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Dædalus coming up in Dædalus:

Race, Inequality Lawrence D. Bobo, William Julius Wilson, Michael Klarman, Rogers & Culture M. Smith, Desmond S. King & Philip A. Klinkner, Douglas S. Massey, Dædalus Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla Weaver & Taci Burch, Martha Biondi, Cathy J. Cohen, James Heckman, Taeku Lee, Alford A. Young, Jr., Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Marcyliena Morgan & Dionne Bennett, Richard E. Nisbett, Jennifer Winter 2011 A. Richeson & Maureen A. Craig, Daniel Sabbagh, Roger Waldinger, and others Winter 2011: Race in the Age of Obama, volume 1

The Modern American David M. Kennedy, Lawrence Freedman, David Segal & Lawrence Race in Gerald Early The Two Worlds of Race Revisited: Military Korb, Robert L. Goldich, Andrew Bacevich, James Sheehan, Brian the Age of A Meditation on Race in the Age of Obama 11 Linn, Deborah Avant & Renée de Nevers, Errol Morris, Thomas Obama, John Hope Franklin The Two Worlds of Race: Mahnken, Jonathan Shay, Charles J. Dunlap, Eugene Fidell, Martha volume 1 A Historical Perspective 28 McSally, William J. Perry, and others Jeffrey B. Ferguson Freedom, Equality, Race 44 Daniel Geary Racial Liberalism, the Moynihan Report Protecting the Internet David Clark, Vinton G. Cerf, Kay Lehman Scholzman, Sidney Verba & “The Negro American” 53 as a Public Commons & Henry E. Brady, R. Kelly Garrett & Paul Resnick, L. Jean Camp, Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Precious African American Memories, Deirdre Mulligan & Fred B. Schneider, John Horrigan, Lee Sproull, Post-Racial Dreams & the American Nation 67 Helen Nissenbaum, and others Glenda R. Carpio Race & Inheritance in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father 79 plus The Alternative Energy Future, On the Common Good, Amina Gautier On Post-Racial America in the Age of Obama 90 Public Opinion &c. Tommie Shelby Justice & Racial Conciliation: Two Visions 95 Eric J. Sundquist “We dreamed a dream”: Ralph Ellison, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Barack Obama 108 Clarence E. Walker Barack Obama, Race & the Tea Party 125 Farah Jasmine Grif½n Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Race & History 131 Werner Sollors “Obligations to Negroes who would be kin if they were not Negro” 142 Korina Jocson Poetry in a New Race Era 154 Hua Hsu Seeing Jay-Z in Taipei 163 David A. Hollinger The Concept of Post-Racial: How Its Easy Dismissal Obscures Important Questions 174 James Alan McPherson Pursuit of the Pneuma 183

U.S. $13; www.amacad.org Cherishing Knowledge · Shaping the Future

Inside front cover: Mary Collie (left) of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp) listens to a speaker at a rally calling for an end to predatory lending practices and home foreclosures outside the New York Stock Exchange, December 10, 2007. Photograph © Jeff Zelevansky/ Reuters. Gerald Early, Guest Editor Phyllis S. Bendell, Managing Editor and Director of Publications D Micah J. Buis, Associate Editor Erica Dorpalen, Editorial Assistant

Board of advisers

Steven Marcus, Editor of the Academy

Rosanna Warren, Poetry Adviser

Committee on Publications Jerome Kagan, Chair, Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Gerald Early, Linda Greenhouse, Jerrold Meinwald; ex of½cio: Leslie Cohen Berlowitz

Dædalus is designed by Alvin Eisenman. Dædalus Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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Dædalus was founded in 1955 and established as a quarterly in 1958. The journal’s namesake was renowned in ancient Greece as an inventor, scientist, and unriddler of riddles. Its emblem, a maze seen from above, symbol- izes the aspiration of its founders to “lift each of us above his cell in the labyrinth of learning in order that he may see the entire structure as if from above, where each separate part loses its comfortable separateness.” The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, like its journal, brings together distinguished individuals from every ½eld of human endeavor. It was chartered in 1780 as a forum “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Now in its third century, the Academy, with its nearly ½ve thousand elected members, continues to provide intellectual leadership to meet the critical challenges facing our world. Dædalus Winter 2011 Subscription rates: Electronic only for non- Issued as Volume 140, Number 1 member individuals–$43; institutions–$113. Canadians add 5% gst. Print and electronic © 2011 by the American Academy for nonmember individuals–$48; institutions of Arts & Sciences –$126. Canadians add 5% gst. Outside the The Two Worlds of Race: A Historical View United States and Canada add $23 for postage © 1965 by the American Academy and handling. Prices subject to change without of Arts & Sciences notice. Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, Institutional subscriptions are on a volume- 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138. year basis. All other subscriptions begin with Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. the next available issue. Email: [email protected]. Single issues: $13 for individuals; $33 for insti- Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 tutions. Outside the United States and Canada isbn 978-0-262-75112-4 add $6 per issue for postage and handling. Prices subject to change without notice. Dædalus publishes by invitation only and assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- Claims for missing issues will be honored free scripts. The views expressed are those of the of charge if made within three months of the author of each article, and not necessarily of publication date of the issue. Claims may be the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. submitted to [email protected]. Mem- issn e-issn bers of the American Academy please direct all Dædalus ( 0011-5266; 1548-6192) questions and claims to [email protected]. is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, fall) by The mit Press, Cambridge ma 02142, Advertising and mailing-list inquiries may be for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. addressed to Marketing Department, mit An electronic full-text version of Dædalus is Press Journals, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge available from The mit Press. Subscription ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2866. Fax: 617 253 and address changes should be addressed to 1709. Email: [email protected]. mit Press Journals, 55 Hayward Street, Permission to photocopy articles for internal Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2889; or personal use is granted by the copyright u.s./Canada 800 207 8354. Fax: 617 577 1545. owner for users registered with the Copyright Printed in the United States of America by Clearance Center (ccc) Transactional Report- Cadmus Professional Communications, ing Service, provided that the per-copy fee of Science Press Division, 300 West Chestnut $12 per article is paid directly to the ccc, Street, Ephrata pa 17522. 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers ma 01923. The fee code for users of the Transactional Report- Newsstand distribution by Ingram Periodicals tn ing Service is 0011-5266/11. Submit all other Inc., 18 Ingram Blvd., La Vergne 37086, and permission inquiries to the Subsidiary Rights Source Interlink Distribution, 27500 Riverview mit fl Manager, Press Journals, by complet- Center Blvd., Bonita Springs 34134. ing the online permissions request form at Postmaster: Send address changes to Dædalus, www.mitpressjournals.org/page/copyright 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge ma 02142. Peri- _permissions. odicals postage paid at Boston ma and at additional mailing of½ces. The typeface is Cycles, designed by Sumner Stone at the Stone Type Foundry of Guinda ca. Each size of Cycles has been separately designed in the tradition of metal types. In this issue

The Two Worlds of Race Revisited: A Meditation on Race in the Age of Obama by Gerald Early ...... 11

Nearly ½fty years ago, the American Academy organized a conference and two issues of its journal Dædalus on the topic of “The Negro American.” The project engaged top intellectuals and policy-makers around the conflicts and limitations of mid-1960s liberalism in dealing with race. Speci½cally, they grappled with the persistent question of how to integrate a forced-worker population that had been needed but that was socially undesir- able once its original purpose no longer existed. Today, racism has been discredited as an idea and legally sanctioned segregation belongs to the past, yet the question the conference participants explored–in essence, how to make the unwanted wanted–still remains. Recent political developments and anticipated demographic shifts, however, have recast the terms of the debate. Gerald Early, guest editor for the present volume, uses Barack Obama’s election to the presidency as a pretext for returning to the central question of “The Negro American” project and, in turn, asking how white liberalism will fare in the context of a growing minority population in the United States. Placing his observations alongside those made by John Hope Franklin in 1965, Early positions his essay, and this issue overall, as a meditation on how far we have come in America to reach “the age of Obama” and at the same time how far we have to go before we can overcome “the two worlds of race.”

The Two Worlds of Race: A Historical View by John Hope Franklin ...... 28

Franklin’s essay traces the practices, policies, and laws that, from colonial times through the mid-1960s moment when he composed his essay, created and sustained the two worlds of race in America. He outlines the history of efforts from that period to alleviate racial distinctions and to foster a “world of equality and complete human fellowship.” Franklin cautions, however, that even certain well-intentioned efforts to extend services, opportunities, and rights to African Americans sometimes reinforced segregation and discrimination. He considers how key historical, legal, political, and social developments from the twentieth century–World War II, the growth of labor unions, the Great Migration, Amer- ica’s ascendancy as a world power, among others–advanced racial equality in America while often intensifying the backlash from opponents to such equality. Still, Franklin concludes optimistically that however strident those opponents may be, they “have been signi½cantly weakened by the very force of the numbers and elements now seeking to eliminate the two worlds of race.” Freedom, Equality, Race by Jeffrey B. Ferguson...... 44

This essay explores some of the reasons for the continuing power of racial categorization in our era, and thus offers some friendly amendments to the more optimistic renderings of the term post-racial. Focusing mainly on the relationship between black and white Amer- icans, it argues that the widespread embrace of universal values of freedom and equality, which most regard as antidotes to racial exclusion, actually reinforce it. The internal logic of these categories requires the construction of the “other.” In America, where freedom and equality still stand at the contested center of collective identity, a history of racial oppression informs the very meaning of these terms. Thus the irony: much of the effort exerted to transcend race tends to fuel continuing division.

Racial Liberalism, the Moynihan Report & the Dædalus Project on “The Negro American” by Daniel Geary ...... 53

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an of½cial in the Johnson administration, published The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, better known as the Moynihan Report. He was influenced by his participation in two conferences organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the mid-1960s, as well as two issues of its journal Dæda- lus, on the topic of “The Negro American.” Arguing that the “damaged” family structure of African Americans would impede efforts to achieve full racial equality in the United States, the Moynihan Report launched an explosive debate that helped fracture a fragile liberal consensus on civil rights. Geary examines the report alongside the Dædalus project, establishing its roots in the racial liberalism of the mid-1960s and connecting it to efforts by liberals to address the socioeconomic dimensions of racial inequality. He considers the close relationship between scholarship and public policy that existed at the time and reflects on the ways liberal ideas about race have changed in the decades since.

Precious African American Memories, Post-Racial Dreams & the American Nation by Waldo E. Martin, Jr...... 67

This interdisciplinary essay explores a fundamental paradox at the heart of American race relations since the 1960s: “the changing same.” The more things change; the more they remain the same. Combining historical and social-scienti½c evidence with autobiographical reflections, this discussion critically probes the paradoxical decline and persistence of two dimensions of our enduring racial quagmire: racial inequality and white supremacy. The essay argues that these powerful and interrelated elements of America’s continuing racial dilemma demand a massive democratic movement to alleviate both at once. This wide-ranging struggle to realize the promise of American democracy requires more than just a revitalized African American Freedom Struggle that is both intraracial and interracial. Progress toward resolving the seemingly intractable problem of racial inequality in the United States demands far more than intensi½ed efforts to alleviate economic inequality; it requires alleviating white supremacy as well.

Race & Inheritance in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father by Glenda R. Carpio ...... 79

When and how did Barack Obama’s now well-known “hope” mantra take shape? Carpio’s essay explores this question through close readings of key passages from Obama’s autobiography. It is nearly three hundred pages into the autobiography before the phrase “the audacity of hope” appears, at the end of the “Chicago” section. Obama has just been accepted to Harvard Law School and has yet to take his ½rst trip to Africa to ½nd his paternal family when he hears the phrase from his infamous ex-pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The essay places this moment from the “Chicago” section in the context of the entire autobiography to illuminate why, for Obama, it takes audacity to hope that we can transcend America’s history of racial conflict. In the process, the essay reveals Obama’s dark view of race relations in America before he became the symbol of a supposedly post-racial America that he is now.

On Post-Racial America in the Age of Obama by Amina Gautier ...... 90

Amina Gautier reflects on her childhood tendency to ask when, not if, there would be a black president. Growing up in the post–civil rights era, she was influenced by knowledge of earlier presidential bids by African Americans as well as references to the idea of a black president in popular culture, including television programs of the 1970s and 1980s that often saw adult characters project the ability to run for of½ce onto black youth. However, Gautier cautions against conflating Barack Obama’s historic election to president with the beginning of a “post-racial” era. She uses a personal experience of racial insensitivity to observe the distance we have yet to go before we are truly post- anything.

Justice & Racial Conciliation: Two Visions by Tommie Shelby ...... 95

As we attempt to measure racial progress in America today and chart a path toward further progress, we should look to the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. Barack Obama has also offered an influential vision of race in America that is similar to and inspired by King’s. This essay compares King’s and Obama’s respective visions for race relations in U.S. society. Both men profess a commitment to racial equality and integration as fundamental ideals; and both provide an astute analysis of the racial realities of his day. However, Shel- by’s comparison of their visions reveals moral de½ciencies in Obama’s political philosophy, particularly with regard to the proposed way forward and the worthy principles that would have to be compromised on by following his path. Liberal pragmatism in matters of race may yield some social bene½ts, but not without moral costs. “We dreamed a dream”: Ralph Ellison, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Barack Obama by Eric J. Sundquist...... 108

In Spring 2010, a manuscript version of Ralph Ellison’s un½nished second novel, Three Days before the Shooting, was ½nally published. Written over the course of more than forty years and running to 1,100 pages, the novel not only has a great deal to tell us about Elli- son’s craft and his approach to the civil rights movement; it also speaks eloquently to traditions of leadership on American race relations stretching from the days of Abraham Lin- coln and Frederick Douglass through the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., and, ultimately, Barack Obama.

“We’re losing our country”: Barack Obama, Race & the Tea Party by Clarence E. Walker...... 125

This essay’s approach to race and the Tea Party is twofold: to consider the role race plays in Tea Partiers’ claim that they have “lost their country” and to question why blacks would be members of the Tea Party given its radically conservative views. To explore the latter, Walker looks to black and other minority conservatives from the past who embraced political conservatism as a means to escape stigmatization. Walker’s essay argues that Amer- ica has become less racist than it used to be, but he resists characterizing the nation as “post-racial.” He uses examples of conflicts between Asians, blacks, and Mexicans to further his point.

At Last . . . ?: Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Race & History by Farah Jasmine Grif½n...... 131

In this essay, Grif½n brings to the fore two extraordinary black women of our age: First Lady Michelle Obama and entertainment mogul Beyoncé Knowles. Both women signify change in race relations in America, yet both reveal that the history of racial inequality in this country is far from over. As an Ivy League-educated descendent of slaves, Michelle Obama is not just unfamiliar to the mainstream media and the Washington political scene; during the 2008 presidential campaign, she was vili½ed as angry and unpatriotic. Beyoncé, who controls the direction of her career in a way that pioneering black women entertainers could not, has nonetheless styled herself in ways that recall the distinct racial history of the Creole South. Grif½n considers how Michelle Obama’s and Beyoncé’s use of their respective family histories and ancestry has bolstered or diminished their popular appeal.

“Obligations to Negroes who would be kin if they were not Negro” by Werner Sollors ...... 142

The 1965/1966 Dædalus issues on “The Negro American” reveal how America’s racial future was imagined nearly a half-century ago, and at least one of the prophecies–voiced by sociologist Everett C. Hughes–found its ful½llment in an unexpected way at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. Short stories by Amina Gautier (“Been Meaning to Say” and “Pan is Dead”), Heidi Durrow’s novel The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, plays by Thomas Bradshaw (Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist and Cleansed), and poems by Terrance Hayes (“For Brothers and the Dragon” and “The Avocado”) suggest trends in recent works by African American authors who began their publishing careers in the twenty-½rst century.

Poetry in a New Race Era by Korina Jocson ...... 154

A growing literary arts movement is shaping discourses about youth and youth culture. With the historic election of President Obama serving as a departure point, this essay calls attention to poetry and the new race era to offer insights into the power of writing. For many youth who write in their own contexts or compete in the Brave New Voices Poetry Slam Festival, for example, such themes as voice, identity, citizenship, and leadership in the twenty-½rst century reveal how language is used to expose social realities often steeped in the margins. What do these themes suggest about the possibilities of poetry in a new race era? Indeed, what do they convey about inhabiting a new race era? Examples that tackle these themes are included in the essay.

Seeing Jay-Z in Taipei by Hua Hsu ...... 163

How does the newly arrived immigrant respond to the news that an identity already awaits him? How does an African American hip-hop artist translate his struggles and triumphs across oceanic divides? What signi½cance do American demographic shifts have in a global context? Hsu’s essay examines what happens once individuals or identities migrate beyond the contexts that ½rst produced them. He explores a variety of circuits: the satellite communities of Asian immigrant students who arrived on American university campuses in the late 1960s; enduring debates about a “post-city” identity, spurred by advances in cheap, ef½cient, world-shrinking communication technologies; and the new af½nities and categories of self-identi½cation made possible by a present-day culture that prizes inter- activity and participation.

The Concept of Post-Racial: How Its Easy Dismissal Obscures Important Questions by David A. Hollinger...... 174

Nearly all of today’s con½dent dismissals of the notion of a “post-racial” America address the simple question, “Are we beyond racism or not?” But most of the writers who have used the terms post-racial or post-ethnic sympathetically have explored other questions: What is the signi½cance of the blurring of ethnoracial lines through cross-group marriage and reproduction? How should we interpret the relatively greater ability of immigrant blacks as compared to standard “African Americans” to overcome racist barriers? What do we make of increasing evidence that economic and educational conditions prior to immigration are more powerful determinants than “race” in affecting the destiny of population groups that have immigrated to the United States in recent decades? Rather than calling constant attention to the undoubted reality of racism, this essay asks scholars and anti- racist intellectuals more generally to think beyond “the problem of the color line” in order to focus on “the problem of solidarity.” The essay argues that the most easily answered questions are not those that most demand our attention.

