihan wrote in 1963 to Labor Secretary W.
10. Willard Wirtz: "For whatever it is worth, I am persuaded, and 1/2nd others such as Phil Hauser completely agree, that it would be a serious mistake from the Negro point of view to integrate the Northern school system at this time. The present level of achievement and family support among most Negroes is so far behind that of most white that any arti1/2cial effort to integrate the schools can only have the effect of consigning almost the entire Negro student body to the bottom of the class, with all the psychic injury that results;
11. Steven R. Weisman, ed., Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 60; italics in the original.
12. Dorothy Rabinowitz, "The Alien in the White House," The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2010.
13. Dinesh D'Souza, The Roots of Obama's Rage (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2010), 42. D'Souza fails to acknowledge anywhere in his book that his idea of understanding Obama as a disgruntled postcolonial was 1/2rst posited by Nigerian writer
14. L. E. Inkenga, in an article she wrote for the conservative website American Thinker; "Obama, the African Colonial," June 25, 2009. Inkenga offers the same psychobiographical reading of Obama's autobiography, Dreams from My Father.
15. for instance, Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). It would have been strange for the 1/2 rst blackman to have been elected president, particularly with Obama's con1/2guration of characteristics and abilities, and not have been seen as a redeemer, as something providential. Literary scholar and social theorist Dana D. Nelson argues that redeemer presidents are hardly new, that "we expect the president to do the work of democracy" and to be "the leader of democracy and its central agent." In this way, the public has come to believe that its sole political job is electing the "right" president, as if that is all we have to do to maintain democracy. As a "new," "transformational" candidate, Obama brilliantly exploited this tendency among voters in order to win the of1/2ce. Nelson's main argument is that we need to be concerned about the presidency having too much power and sandbagging democracy, as the executive branch is the only one of the three branches of government that is runand symbolized by an individual.
16. Dana D. Nelson, Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008; updated with a new preface, 2010), xiv. 13
17. Eugene Robinson, "What's Behind the Tea Party's Ire?" The Washington Post, November 2, 2010.
18. Historian and economist Bruce Bartlett did, in fact, blast Bush on these grounds in his book Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2006). The book was well received by many on the Right.
19. It is pointless to call the black people who are part of the Tea Party "Uncle Toms," as it is impossible to say that they are selling anyone out or that their political stances are selfevidently detrimental to blacks. One can plausibly argue that their involvement with the Right is helpful to blacks as a group, providing them with a voice and influence in other political spheres. Michael Steele's leadership of the Republican National Committee may, in some respects, be as strategically important to African Americans as a group as the Congressional Black Caucus has been. It is equally pointless to call black conservatives opportunists, as anyone actively espousing a political cause or identifying with a political faction can be accused of opportunism. This is particularly true on the Left, as that is the most socially approved political position for a black person to take, the position judged as representing true solidarity.
20. John Hope Franklin notes in his Dædalus essay that the phrase "Turning back the clock," popularly used by liberal and civil rights groups in opposition to conservative policies or conservative ideology, was used in the 1960s by Southern whites to describe how civil rights legislation would turn back the clock to the era of Reconstruction.
21. See Franklin, "The Two Worlds of Race," 917.
22. Amy Gardner, "Few Signs at Tea Party Rally Expressed Racially Charged Anti-Obama Themes," The Washington Post, October 14, 2010.
23. Lawrence Otis Graham's Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class (New York: HarperCollins, 1999) remains an insightful look at elitism among blacks. It may be that some (perhaps many) in the Tea Party dislike Obama because of his race, but one could make an equally plausible argument that they don't like him because he is an intellectual. His admirers are convinced he is an intellectual and love to promote the idea, as the quotation above from Valerie Jarrett illustrates. Or consider this response from Vice President Joe Biden when he was asked why Obama is perceived as aloof: "I think what it is is he is so brilliant. He is an intellectual"; Lisa DePaulo, "$#!% Joe Biden Says," gq, December 2010; emphasis in the original. There has always been a large swath of the American public that distrusts and dislikes intellectuals, particularly in leadership positions, thinking them elitist, controlling, and too theoretical for their own or anyone else's good. George W. Bush, who developed the demeanor of the plainspoken, at times thick-tongued antiintellectual, attended Yale University and Harvard Business School. During his presidency, it was commonly thought he was stupid and dogmatic, although many leftist critics tried to out him as an elitist with C grades playing the role of a good old boy. Karl Rove outed Bush as a voracious reader in his December 26, 2008,
24. Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Bush is a Book Lover." Bush read anywhere from 1/2fty to one hundred books a year while he was president. It seems more likely that both Obama and Bush, whatever the extent of their intellectual interests and skills, have developed personas-images-that they have found useful as politicians. Obama and his brain trust may greatly emphasize his intellect as a way of thwarting doubts about his mental abilities because he is a black man, as a way to redirect the aspirations of young blacks, for whom he could be a role model, away from popular culture, and as a way to make whites feel comfortable voting for him by convincing them they are voting for an "exceptional," not an "ordinary," Negro: voting for him was not an "af1/2rmative action" vote but a "merit" vote. Bush may have downplayed his own intellectual pretensions as a way of reaching a large swath of the conservative merican electorate that dislikes and distrusts intellectuals. It is interesting to note that both Bush and Obama are considered arrogant by their political enemies.
25. Jason Riley, "The naacp's Unhealthy Tea Party Obsession," The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2010.
26. Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American-May 14-15, 1965," Dædalus 95 (1) (Winter 1966): 408. "Liberalism and the Negro," 41. Weisman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 79.
27. Liberalism and the Negro"; emphasis in the original.
28. In a 1965 memo to presidential aide Harry McPherson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan sums up liberalism's internal conflict thus: "American democracy is founded on the twin ideals of liberty and equality.Liberty has been the American middle-class ideal par excellence. It has enjoyed the utmost social prestige. Not so equality. Men who would carelessly give their lives for Liberty, are appalled by equality." Moynihan points out that equality movements in the United States have met with great opposition, far more than movements for liberty, that is, the right not to be denied civic access. Moynihan continues, in speaking about the anti-colonialism movement, "I sometimes have the feeling that part of the mutual uncomprehension that is so evident in the encounter of Americans with that world [the Third World] is that we are talking liberty and they are talking equality." See Weisman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 103-104.
29. Liberalism and the Negro," 37-38.
30. Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American-May 14-15,1965," 436.
31. During the Academy conference, Ellison reacted unfavorably to some of Nathan Glazer's remarks from the "Liberalism and the Negro" roundtable; see page 408 in the transcript.