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I've been thinking about this for a long time now and it continues to bother me, so here it comes: a load of blather about the 2004 election and race. I am aware that this will probably generate either the silence of distinterest or the flames of defensiveness, but I'm taking the risk. We need to do some serious thinking about this if we do not want another 4 years of Bush.
First off, what I mean by "we," on this nasty gray Monday morning on which I, unlike 90% of the country, am at work: I'm talking about the American white left. I would use the term "white liberals" except that I personally do not identify as a liberal any more, having moved past that to "radical" and through "radical" to "crackpot." I'm talking about the white people in this country who are intellectually and ideologically committed to liberty and justice for all, yes all including Americans who are not white or are poor. I'm talking about the segment of the Democratic base that seems to be lining up most enthusiastically behind Dean and Kucinich, the segment of the Democratic base that makes up the vast majority of the population I see at the average anti-war rally, constituents' meeting, national march, and so on. I am not knocking the contributions of the white left; after all, we have done a lot of hard work trying to protect this country and the world from the worst depredations of the white right. But the white left cannot save this country all by itself; and that is why we need to do some hard thinking about how to take this to the next level.
As much as we all abuse the DLC for being a bunch of Republican-lite outselling spineless bastards, it is important to realize that they are the way they are simply because they have recognized a fundamental truth: the white left is now so outnumbered that they cannot win you an election, except in certain narrowly circumscribed geographical areas. Their solution is to attempt to remake the Democratic party so that it appeals more to the white center and (I hurl just thinking about it) the white right. This solution is patently wrong, as we learn in whole new ways every single day. The white right is not interested in compromise; the only thing that appeals to the white right is total surrender. The white center, faced with a choice between the triumphant Republicans and the truckling Democrats, will lean to the right because for most people, power is attractive. So we need another solution, and the obvious alternative is to go beyond the white electorate. This country has large and growing African-American, Latino, Asian-American, and recent-immigrant populations. The white right supports policies that screw the hell out of all of these groups. So the axiomatic thing would be for the white left to join forces with the non-white electorate, overpower the white right, and draw the white center to us with our newfound magnetism.
None of this is new thinking. What we need to realize is that we the white left cannot ask the nonwhite electorate to support us the same way that Bush is asking the U.N. to support our war in Iraq. In other words, we cannot generate broad support in the nonwhite electorate without sharing control of the agenda. If we want currently disenfranchised and disaffected nonwhite voters involved in the democratic process--which is absolutely necessary if we are not to get run over yet again by the juggernaut of the white right--then our candidates have to be willing to run on their issues. And as far as I can tell, that is just not happening.
Yes, all the current Democratic candidates are better on race than the Republicans (even, I would argue, Joe Lieberman). That is not enough. It is not enough because almost none of them are willing to go below the cosmetic level to get to the real bedrock of racial oppression in this country. Why is it, for example, that with 9 candidates in the race, we hear so little about:
* The criminalization and consequent disenfranchisement of African-Americans, especially through mandatory minimum drug sentencing guidelines that are disproportionately enforced on nonwhite offenders.
* The enormous expansion and increasing political and economic power of the prison industry, which has a vested interest in continuing to criminalize and disenfranchise African-Americans.
* The failure of welfare reform, which as we must remember was passed on Clinton's watch.
* The drying up of affordable housing and other forms of state support for the un- or underemployed.
* The criminal and abysmal state of public education in this country, which is expressly designed so that the poorest children are least likely to get the kind of education which might enable them not to remain poor.
* The fact that many Americans are now working full-time (or overtime) at jobs that do not pay a living wage.
The list could go on, but my point is: these are all issues you might expect to be of real interest to potential voters who are now too disenfranchised and/or disgusted by this country to participate in the electoral process. Why don't we hear about them? I can think of two reasons. One is that our candidates are simply afraid to touch them, as they are guaranteed to play poorly for the white center and the white right. The other is that as well-meaning as the white left is, we share a certain blindness about the source of our country's problems that we have managed to communicate to "our" candidates.
You hear a lot at marches and rallies about "taking the country back." I have been thinking about this especially because of all the commemorations of the March on Washington lately. The point of the original March on Washington was that the country had never really been given to them in the first place. The point was to seize the rights to life, liberty, and happiness that the constitution had promised all Americans--not again, but for the first time. When we the white left talk about "taking the country back," we acknowledge our own entitlement without really reflecting on it. White voters are in the streets now because they have realized that they are losing the rights that they once had. They do not always appear to understand that for a lot of the people with whom we the white left share the country, those rights were always lost to begin with. Yes, legally the Constitution now protects the right to vote regardless of race. The system now revokes that right indirectly through the criminalization of African-American men (felons cannot vote). This is one example of a larger pattern that has worked istelf out since the 1960s: we grant legal rights on paper and then revoke them through economic oppression. Jim Crow is gone; but segregation is still with us. Is your neighborhood *really* integrated? Mine sure as shit isn't. How about your public school? Or have you even been in your public school lately? Do you send your kids to a parochial school, or a magnet school, or homeschool them, because your own public school is so crappy?
My point is this: we are all very focused on the changes that have taken place under Bush that affect *our* rights--the curtailment of free speech, job loss, disenfranchisement through electoral fraud, the war, and so on. A huge chunk of the Democratic party's potential base does not care about these things because 1) they were already oppressed, unemployed, and disenfranchised before Bush took office and 2) returning the country to the status quo ante Bush is not going to help them.
So we cannot take our country back. We have to take it forward. We have to undo not just two years of Bush, but 20 years of capitalism running amok. And we have to be prepared to make sacrifices. Taxes, for sure. But also, we have to think about whether we are ready to really relinquish our position of privilege. How will we like it when 7 of the party presidential hopefuls are *not* white? Are we prepared to take steps that will lead to our becoming less important to the party than our more numerous nonwhite brothers and sisters? Are we ready to admit that it is not all about us and our rights?
I would go on if time permitted, but right now, it doesn't. But either we do some thinking abotu this, or we are sunk. So I hope to see other people responding to this with their ideas, because we sure need some.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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