Pursuit of the Pneuma by James Alan McPherson ...... 183

Inspired by a former colleague’s written remembrance of his tenure at the University of Iowa, McPherson looks back on the University’s historic receptiveness to non-white students and his own experience serving on the faculty of the Writers’ Workshop. He reflects on the attitudes and mores that create a sense of community before settling on the concept of the pneuma, Greek for “the vital spirit of life itself.” He contrasts the racially polarized South, where he grew up, began his writing career, and had his daughter, with Iowa City, where he and his daughter have formed lasting relationships with McPherson’s students and colleagues from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. A willingness to learn from cultural difference has guided McPherson as a teacher and a father, and it offers hope for the evolution of a more integrated American society. The Two Worlds of Race Revisited: A Meditation on Race in the Age of Obama

Gerald Early

I think it can be said, and I think that most liberals would ½nally have to agree, that the presence of the Negro here is precisely what has allowed white people to say they were free; and it is what has allowed them to assume they were rich. –James Baldwin, “Liberalism and the Negro” (1964)

I had to move without movin’. –Trueblood, from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952)1

A Rasmussen poll published in Fall 2010 reveals that only 36 percent of Americans think the relationship between blacks and whites is getting better. This number is down from 62 percent who, in July 2009, reported feeling that race relations are improving. That was the same month in which GERALD EARLY, a Fellow of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police arrested Har- American Academy since 1997 vard professor Henry Louis Gates, and at a news and Cochair of the Academy’s conference following the arrest, President Barack Council, is the Merle Kling Pro- fessor of Modern Letters and Obama criticized the police. He acknowledged Director of the Center for the that he did not know the full situation, “not hav- Humanities at Washington Uni- ing been there and not seeing the facts,” but none- versity in St. Louis. His many theless he said that the police had “acted stupid- publications include The Culture ly.” He continued: “[T]here’s a long history in this of Bruising: Essays on Prize½ghting, country of African Americans and Latinos being Literature, and Modern American stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. Culture (1994) and This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s That’s just a fact.” For some people, this was just a (2003). He is the series editor for half-fact, forcefully but inartfully expressed at that. Best African American Fiction and Obama’s response here may have been the be- Best African American Essays. ginning of a fracture along racial lines about pre-

Dædalus Winter 2011 11 The Two cisely what Obama represents in “post- of his wife. As de½ned by federalism, Worlds racial America.” For the man who, as presidents should not talk about matters of Race Revisited: A Joe Klein put it for Time magazine in of state law enforcement unless some Meditation 2006, “transcends the racial divide so urgent federal interest compels it. More- on Race in 2 the Age of effortlessly,” there was nothing post- over, many whites were uncomfortable Obama racial in the president’s analysis of the about the president’s rush to judgment Gates affair. For blacks, Obama spoke of the Cambridge police. After all, it is the pure and simple truth: blacks and true that blacks and Latinos are stopped Latinos are stopped–harassed, really disproportionately by the police, but it –much more by the police than whites. is also true that they commit a hugely Young black and Latino males in partic- disproportionate share of violent crime ular live in a virtual police and penal in America–the other half of the fact state, where they are under constant that Obama’s initial response seemed to suspicion. Consider the killing of Oscar elide. (Blacks and Latinos, for instance, Grant by a bart police of½cer on Jan- committed 89 percent of all murders in uary 1, 2009, in Oakland, California. New York City between 2003 and 2009.4 Grant is just one example of the many Eighty-eight percent of the victims were unarmed blacks who have been assault- also blacks and Latinos, which is why, ed or killed by the police. (On Novem- from the perspective of blacks and Lati- ber 5, 2010, the of½cer was sentenced nos, so little is being done about crime to two years in prison; many blacks in in urban minority communities.5) Oakland, feeling the sentence far too Blacks are generally proud that Oba- lenient, responded with protest demon- ma openly took their side in this matter, strations.) And to think that a black pro- that he understood, articulated, and, fessor at Harvard would be arrested on more important, legitimated their posi- the grounds of his own home! That he tion. Many whites, however, were sur- would be asked to produce identi½ca- prised that the president took any side tion and prove that he lived there! For at all, that he did not see the necessity blacks, Obama was right to side with as president to transcend such a matter. “the brother,” despite not knowing the This was not Little Rock or Selma. The facts of the case. He was right to be skep- Cambridge police of½cer was not Bull tical of cops and the so-called justice Connor. (Indeed, the Cambridge Police bureaucracy they represent.3 Department is highly diverse, and its Many whites, on the other hand– of½cers are given sensitivity training.) conservatives in many instances, but Henry Louis Gates is not an uneducated, not exclusively or even mainly so–were unemployed black victim of the inner appalled. How could the president adopt city but rather a man of considerable a stance on a case whose details were intellectual, ½nancial, and institutional largely unknown to him? Why, indeed, resources who can well take care of him- was he even commenting on a case that self in his disputes with the city of Cam- involved local law enforcement? It was bridge. The problem with African Amer- in no way a federal matter, and therefore icans (and their liberal left enablers and the president, rightly, should have made comrades), as many whites see it, is that no comment. To these white Americans, they are constantly seeking to relive the Obama’s response seemed as crazy as days of grand martyrdom from the civil if Bill Clinton had commented on O. J. rights movement, recasting every racial Simpson’s arrest in 1995 for the murder disparity and every racial incident as a

12 Dædalus Winter 2011 sign that nothing has changed. Blacks instead of each complaining about how Gerald feel that they must be forever vigilant the other is dependent on it, each coop- Early lest things, in fact, do change for the erated to achieve a common goal, elect- worse. Yes, the Gates arrest and Obama’s ing Obama as a way to restart or rede½ne reaction may have marked the beginning American history. Many hoped that Oba- of the end of the fragile racial unity and ma could permanently unify the two hope that Obama’s presidency had in- worlds of race: this was the prospect spired in many Americans. Put another they found so exciting about his candi- way, it may have been the end of the be- dacy. Obama the bridge, the mixed- ginning of a stage in America’s relation- race messiah, Obama the blended be- ship with its new president as we have ne½cence. Alas, it is questionable if he come to know and understand him; it can unify us. In the end, the two worlds may have set in motion the work of unof race demand that we be on either raveling a bit of the mystery of his polit- one side or the other. ical art and his extraordinarily packed persona. In the Fall 2010 Rasmussen poll men- Is Obama as emblem of post-racial tioned above, 27 percent of all respon- America nothing more than the hope- dents reported feeling that race rela- ful repository of all our racial desires? tions are getting worse. Thirty-nine Is he the brave new world of American percent of whites think race relations politics? Is he the representative, the are getting better compared to only 13 embodiment of a new wave of post- percent of blacks. The low percentage American, minority-centered national- among blacks seems especially remark- ism that will free us at last from a hege- able given we now have an African Amer- monic white nationalist past? Is he the ican president–or, more accurately, a hero, the last grand martyr of a ½nal president of American and African American civil rights campaign? Is he parentage whose ascent to the highest the philosopher-king whose subjects political of½ce in the realm was meant are unworthy of him, a man who, as to signal a remarkable coming of racial White House advisor Valerie Jarrett put age in the United States, the proof of a it, “has never really been challenged in- new American exceptionalism. (Oba- tellectually”?6 Is he an abject failure, the ma’s story could only have happened af½rmative action kid in over his head? here. What are the chances of a person Is he the con½dence man in his ultimate from a historically despised and perse- masquerade, the king of bullshitters, the cuted minority being elected leader of Ellisonian Rinehart, fooling both whites some other nation?) Indeed, the poll and blacks? Is he simply the confused, numbers show a disparity of sorts in contradictory illusion of our collective black opinion: while few blacks think –both black and white–racial hysteria race relations are getting better, 59 per- and misperceptions? Who can say? cent of blacks think the United States What can be said is that for a time, Oba- is moving in the right direction, more ma brought together, or possessed the than twice the percentage of whites promise of bringing together, what the who share that view (27 percent). These late historian John Hope Franklin called numbers invite several observations. “the two worlds of race.”7 He brought First, the era of good racial feelings that together the privileged majority and Obama ushered in at the beginning of the aggrieved minority in a new way: his term in 2009 has, at least for now,

Dædalus Winter 2011 13 The Two ended, particularly as determined by black and is pursuing policies that seem, Worlds African Americans themselves. In other contrarily, to place limits on American of Race Revisited: A words, African Americans generally are power abroad (or recognize the limits Meditation now both optimistic about Obama’s pol- and abuses of that power) while at the on Race in the Age of icies but increasingly pessimistic about same time expanding the reach of the Obama his fate as president, insofar as that fate federal government at home. Obama is is somehow contingent on the belief that not a quintessential liberal; he is a quin- he represents a giant step forward in race tessential black liberal. Most blacks are relations. But for many African Ameri- comfortable with the way that he seems cans, a step forward in race relations di- to represent the decline of an of½cial rectly depends on white America’s belief American exceptionalism–an ideology in Obama’s policies. born of the belief that America is blessed Second, as of Fall 2010, whites are giv- by providence to be the foremost power ing up on Obama, while African Amer- in white Western hegemony–and the icans, by a large margin, are remaining concurrent rise of domestic federal pow- steadfast in their loyalty, although there er as an unabashed bulwark against mar- is a signi½cant gap among blacks between kets and private wealth, against the prov- their overall approval rating for Obama, inces of white power and privilege. Since ranging between 85 and 91 percent, and the days of slavery, blacks have sought their support of his policies. The latter protection from the federal government is still a solid, healthy majority but is no- (frequently not receiving it), they have where near his overall approval rating been skeptical of the old version of Amer- among blacks. (The president’s approval ican exceptionalism, and they have de- rating among whites, as of Fall 2010, is spaired at being at the mercy of local or 38 percent. In the 2010 midterm elec- state power. tions, 90 percent of black voters voted Third, blacks feel that moving the for the Democratic Party, in support of country in what they think is the right President Obama’s policies, whereas direction is jeopardizing the overall re- only 37 percent of whites voted Demo- lationship between blacks and whites; cratic.) This consistent support from however, they likely feel that this is a blacks is not simply because Obama, necessary price for seeing Obama suc- too, is black. Electing just any black ceed where change is needed. As much person president would not necessarily as blacks may feel that broad accept- have warmed the cockles of the hearts ance of Obama’s policies and leader- of most blacks. In fact, one can imagine ship among whites would be a major some blacks being elected president step forward in race relations, there is who would have been vehemently op- uncertainty about how strong the black posed by most blacks. (Consider some- support of Obama would remain if his one along the lines of Supreme Court approval numbers were high among Justice Clarence Thomas or political whites. Many blacks still have the sneak- activist and businessman Ward Con- ing suspicion that any black leader or nerly or some other outspoken oppo- any leader who happens to be black, as nent of af½rmative action, someone in Obama’s case, and who is making who believes in a color-blind America whites extraordinarily happy is proba- or espouses the view that racism is no bly doing it at the expense of blacks, sell- longer a factor in American life.) Blacks ing them out or kowtowing to the white remain loyal to Obama because he is folk. In other words, blacks expect Oba-

14 Dædalus Winter 2011 ma to govern as a black or minority pres- dential. Suppose race relations do not get Gerald ident, voicing a black or minority per- better or worse in a linear or statistical Early spective, a black or minority conscious- way but simply respond and adjust to the ness, and rede½ning what it means to be economic and technological features of an American. If whites oppose him, ac- any particular point in time. Suppose race cording to the view of many blacks, it relations have nothing to do with the will is because many or most whites cannot of either whites or blacks but rather react abide having the minority perspective to the spasms of their nervous systems, as the representative or standard inter- to their co-constructed mythologies of pretation of American experience. reality. Suppose the relationship between blacks and whites is ½xed as a continuous What blacks and whites do have in exercise in social experimentation, in common is a belief that race relations which the power between the two some- are somehow reflected as progress; ei- times pulsates in unexpected rhythm but ther they are getting better or worse, never really changes. Suppose we have it improving or deteriorating. When race completely backward. Suppose because relations are framed in a larger narrative it is whites who are the decided minority of progress, then some millennial aim or in the world that they will always be spe- goal emerges: a moment to be reached cial. Suppose it is blacks who are the in- when race relations or race itself shall advertent enablers in the special status be no more. For whites, this time could given to whites, who are themselves in- perhaps be when blacks no longer view vested even against their will in this sta- themselves as a distinct grievance group, tus as a form of chiliastic order in the when they ½t in, at last, no longer requir- world. Suppose one day leftist whites, ing special cheerleading and enabling, who hate the idea of progress, particular- no longer making claims of exceptional- ly as embodied in the idea of economic ism as Americans because of their his- growth, which they ½nd to be an utterly torical status as slaves. For blacks, per- destructive concept, can no longer square haps it is when they have percentage this view with racial progress, which in representation in every profession and fact greatly depends on economic growth, occupation, in every social and econom- as noted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and ic category, that is at least the equal of other policy intellectuals in the 1960s their percentage in the population; when when Dædalus published the ½rst of two their representation in negative catego- special issues on “The Negro American.” ries, such as incarceration or single-par- (Whites, on the whole, are willing to ent households, aligns with their percent- make concessions to blacks when the age in the population; when they cease overall economic pie is getting larger. to be a population de½ned by their path- In this way, blacks make progress rela- ologies, which they feel are not their fault. tive to their status in the past but never This moment will be the end of racism, make any real gains in relation to whites. and thus the end of race relations, which Therefore, there is no progress: things for blacks are just a calibration of the exchange without changing.) tent to which racism affects their lives at We are trapped, however, in seeing any given moment, as there would be no race relations as a yardstick of progress. distortion in black American life. (Jeffrey B. Ferguson has a brilliant take But suppose race relations have noth- on this in his essay in this volume.) How ing to do with progress, secular or provi- else could we account for all the wealthy

Dædalus Winter 2011 15 The Two black movie stars (Will Smith, Samuel L. out question, things were better for Worlds Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, blacks–much better. After all, they of Race Revisited: A Denzel Washington, and the rest) and were no longer chattels! And Franklin’s Meditation athletes (Michael Jordan, LeBron James, beginning only underscored how far on Race in the Age of Serena and Venus Williams, Tiger Woods) blacks had come by the 1950s and 1960s: Obama who have such huge crossover appeal? civil rights commissions, civil rights Today, blacks direct mainstream Holly- laws, the beginning of the end of Jim wood movies, appear in mainstream ad- Crow, and the promise of integration vertising, are celebrated authors and pub- and equality. But the broad historical lic intellectuals; they lead major white outline that Franklin’s essay provides institutions, and they are doctors, lawyers, showed how deeply entrenched the and Indian chiefs. Booker T. Washington notion of two races was in structuring preached racial progress as he sought American reality and its historical self- funds from wealthy whites to support understanding, how much both custom Tuskegee Institute at the turn of the and convenience supported it, and how twentieth century. W.E.B. Du Bois had much power and pride were determined once believed in it when he was involved to maintain it. with the naacp. The movers and shak- Black nationalists, such as Marcus ers of the New Negro Renaissance of Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, and Mal- the 1920s–Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, colm X, and black Marxists, as Du Bois James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke– became, never accepted the idea of ra- all believed in progress and patronage. cial progress. Nothing got better in any Thurgood Marshall believed in it, as did real sense as far as they were concerned. Benjamin Mays and A. Philip Randolph This view is not without its justi½cations. and the late Dorothy Height. Martin Blacks were at the bottom of the Ameri- Luther King, Jr., based his popular vision can social, political, and economic lad- on assumptions of it. And one can be- ders in the eighteenth and nineteenth lieve in it only if there is irrefutable evi- centuries, and they remain there today. dence that progress is actually occurring. They are at the bottom of standardized John Hope Franklin, in a tough-mind- test scores, at the bottom of accumulat- ed way, acknowledged progress in his ed or acquired wealth, at the bottom in Dædalus essay from 1965, featured in the life expectancy, at the bottom in mar- ½rst of the two issues on “The Negro riage rates, at the top in single-mother American.” “By the middle of the eigh- birth rates, at the top in incarceration teenth century,” Franklin wrote, “laws rates, and at the top for unemployment governing Negroes denied to them cer- and high school dropout rates.9 tain basic rights that were conceded to What race relations so profoundly re- others. They were permitted no indepen- flect in America is the complex nature of dence of thought, no opportunity to im- our social dynamic: how in this country, prove their minds or their talents or to as Ralph Ellison brilliantly encapsulated worship freely, no right to marry and in Invisible Man, one can move without enjoy the conventional family relation- moving. Many African American cynics ships, no right to own or dispose of prop- ask, what has changed, except the façade erty, and no protection against miscar- that masks the great American racial le- riages of justice or cruel and unreason- viathan, whose belly still contains the able punishments.”8 This was the origin two worlds of race? What they may not of the two worlds of race. By 1965, with- appreciate is that for African Americans

16 Dædalus Winter 2011 to move without moving is, in a sense, a mind,” she wrote. “Churchill, face of Gerald ½nely wrought art, a virtuosic pose of ex- our shared wartime struggle, dauntless Early istentialism. Blacks have made their con- rallier of his nation who continues, so ditions into an attitude. The dif½cult craft remarkably, to speak to ours. For a presi- of post-racial racialism requires buying dent to whom such associations are alien, into a belief that everything has changed ridding the White House of Churchill in modern attitudes about race (why not would, of course, have raised no second let your daughter or son marry one and thoughts.” Conservative commentator bring a bit of diversity into the family?) and writer Dinesh D’Souza, in his right- while at the same time recognizing that wing psychobiography The Roots of Oba- the problems that stigmatize black peo- ma’s Rage, offers this interpretation of ple and make them distinct in the body the return of the bust: politic are as intractable now as ever. The Obama probably remembers Churchill dance of post-racial racialism is to move as an imperialist who soldiered for the without moving. It is precisely what Oba- empire in India and Africa. Churchill was ma is trying to do as president, don’t you opposed to India’s independence move- think? He is trying to be a black presi- ment. . . . Even as late as 1954, when Presi- dent without being a black president. dent Eisenhower raised with Churchill the idea of granting self-government to n a recent Wall Street Journal article head- I all remaining British colonies in Africa, lined “The Alien in the White House,” Churchill responded that he was “skepti- columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote: cal about universal suffrage for the Hot- A great part of America now understands tentots.” In the 1950s, Churchill was that this president’s sense of identi½cation prime minister during Britain’s Fight lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways un- against the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, like theirs. He is hard put to sound con- the native country of Obama’s father.11 vincingly like the leader of the nation, be- D’Souza’s view makes some sense. cause he is, at heart and by instinct, the Obama’s father was Kenyan. If the bust voice mainly of his ideological class. He of Churchill was meant to symbolize is the alien in the White House, a matter some special relationship between Amer- having nothing to do with delusions about ica and Britain, returning the bust may his birthplace cherished by the demented 10 have been meant to symbolize another fringe. sort of special relationship between for- When Obama, during the 2008 cam- mer colonies and Britain. But why should paign, jokingly referred to the fact that anyone think returning the bust was nec- he does not look like the presidents on essarily an “alien” act, unless one assumes our currency, he was more right than he that the way whites see history is the only knew. According to his critics, he is far legitimate way to see it. Are whites some- more different from them than he ever how insulted that Obama, in returning let on. Rabinowitz took special umbrage the bust, was saying that Churchill was a at Obama’s returning a bust of Churchill white hero, if, indeed, that was what he that was given by Tony Blair as a gift. was trying to say? They might respond “The new administration had apparent- by saying that the presidency is bigger ly found no place in our national house than the race or religion of the occupant. of many rooms for the British leader In fact, the of½ce has nothing to do with who lives on so vividly in the American the race, religion, or gender of the occu-

Dædalus Winter 2011 17 The Two pant, and the election should not be seen tion of how blacks and whites see de- Worlds as “correcting” or “repudiating” the so- mocracy. And was there not a time, dur- of Race Revisited: A called whiteness of the of½ce. But if that ing the post–World War II development Meditation is the case, what then is Obama’s differ- of the American studies discipline, when on Race in the Age of ence supposed to mean? Or put another Americans understood themselves his- Obama way, what difference is racial difference torically as a redeemer nation?12 supposed to make? Was it the expectation of whites, both In a recent Washington Post article, col- those who supported Obama in 2008 and umnist Eugene Robinson attempted to those who did not, that he would serve answer the question, “What’s Behind as president in a way that would be indis- the Tea Party’s Ire?” The party, “over- tinguishable from a white serving in the whelmingly white and lavishly funded,” of½ce? Would this outcome have been is more upset about Obama’s race than their ideal of the post-racial? Blacks, by his policies, according to Robinson. He and large, probably had no problem with describes the rhetoric frequently used Obama returning the bust, as it was most at Tea Party rallies and by Tea Party- likely their expectation–certainly their endorsed candidates–calls for “taking hope–that he would serve as an active the country back” and “returning the agent of their interests, avenger of their American government to the American injuries and insults, restorer of their place people”–as implicitly racist. It disturbs of respect in the world. (This was proba- him that many in the Tea Party see Oba- bly the hope of the white Left, too, whose ma as an elitist, “when he grew up in watchword, after all, is transformative, modest circumstances–his mother was which so many have called the Obama on food stamps for a time–and paid for presidency.) Is this black Americans’ his fancy-pants education with student idea of post-racial, when a black person loans.”13 If anyone ½ts the bill as an elit- would not be expected to be indistin- ist, Robinson suggests, it is George W. guishable from his white predecessors Bush, on the basis of his privileged back- but, in fact, would be expected to be very ground. Bush seems to have wrecked different, the deconstructive counter- the budget with de½cit spending before point, the legitimation of black reality Obama entered the of½ce, yet despite meant to expose the fact that there is a being widely unpopular, he does not “white” way of governing and, naturally, seem to be blamed for these sins as a “non-white” way? What many whites Obama has been.14 looked for in Obama was a Sidney Poitier Some of these same concerns and character from the 1950s; many blacks misgivings about the Tea Party are wanted the hero of a 1970s blaxploita- made (more compellingly) by historian tion ½lm. Shelby Steele, in a Wall Street Clarence E. Walker in his essay for this Journal op-ed from October 28, 2010, issue of Dædalus. But it is hard to judge warned against electing a redeemer precisely how racist the Tea Party may rather than a steward because redeem- be. First, the environmental movement, ers, by their very nature and mission, the climate change movement, the ani- must be transformative. Stewards, con- mal rights movement, and the anti-war versely, simply wish to guard the val- movement (its latest incarnation being ues and principles, the institutions and in opposition to Iraq) all have an over- wealth, of the republic. Perhaps. But whelmingly white public face (at their that is probably too simple an explana- public demonstrations, for example).

18 Dædalus Winter 2011 Gerald Early

This political button shows how the Left has also embraced the rhetoric of “taking back the country.” It features Jerry Brown, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, and Jesse Jackson, whom Brown said he would select as his vice presidential running mate if he was nominated.

No one makes this point to discredit or to his abilities as a politician. But being criticize these movements. Why not, if an elitist–or some sort of social-status lack of diversity is a serious shortcoming hound or cultural snob–is not at all con- in a political movement? Tea Party ral- tingent on the modesty of one’s back- lies generally have gone to great lengths ground. A parvenu, which Obama and to include black conservative speakers, other highly educated black folk such as such as Angela McGlowan and Alfonzo myself happen to be, can be the worst Rachel, and the movement has endorsed sort of snob, intensely elitist.18 It is ar- non-white candidates comprising Afri- guable whether racism in the Tea Party can Americans, Indian Americans, and movement even matters very much to Hispanic Americans.15 Second, both the black people’s interests. Black editorial Left and the Right have used the phrase writer Jason Riley, of The Wall Street Jour- “taking back the country.” For example, nal, made a point of criticizing the naacp the Left used it in the political button for issuing a report condemning the rac- pictured above, featuring Jerry Brown, ism of the Tea Party; he called the report who was running for the Democratic misguided and extraneous to the real is- presidential nomination in 1992, and sues and concerns facing black people in Jesse Jackson, whom Brown said he the United States.19 would select as his vice presidential My point is not that Robinson’s col- running mate if he was nominated.16 umn is super½cial and poorly argued The Washington Post recently revealed (hardly a novel or trenchant observation that only 5 percent of signs at a Tea Party to make of an op-ed). I am not even try- rally mentioned either Obama’s race or ing to argue that the Tea Party movement religion.17 Whether Obama is an elitist isn’t racist. A book like political scientist is hard to say and, frankly, is irrelevant Robert C. Smith’s Conservatism and Rac-

Dædalus Winter 2011 19 The Two ism, and Why in America They Are the receive special treatment because he Worlds Same (2010) makes a provocative and is black, and they expect such achieve- of Race Revisited: A sometimes compelling argument about ment to be lionized not merely as exem- Meditation the persistent historical connection be- plary but as heroic; on the other hand, on Race in the Age of tween conservatism and its justi½cation they do not want the achievement of any Obama of white privilege or the status quo of prominent black to be diminished or dis- white dominance. Rather, I am interest- missed, somehow quali½ed or patron- ed in how Robinson’s column reveals ized, because of race or any special con- two signi½cant anxieties that many Afri- sideration given to it. So the brutal give- can Americans feel. The ½rst anxiety de- and-take of partisan politics, which blacks rives from the fact that Barack Obama know well enough, in this instance makes is, without question, the most criticized them uneasy. And they are not unjusti- black man in the United States now, not ½ed in their distrust of white motives: a surprising fate given he is president. many blacks still remember the Republi- He is probably the most criticized black can Party’s Nixonian Southern strategy man in the history of the United States of the late 1960s through the 1980s, mak- because, once again, being the president ing a coded appeal as it did to whites as he is the most visible and most power- whites; many still remember the suc- ful black man in history. Blacks, on the cessful Willie Horton ad campaign that whole, have always felt uncomfortable, George H.W. Bush used against Michael if not outright defensive, whenever a Dukakis in 1988; many remember the black person is stridently and caustically racist af½rmative action ads Jesse Helms criticized, especially when it is a black used against black challenger Harvey man and especially when criticized by Gantt in North Carolina. Some will say whites. African Americans frequently that blacks cannot take the pressure of fluctuate between defensive militancy being in the political arena and over- and special pleading in response to criti- react to criticism of Obama, that they cism because, throughout their history, are overly sensitive to whites’ good or they have been unjustly, sometimes sav- bad intentions. (Beating Hillary Clinton agely and opportunistically, criticized and John McCain, two highly experi- by whites. The group may feel that at- enced white politicians, in the arena of tacks on Obama are onslaughts to the political debate and exchange was prob- manhood virtue of the race itself, and ably what made blacks feel most proud manhood remains a sensitive and po- of Obama.) Others feel that the whites tent issue for blacks, who still general- who do not like Obama use their harsh ly feel that their men are more at risk criticism of him to take racist potshots than their women. As Obama is the ½rst at the group as a whole through him. black president, and as blacks who over- Besides, many blacks feel that they whelmingly supported him are highly should defend Obama as vigorously as invested in his success, they are strongly most conservatives defended Bush. If inclined to be piqued by attacks, while your opponents consider ideological also proud of his ability to withstand the loyalty a virtue for their side, why is attacks, proud of his being in the arena it not a virtue for you as well? where such attacks are made. This is the The second anxiety is related to the tension of what I call post-racial racial- group of whites with whom African ism: blacks want Obama (or any prom- Americans generally align themselves inent black person of achievement) to politically. This group usually comprises

20 Dædalus Winter 2011 educated, highly cultured, middle- and vision, Frankenstein thought that he Gerald upper-class liberal whites–those who, could create a being equal to those Early back in the days of slavery and after, around him, that he could fabricate or would have been referred to as “de qual- engineer an equal being from the bits ity.” Historically, blacks have had little and pieces of bodies. The villagers are truck with lower-class whites or with the lower-class whites–superstitious, white ethnics (except Jews). This politi- fearful, and jealous of the monster, re- cal alignment is one reason why whites sentful of the better-off whites who who hate Obama call him elitist, because scorn them as backward simpletons. they feel that the group of whites who And in virtually every Frankenstein back him are, by and large, elitist; they movie, the villagers, with their torches, also feel that whites who support Oba- shotguns, and pitchforks, destroy ma treat blacks as favored pets while dis- Frankenstein and his monster. daining other whites who are not sup- In this fevered vision, no one is ad- porters. After all, these liberal, educated mirable; no one has the moral high whites took to Obama largely because ground, although the monster, in its they felt they were dealing with one of way, represents a form of innocence, their own: someone who went to their pathos: the upper and lower classes schools, read their kind of books, had are flawed, either arrogant in their intel- their kind of habits, spoke their language. ligence or mob-like in their ignorance, Obama impressed even upper-class con- and the monster is deformed. A twisted servatives such as David Brooks, Chris- reading of the Obama presidency–and topher Buckley, and Peggy Noonan for some white conservatives are reading the same reasons. He is a black who did it in just this way–makes it out to be a not, through his habits or inclinations, modern Frankenstein story, the hubris overly remind them that he is black: of the modern Prometheus–the hubris rather like the educated, deracinated of liberalism. Perhaps it is a hubris to “mulatto” colonial, in some respects. answer the hubris the Left saw in the Lower-class whites have always been conservative policies of Bush, the hu- jealous of this alignment as a violation bris the Left sees in the American em- of white racial solidarity and because pire–what might be called the hubris the blacks seemed to be rising at their of neoliberalism. expense. One of the most remarkable racist I know that in the life styles of any num- allegories of this situation I describe is ber of groups in the nation, there are the series of Frankenstein movies made many things which Negroes would cer- by Universal Studios in the 1930s and tainly reject, not because they hold them early 1940s. Doctor Frankenstein and in contempt, but because they do not sat- his colleagues all represent the upper- isfy our way of doing things and our feel- class whites–scienti½c, rational, liber- ing about things. al, seeking new knowledge and want- –Ralph Ellison, from a transcript of the ing to overturn the old ways. The vio- American Academy conference on “The lent monster is the African American, Negro American,” May 14–15, 1965 the botched experiment of breathing new life into a dead people, of resurrect- This is why I say that in order for the ing them through science and rationali- Negro to become an American citizen, ty. Through the sheer will of a liberal all American citizens will be forced to

Dædalus Winter 2011 21 The Two undergo a change, and all American in- this ideological division in dealing with Worlds stitutions will be forced to undergo a African Americans, their status, and of Race Revisited: A change too. their claims for justice. Daniel Patrick Meditation Moynihan, a key ½gure at the American –James Baldwin, “Liberalism and the on Race in Academy conferences and author of the Age of Negro” (1964) Obama what would prove to be one of the most important and controversial documents The Negroes are asking for unequal treat- about the status of blacks in the United ment. States, The Negro Family: The Case for Na- –Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Memoran- tional Action (1965), was torn about the dum for the Secretary (1964)20 best way forward. Without some strong federal intervention to change hiring practices, the black male, who was the In 1964, Commentary magazine spon- primary focus of Moynihan’s report, sored a roundtable on “Liberalism and would never become the breadwinner the Negro,” moderated by Norman Pod- and ½gure of stability that he needed horetz and including panelists James to be if the black family was to cease Baldwin, Sidney Hook, Gunnar Myrdal, being dysfunctional. and Nathan Glazer. Podhoretz, then-edi- On the one hand, the idea of making tor of the magazine, put it as well as any- race a permanent category in American one when he described the crisis in liber- politics by introducing preferential treat- alism thus: ment for blacks was not simply distaste- For the traditional liberal mentality con- ful but contrary to American ideology ceives of society as being made up not of and the preferred aim of getting rid of competing economic classes and ethnic racism by getting rid of race itself. Ulti- groups, but rather of competing individuals mately, liberalism essentially chose af½r- who confront a neutral body of laws and mative action under President Nixon a neutral institutional complex. . . . [T]he and his Philadelphia Plan in 1969, and newer school of liberal thought on race what emerged was the political ½xture of relations maintains that the Negro com- racial categories in a scheme of preferred munity as a whole has been crippled by treatment, designed largely to stop the three hundred years of slavery and perse- violent black rebellions in major Amer- cution and that the simple removal of le- ican cities that had become common- gal and other barriers to the advancement place by 1964 and horrendous by 1965 of individual Negroes can therefore only when the Watts section of Los Angeles result in what is derisively called “token- exploded in racial violence that at times ism.” This school of thought insists that resembled out-and-out warfare. Instead radical measures are now needed to over- of lasting only ten or twenty years–a come the Negro’s inherited disabilities.21 kind of domestic Marshall Plan, as early advocates like Bayard Rustin and Whit- The American Academy of Arts and Sci- ney Young wanted–af½rmative action ences’ conferences on “The Negro Amer- has now lasted forty years and, despite ican” in 1964 and 1965, as well as the re- challenges and changes, shows no sign sulting issues of Dædalus that published of being abandoned as a policy position the conference papers and partial tran- of blacks, white liberals, and the Left. scripts, reveal that nearly everyone was Af½rmative action is bolstered by a phi- wrestling with this tension in liberalism, losophy called multiculturalism, which

22 Dædalus Winter 2011 involves radicalizing the concept of plu- words, blacks needed “victim allies” in Gerald ralism and tolerance as the active destruc- order for the policy to be accepted. Yet Early tion of all marginalization; by the slogan some argue that including these allies of diversity (a form of bureaucratic bean- has caused the policy not to work very counting for proper representation); and well for blacks, or at least not work as by a network of government-enforced or originally intended. government-encouraged forms of soli- Conservatives today are ½ghting for darity. As a result, af½rmative action as a the alternative liberalism, the original remediation policy has widened its reach liberalism, if you will, of competing in- to include virtually anyone in the United dividuals, race-neutral laws and insti- States who is not an able-bodied, hetero- tutions, and an essentially race-neutral sexual white man. For some, this “inclu- public square; they would have race be- sion industry” has hurt blacks, as the idea come what religion or any other form of preferential treatment was originally of identi½cation is: a private realm, un- conceived to address the speci½c needs forced and unenabled by a system of that arose from the historical fact–pop- governmental rewards and disincen- ularized by liberal historians and sociol- tives. For these conservatives (old-fash- ogists in the 1950s and 1960s–that blacks ioned liberals), the government has no had been slaves in the United States, a compelling interest in maintaining ra- unique form of political oppression and cial categories or helping people on the social ostracism. They had been placed basis of race. The biggest mistake Amer- in a position of government-approved ica ever made was to recognize race as powerlessness and total abjection and a way of legitimatizing slavery; contin- thus had been incomparably damaged as uing to recognize race does not rectify a people by that institution. According that mistake. The af½rmative action lib- to this view, blacks were the only true erals retort by saying the government caste victims in America. They were also invented and sanctioned race as a legit- the only people in this mythical land of imate category; it cannot blithely get the immigrant who came here against out of the race business now by declar- their will. (There are some exceptions ing that race, in effect, does not exist to this, such as immigrants from Africa because we now ½nd race a repugnant and the Caribbean.) They therefore re- idea. In other words, for the af½rmative quired a remedy that was beyond the action liberals, the so-called original normal avenues of redress others could liberalism never existed except in the obtain through constitutional means or American imagination, in America’s the regular political process, with its fantasy of itself.22 built-in mechanisms for reform. The two worlds of race have pro- On the other hand, some have argued duced two views of liberalism. And that af½rmative action would never have within blacks themselves the two endured as a policy had its client list not worlds have produced two interpre- been widened in order to garner more po- tations of America: one that reveals litical support. The country on the whole America as it really is, a view shaped was not very interested in helping blacks by the special knowledge blacks have overcome a socially imposed and politi- derived from their condition in Ameri- cally managed inferiority status unless ca; and another view that denies them others who felt they had equally legiti- a true sense of what America is, shaped mate claims were also helped. In other by the knowledge kept from them based

Dædalus Winter 2011 23 The Two on their condition. Novelist James Bald- or more oblique American experience, Worlds win said in 1964, “I have watched the way calls for a consideration of this new age, of Race Revisited: A most white people in this country live. I the “age of Obama.” A desire to explore Meditation have worked in their kitchens and I have the role of white liberalism in the con- on Race in the Age of served them their brandy, and I know text of a growing minority population in Obama what goes on in white living rooms bet- the United States–one that will, before ter than white people know what goes mid-century, outnumber whites–also on in mine.”23 Ralph Ellison made this motivated my interest in revisiting “The observation in 1965: “There are many Negro American” project of 1965. Our parts of this complex American society moment today is in every way as signi½- which Negroes have been kept away from. cant as that moment, following the pas- Even most of our novelists do not give sage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting enough of a report of how life is actually Rights Act, when America seemed on lived in the country for a Negro to pick the edge of a brave new world, poised for up a novel and get some clues. The con- rede½nition and ready to see itself anew. strictions and the exclusiveness very of- The present volume is the humanist ten have gotten into our perception of companion to the Dædalus issue (Spring social complexity.”24 The two worlds of 2011) that Harvard sociologist Lawrence race created in blacks a contrary sense of Bobo is guest editing and that will more what they knew about the United States strongly feature the social sciences. The and the whites who ran it, blending into original Dædalus issues on “The Negro a self-aggrandized sense of isolation: American” included only one essay by both inside and outside at once. a true humanist, historian John Hope Franklin, a man I greatly admired. His The Dædalus issues on “The Negro essay is reprinted here, and my essay is American” grappled with the conflict- meant in some ways, even with its title, ing views of liberalism in dealing with to be a thematic continuation, a reimag- race as well as liberalism’s discontent ing and reworking of the intellectual with its own limitations at reforming preoccupations in his essay, and a trib- a problem that has been at the crux of ute to his work. I feel privileged to have the American experiment: that is, how the opportunity to be the guest editor to integrate a forced-worker population of this issue, as I feel privileged to be in that once was needed but is socially un- partnership with Bobo, another scholar desirable now that its original purpose I admire. I am extremely grateful to the for being here no longer exists; or, how brilliant contributors who wrote won- to make the unwanted wanted. I thought derfully thoughtful and engaging essays that Obama’s election as president could for this volume. I am glad the topic cap- be a useful pretext to return to this ques- tured their imagination and that they tion or issue–one that has been signi½- had con½dence in my skills as an editor. cantly recast and reformulated since the These are busy people, and I appreciate Dædalus issues on “The Negro Ameri- their taking the time. As Lou Gehrig can,” now that we have lived for nearly said, “Today I consider myself the luck- ½fty years with racism as a discredited iest man on the face of the earth.” idea, segregation as a thing of the past, and blacks as an of½cially sanctioned re- medial caste. Having a president who is a black man, albeit one with a tangential

24 Dædalus Winter 2011 endnotes Gerald Early 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 con½dence 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 con½dence 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 See 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 af½rmative action–would simply exacerbate racial relations by highlighting how blacks lagged far behind whites. For instance, consider this passage from a letter Moynihan wrote in 1963 to Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz: “For whatever it is worth, I am persuaded, and ½nd 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 arti½cial 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; Steven R. Weisman, ed., Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 60; italics in the original. 10 Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Alien in the White House,” The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2010. 11 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 Oba- ma as a disgruntled postcolonial was ½rst posited by Nigerian writer L. E. Inkenga, in an article she wrote for the conservative website American Thinker; “Obama, the African Co- lonial,” June 25, 2009. Inkenga offers the same psychobiographical reading of Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father. 12 See, 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 ½rst black man to have been elected president, particularly with Obama’s con½guration of characteristics and abilities, and not have been seen as a redeemer, as something providential. Liter- ary 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 of½ce. 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 run

Dædalus Winter 2011 25 The Two and symbolized by an individual. See Dana D. Nelson, Bad for Democracy: How the Presi- Worlds dency Undermines the Power of the People (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, of Race 2008; updated with a new preface, 2010), xiv. Revisited: A Meditation 13 Eugene Robinson, “What’s Behind the Tea Party’s Ire?” The Washington Post, November 2, on Race in 2010. the Age of Obama 14 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. 15 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 self- evidently 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 Con- gressional Black Caucus has been. It is equally pointless to call black conservatives oppor- tunists, 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 repre- senting true solidarity. 16 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. See Franklin, “The Two Worlds of Race,” 917. 17 Amy Gardner, “Few Signs at Tea Party Rally Expressed Racially Charged Anti-Obama Themes,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2010. 18 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 quota- tion 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 anti- intellectual, 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, Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Bush is a Book Lover.” Bush read anywhere from ½fty 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 convinc- ing them they are voting for an “exceptional,” not an “ordinary,” Negro: voting for him was not an “af½rmative 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 Amer-

26 Dædalus Winter 2011 ican electorate that dislikes and distrusts intellectuals. It is interesting to note that both Gerald Bush and Obama are considered arrogant by their political enemies. Early 19 Jason Riley, “The naacp’s Unhealthy Tea Party Obsession,” The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2010. 20 “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. 21 “Liberalism and the Negro”; emphasis in the original. 22 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 Weis- man, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 103–104. 23 “Liberalism and the Negro,” 37–38. 24 “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American–May 14–15, 1965,” 436. 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.

Dædalus Winter 2011 27 The Two Worlds of Race: A Historical View

John Hope Franklin

Measured by universal standards the history of the United States is indeed brief. But during the brief span of three and one-half centuries of colonial and national history Americans developed traditions and prejudices which created the two worlds of race in modern America. From the time that Africans were brought as indentured servants to the mainland of English America in 1619, the enormous task of rationalizing and justifying the forced labor of peoples on the basis of racial differences was begun; and even after legal slavery was ended, the notion of racial differences persisted as a basis for maintaining segregation and discrimination. At the same time, the effort to establish a more healthy basis for the new world social order was begun, thus launching the continuing battle between the two worlds of race, on the one hand, and the world of equality and complete JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN human fellowship, on the other. (1915– For a century before the American Revolution 2009) was a prominent historian and ardent defender of civil rights. the status of Negroes in the English colonies had His numerous publications include become ½xed at a low point that distinguished the groundbreaking book From them from all other persons who had been held Slavery to Freedom: A History of in temporary bondage. By the middle of the eigh- American Negroes (1947), now in teenth century, laws governing Negroes denied to its eighth edition. He was elected them certain basic rights that were conceded to a Fellow of the American Acad- others. They were permitted no independence of emy in 1964. The essay reprinted here originally appeared in Dæda- thought, no opportunity to improve their minds lus 94 (4) (Fall 1965); that volume or their talents or to worship freely, no right to was the ½rst of two special issues marry and enjoy the conventional family relation- on “The Negro American.” ships, no right to own or dispose of property, and

28 Dædalus Winter 2011 no protection against miscarriages of dom. In changing his policy if not his John Hope justice or cruel and unreasonable pun- views, Washington availed himself of Franklin ishments. They were outside the pale the services of more than 5,000 Negroes of the laws that protected ordinary hu- who took up arms against England.1 mans. In most places they were to be Many Americans besides Mrs. Adams governed, as the South Carolina code were struck by the inconsistency of their of 1712 expressed it, by special laws “as stand during the War for Independence, may restrain the disorders, rapines, and and they were not averse to making inhumanity to which they are naturally moves to emancipate the slaves. Quak- prone and inclined.” A separate world ers and other religious groups organized for them had been established by law antislavery societies, while numerous and custom. Its dimensions and the con- individuals manumitted their slaves. In duct of its inhabitants were determined the years following the close of the war by those living in a quite different world. most of the states of the East made pro- By the time that the colonists took up visions for the gradual emancipation of arms against their mother country in slaves. In the South, meanwhile, the order to secure their independence, the antislavery societies were unable to ef- world of Negro slavery had become deep- fect programs of state-wide emancipa- ly entrenched and the idea of Negro in- tion. When the Southerners came to feriority well established. But the dilem- the Constitutional Convention in 1787 mas inherent in such a situation were they succeeded in winning some repre- a source of constant embarrassment. sentation on the basis of slavery, in se- “It always appeared a most iniquitous curing federal support of the capture scheme to me,” Mrs. John Adams wrote and rendition of fugitive slaves, and her husband in 1774, “to ½ght ourselves in preventing the closing of the slave for what we are daily robbing and plun- trade before 1808. dering from those who have as good a Even where the sentiment favoring right to freedom as we have.” There were emancipation was pronounced, it was others who shared her views, but they seldom accompanied by a view that were unable to wield much influence. Negroes were the equals of whites and When the ½ghting began General George should become a part of one family of Washington issued an order to recruit- Americans. Jefferson, for example, was ing of½cers that they were not to enlist opposed to slavery; and if he could have “any deserter from the ministerial army, had his way, he would have condemned nor any stroller, negro, or vagabond, or it in the Declaration of Independence. person suspected of being an enemy to It did not follow, however, that he be- the liberty of America nor any under lieved Negroes to be the equals of whites. eighteen years of age.” In classifying He did not want to “degrade a whole Negroes with the dregs of society, trai- race of men from the work in the scale tors, and children, Washington made it of beings which their Creator may per- clear that Negroes, slave or free, were haps have given them. . . . I advance it not to enjoy the high privilege of ½ght- therefore, as a suspicion only, that the ing for political independence. He would blacks, whether originally a distinct change that order later, but only after race, or made distinct by time and cir- it became clear that Negroes were en- cumstance, are inferior to the whites listing with the “ministerial army” in in the endowment both of body and droves in order to secure their own free- mind.” It is entirely possible that Jef-

Dædalus Winter 2011 29 The Two ferson’s later association with the exer institutions–schools, newspapers, Worlds of traordinarily able Negro astronomer benevolent societies–to serve those Race: A Historical and mathematician, Benjamin Bannek- who lived in a world apart. View er, resulted in some modi½cation of his Those Americans who conceded the views. After reading a copy of Bannek- importance of education for Negroes er’s almanac, Jefferson told him that it tended to favor some particular type of was “a document to which your whole education that would be in keeping with race had a right for its justi½cations their lowly station in life. In 1794, for against the doubts which have been example, the American Convention of entertained of them.”2 Abolition Societies recommended that In communities such as Philadelphia Negroes be instructed in “those mechan- and New York, where the climate was ic arts which will keep them most con- more favorably disposed to the idea of stantly employed and, of course, which Negro equality than in Jefferson’s Vir- will less subject them to idleness and ginia, few concessions were made, ex- debauchery, and thus prepare them for cept by a limited number of Quakers becoming good citizens of the United and their associates. Indeed, the white States.” When Anthony Benezet, a dedi- citizens in the City of Brotherly Love cated Pennsylvania abolitionist, died in contributed substantially to the perpet- 1784 his will provided that on the death uation of two distinct worlds of race. of his wife the proceeds of his estate In the 1780s, the white Methodists per- should be used to assist in the establish- mitted Negroes to worship with them, ment of a school for Negroes. In 1787 the provided the Negroes sat in a designat- school of which Benezet had dreamed ed place in the balcony. On one occa- was opened in Philadelphia, where the sion, when the Negro worshippers oc- pupils studied reading, writing, arith- cupied the front rows of the balcony, metic, plain accounts, and sewing. from which they had been excluded, Americans who were at all interested the of½cials pulled them from their in the education of Negroes regarded it knees during prayer and evicted them as both natural and normal that Negroes from the church. Thus, in the early days should receive their training in separate of the Republic and in the place where schools. As early as 1773 Newport, Rhode the Republic was founded, Negroes had Island, had a colored school, maintained a de½nite “place” in which they were ex- by a society of benevolent clergymen of pected at all times to remain. The white the Anglican Church. In 1798 a separate Methodists of New York had much the private school for Negro children was same attitude toward their Negro fel- established in Boston; and two decades lows. Soon, there were separate Negro later the city opened its ½rst public pri- churches in these and other communi- mary school for the education of Negro ties. Baptists were very much the same. children. Meanwhile, New York had es- In 1809 thirteen Negro members of a tablished separate schools, the ½rst one white Baptist church in Philadelphia opening its doors in 1790. By 1814 there were dismissed, and they formed a were several such institutions that were church of their own. Thus, the earliest generally designated as the New York Negro religious institutions emerged African Free Schools.3 as the result of the rejection by white Thus, in the most liberal section of communicants of their darker fellow the country, the general view was that worshippers. Soon there would be oth- Negroes should be kept out of the main

30 Dædalus Winter 2011 stream of American life. They were ington, and President James Monroe John Hope forced to establish and maintain their thought that separation–expatriation– Franklin own religious institutions, which were was the best thing for Negroes who were frequently followed by the establishment or who would become free.4 of separate benevolent societies. Like- While the colonization scheme was wise, if Negroes were to receive any ed- primarily for Negroes who were already ucation, it should be special education free, it won, for a time, a considerable provided in separate educational institu- number of sincere enemies of slavery. tions. This principle prevailed in most From the beginning Negroes were bitter- places in the North throughout the pe- ly opposed to it, and only infrequently riod before the Civil War. In some Mas- did certain Negro leaders, such as Dr. sachusetts towns, however, Negroes Martin Delany and the Reverend Henry gained admission to schools that had M. Turner, support the idea. Coloniza- been maintained for whites. But the tion, however, retained considerable School Committee of Boston refused to support in the most responsible quar- admit Negroes, arguing that the natural ters. As late as the Civil War, President distinction of the races, which “no legis- Lincoln urged Congress to adopt a plan lature, no social customs, can efface ren- to colonize Negroes, as the only work- ders a promiscuous intermingling in the able solution to the race problem in the public schools disadvantageous both to United States. Whether the advocates them and to the whites.” Separate schools of colonization wanted merely to pre- remained in Boston until the Massachu- vent the contamination of slavery by setts legislature in 1855 enacted a law pro- free Negroes or whether they actually viding that in determining the quali½ca- regarded it as the just and honorable tions of students to be admitted to any thing to do, they represented an impor- public school no distinction should be tant element in the population that re- made on account of the race, color, or jected the idea of the Negro’s assimila- religious opinion of the applicant. tion into the main stream of American Meanwhile, in the Southern states, life. where the vast majority of the Negroes Thus, within ½fty years after the lived, there were no concessions sug- Declaration of Independence was writ- gesting equal treatment, even among ten, the institution of slavery, which re- the most liberal elements. One group ceived only a temporary reversal during that would doubtless have regarded it- the Revolutionary era, contributed great- self as liberal on the race question ad- ly to the emergence of the two worlds vocated the deportation of Negroes of race in the United States. The natural to Africa, especially those who had be- rights philosophy appeared to have little come free. Since free Negroes “neither effect on those who became committed, enjoyed the immunities of freemen, nor more and more, to seeking a rationali- were they subject to the incapacities zation for slavery. The search was ap- of slaves,” their condition and “uncon- parently so successful that even in areas querable prejudices” prevented amalga- where slavery was declining, the sup- mation with whites, one colonization port for maintaining two worlds of race leader argued. There was, therefore, was strong. Since the Negro church and a “peculiar moral ½tness” in restoring school emerged in Northern communi- them to “the land of their fathers.” Men ties where slavery was dying, it may be like Henry Clay, Judge Bushrod Wash- said that the free society believed almost

Dædalus Winter 2011 31 The Two as strongly in racial separation as it did into the pseudo-nobility of race, Cart- Worlds of in racial freedom. wright won their enthusiastic support Race: A Historical in the struggle to preserve the integrity View The generation preceding the outbreak and honor of the race. Professor Thomas of the Civil War witnessed the develop- R. Dew of the College of William and ment of a set of defenses of slavery that Mary comforted the lower-class whites became the basis for much of the racist by indicating that they could identify doctrine to which some Americans have with the most privileged and affluent of subscribed from then to the present time. the community. In the South, he said, The idea of the inferiority of the Negro “no white man feels such inferiority of enjoyed wide acceptance among South- rank as to be unworthy of association erners of all classes and among many with those around him. Color alone is Northerners. It was an important ingre- here the badge of distinction, the true dient in the theory of society promul- mark of aristocracy, and all who are gated by Southern thinkers and lead- white are equal in spite of the variety ers. It was organized into a body of sys- of occupation.”5 tematic thought by the scientists and so- Many Northerners were not without cial scientists of the South, out of which their own racist views and policies in emerged a doctrine of racial superiority the turbulent decades before the Civil that justi½ed any kind of control over the War. Some, as Professor Louis Filler slave. In 1826 Dr. Thomas Cooper said has observed, displayed a hatred of Ne- that he had not the slightest doubt that groes that gave them a sense of superior- Negroes were an “inferior variety of the ity and an outlet for their frustrations. human species; and not capable of the Others cared nothing one way or the same improvement as the whites.” Dr. other about Negroes and demanded S. C. Cartwright of the University of only that they be kept separate.6 Even Louisiana insisted that the capacities of some of the abolitionists themselves the Negro adult for learning were equal were ambivalent on the question of Ne- to those of a white infant; and the Negro gro equality. More than one antislavery could properly perform certain physio- society was agitated by the suggestion logical functions only when under the that Negroes be invited to join. Some control of white men. Because of the members thought it reasonable for Negro’s inferiority, liberty and republi- them to attend, but not to be put on can institutions were not only unsuited an “equality with ourselves.” The New to his temperament, but actually inimi- York abolitionist, Lewis Tappan, admit- cal to his well-being and happiness. ted “that when the subject of acting out Like racists in other parts of the world, our profound principles in treating men Southerners sought support for their irrespective of color is discussed heat is ideology by developing a common bond always produced.”7 with the less privileged. The obvious ba- In the ½nal years before the begin- sis was race; and outside the white race ning of the Civil War, the view that the there was to be found no favor from God, Negro was different, even inferior, was no honor or respect from man. By the widely held in the United States. Lead- time that Europeans were reading Gob- ers in both major parties subscribed to ineau’s Inequality of Races, Southerners the view, while the more extreme racists were reading Cartwright’s Slavery in the deplored any suggestion that the Negro Light of Ethnology. In admitting all whites could ever prosper as a free man. At Peo-

32 Dædalus Winter 2011 ria, Illinois, in October 1854, Abraham for equality or for the creation of one John Hope Lincoln asked what stand the opponents racial world. Franklin of slavery should take regarding Negroes. The Lincoln and Johnson plans for set- “Free them, and make them politically tling the problems of peace and freedom and socially, our equals? My own feel- never seriously touched on the concomi- ings will not admit of this; and if mine tant problem of equality. To be sure, in would, we well know that those of the 1864 President Lincoln privately raised great mass of white people will not. with the governor of Louisiana the ques- Whether this feeling accords with jus- tion of the franchise for a limited num- tice and sound judgment, is not the sole ber of Negroes, but when the governor question, if indeed, it is any part of it. ignored the question the President let A universal feeling, whether well or ill the matter drop. Johnson raised a simi- founded, cannot be safely disregarded. lar question in 1866, but he admitted that We cannot, then, make them equals.” it was merely to frustrate the design of The Lincoln statement was forthright, radical reformers who sought a wider and it doubtless represented the views franchise for Negroes. During the two of most Americans in the 1850s. Most of years following Appomattox Southern those who heard him or read his speech leaders gave not the slightest considera- were of the same opinion as he. In later tion to permitting any Negroes, regard- years, the Peoria pronouncement would less of their service to the Union or their be used by those who sought to detract education or their property, to share in from Lincoln’s reputation as a champion the political life of their communities. of the rights of the Negro. In 1964, the Not only did every Southern state refuse White Citizens’ Councils reprinted por- to permit Negroes to vote, but they also tions of the speech in large advertise- refused to provide Negroes with any of ments in the daily press and insisted the educational opportunities that they that Lincoln shared their views on the were providing for the whites. desirability of maintaining two distinct The early practice of political disfran- worlds of race. chisement and of exclusion from public Lincoln could not have overcome the educational facilities helped to determine nation’s strong predisposition toward subsequent policies that the South adopt- racial separation if he had tried. And he ed regarding Negroes. While a few lead- did not try very hard. When he called ers raised their voices against these poli- for the enlistment of Negro troops, af- cies and practices, it was Negroes them- ter issuing the Emancipation Proclama- selves who made the most eloquent at- tion, he was content not only to set Ne- tacks on such discriminations. As early groes apart in a unit called “U.S. Colored as May 1865, a group of North Carolina Troops,” but also to have Negro privates Negroes told President Johnson that some receive $10 per month including cloth- of them had been soldiers and were doing, while whites of the same rank re- ing everything possible to learn how to ceived $13 per month plus clothing. discharge the higher duties of citizen- Only the stubborn refusal of many Ne- ship. “It seems to us that men who are gro troops to accept discriminatory pay willing on the ½eld of battle to carry the ½nally forced Congress to equalize com- muskets of the Republic, in the days of pensation for white and Negro soldiers.8 peace ought to be permitted to carry the The ½ght for union that became also a ballots; and certainly we cannot under- ½ght for freedom never became a ½ght stand the justice of denying the elective

Dædalus Winter 2011 33 The Two franchise to men who have been ½ght- South segregated schools persisted, even Worlds of ing for the country, while it is freely giv- in the places where the radicals made a Race: A Historical en to men who have just returned from half-hearted attempt to desegregate them. View four years ½ghting against it.” Such pleas In 1875 Congress enacted a Civil Rights fell on deaf ears, however; and it was Act to guarantee the enjoyment of equal not until 1867, when Congress was suf½- rights in carriers and all places of public ciently outraged by the inhuman black accommodation and amusement. Even codes, widespread discriminations in before it became law Northern philan- the South, and unspeakable forms of vio- thropists succeeded in forcing the dele- lence against Negroes, that new federal tion of the provision calling for desegre- legislation sought to correct the evils of gated schools. Soon, because of the mas- the ½rst period of Reconstruction. sive resistance in the North as well as in The period that we know as Radical the South and the indifferent manner in Reconstruction had no signi½cant or which the federal government enforced permanent effect on the status of the the law, it soon became a dead letter Negro in American life. For a period of everywhere. When it was declared un- time, varying from one year to ½fteen constitutional by the Supreme Court in or twenty years, some Negroes enjoyed 1883, there was universal rejoicing, ex- the privileges of voting. They gained po- cept among the Negroes, one of whom litical ascendancy in a very few commu- declared that they had been “baptized nities only temporarily, and they never in ice water.” even began to achieve the status of a rul- Neither the Civil War nor the era of ing class. They made no meaningful steps Reconstruction made any signi½cant toward economic independence or even step toward the permanent elimination stability; and in no time at all, because of of racial barriers. The radicals of the the pressures of the local community and post–Civil War years came no closer the neglect of the federal government, to the creation of one racial world than they were brought under the complete the patriots of the Revolutionary years. economic subservience of the old ruling When Negroes were, for the ½rst time, class. Organizations such as the Ku Klux enrolled in the standing army of the Klan were committed to violent action United States, they were placed in sep- to keep Negroes “in their place” and, arate Negro units. Most of the liberals having gained respectability through of the Reconstruction era called for and sponsorship by Confederate generals worked for separate schools for Negroes. and the like, they proceeded to wreak Nowhere was there any extensive effort havoc in the name of white supremacy to involve Negroes in the churches and and protection of white womanhood.9 other social institutions of the dominant Meanwhile, various forms of segrega- group. Whatever remained of the old tion and discrimination, developed in abolitionist fervor, which can hardly be the years before the Civil War in order described as unequivocal on the ques- to degrade the half million free Negroes tion of true racial equality, was rapidly in the United States, were now applied disappearing. In its place were the senti- to the four million Negroes who had be- ments of the business men who wanted come free in 1865. Already the churches peace at any price. Those having com- and the military were completely seg- mon railroad interests or crop-market- regated. For the most part the schools, ing interests or investment interests even in the North, were separate. In the could and did extend their hands across

34 Dædalus Winter 2011 sectional lines and joined in the task of ify to vote. The new literacy and “un- John Hope working together for the common good. derstanding” provisions permitted lo- Franklin In such an atmosphere the practice was cal registrars to disqualify Negroes to accept the realities of two separate while permitting white citizens to qual- worlds of race. Some even subscribed to ify. Several states, including Louisiana, the view that there were signi½cant eco- North Carolina, and Oklahoma, insert- nomic advantages in maintaining the ed “grandfather clauses” in their consti- two worlds of race. tutions in order to permit persons, who could not otherwise qualify, to vote if The post-Reconstruction years wit- their fathers or grandfathers could vote nessed a steady deterioration in the sta- in 1866. (This was such a flagrant dis- tus of Negro Americans. These were the crimination against Negroes, whose an- years that Professor Rayford Logan has cestors could not vote in 1866, that the called the “nadir” of the Negro in Amer- United States Supreme Court in 1915 de- ican life and thought. They were the clared the “grandfather clause” uncon- years when Americans, weary of the cru- stitutional.) Then came the Democratic sade that had, for the most part, ended white primary in 1900 that made it im- with the outbreak of the Civil War, dis- possible for Negroes to participate in played almost no interest in helping the local elections in the South, where, by Negro to achieve equality. The social this time, only the Democratic party Darwinists decried the very notion of had any appreciable strength. (After equality for Negroes, arguing that the more than a generation of assaults on it, lowly place they occupied was natural the white primary was ½nally declared and normal. The leading literary jour- unconstitutional in 1944.) nals vied with each other in describing Inequality was legislated in still anoth- Negroes as lazy, idle, improvident, im- er way. Beginning in the 1880s, many moral, and criminal.10 Thomas Dixon’s states, especially but not exclusively in novels, The Klansman and The Leopard’s the South, enacted statutes designed to Spots, and D. W. Grif½th’s motion pic- separate the races. After the Civil Rights ture, “The Birth of A Nation,” helped Act was declared unconstitutional in to give Americans a view of the Negro’s 1883 state legislatures were emboldened role in American history that “proved” to enact numerous segregation statutes. that he was un½t for citizenship, to say When the United States Supreme Court, nothing of equality. The dictum of Wil- in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, set forth liam Graham Sumner and his followers the “separate but equal” doctrine in that “stateways cannot change folkways” 1896, the decision provided a new stimu- convinced many Americans that legislat- lus for laws to separate the races and, of ing equality and creating one great socie- course, to discriminate against Negroes. ty where race was irrelevant was out of In time, Negroes and whites were sep- the question. arated in the use of schools, churches, But many Americans believed that cemeteries, drinking fountains, restau- they could legislate inequality; and they rants, and all places of public accommo- proceeded to do precisely that. Begin- dation and amusement. One state enact- ning in 1890, one Southern state after an- ed a law providing for the separate ware- other revised the suffrage provisions of housing of books used by white and Ne- its constitution in a manner that made it gro children. Another required the tele- virtually impossible for Negroes to qual- phone company to provide separate tele-

Dædalus Winter 2011 35 The Two phone booths for white and Negro cus- the Civil War, but none of them had chal- Worlds of tomers. In most communities housing lenged the white historians’ efforts to Race: A 11 Historical was racially separated by law or practice. relegate Negroes to a separate, degraded View Where there was no legislation requir- world. In 1882, however, George Wash- ing segregation, local practices ½lled the ington Williams published his History of void. Contradictions and inconsistencies the Negro Race in America in order to “give seemed not to disturb those who sought the world more correct ideas about the to maintain racial distinctions at all costs. colored people.” He wrote, he said, not It mattered not that one drive-in snack “as a partisan apologist, but from a love bar served Negroes only on the inside, for the truth of history.”12 Soon there while its competitor across the street were other historical works by Negroes served Negroes only on the outside. Both describing their progress and their con- were committed to making racial distinc- tributions and arguing that they deserved tions; and in communities where prac- to be received into the full fellowship of tices and mores had the force of law, the American citizens. distinction was everything. Such prac- It was in these post-Reconstruction tices were greatly strengthened when, years that some of the most vigorous in 1913, the federal government adopted efforts were made to destroy the two policies that segregated the races in its worlds of race. The desperate pleas of of½ces as well as in its eating and rest- Negro historians were merely the more room facilities. articulate attempts of Negroes to gain By the time of World War I, Negroes complete acceptance in American life. and whites in the South and in parts of Scores of Negro organizations joined the North lived in separate worlds, and in the struggle to gain protection and the apparatus for keeping the worlds recognition of their rights and to elimi- separate was elaborate and complex. Ne- nate the more sordid practices that char- groes were segregated by law in the pub- acterized the treatment of the Negro lic schools of the Southern states, while world by the white world. Unhappily, those in the Northern ghettos were sent the small number of whites who were to predominantly Negro schools, except committed to racial equality dwindled where their numbers were insuf½cient. in the post-Reconstruction years, while Scores of Negro newspapers sprang up government at every level showed no in- to provide news of Negroes that the terest in eliminating racial separatism. white press consistently ignored. Negroes It seemed that Negro voices were indeed were as unwanted in the white churches crying in the wilderness, but they car- as they had been in the late eighteenth ried on their attempts to be heard. In century; and Negro churches of virtual- 1890 Negroes from twenty-one states ly every denomination were the answer and the District of Columbia met in for a people who had accepted the white Chicago and organized the Afro-Amer- man’s religion even as the white man re- ican League of the United States. They jected his religious fellowship. called for more equitable distribution Taking note of the fact that they had of school funds, fair and impartial trial been omitted from any serious consider- for accused Negroes, resistance “by all ation by the white historians, Negroes legal and reasonable means” to mob began in earnest to write the history of and lynch law, and enjoyment of the their own experiences as Americans. franchise by all quali½ed voters. When There had been Negro historians before a group of young Negro intellectuals,

36 Dædalus Winter 2011 led by W.E.B. Du Bois, met at Niagara into Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. John Hope Falls, Ontario, in 1905, they made a sim- Although many were unable to secure Franklin ilar call as they launched their Niagara employment, others were successful and Movement. achieved a standard of living they could However eloquent their pleas, Ne- not have imagined only a few years earli- groes alone could make no successful er. Northern communities were not alto- assault on the two worlds of race. They gether friendly and hospitable to the new- needed help–a great deal of help. It was comers, but the opportunities for educa- the bloody race riots in the early years tion and the enjoyment of political self- of the twentieth century that shocked respect were the greatest they had ever civic minded and socially conscious seen. Many of them felt that they were whites into answering the Negro’s pleas entirely justi½ed in their renewed hope for support. Some whites began to take that the war would bring about a com- the view that the existence of two soci- plete merger of the two worlds of race. eties whose distinction was based sole- Those who held such high hopes, how- ly on race was inimical to the best inter- ever, were naive in the extreme. Already ests of the entire nation. Soon, they were the Ku Klux Klan was being revived– taking the initiative and in 1909 organ- this time in the North as well as in the ized the National Association for the South. Its leaders were determined to Advancement of Colored People. They develop a broad program to unite “na- assisted the following year in establish- tive-born white Christians for concert- ing the National Urban League. White ed action in the preservation of Ameri- attorneys began to stand with Negroes can institutions and the supremacy of before the United States Supreme Court the white race.” By the time that the to challenge the “grandfather clause,” war was over, the Klan was in a position local segregation ordinances, and fla- to make capital of the racial animosities grant miscarriages of justice in which that had developed during the conflict Negroes were the victims. The patterns itself. Racial conflicts had broken out of attack developed during these years in many places during the war; and be- were to become invaluable later. Legal fore the conference at Versailles was action was soon supplemented by pick- over race riots in the United States had eting, demonstrating, and boycotting, brought about what can accurately be with telling effect particularly in select- described as the “long, hot summer” ed Northern communities.13 of 1919. If anything, the military operations The two world wars had a profound which aimed to save the world for de- effect on the status of Negroes in the mocracy merely ½xed more permanent- United States and did much to mount ly the racial separation in the United the attack on the two worlds of race. States. Negro soldiers not only constitut- The decade of World War I witnessed a ed entirely separate ½ghting units in the very signi½cant migration of Negroes. United States Army, but, once overseas, They went in large numbers–perhaps were assigned to ½ghting units with the a half million–from the rural areas of French Army. Negroes who sought ser- the South to the towns and cities of the vice with the United States Marines or the South and North. They were especially Air Force were rejected, while the Navy attracted to the industrial centers of the relegated them to menial duties. The re- North. By the thousands they poured action of many Negroes was bitter, but

Dædalus Winter 2011 37 The Two most of the leaders, including Du Bois, the whites who consigned him to the Worlds of counseled patience and loyalty. They con- ghetto, attacked racial discrimination Race: A Historical tinued to hope that their show of patri- in employment, and pressed for legisla- View otism would win for them a secure place tion to protect his rights. If he was sel- of acceptance as Americans. dom successful during the postwar de- Few Negro Americans could have an- cade and the depression, he made it ticipated the wholesale rejection they quite clear that he was unalterably op- experienced at the conclusion of World posed to the un-American character of War I. Returning Negro soldiers were the two worlds of race. lynched by hanging and burning, even Hope for a new assault on racism was while still in their military uniforms. kindled by some of the New Deal poli- The Klan warned Negroes that they must cies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As mem- respect the rights of the white race “in bers of the economically disadvantaged whose country they are permitted to group, Negroes bene½ted from relief reside.” Racial conflicts swept the coun- and recovery legislation. Most of it, try, and neither federal nor state govern- however, recognized the existence of ments seemed interested in effective the two worlds of race and accommodat- intervention. The worlds of race were ed itself to it. Frequently bread lines and growing further apart in the postwar soup kitchens were separated on the ba- decade. Nothing indicated this more sis of race. There was segregation in the clearly than the growth of the Univer- employment services, while many new sal Negro Improvement Association, agencies recognized and bowed to Jim led by Marcus Garvey. From a mere Crow. Whenever agencies, such as the handful of members at the end of the Farm Security Administration, fought war, the Garvey movement rapidly be- segregation and sought to deal with came the largest secular Negro group people on the basis of their needs rather ever organized in the United States. Al- than race they came under the wither- though few Negroes were interested in ing ½re of the racist critics and seldom settling in Africa–the expressed aim of escaped alive. Winds of change, how- Garvey–they joined the movement by ever slight, were discernible, and no- the hundreds of thousands to indicate where was this in greater evidence than their resentment of the racial duality in the new labor unions. Groups like that seemed to them to be the central the Congress of Industrial Organiza- feature of the American social order.14 tions, encouraged by the support of the More realistic and hardheaded were Wagner Labor Relations Act, began to the Negroes who were more determined look at manpower resources as a whole than ever to engage in the most desper- and to attack the old racial policies that ate ½ght of their lives to destroy racism viewed labor in terms of race. in the United States. As the editor of the As World War II approached, Negroes Crisis said in 1919, “We return from ½ght- schooled in the experiences of the nine- ing. We return ½ghting. Make way for teen-twenties and thirties were unwill- Democracy! We saved it in France, and ing to see the ½ght against Nazism car- by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in ried on in the context of an American the U.S.A., or know the reason why.” racist ideology. Some white Americans This was the spirit of what Alain Locke were likewise uncomfortable in the role called “The New Negro.” He fought the of freeing Europe of a racism which still Democratic white primary, made war on permeated the United States; but it was

38 Dædalus Winter 2011 the Negroes who dramatized American such large-scale migration were numer- John Hope inconsistency by demanding an end to ous. The concentration of Negroes in Franklin discrimination in employment in de- communities where they suffered no po- fense industries. By threatening to march litical disabilities placed in their hands on Washington in 1941 they forced the an enormous amount of political power. President to issue an order forbidding Consequently, some of them went to such discrimination. The opposition the legislatures, to Congress, and to posi- was loud and strong. Some state gover- tions on the judiciary. In turn, this won nors denounced the order, and some for them political respect as well as legis- manufacturers skillfully evaded it. But lation that greatly strengthened their it was a signi½cant step toward the position as citizens. elimination of the two worlds. During World War II the assault on Following World War II there was a racism continued. Negroes, more than marked acceleration in the war against a million of whom were enlisted in the the two worlds of race in the United armed services, bitterly fought discrimi- States. In 1944 the Supreme Court ruled nation and segregation. The armed ser- against segregation in interstate trans- vices were, for the most part, two quite portation, and three years later it wrote distinct racial worlds. Some Negro units the ½nal chapter in the war against the had white of½cers, and much of the of- Democratic white primary. In 1947 the ½cer training was desegregated. But it President’s Committee on Civil Rights was not until the ½nal months of the war called for the “elimination of segrega- that a deliberate experiment was under- tion, based on race, color, creed, or na- taken to involve Negro and white enlist- tional origin, from American life.”16 In ed men in the same ½ghting unit. With the following year President Truman the success of the experiment and with asked Congress to establish a permanent the warm glow of victory over Nazism as Fair Employment Practices Commis- a backdrop, there was greater inclination sion. At the same time he took steps to to recognize the absurdity of maintain- eliminate segregation in the armed ser- ing a racially separate military force to vices. These moves on the part of the ju- protect the freedoms of the country.15 dicial and executive branches of the fed- During the war there began the great- eral government by no means destroyed est migration in the history of Negro the two worlds of race, but they created Americans. Hundreds of thousands left a more healthy climate in which the gov- the South for the industrial centers of ernment and others could launch an at- the North and West. In those places they tack on racial separatism. met hostility, but they also secured em- The attack was greatly strengthened ployment in aviation plants, automobile by the new position of world leadership factories, steel mills, and numerous oth- that the United States assumed at the er industries. Their dif½culties persisted close of the war. Critics of the United as they faced problems of housing and States were quick to point to the incon- adjustment. But they continued to move sistencies of an American position that out of the South in such large numbers spoke against racism abroad and counte- that by 1965 one third of the twenty mil- nanced it at home. New nations, brown lion Negroes in the United States lived and black, seemed reluctant to follow in twelve metropolitan centers of the the lead of a country that adhered to its North and West. The rami½cations of policy of maintaining two worlds of

Dædalus Winter 2011 39 The Two race–the one identi½ed with the old co- and, not infrequently, the teachers and Worlds of lonial ruling powers and the other with school administrators, become auxiliary Race: A Historical the colonies now emerging as indepen- guardians of the system of racial separa- View dent nations. Responsible leaders in the tion. In such communities Negroes oc- United States saw the weakness of their cupy no policy-making positions, exer- position, and some of them made new cise no influence over the determination moves to repair it. of policy, and are seldom even on the Civic and religious groups, some la- police force. State and local resources, bor organizations, and many individu- including tax funds, are at the disposal als from the white community began of those who guard the system of segre- to join in the effort to destroy segrega- gation and discrimination; and such tion and discrimination in American funds are used to enforce customs as life. There was no danger, after World well as laws and to disseminate infor- War II, that Negroes would ever again mation in support of the system. stand alone in their ½ght. The older in- The white community itself acts as terracial organizations continued, but a guardian of the segregated system. they were joined by new ones. In addi- Schooled in the specious arguments tion to the numerous groups that in- that assert the supremacy of the white cluded racial equality in their overall race and fearful that a destruction of programs, there were others that made the system would be harmful to their the creation of one racial world their own position, they not only “go along” principal objective. Among them were with it but, in many cases, enthusiasti- the Congress of Racial Equality, the cally support it. Community sanctions Southern Christian Leadership Confer- are so powerful, moreover, that the in- ence, and the Student Non-Violent Co- dependent citizen who would defy the ordinating Committee. Those in exis- established order would ½nd himself tence in the 1950s supported the court not only ostracized but, worse, the tar- action that brought about the decision get of economic and political reprisals. against segregated schools. The more Within the community many self- recent ones have taken the lead in press- appointed guardians of white supremacy ing for new legislation and in develop- have emerged at various times. After the ing new techniques to be used in the Civil War and after World War I it was war on segregation. the Ku Klux Klan, which has shown surprising strength in recent years. After The most powerful direct force in the the desegregation decision of the Su- maintenance of the two worlds of race preme Court in 1954 it was the White has been the state and its political sub- Citizens’ Council, which one Southern divisions. In states and communities editor has called the “uptown Ku Klux where racial separation and discrimi- Klan.” From time to time since 1865, it nation are basic to the way of life, the has been the political demagogue, who elected of½cials invariably pledge them- has not only made capital by urging his selves to the perpetuation of the duality. election as a sure way to maintain the Indeed, candidates frequently vie with system but has also encouraged the less one another in their effort to occupy the responsible elements of the community most extreme segregationist position to take the law into their own hands. possible on the race question. Appoint- Violence, so much a part of American ed of½cials, including the constabulary history and particularly of Southern his-

40 Dædalus Winter 2011 tory, has been an important factor in tempt to turn back the clock to the Re- John Hope maintaining the two worlds of race. In- construction era, when federal inter- Franklin timidation, terror, lynchings, and riots vention, they claim, imposed a harsh have, in succession, been the handmaid- and unjust peace.17 To make effective en of political entities whose of½cials their argument, they use such emotion- have been unwilling or unable to put an laden phrases as “military occupation,” end to it. Violence drove Negroes from “Negro rule,” and “black-out of honest the polls in the 1870s and has kept them government.” Americans other than away in droves since that time. Lynch- Southerners have been frightened by ings, the spectacular rope and faggot the Southerners’ claim that civil rights kind or the quiet kind of merely “doing for Negroes would cause a return to the away” with some insubordinate Negro, “evils” of Reconstruction. Insecure in have served their special purpose in ter- their own knowledge of history, they rorizing whole communities of Negroes. have accepted the erroneous assertions Riots, con½ned to no section of the coun- about the “disaster” of radical rule after try, have demonstrated how explosive the Civil War and the vengeful punish- the racial situation can be in urban comment meted out to the South by the Ne- munities burdened with the strain of gro and his white allies. Regardless of racial strife. the merits of these arguments that seem The heavy hand of history has been a specious on the face of them–to say powerful force in the maintenance of a nothing of their historical inaccuracy– segregated society and, conversely, in they have served as effective brakes on the resistance to change. Americans, the drive to destroy the two worlds of especially Southerners whose devotion race. to the past is unmatched by that of any One suspects, however, that racial others, have summoned history to sup- bigotry has become more expensive in port their arguments that age-old prac- recent years. It is not so easy now as it tices and institutions cannot be changed once was to make political capital out overnight, that social practices cannot of the race problem, even in the deep be changed by legislation. Southerners South. Local citizens–farmers, labor- have argued that desegregation would ers, manufacturers–have become a break down long-established customs bit weary of the promises of the dema- and bring instability to a social order gogue that he will preserve the integri- that, if left alone, would have no seri- ty of the races if he is, at the same time, ous racial or social disorders. After all, unable to persuade investors to build Southern whites “know” Negroes; and factories and bring capital to their com- their knowledge has come from many munities. Some Southerners, depen- generations of intimate association dent on tourists, are not certain that and observation, they insist. their vaunted racial pride is so dear, if it White Southerners have also sum- keeps visitors away and brings depres- moned history to support them in sion to their economy. The cities that their resistance to federal legislation see themselves bypassed by a prospec- designed to secure the civil rights of tive manufacturer because of their rep- Negroes. At every level–in local groups, utation in the ½eld of race relations state governments, and in Congress– might have some sober second thoughts white Southerners have asserted that about the importance of maintaining federal civil rights legislation is an at- their two worlds. In a word, the eco-

Dædalus Winter 2011 41 The Two nomics of segregation and discrimina- While it is not possible to measure the Worlds of tion is forcing, in some quarters, a recon- influence of public opinion in the drive Race: A Historical sideration of the problem. for equality, it can hardly be denied that View It must be added that the existence of over the past ½ve or six years public opin- the two worlds of race has created forces ion has shown a marked shift toward that cause some Negroes to seek its per- vigorous support of the civil rights move- petuation. Some Negro institutions, the ment. This can be seen in the manner in product of a dual society, have vested in- which the mass-circulation magazines as terests in the perpetuation of that socie- well as influential newspapers, even in ty. And Negroes who fear the destruc- the South, have stepped up their support tion of their own institutions by desegre- of speci½c measures that have as their gation are encouraged by white racists to objective the elimination of at least the ½ght for their maintenance. Even where worst features of racism. The discussion Negroes have a desire to maintain their of the problem of race over radio and tel- institutions because of their honest com- evision and the use of these media in re- mitment to the merits of cultural plural- porting newsworthy and dramatic events ism, the desire becomes a strident strug- in the world of race undoubtedly have gle for survival in the context of racist had some impact. If such activities have forces that seek with a vengeance to de- not brought about the enactment of civil stroy such institutions. The ½ring of a rights legislation, they have doubtless few hundred Negro school teachers by stimulated the public discussion that a zealous, racially-oriented school board culminated in such legislation. forces some second thoughts on the part The models of city ordinances and of the Negroes regarding the merits of state laws and the increased political desegregation. influence of civil rights advocates stimulated new action on the federal level. The drive to destroy the two worlds Civil rights acts were passed in 1957, of race has reached a new, dramatic, 1960, and 1964–after almost complete and somewhat explosive stage in re- federal inactivity in this sphere for more cent years. The forces arrayed in behalf than three quarters of a century. Strong of maintaining these two worlds have leadership on the part of the executive been subjected to ceaseless and power- and favorable judicial interpretations ful attacks by the increasing numbers of old as well as new laws have made committed to the elimination of racism it clear that the war against the two in American life. Through techniques worlds of race now enjoys the sanction of demonstrating, picketing, sitting-in, of the law and its interpreters. In many and boycotting they have not only ha- respects this constitutes the most sig- rassed their foes but marshaled their ni½cant development in the struggle forces. Realizing that another ingredi- against racism in the present century. ent was needed, they have pressed for The reading of American history new and better laws and the active sup- over the past two centuries impresses port of government. At the local and one with the fact that ambivalence on state levels they began to secure legisla- the crucial question of equality has per- tion in the 1940s to guarantee the civil sisted almost from the beginning. If rights of all, eliminate discrimination the term “equal rights for all” has not in employment, and achieve decent always meant what it appeared to mean, public and private housing for all. the inconsistencies and the paradoxes

42 Dædalus Winter 2011 have become increasingly apparent. This the voices supporting inequality, while John Hope is not to say that the view that “equal no less strident, have been signi½cantly Franklin rights for some” has disappeared or has weakened by the very force of the num- even ceased to be a threat to the concept bers and elements now seeking to elimi- of real equality. It is to say, however, that nate the two worlds of race.

endnotes 1 Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 15–18. 2 John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (New York: Knopf, 1956), 156–157. 3 Carter G. Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1919), 93–97. 4 P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 22–32. 5 John Hope Franklin, The Militant South, 1800–1861 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1956), 83–86. 6 Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830–1860 (New York: Harper, 1960), 142–145. 7 Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery; The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1961), 216–217. 8 Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 200. 9 John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction: After the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 154–158. 10 Rayford W. Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 (New York: Dial Press, 1954), 239–274. 11 John Hope Franklin, “History of Racial Segregation in the United States,” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science 304 (March 1956): 1–9. 12 George W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers and as Citizens, together with a Preliminary Consideration of the Unity of the Human Family, an Historical Sketch of Africa, and an Account of the Negro Governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882), x. 13 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 437–443. 14 Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses, The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955), 202–206. 15 Lee Nichols, Breakthrough on the Color Front (New York: Random House, 1954), 221–226. 16 To Secure These Rights, The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of½ce, 1947), 166. 17 John Hope Franklin, “As For Our History,” in The Southerner as American, ed. Charles G. Sellers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 1–18.

Dædalus Winter 2011 43 Freedom, Equality, Race

Jeffrey B. Ferguson

Our current era of race relations in America maintains racial distinctions largely through the expectation that they will soon disappear. This stands in contrast with previous periods, in which such categories as black and white counted as durable facts of descent and destiny. One side of the current race debate plays up the disappearance of racial distinctions, sometimes by exaggerating the virtues of color blindness. The other side guards against the diminishment of such distinctions, at times going so far as to equate current racial problems with the dark and distant past of slavery and Jim Crow. For the ½rst camp–what we might call a “party of hope”– current racial realities signal the promise of a raceless future where skin color may have no more societal import than does eye color. The second –a “party of memory”–aims for a similar goal, but it generally casts its ultimate purpose in more pluralistic terms. This party ½nds the waning of timeworn forms of racial identity, along with the deeply etched barriers that gave rise to them, threatening to the very political movements that JEFFREY B. FERGUSON is the might bring about lasting positive change. Ironi- Andrew W. Mellon Professor cally, the party of memory ½nds what the party of Black Studies and American of hope would call racial progress somewhat dan- Studies at Amherst College. He gerous to ultimate racial justice. No less curious is the author of The Harlem Re- naissance: A Brief History with is the party of hope’s prevailing expectation that Documents (2008) and The Sage after more than two hundred years of constant ra- of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler cial strife, black and white identity in the United and the Harlem Renaissance (2005). States will simply fade away.

44 Dædalus Winter 2011 In some ways, the expectation that historian Edmund Morgan, have dem- Jeffrey B. race will disappear seems particular to onstrated a necessary relationship be- Ferguson our era of race relations; but in other tween the freedom cries of slavemasters ways, the thought goes back quite far. and their status as absolute rulers of Most Americans have always regarded stateless men and women who were the abiding values of our country as uni- regarded primarily as property and as versal, and therefore raceless. Because human beings in a much less formal they think of such principles as equali- register. In American Slavery, American ty and freedom in this way, they believe Freedom (1975), Morgan argues that rul- that eventually, in an essentially good ing-class Southerners at the time of the and fair country such as ours, these high American Revolution–Patrick Henry, ideals will prevail over the more paro- for example–tended to associate all chial values that keep us apart. Histori- subordination with the wretched con- cally, this progressive mindset has come dition of their slaves.1 They employed with many good intentions on the race this analogy in their idealistic insistence question but much less follow-up. For on freedom from the British. Henry’s this and other reasons it has long been famous eruption on the floor of the Con- an object of attack for scholars of the tinental Congress, “Give me liberty or African American experience. Those give me death,” marked him as a radical who believe that racial problems will republican, one ready to pay the highest go away on their own tend not to act price for independence. Nevertheless, directly to solve them, or they put forth the reverberant utterance of this slave- half-stepping measures that address holding Virginian (and others like him) some issues but invent, reinvent, or bequeathed a cruel legacy to generations exacerbate others. Over time, this ten- of Americans. Unlike free white men, dency has contributed mightily to the Henry’s slaves lived under the very con- cloud of betrayal that hangs constant- dition that would presumably have driv- ly, and sometimes ominously, over the en their freedom-loving master to kill American racial discourse. At its worst, and to die. Henry’s formulation, odd- the seemingly benign idea of progress, ly, justi½ed the degradation of African which many still regard as the soul of Americans by the very condition that the American dream, can serve as a the degradation caused; in no small mask for crass class interest, or can measure, it associated blackness with allow racists to “blame the victim” and shame. Though they lived to guarantee thus to deny the cruel meaning of their the freedom of supposedly independent anti-democratic views. Yet these conse- men, and yearned for freedom in their quences of progress do not contradict own terms despite their abasement, the meaning of such foundational val- African Americans suffered for how ues as freedom and equality so much starkly they symbolized what white as they manifest their inner logic. men both feared and despised. It is worth remembering the uncomfortable and often repeated fact that Many writers have observed that our most cherished American princi- the Enlightenment, through its empha- ples have as one of their most important sis on human powers, gave freedom its sources the minds of slavemasters and modern meaning; but it also codi½ed slave traders. Discerning observers of the modern idea of race as one way to the American experience, such as the distinguish those worthy of liberty from

Dædalus Winter 2011 45 Freedom, the irrational, uncivilized, and supersti- logical valences remain active, the post– Equality, tious “others” who supposedly lived in a civil rights concept of race relies main- Race perpetual past. In other words, this peri- ly on values, modes of signifying, and od handed down most of the reasons to behavior. Rather than membership in believe in race along with the justi½ca- a biological group, “whiteness” repre- tions for despising and resisting it. As sents a cultural norm that non-whites the Enlightenment gave life to the mod- may receive rewards for adopting– ern concept of race, it created the condi- though acquiring the necessary cultural tions that force us to explain and theo- capital to do so can prove almost impos- rize this category incessantly. In the hands sible for many. Here, as the social theo- of early race theorists such as Linnaeus, rist Etienne Balibar points out, the work Blumenbach, and de Buffon, seemingly of exclusion occurs through the regula- objective biological categories like skin tion of inclusion rather than forming an color and skull size served as impartial absolute line of demarcation between measures that positioned man as a sub- the races.2 Those able to conform to the ject of his own scienti½c inquiry and normalizing logic of post–civil rights thus as an object of new forms of power/ “whiteness” live freer lives than those knowledge that enabled the shaping and who cannot, as the dismal statistics control of populations. Thus, human showing racial disparities in wealth, freedom in this era, and thereafter, de- health, education, and criminal justice pended crucially on a thoroughgoing reveal so evidently. Under this regime, form of subjection that created its own the work of racial exclusion can occur human hierarchies, which in some ways quite ef½ciently but without overt rac- reinscribed ancient ideas of descent and ism. In contrast with the frontal as- inheritance but now with new and high- sault of the pre–civil rights racial rely influential scienti½c imprimatur. As gime, which occurred more or less in the modern concept of freedom carried the open, the new dispensation con- with it the inclusive language of univer- ducts most of its oppressive labor be- salism, it also privileged certain human hind a smokescreen of elaborate racial qualities: rationality, possession of na- etiquette and discursive deflection that ture or property, power, resistance, and communicates racial fear and aversion autonomy, to name a few. Instead of across an ever wider range of signi½ca- membership in humanity as it is, free- tion. dom signi½ed communion with hu- In its more recent cultural guise, race manity as it ought to be. Those who continues to play a strategic role on the failed to qualify for this imagined ideal exclusionary side of modern freedom; often faced terrible consequences, as for the excluded, however, racial iden- the long history of slavery, imperialism, tity still has deep attractions, partly be- sexism, and class oppression demon- cause the sheer existence of barriers to strates amply. full social advancement provides a back- From their inception, the concepts of drop against which group solidarity freedom and race have reinforced each might be perceived in moral terms: as other in the making of modernity; they part of a long and righteous struggle for continue to do so today, though the con- freedom. This idea is well established cept of race has shifted in its de½nition- among African Americans, who, out of al grounding, from nature to culture. the necessity of historic struggle, have Despite the fact that some of the old bio- formed an alternately heroic, sacri½cial,

46 Dædalus Winter 2011 and sometimes melodramatic sense of on one side and a battle for individual Jeffrey B. group belonging laden with collective distinction or status on the other. Ferguson memories of struggle on the wrong side Basing his observations on an exten- of the American color line. These strug- sive tour of the United States during the gles have served not only as ways of ac- 1830s, Tocqueville regarded American quiring freedom, but also as a means of society as a test case for the prospects of performing it culturally and politically a new and inexorable world-historical across a great range that encompasses process in which equality, individualism, modes of self-fashioning, artistic styles, and democracy would increasingly dis- and direct forms of political resistance place privilege based on birth and per- and protest. This tradition of perform- manent class structures. He contemplat- ing freedom has helped raise African ed America at an early stage of its devel- American identity above the level of opment with the chaos and despotism mere external imposition as it has creat- of post-revolutionary France, and the ed a point of identi½cation for those out- slipping grip of his own class, well in side the group to symbolize their own view. Though he recognized the positive freedom struggles. potential of democracy, he remained equally cognizant of its constitutional As a dominant value in American flaws: its tendencies toward conformity, life, freedom has always stood beside, dictatorship of the people, corruption, and competed with, the idea of equal- greed, envy, moralism, intellectual shal- ity. Nowhere has the complex relation- lowness, voluntary isolation of the in- ship between these two bedrock con- dividual from collective life, and many cepts had greater impact than in the other weaknesses both large and small. history of race relations, and rarely has For Tocqueville, American society in the their mutual opposition and entangle- 1830s represented a wonderful opportu- ment received more trenchant treat- nity to observe whether such defective ment than in the work of the nine- tendencies would prevail because it of- teenth-century French aristocrat and fered a perfect photo-negative of the social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville. In European social picture: a place where his classic Democracy in America (1840), sheer newness put immigrants and near- he observed that in a country where all immigrants, strangers to the land with men are created equal, those not recog- no permanent barrier between them, in nized as equals may not be regarded as a society where they might arrange life men. Tocqueville’s eminently logical for- according to their tastes, talents, and de- mula sets out in elegant form the inti- sires. Many of the saving graces and sus- mate connection between a high uni- taining patterns that Tocqueville recog- versal ideal and a foundational violence nized in American democracy–its local that it maintains through masking. Fol- associations and communal public life, lowing Tocqueville’s calculation, hierar- its ascetic faith in the value of work, its chies of descent grow naturally from the dynamic and expansive world-altering inner tensions of democratic values, not will–stand endangered in our own age; out of a failure to attend to them. Amer- thus, we may still wonder about the ulti- icans constantly reinvent racial distinc- mate survivability of our way of life. Or, tions and invidious race theories in part in light of American race relations from to resolve the quandary of their national slavery to the present, we might wonder condition, which entails basic equality whether Tocqueville understood entirely

Dædalus Winter 2011 47 Freedom, the full array of forces that have made geoning productivity, culture of equali- Equality, American democracy cohere. In the end, ty, and the competitive anxiety of its citi- Race the stability of our democracy may de- zens. In the South, he surmised, the exis- pend as much on the maintenance of tence of slavery retarded development. racial inequality, vouchsafed by the Rather than productive, the South was anxieties of equality, as it does on the lazy; instead of progressive, it remained values and structures that Tocqueville mired in the past. Lacking ingenuity, it so famously cited. depended on a narrow range of cash Without “blackness,” or some such crops; lacking equality, it suffered from negative or countervailing category, the absence of inner drive in its rank- “whiteness” would not have achieved and-½le citizens, who depended on rel- its stability as the primary mode of iden- atively unproductive slaves to do most ti½cation in America. And without the of the work. None of these characteris- stabilizing effect of “blackness,” one of tics augured well for the survival of the the main justi½cations for the average South. Underdeveloped by its own eco- white person to count himself a member nomic and cultural commitments, faced of the same group as the richest would with an expansive and dynamic section- not exist. As several important scholars al competitor, and threatened by the of whiteness studies, such as David Roe- natural increase of its slave population, diger, Noel Ignatiev, and Matthew Frye it faced an imminent crisis. In time, Jacobson, have shown, this formula has Tocqueville imagined, the South would provided one of the greatest bulwarks lose its grip on its slaves, in part because against the formation of entrenched these unfree people, as members of a so- class identity, even as Americans of all ciety that prized equality, would never colors and persuasions strive to climb accept their unequal station, and thus the class ladder partly by blending in.3 could never embrace the spirit of Euro- Whiteness, with all its confused conno- pean peasantry. Yet, he thought, whites tations of universality and particularity, would never admit blacks as equals. A of destiny and sheer emptiness, still pre- racist himself, Tocqueville believed that vails as a reason for some of the poorest whites everywhere in the United States Americans to tolerate their condition, would understandably continue to dis- even as demographers anticipate the criminate against an inferior people, day, not more than forty years from and that blacks stood little chance be- now, when the American majority will, yond establishing their own state by in numbers, take on a darker hue. conducting a war against indolent In his famous section “On the Three Southern whites. Given their numbers, Races that Currently Inhabit America,” and what he regarded as the decrepit Tocqueville contributed a foundational moral state of their white enemies, he pillar to a long tradition of social analy- liked their chances in such a conflict.4 sis that would regard the problem of black and white as an aberration rather Tocqueville’s analysis of race in “On than a constitutive feature of American the Three Races that Currently Inhabit social and political life. Though he ana- America” commands current interest lyzes the slave South in detail, he treats much more for its connection to his larg- it as the opposite of the industrial North, er theory than for its historical accuracy. which for him represented the future of Much of what he anticipated simply did American democracy because of its bur- not happen. Moreover, few current his-

48 Dædalus Winter 2011 torians of American slavery would take white and black working classes apart, Jeffrey B. up his dichotomous view of North and rested heavily on this formula, for no Ferguson South, his dim account of slavery’s prof- matter how far a white person fell in itability, his unitary view of the slave the competition with other whites, he system, or his somewhat mechanical could always look back and spot a dark rendering of the effects of the peculiar face in his rearview mirror. Given the institution on the hearts, minds, and broad patterns of American politics motivations of slaves and slaveholders. since the late 1960s–from the success Nevertheless, Tocqueville’s theoretical of the Republican “Southern Strategy,” terms in Democracy in America do pro- to the disaffection of Northern work- vide a good foundation for understanding-class whites who abandoned the ing how the value of equality helped Democratic coalition in the 1970s and reinforce the perennial American ob- 1980s, to today’s racially inflected Tea session with racial distinction. Party movement and paranoid fears Tocqueville believed that white Ameri- concerning a “Marxist,” “Fascist,” cans, beyond their motivations rooted “Muslim,” African American presi- in racism, would ½nd black Americans dent–it would appear that an unfor- hard to accept because of the radically tunately high proportion of whites unequal station from which they start- still subscribe to this way of thinking. ed. Locked in an absorbing competition In his many essays on race and Amer- with their peers and exceedingly nervous ican identity, Ralph Ellison wrote art- about the prospects of rising and falling fully of what he called the democratic in the game of distinction, white Amer- “chaos” that white Americans sought icans would always feel compromised to avoid through their various projec- by their association with a degraded and tions onto African Americans. Today, inferior people; their anxiety derived in this process might have more varied part from how perfectly the condition of economic and social consequences congenital inferiority and social invisibil- than in the pre–civil rights era when ity reflected their own worst fears. The Ellison gave it such eloquent codi½ca- promise of American life, rooted in the tion, but the moral consequences have idea that no permanent social barrier not changed very much at all. Accord- stands between even the lowest white ing to Ellison, these projections have man and the very richest, comes with at their root the cowardly avoidance of the devastating prospect of freefall: those ethical responsibility to give shape to who can rise in½nitely can also fall into the self within a democratic culture. uncharted territory of vulnerability, in- At its best, Ellison suggested, such a cul- visibility, and loss. Cut off from strong ture demands sincere engagement with claims to a primordial past, and staked diverse human possibility; at its worst, on the prospect of ever better days to it cowers behind candy-coated fantasies come, white Americans needed to in- of goodness already achieved and boun- vent the nigger–the nameless, faceless, ty with no consequence. As diligent and incompetent who warranted no respect successful shapers of a way of life, Afri- –in order to hide from the real prospect can Americans have af½rmed democrat- of becoming one. The “psychological ic possibility under the toughest circum- wage” of whiteness, which W.E.B. Du stances by facing the ultimate threat of Bois famously identi½ed in Black Recon- nothingness and bringing themselves struction (1935) to explain what kept the into being, though they have also suc-

Dædalus Winter 2011 49 Freedom, cumbed in countless ways to illusions poor–indeed, many have become even Equality, stemming from the anger, despair, and poorer–the black middle class has ris- Race resentment endemic to their social cir- en to unprecedented heights of profes- cumstance. Ellison’s protagonist in the sional achievement, inclusion in impor- novel Invisible Man (1952) spends the tant institutions, and social exposure. larger part of the book living the false Today, the appearance of black Ameri- life of a black man on the make who cans in advertising and the media no takes his signals concerning who to be longer surprises, nor do the images from whites, whose humanity he can- they portray necessarily reflect stereo- not clearly recognize for lack of facing types. Some popular stars, such as Tiger his own. Just as whites project their de- Woods, whose multiracial background sires onto him, he regards them as mere would not have spared him from being conduits to power, and thus as gods of considered black in the pre–civil rights a sort. His power fantasy engenders era, dwell in an apparent racial twilight only weakness.5 zone that seems “neither black nor The game of projection at the heart of white, yet both.”6 Though the country race relations comes, according to Elli- remains highly segregated residentially son, with a large portion of paranoia, as and educationally, and intermarriage whites, subject to the identity confusion rates between blacks and whites show so basic to American life, know on some only incremental increases, surveys of unconscious level that black skin forms white Americans reveal a continuing the mystic writing pad of their own de- diminishment of overt racism rooted sires. Of course, blacks sense the same in ideas of biological inferiority. And thing: that in important ways, white the clincher of this case needs almost Americans, for all their apparent strength no mention: our president is an Afri- as a group, remain vulnerable and always can American. a bit worried that the person behind the Yet these signs of progress seem to black mask must know their desires– engender their opposite. The effort that and with that truth in hand, may well be our society has exerted to make advances putting one over on them. Today, in our in race relations has also served at times post–civil rights period, a large part of to reinforce the importance of race in this game occurs around the public drama our politics and to encourage new styles of continuing black anger, the notion of of racial identi½cation. Nothing reflects “pulling the race card,” and the seeming- this fact better than the effect of af½rma- ly bottomless need from whites for con- tive action policies, which have granted ½rmation from blacks that racism no middle-class blacks unprecedented ac- longer exists, or at the very least that cess to important institutions, but at the they as individuals bear no visible trace same time have led many whites to think of the unspeakable sin. in zero-sum terms about racial progress: a job given to a black American is one de- To this observation some might an- nied to a more quali½ed white. At times, swer that black people no longer suffer even our celebrations of racial progress from invisibility in the same way they serve to reinforce boundaries between did when Ellison penned his famous the races because they require us to re- works. Over the last thirty years, al- inscribe race discursively by employing though large portions of the black low- it as a mode of classi½cation. Recently, er and working classes have remained a reporter commented after a speech by

50 Dædalus Winter 2011 President Obama that, during the course the ½nal scene of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jeffrey B. of that address, he had forgotten Obama’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which famous- Ferguson race. No doubt his thought reflected that ly reflects on the beauty and tragedy of of many Americans of every description. the American insistence on remaining Of course, this reporter’s amazement at forever new. Though he does not say so experiencing a supposedly raceless mo- directly, Huggins suggests that the pow- ment required him constantly to note, as erful effect of Fitzgerald’s famous pas- Obama spoke, that he really was in the sage, in all its tragic wisdom, depends presence of the “other,” but in a fashion in part on the exclusion of those early both new and unapproachable because black captives, who also brought dreams otherness itself was absent. In a sense, with them, however muted by misfor- Obama had provided a moment for the tune. While these dreams, and the ef- reporter that exceeded the limits of his forts they engendered, would over gen- racial categories. But recognizing this erations play a great role in constitut- fact required the evocation of a highly ing the American experience, so would rei½ed and essential form of blackness, the attempts to exclude them or to play a virtual thing in itself requiring almost down their importance. Our nation has no content. Though Obama did not “talk certainly made some progress on this black” or “act black”–apparently he did record, but it has not arrived at the new not even “look black” to this reporter– narrative of the American experience somehow he was black, nonetheless. that Huggins thought necessary to align Such are the confusions of our mo- American dreams with the events that ment, emanations of an undigested past. have made us who we are. Race has In Black Odyssey (1977), a book that over marked American culture trenchantly, the years has become a classic in black as it has marked the basic principles studies for its challenge to the progres- that we regard as raceless. Recognizing sive brand of American historiography, the full meaning of this thought will re- Nathan Huggins reaches back in his epi- quire a new narrative, indeed. In his last logue to wonder how the sprawling sentence, both in homage and in mild green visage of the new world ½rst ap- derision, Huggins quotes the famous peared to the twenty slaves aboard the last line of Gatsby, which still merits fateful Dutch ship that lay off the shore our deepest reflection: “So we beat on, of Jamestown in 1619.7 In making this boats against the current, borne cease- gesture, he parodies (to some extent) lessly into the past.” endnotes 1 On the connection between republicanism and slavery, see Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 363–390; also Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” The Journal of American History 59 (1) (June 1972): 5–29. 2 Etienne Balibar, “Is There a ‘Neo-Racism’?” in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Waller- stein, Race, Nation, Class (London: Verso, 1991), 17–28. 3 See Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 2007); and Matthew Frye Jacob- son, Whiteness of a Different Color (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Dædalus Winter 2011 51 Freedom, 4 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), Equality, 302–391. Race 5 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1995); Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth Century Fiction and the Mask of Humanity,” Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1995), 24–29, 41; see also in the same volume, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” 53. 6 This is the title of Werner Sollors’s authoritative account of interracial literature in Amer- ica; see Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 7 Nathan Irvin Huggins, Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal in Slavery (New York: Random House, 1990), 243–244.

52 Dædalus Winter 2011 Racial Liberalism, the Moynihan Report & the Dædalus Project on “The Negro American”

Daniel Geary

With the ultimate goal of “including [African Americans] in our society,” President Lyndon Johnson called on Americans to combat “the inter-locking effects of deprivation” that resulted from centuries of oppression.1 Johnson delivered these words not in a political speech but in his 1965 foreword to a two-part issue of Dædalus. It is not often that presidents write introductions for scholarly journals. But, from its inception, the Dædalus project on “The Negro American” (including two conferences, two journal issues, and the 1966 book based on them) was linked to mid-1960s liberal political efforts to address long-standing racial inequalities in the United States.2 The Dædalus project became entangled with one of the period’s most explosive liberal statements, The Negro Family: The Case for Nation- DANIEL GEARY is the Mark Pig- al Action (1965), better known as the Moynihan ott Lecturer in U.S. History at Report after its author, Daniel Patrick Moyni- Trinity College Dublin. His pub- han, then an Assistant Secretary of Labor, later lications include Radical Ambi- tion: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and a long-serving U.S. Senator from New York. The American Social Thought (2009) Moynihan Report argued that the damaged fam- and “‘Becoming International ily structure of many poor African Americans Again’: C. Wright Mills and the would impede efforts to achieve economic Emergence of a Global New Left, equality between blacks and whites. 1956–1962,” Journal of American The Negro Family, written on Moynihan’s own History (2008). He is currently initiative with the hope of influencing govern- working on a book, tentatively titled Tangled Ideologies: The ment policy, was a political document that drew Moynihan Report Controversy and heavily on social-scienti½c ideas; rarely have poli- the Transformation of American tics and scholarship come so closely together. The Racial Discourse. Negro Family’s lesser known scholarly twin was

Dædalus Winter 2011 53 Racial Moynihan’s contribution to the Dædalus makers toward these ends. White liber- Liberalism, special issue, “Employment, Income, and als such as Moynihan viewed themselves the Moynihan the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” an arti- as allies of the civil rights movement. But Report & cle that he prepared simultaneously with their commitment to racial liberalism had “The Negro American” the report. In 1964, Moynihan attended other roots as well, notably their concern the ½rst of the two Dædalus conferences for how racial strife undermined both do- held at the American Academy of Arts mestic tranquillity and the image of the and Sciences, where he discovered an United States abroad. In his foreword, emerging social-scienti½c consensus on Johnson declared that “we must affect the need for new approaches to civil rights every dimension of the Negro’s life for that focused on issues of socioeconomic the better” not only for “our country to equality. Conference participants agreed live with its conscience” but also to se- that black family structure formed a ma- cure “peace at home” and “to speak with jor part of this problem. At the 1965 Dæ- one honest voice in the world.”4 In The dalus conference, Moynihan’s “Employ- Negro Family, Moynihan suggested more ment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Ne- ominously that if the nation failed to ad- gro Family” won approval from many of dress the problems of poor African Amer- the assembled social scientists and civil icans, “there will be no social peace in rights leaders. However, others present the United States for generations.”5 voiced some of the criticisms that would While the Moynihan Report emerged later be leveled against the Moynihan Re- from an ideology of racial liberalism port. Thus, the Dædalus project was a key that had been well established for two conduit for introducing social-scienti½c decades, examining its origins in the knowledge into government policy-mak- Dædalus project reveals that the report ing and, ultimately, public controversy. developed during a particular mid-1960s The Moynihan Report is sometimes moment in which liberals began to em- understood as a conservative document phasize the socioeconomic dimensions that emphasized the need for African of African American inequality. The of- Americans to adopt white middle-class ten overlooked preface to the Moynihan family values. It is better seen as the last Report declared that the civil rights move- great statement of the racial liberalism ment was entering a new phase, one fo- that had accompanied mid-twentieth- cused on achieving “equality of results.” century struggles for black freedom and A “new and special effort,” Moynihan had de½ned intellectual and political pol- contended, would be needed to secure icies among liberal elites.3 Moynihan and this goal.6 Even before the Watts riots his interlocutors at the Dædalus confer- of August 1965 focused national media ence held a set of assumptions common attention on poor urban African Amer- among mid-century liberals: that the icans, liberals recognized that disman- main racial divide in the United States tling the legal edi½ce of segregation and existed between whites and blacks, that discrimination would not ensure racial the ultimate goal of racial policy was equality. Accordingly, liberal social sci- to integrate African Americans into entists sought to complement the legal, American society, that this goal could moral, and psychological approaches be achieved within the established post– they had stressed in the decades after New Deal political and social order, and World War II by incorporating socio- that social-scienti½c knowledge could logical and economic perspectives. At enlighten the public and guide policy- the Dædalus conferences, economists

54 Dædalus Winter 2011 and, especially, sociologists predomi- the intellectual and political dimensions Daniel nated. At the 1965 conference, Thomas of racial liberalism’s socioeconomic turn Geary Pettigrew, himself a psychologist, ex- in the mid-1960s. pressed dissatisfaction with the dispro- Understanding this shift within racial portionate influence of psychological liberalism helps contextualize the Moyn- approaches: “[O]ne of the greatest fal- ihan Report’s emphasis on the “tangle lacies we have had in the ½eld of race of pathology” that he claimed afflicted relations for many, many decades has poor African American communities. been to worry about attitudes rather He borrowed this term from psycholo- than conditions.”7 gist Kenneth Clark to refer to dispropor- This intellectual shift toward socio- tionate levels among African Americans economic perspectives paralleled po- of female-headed households, out-of- litical developments. The civil rights wedlock births, juvenile delinquency, movement had long been a presence in and school dropouts. Here, too, Moyni- Northern cities and had often drawn han adopted what had become a com- attention to economic issues; it had mon strategy for liberals. As historian never de½ned equality solely in legal Daryl Scott has argued, post–World terms. Nevertheless, with the successes War II liberals often employed the of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the “damage thesis,” an argument that black Voting Rights Act of 1965, the move- social life had been made pathological ment shifted its focus away from ½ght- as a result of white oppression, in order ing Southern segregation and legal dis- to win sympathy for the broader cause crimination and toward socioeconom- of civil rights.10 However, reflecting its ic questions.8 In January 1964, Lyndon origins in racial liberalism’s socioeco- Johnson announced ambitious plans nomic turn, Moynihan’s version of the for a War on Poverty as part of a Great damage thesis differed in a key respect Society program that would see the from earlier arguments about psycholog- largest expansion of the American wel- ical damage, such as those used to com- fare state since the New Deal. (The plement the naacp’s case in Brown v. expansion also attempted to correct Board of Education. While earlier argu- the racial imbalances in bene½ts that ments focused on individual psycholog- characterized earlier programs.) This ical damage, Moynihan’s concentrated new attempt to address racial inequali- on families and communities. As an in- ties in socioeconomic terms was mem- vestigation into Moynihan’s role in the orably captured in Lyndon Johnson’s Dædalus project reveals, his approach much-noted June 4, 1965, address at was common among liberal social sci- Howard University. Insisting that “free- entists of the mid-1960s. dom is not enough,” Johnson declared that “the next and more profound stage Founded in 1780, the American Acade- in the battle for civil rights” would seek my of Arts and Sciences had long func- “not just equality as a right and a theory tioned as an honorary society and intel- but equality as a fact and a result.”9 lectual center. In the post–World War II That this speech was based in part on period, however, the Academy demon- the Moynihan Report and coauthored strated a new ambition to shape public by Moynihan following his attendance discourse on the national level. In an at the two Dædalus conferences indi- age of research specialization, Academy cates the direct connections between leaders believed they were particularly

Dædalus Winter 2011 55 Racial well placed to bring scholars from differ- anthropologist Clifford Geertz; econo- Liberalism, ent disciplines together with ½gures out- mists Rashi Fein and Carl Kaysen; and the Moynihan side of academia to address contempo- law professor Paul Freund. Remarkably, Report & rary problems. The Academy’s direction all participants were white.13 As the As- “The Negro American” was best represented by its new journal, sistant Secretary of Labor, Moynihan Dædalus. Founded in 1955, Dædalus tar- gave the Academy its closest link to the geted not only Academy members, but policy-making circles that it hoped to also political decision-makers and a gen- influence. Moynihan had a Ph.D. in erally educated audience.11 political science but at this point had Given the Academy’s desire to bring demonstrated little expertise in African scholarship to bear on pressing issues of American issues. He likely was invited the day, it was hardly surprising that it on the basis of his reputation as the co- focused attention on African Americans author (with Nathan Glazer) of a widely at a time when the civil rights movement noted book on New York City’s ethnora- had pushed the question of racial equal- cial groups, Beyond the Melting Pot.14 ity to the forefront of national discus- The transcript of the two full days of sion. Academy of½cials and members, freewheeling discussion offers rare in- led by Dædalus editor Stephen Graubard, sight into the state of mid-1960s racial aimed to create a de½nitive scholarly liberalism from which the Moynihan work on the topic. They concluded that Report emerged. Both in its general ori- research on African Americans had stag- entation toward American race relations nated since the publication of Gunnar and its speci½c focus on the issue of fam- Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944), ily structure, the conference discussion the monumental study that, more than strongly anticipated the main themes of any other work, had de½ned racial liber- the report. Following the event, Moyni- alism in the postwar United States. Con- han wrote to other participants: “I hope ference planners hoped they could do you found our weekend half as stimulat- for their era what Myrdal had done for ing as I did.”15 Moynihan’s participation his. Indeed, the same organization that in the 1964 conference strongly reinforced had sponsored Myrdal’s study, the Car- his belief that the civil rights movement negie Corporation, funded the Acad- was entering a new phase focused on emy’s project. Carnegie funds helped issues of social and economic equality. pay for a planning conference in 1964 Most of the social scientists present ar- as well as the 1965 conference that re- gued that both scholarship and politics sulted in the two-part issue of Dædalus.12 needed to move beyond the moral, legal, The planning conference, held April and psychological aspects of African 10–11, 1964, gathered some of the most American equality to embrace socio- prominent social scientists in the United economic issues. States. Academy leaders invited the most Summing up the discussion, Graubard distinguished scholars they could ½nd, noted that “the problem of jobs emerges even though many were not known as as primary.” The Academy, he concluded, experts on African Americans. Included should promote scholarship in the “study among the seventeen participants were of indirect victimization, not simply the sociologists Daniel Bell, Everett Hughes, exercise of prejudice or discrimination, Robert Merton, and Talcott Parsons; but the institutional processes, the chang- psychologists Erik Erikson and Thomas ing social and economic structures which Pettigrew; historian Oscar Handlin; militate against equal treatment.”16 Many

56 Dædalus Winter 2011 participants emphasized the economic Graubard concluded that “of ½rst impor- Daniel obstacles to racial integration in the tance [is] a study of the family structure Geary United States. Even Parsons, who was of the Negro, of what happens to urban- known for shifting postwar sociology izing families, the peculiar nature of away from economic issues and toward Negro family and kinship patterns, the psychological and cultural ones, stressed sexual roles resulting from Negro matri- the class dimensions of racial inequality. archalism, the psychological effects of “I would even go so far as to suggest,” father-absence, etc., etc.”20 At the very declared Parsons, “that perhaps a really least, attending the conference con½rmed radical solution of the race problem is Moynihan’s sense that African Ameri- not likely to occur until we can virtually can family structure was a central issue eliminate . . . a lower class from our socie- for racial liberals. Considering that prior ty, regardless of color.”17 Moynihan read- to The Negro Family and his Dædalus arti- ily appreciated the policy implications cle Moynihan had written little on Afri- of this discussion and sought to enlist can Americans, his attendance at the the participants to provide ideological conference may have played an even justi½cation for new government poli- greater role in the origins of the Moyni- cies. Raising the “question of unequal han Report. treatment,” Moynihan suggested that “[t]he Academy might do a great service Graubard invited Moynihan to write a if it . . . were to come to a conclusion that paper for the 1965 conference that would if you are ever going to have anything consider “the Negro’s position in Ameri- like an equal Negro community, you are can society [and] the economic, social, for the next 30 years going to have to and personal handicaps under which he give them unequal treatment. I think presently lives” with speci½c reference the possibilities of thus legitimizing to unemployment.21 Moynihan drafted such treatment might have some rele- the paper at the same time that he wrote vance to public policy right now.”18 The Negro Family, using many of the same Conference participants discussed ideas and facts. Meeting on May 14–15, how a lack of economic opportunity 1965, the conference occured just weeks for black men affected African Ameri- before Johnson’s Howard University ad- can families. They also expressed con- dress. It would not be until the end of cern about the extent to which “dam- that summer that the Moynihan Report, aged” family structure would impede originally intended as an internal policy African Americans’ ability to take ad- document, was widely reported in the vantage of new opportunities. Geertz press. Therefore, the 1965 conference ½rst raised the topic of family structure, provided the ½rst opportunity for dis- but Moynihan quickly latched onto it. cussion of Moynihan’s ideas outside When Graubard asked Moynihan what of the White House. kind of research would most aid the The 1965 conference was approximately White House, he responded: “I think twice the size of the 1964 planning con- that the problem of the Negro family ference and had a broader range of paris practically the property of American ticipants, including several African Amer- government. . . . [I]f we knew something icans and many ½gures from outside aca- about the dynamics of that . . . then there demia. In addition to those who attend- is a possibility of public policy reacting ed the 1964 planning conference, among to it.”19 Summarizing the conference, those at the 1965 meeting were Edwin C.

Dædalus Winter 2011 57 Racial Berry and John B. Turner of the Nation- conclusion as he did in The Negro Family, Liberalism, al Urban League; psychologist Robert Moynihan contended, “The fundamen- the Moynihan Coles; literary critic Saunders Redding; tal problem is the position of the Negro Report & sociologists Philip Hauser, Lee Rainwa- male.”26 “The Negro American” ter, and Peter Rossi; economist James When Moynihan returned to the White Tobin; historian C. Vann Woodward; House, he wrote a memorandum sum- journalist Max Lerner; and writer Ralph marizing the conference to Bill Moyers, Ellison. The conference was closed to an advisor to President Johnson: “This the public; yet a full transcript was kept, past weekend we met to read and criti- and the Academy deemed the discussion cize our various papers. I was impressed to be so important that it published an to ½nd out how much my conviction of edited version in Dædalus. Pre-circulat- the importance of family structure and ed papers provided the basis for a wide- the relation of unemployment to that ranging and often contentious discussion. problem was shared by the Negro par- Just after the event, Moynihan reflected, ticipants. They did not have the data, “We all go to a lot of meetings, but this but they knew all about the problem.”27 last one was worth it. I came away beat, Indeed, at the conference, John B. Turn- but convinced we had got somewhere.”22 er of the National Urban League agreed Lerner later reported that even among with Moynihan that a crucial issue was this prominent group of scholars, writ- “whether or not [a] family is able to pro- ers, and activists, Moynihan “stood out vide protection, able to provide the so- with his flair for a kindling persuasive- cialization functions, and able to provide ness.”23 Indeed, Moynihan’s paper was the basic necessities of life which people among the ½rst to be discussed, and it need to cope with the system.”28 provoked some of the conference’s most One of Moynihan’s most emphatic spirited exchanges. Like the Moynihan supporters at the conference was Edwin Report, “Employment, Income, and C. Berry of the Chicago Urban League. the Ordeal of the Negro Family” was Like Moynihan, Berry insisted that the premised on the assumption that the United States would have to be “af½r- “civil rights revolution” was entering a matively color-conscious” in order to new phase concerned with economic achieve the ultimate goal of a color-blind equality.24 Drawing from the same data society.29 Speaking directly in favor of that he used in the report, Moynihan Moynihan’s thesis, Berry declared that detailed the problem of black unem- “there is no way to strengthen family life ployment, which he traced to structur- among Negroes . . . until we ½nd a way to al economic shifts. He identi½ed unem- give the father his rightful role as bread- ployment as the “master problem” af- winner and protector of his family. . . . We fecting African Americans and argued, have a very strong matriarchal situation “[T]he linkage between problems of in the Negro community.”30 However, employment and the range of social when Berry stated that black families pathology that afflicts the Negro com- would have to play by “the white middle- munity is unmistakable.”25 He pro- class rules” he also hinted at dissatisfac- ceeded to detail the “social pathology” tion with expectations that African Amer- of the black community, focusing on the icans had to conform to white values.31 “ordeal of the Negro family” and draw- Furthermore, Berry remained skeptical ing a link between unemployment and that white Americans would accept the marital separation. Coming to the same kinds of drastic measures needed to ad-

58 Dædalus Winter 2011 dress the social and economic inequali- he noted this phenomenon in The Negro Daniel ties of African Americans. He even im- Family, he expanded on the ½nding in his Geary plicated the conference’s participants Dædalus article, wondering “whether a when he concluded that the success of reversal in the course of economic events any such program would require not will no longer produce the expected re- only educating African Americans in sponse in social areas” and questioning marketable skills but also educating the whether “measures which once would “so-called white culturally overprivi- have worked will henceforth not work leged” group to committ to the extensive so well, or not at all.”34 This skeptical changes required to adequately redress note undercut Moynihan’s call for action racial inequalities.32 by placing doubt on whether government Like Berry, most conference partici- economic policies could reverse the ef- pants interpreted Moynihan’s paper as an fects of damage to African American fam- argument for new government policies ilies; it implied that the problems Moyni- that would advance the cause of racial lib- han highlighted were either insoluble or eralism by adopting race-conscious mea- could be addressed only by African Amer- sures to address socioeconomic inequali- icans themselves. This line of argument ties. Many attendees agreed with Moyni- threatened to undermine the entire proj- han that the central policy challenge was ect of racial liberalism by questioning not to ½nd well-paying jobs for unemployed only whether government policy could black men so that they could support suf½ciently attenuate racial inequality their families. Clifford Geertz, for exam- but also whether social-scienti½c knowl- ple, concurred with Moynihan that “[i]t edge could effectively inform government is income that flows through the occupa- policy. In this sense, it anticipated a neo- tional system that will change the status conservative critique of liberalism that of the family. . . . I can . . . think of no other would become associated with the jour- way in which one could directly affect nal The Public Interest, founded by Irving the family. . . . In the long run, unless the Kristol and Daniel Bell in 1965, to which Negro male’s position in the occupation- Moynihan would frequently contribute. al structure changes, nothing much is However, at the 1965 Dædalus conference, going to change.”33 Moynihan’s concerns were primarily in- However, some aspects of the confer- terpreted in liberal terms, as a call for ence discussion anticipated later criti- urgent action before the situation grew cisms of the Moynihan Report and fore- out of control.35 Indeed, Moynihan con- shadowed emerging criticisms of post- cluded his article by declaring that a war racial liberalism. One challenge to “crisis of commitment is at hand.”36 racial liberalism came from a line of Some conference participants’ chal- argument in Moynihan’s own paper. lenges to Moynihan pre½gured later criti- Moynihan noted that in the early 1960s cisms of the Moynihan Report by liber- the number of welfare (Aid to Families als. One exchange characterized the in- with Dependent Children) cases contin- ternal policy disagreements in the John- ued to rise despite a drop in the unem- son White House over the direction of ployment of non-white men. Moynihan the War on Poverty. Moynihan and the interpreted this evidence as an indica- Department of Labor had argued vigor- tion that improvements in black male ously (and unsuccessfully) for direct job unemployment might no longer be ade- creation against others in the govern- quate to ensure family stability. Though ment who based their anti-poverty strat-

Dædalus Winter 2011 59 Racial egies on promoting economic growth.37 ment in political activism was a crucial Liberalism, At the conference, when James Tobin, means for African Americans to attain the Moynihan who served on the Council of Economic psychological well-being. He thereby Report & Advisors, upheld the latter argument, questioned the unstated assumption of “The Negro American” Moynihan forcefully disagreed, going Moynihan and other racial liberals that so far as to state, “[Y]ou can blame Mr. change could best be effected by social Tobin for our present dilemma.” For engineering from above. Similarly, his- Moynihan, the government’s sole focus torian C. Vann Woodward wondered on overall economic growth was inade- whether the participation of so many qaute to address the speci½c nature of African Americans in political action black male unemployment.38 Instead, revealed that social scientists had over- he asserted, targeted measures were rated the extent to which they and their needed: “[I]n order to do anything communities were truly damaged.41 about Negro Americans on the scale While not directed speci½cally toward that our data would indicate, we have Moynihan’s paper, Ralph Ellison’s com- to declare that we are doing it for every- ments offered perhaps the most far- body. I think, however, that the problem reaching criticism of the ideas Moyni- of the Negro American is now a special han voiced at the conference. Ellison one, and is not just an intense case of questioned the goal of assimilation, the problem of all poor people.”39 wondering why so many at the confer- Other liberals at the conference ques- ence assumed that African Americans tioned Moynihan’s emphasis on black wanted to “lose our identity as quickly pathology. Howard University sociolo- as possible.”42 Ellison also challenged gist G. Franklin Edwards agreed that the unexamined value biases of social matriarchal family structure was a prob- science itself, suggesting it could not lem but felt that Moynihan overrated its truly understand African American cul- signi½cance since women headed only 21 ture: “The sociology is loaded. . . . The percent of black families. Psychologist concepts which are brought to bear are Robert Coles questioned Moynihan’s usually based on those of white, middle- undifferentiated depiction of black fam- class, Protestant values and life style.”43 ily structure. He also wondered whether Though not addressing the question of poor African American families were family structure per se, Ellison’s remarks truly “damaged” and questioned the anticipated an alternative interpretation assumption made by Moynihan and his of African American family structure supporters that middle-class values were that would be counterposed to Moyni- superior in practice: “We tend to think han’s: that matriarchal black families of the Negro community at times as a should be understood anthropologically kind of undifferentiated alternative to rather than sociologically; they were not the white community; but I think there pathological variants of white norms, were possibilities within the hard-core, but the products of deliberate choices most-dif½cult-to-work-with groups that with inherent cultural value. are perhaps more hopeful than the estab- What would become one of the major lished Negro community.”40 Basing his criticisms of the Moynihan Report–the comments on experience working with challenge to its patriarchal assumptions– the Student Nonviolent Coordinating was not voiced at the Dædalus conference. Committee (sncc) in McComb, Missis- In part, the absence of this critique re- sippi, Coles maintained that involve- flected the gender makeup of the group,

60 Dædalus Winter 2011 which was almost exclusively male. tively. Yet the fact that it also came under Daniel More important, as Ruth Feldstein has some heavy criticism even in this rela- Geary argued, many mid-century racial liberals tively sympathetic environment pre- shared what we would describe today as saged the controversial reaction the “conservative” gender norms that stressed report would receive when it became the man’s role as family breadwinner widely publicized later that year. and the woman’s role as mother.44 In 1965, most liberals and many civil rights President Johnson, in his Howard Uni- leaders still thought within a family-wage versity speech of June 1965, called for a framework that had yet to meet major White House conference that would in- opposition from second-wave feminism. clude movement leaders and top intel- Indeed, discussion at the conference re- lectuals in order to facilitate a transition volved almost entirely around what could to a new phase of civil rights, one that be done for black men, who, because of focused on socioeconomic topics includ- their higher rate of unemployment and ing family structure. The very idea that the dif½culties many faced in supporting such issues could best be solved by hold- their families, were seen as suffering the ing a conference ½t nicely with the social brunt of economic and psychological engineering ideal of racial liberalism. oppression. Conference participants fre- Moynihan himself must have considered quently used the pronoun “he” to refer the Academy conference as a model for to “the Negro.” When African American the one Johnson proposed; indeed, many women were discussed, their relative of the ½gures who gathered at the Acade- economic success in comparison with my in May played a prominent role in black men was depicted as a threat to the planning the White House conference.46 restoration of black manhood and hence Johnson described essays from the Dæ- to progress toward racial equality. For dalus issue as “invaluable source materi- example, Moynihan recounted that ef- als for the White House Conference.”47 forts to hire African Americans in his Yet the White House conference, the own government department in recent planning for which was held in Novem- years had bene½ted black women to the ber, ultimately failed to establish any con- detriment of black men: “You can stand sensus on new policies, in large part be- in front of the Department of Labor any cause of the controversy surrounding the morning at eight-thirty, and it is a sight: Moynihan Report, which was widely re- spectacularly well-dressed, competent, ported in the press following the Watts beautiful [black] young women . . . spend- riot in August 1965.48 ing the day on the phone with the Attor- Given the Moynihan Report’s origins ney General and seeing ambassadors, in racial liberalism’s socioeconomic turn, then coming home and asking the old it is ironic that its liberal critics often at- man, what did you do today?”45 tacked it for shifting focus away from The group that gathered at the Acade- economic issues. Writing in The Nation, my in May 1965 had much in common in sociologist William Ryan famously ac- terms of ideology and background. No cused Moynihan of blaming the victim– conservatives or radicals were invited, ignoring the effects of white racism and only liberal social scientists and moder- implying that African Americans were ate civil rights leaders. Therefore, it is responsible for their own poverty.49 This hardly surprising that for the most part criticism gained currency from the man- they received Moynihan’s paper posi- ner in which the report became public,

Dædalus Winter 2011 61 Racial as critics responded to distorted and tial planning conference. Finally, by the Liberalism, sensationalist media descriptions rather late 1960s, feminists, especially African the 50 Moynihan than the report itself. Yet it also result- American feminists, added to Moyni- Report & ed from Moynihan’s attempt to address han’s chorus of critics, questioning the “The Negro American” socioeconomic inequality primarily report’s patriarchal assumptions, which through family structure. Focusing on had been widely shared by racial liberals. the family led many to conclude that When Moynihan came under ½re, the Moynihan believed that the government conference attendees and the Academy could do little to resolve social inequal- itself provided a crucial source of sup- ities and that solutions would have to port. In 1966, James Q. Wilson stepped come from African American themselves. down as director of the Harvard-mit This conclusion ran contrary to the main Joint Center for Urban Studies so that thrust of Moynihan’s ideas and how they Moynihan could ½ll the post. The Acad- were understood throughout the Dæda- emy continued its project by funding an lus project. Yet it was hardly a complete ongoing “Seminar on Race and Poverty” misunderstanding, since Moynihan had that Moynihan organized. The Academy hinted at the limitations of government took full advantage of the Moynihan policies in his contribution. controversy to promote the Dædalus Most important, public criticism of issue and the book; it chose Moynihan’s the Moynihan Report emerged from an to be the lead article of the special issue. increasing disenchantment with the core Writing in the Afro-American, conference assumptions of racial liberalism. In par- participant Saunders Redding praised ticular, along the lines of Ellison’s com- the Dædalus issue: “Not since the publi- ments at the conference, many critics cation of [An American Dilemma] have so came to reject the common sociological many knowledgeable men brought their view that African American culture was combined intellects and experiences to a pathological distortion of white Amer- bear on the American colored man. . . . ican culture and that blacks should have [I]t is rumored that the papers are the to conform to white values in order to source of certain government programs achieve equality. Many critics also ques- and plans.”51 Yet the Dædalus project tioned the manner in which whites dom- ultimately failed to match An American inated the production of social-scienti½c Dilemma in its influence on public opin- ideas about African Americans. Moyni- ion and government policy, largely be- han drew on an interracial tradition of cause of the growing dissatisfaction sociology; his most important influences with racial liberalism evident in the were E. Franklin Frazier and Kenneth controversy over the Moynihan Report. Clark. Nevertheless, the Dædalus project demonstrated that whites held positions Racial discourse has changed consid- of intellectual and political power that erably in the nearly half-century since allowed them to control the formulation the Dædalus project. After the mid-1960s, of social-scienti½c ideas about African racial liberalism no longer de½ned a con- Americans. Though Kenneth Clark ulti- sensus shared by elite academics and mately coedited with Parsons the book national policy-makers. But it did not based on the Dædalus issue, the project disappear. In the 1970s and beyond, a had been developed by an organization transformed racial liberalism was de- that was almost entirely white and in- ½ned in large part by support for af½r- cluded no African Americans in its ini- mative action and multiculturalism. The

62 Dædalus Winter 2011 Dædalus project of the mid-1960s laid as Myrdal had two decades earlier: as a Daniel the groundwork for a liberal defense of pathological variant of white middle- Geary af½rmative action by indicating the need class culture. By the 1970s, most liberals for policies to move beyond a color-blind accepted that there are distinctive Afri- commitment to legal rights. Introduced can American cultures of inherent value. by white elites in part as a way of restor- However, to the extent that racial liber- ing social order following a series of ur- als came to emphasize cultural issues at ban riots and the radicalization of the the expense of socioeconomic ones, they black freedom movement, af½rmative neglected questions about the persistent action can also be viewed as a continua- structural inequalities faced by African tion of social engineering.52 However, Americans.54 Such questions were in- af½rmative action policies, as they took creasingly silenced as Great Society lib- hold in the late 1960s–focusing on pref- eralism gave way to a new market funda- erential hiring, college admissions, and mentalism that shifted the entire Ameri- set-aside contracts for minorities–were can political spectrum to the right. less far-reaching than the measures Moyn- The issue of Dædalus in which this es- ihan and other participants in the Amer- say appears treats race in very different ican Academy project had considered, terms than did the issues whose history which had centered around providing I have discussed above. Ellison’s argu- full employment. Af½rmative action ment about the value and autonomy of bene½ted middle-class and working- African American cultures is now wide- class African Americans more than the ly accepted by liberals. (It is striking to group racial liberals such as Moynihan note the differences between the con- were most worried about: unemployed tributors to the 1965 and 1966 issues of black men. Moreover, as it developed, Dædalus devoted to “The Negro Ameri- af½rmative action was applied not just can” and the contributors for this pres- to African Americans but also to white ent issue: whereas all contributors to women and other ethnoracial minori- the earlier issues were social scientists, ties, including many new immigrants. this issue has signi½cant contributions As a result, it lost its speci½city as a mea- from scholars whose expertise lies in sure for redressing African American the domain of culture, most notably inequality.53 literary scholars.) Scholars today resist After it was established, af½rmative seeing American race relations as simply action was often defended as a means to a black-white problem and stand wary enhance cultural diversity. Indeed, the of assimilationist assumptions lurking rise of multiculturalism, anticipated by behind calls for racial integration. They Ellison’s comments at the 1965 Dædalus are skeptical that centuries of racism can conference, indicated another transition easily be overcome within the existing in racial liberalism. Racial discourse in social structure and doubt that social sci- the United States shifted from questions ence has all the solutions. Feminism’s of law, economics, and society and to- influence has led them to question the ward ones of culture and identity. Cul- patriarchal assumptions once shared by ture is now understood as fundamental Moynihan and other liberals. However, to racial questions in a way that it was the once-close connection between aca- not in the mid-1960s. Ellison aside, most demic work and policy-making, evident participants at the Dædalus conference in the earlier Dædalus project, no longer viewed African American culture much exists. At present, it seems incredible

Dædalus Winter 2011 63 Racial that an academic conference could be lectuals today should seek to recuperate Liberalism, so closely connected to government pol- mid-1960s racial liberalism. The solutions the Moynihan icy discussions at the highest level. Per- Moynihan and others involved with the Report & haps most remarkable, the Moynihan Dædalus project offered were flawed by “The Negro American” Report and the Dædalus project marked patriarchal assumptions, a misinterpre- a moment when American elites consid- tation of African American culture as ered extensive measures to redress the pathological, and an overemphasis on social and economic inequalities pro- family structure as central to social induced by the historic and ongoing op- equality. Nevertheless, the questions pression of African Americans. That they raised about the socioeconomic they addressed such issues more seri- dimensions of racial inequality remain ously than most mainstream liberals in to be answered. our own time hardly means that intel-

endnotes 1 Lyndon Johnson, “Foreword to the Issue,” Dædalus 94 (Fall 1965): 744. 2 Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark, The Negro American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). 3 Most historians of the subject now consider the Moynihan Report a liberal document, at least by the standards of its time. See James Patterson, Freedom is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and Black Family Life from lbj to Obama (New York: Basic Books, 2010); a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, “The Moynihan Report Revisited: Lessons and Reflections after Four Decades” 621 (2009); and Daryl Scott, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 137–159. For an alternate reading, see Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 203– 210. On racial liberalism generally, see Richard H. King, Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) and Walter A. Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938– 1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). 4 Johnson, “Foreword,” 744. 5 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, D.C.: Of½ce of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, 1965), 3. 6 Ibid., unpaginated introduction. 7 “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American–May 14–15, 1965,” Dædalus 95 (Winter 1966): 312. 8 Dona C. Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Pol- icies of Civil Rights Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). The Civil Rights Act was enacted in July 1964; the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. However, by early 1964, their enactment was anticipated by many within and outside the movement and taken for granted by the participants in the Dædalus project. 9 For a recent account of the politics of this period that complements my account of its intellectual developments, see David C. Carter, The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 10 Scott, Contempt and Pity.

64 Dædalus Winter 2011 11 Stephen Graubard, “‘Dædalus’: Forty Years On,” Dædalus 128 (1999): 1–12. Dædalus was Daniel founded in 1955, when the Academy renamed its Proceedings of the American Academy of Geary Arts and Sciences, but it was not until 1958 that it adopted a quarterly format and aimed to reach an audience outside its own membership. 12 While research on the psychology of white prejudice thrived in the postwar period, the very success of Myrdal’s statement had discouraged scholars and foundations from pursuing further research on African American topics. On this point, see Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience, 231–271. For a reappraisal of An American Dilemma, see the special issue of Dædalus, “An American Dilemma Revisited” 124 (Winter 1995), especially the preface by Stephen Graubard, which includes his recollections of how the mid- 1960s Dædalus project on “The Negro American” compared to Myrdal’s effort. 13 Graubard had invited three African American scholars: Allison Davis, John Hope Franklin, and Whitney Young. 14 Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1963). Glazer was the lead author and wrote the chapter on African Americans. 15 See, for example, Moynihan to Everett Hughes, April 16, 1964, Part I: Box 27, Daniel P. Moynihan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 16 “Transcript of The Negro in America Planning Committee,” Part I: Box 38, Moynihan Papers, ii, iii. 17 Ibid., 7. 18 Ibid., 47. 19 Ibid., 114. 20 Ibid., iii. 21 Graubard to Moynihan, December 10, 1964, Part I: Box 38, Moynihan Papers. 22 Moynihan to Hughes, May 25, 1965, Box 42, Everett Cherrington Hughes Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 23 Max Lerner, “Moynihan,” New York Post, July 25, 1965. 24 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” Dædalus 94 (Fall 1965): 745. 25 Ibid., 746. 26 Ibid., 760. 27 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Memorandum to Mr. Bill Moyers,” May 19, 1965, Part I: Box 38, Moynihan Papers. 28 “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American,” 303. 29 Ibid., 351. 30 Ibid., 291. 31 Ibid., 300. 32 Ibid., 351. 33 Ibid., 304. 34 Moynihan, “Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” 755. 35 The only conference participant who subjected Moynihan’s ideas to this more conservative interpretation was James Q. Wilson, who commented: “[O]ne of the crucial aspects of the gap . . . is the nature of the family. This I take it to be the reason that Mr. Moynihan suggests pessimistically–and I think with good reason–that poverty may be feeding on

Dædalus Winter 2011 65 Racial itself; in some sense it may be a cultural, as well as economic, phenomenon and a cultur- Liberalism, al phenomenon that can be inherited to a very depressing degree”; “Transcript of the the American Academy Conference on the Negro American,” 289. Moynihan Report & 36 Moynihan, “Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” 769. “The Negro 37 American” See Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Welfare to the War on Poverty (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 93–94. 38 “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American,” 308. 39 Ibid., 288. 40 Ibid., 318. 41 Ibid., 366. 42 Ibid., 308. 43 Ibid., 438. Ellison’s comments echoed his famous criticisms of Myrdal’s An American Dilemma in a review he wrote in 1944 but did not publish until 1964. See Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 303–317. 44 Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930–1965 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000). 45 “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American,” 295. 46 The July meetings held to plan the White House conference included Parsons, Erikson, Clark, Coles, Pettigrew, and Wilson. See Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 1967), 33. 47 Johnson, “Foreword,” 744. 48 Carter, The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement, 75–101; Kevin L. Yuill, “The 1966 White House Conference on Civil Rights,” The Historical Journal 41 (March 1998): 259–282. 49 The actual phrase “blaming the victim” comes from Ryan’s 1971 book of the same name, but he ½rst put forth his critique of the Moynihan Report in a 1965 article in The Nation, based on an influential unpublished memorandum that he circulated to civil rights organizations in October 1965. 50 Rainwater and Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy. 51 Saunders Redding, “Review of The Negro American,” Afro-American, February 26, 1966. 52 John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Af½rmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 53 Hugh Davis Graham, Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Af½rmative Action and Im- migration Policy in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 54 This cultural shift in racial discourse is noted by King, Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals and David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

66 Dædalus Winter 2011 Precious African American Memories, Post-Racial Dreams & the American Nation

Waldo E. Martin, Jr.

Precious memories, how they linger How they ever flood my soul In the stillness of the midnight Precious, sacred scenes unfold. –From “Precious Memories,” composed by Willie Nelson and performed by Aretha Franklin and James Cleveland1

Where are the nametags? Throughout the weekend’s activities, this question overwhelmed me. We had gathered to celebrate our fortieth high school reunion, having proudly graduated from James B. Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1969. Yet I barely recognized many of my former high school classmates. Those willing and able to be a part of the festivities were looking good, of course. Most of us had put on a few pounds, showed gray, thinning, or no hair, and moved less vigorously now, notably on the dance floor. If I squinted hard, the shock of rec- WALDO E. MARTIN, JR. is a Pro- ognition sometimes emerged. More often than fessor of History at the Univer- not, though, I was quizzical, asking myself and sity of California, Berkeley. His anyone who would listen, “Whose idea was it to publications include The Mind of ignore nametags?” Frederick Douglass (1984), Brown v. One thing remained clear: we all were still Board of Education: A Brief History solidly black. In 1969, Dudley remained an all- with Documents (1998), Civil Rights black institution. School desegregation came sev- in the United States: An Encyclopedia (coedited with Patricia A. Sulli- eral years later. For those of us fortunate enough van, 2000), and No Coward Sol- to attend the reunion in 2009, the anniversary diers: Black Cultural Politics in Post- brought back a flood of memories and sparked war America (2005). innumerable conversations about the courses

Dædalus Winter 2011 67 Precious and meanings of our lives. One fact was ety, the public and private barriers to African inescapable and palpable: blackness and African American progress would con- American Memories, its recent history have profoundly shaped tinue to be defeated, or so we believed. Post-Racial who we have become and how we see My classmates at Dudley, like our ra- Dreams & the the world. cial cohort throughout the nation, be- American In the last ½fty years, notwithstanding gan the 1960s as Negroes and entered Nation signi½cant evidence of black progress, the 1970s as blacks. On February 1, 1960, race and anti-black racism have, para- before many of us had turned nine years doxically, declined yet endured. In 2010, old, Ezell A. Blair, Jr., David L. Rich- distressing patterns of racial inequality mond, Joseph A. McNeil, and Franklin rooted in racism and discrimination E. McCain, four students at the North stubbornly persist. As symbolized by Carolina Agricultural and Technical Dudley’s all-black fortieth high school College for Negroes in Greensboro sat reunion in 2009 and represented power- down at the local Woolworth’s lunch fully in deeply entrenched patterns of counter, initiating the sit-in phase of residential segregation, racial segrega- the civil rights insurgency. Our segre- tion endures. The memories of African gated world soon turned upside down. Americans who lived through the Jim Formerly all-white restaurants, stores, Crow era, as well as the stories they movie houses, theaters, motels and passed down to subsequent generations, hotels, parks, community centers, and have helped shape African American ymca and ywca branches began to views of African American progress open their doors to Negroes. Interracial since the triumphs of the civil rights councils among youth and adults prolif- revolution. Like vast numbers of Afri- erated. Interracial barriers seemed to can Americans, the post-graduation tumble. But were they indeed tumbling? journeys of Dudley’s all-black class of Around 1965 and 1966, the revolu- 1969 continue to be rich and resilient, tion in racial, political, and cultural in spite of anti-black racism. Unfortu- consciousness known as Black Power nately, persistent patterns of racial in- struck like a thunderbolt. At the Dem- equality, in part shaped by enduring ocratic Party’s 1964 presidential nom- patterns of racial segregation, likewise inating convention, the Party had re- afflict both my graduating class and fused to unseat the all-white Missis- African Americans nationwide. sippi State delegation in favor of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Demo- Born around 1951, the members of cratic Party. Clearly, the Old South still Dudley’s 1969 graduating class came exerted national political sway. When of age in the world of late Jim Crow. the Watts riot exploded in August 1965, We witnessed the civil rights insur- simmering Negro anger erupted over gency and subsequent collapse of the ongoing patterns of police brutality in Southern racial caste system. Given the particular and racial injustice and in- African American Freedom Struggle’s equality in general. When juxtaposed stunning victories over legalized Jim with the lack of short-term progress Crow and formal disenfranchisement, in alleviating galling patterns of racist like most of our generation–white and oppression, the escalation of Negro ex- non-white–we envisioned a new yet pectations for immediate progress fed uncharted world: a racially desegregat- growing disillusionment with the civil ed, or integrated, society. In that soci- rights movement. Malcolm X’s power-

68 Dædalus Winter 2011 ful calls for Negro nationalism and self- longings and militant politics. We were Waldo E. determination, which he vividly ex- now Malcolm’s children. Martin, Jr. pressed in his highly influential auto- The belief that revolution was immi- biography, found an increasing Negro nent animated radicals and progressives audience, especially among the youth.2 everywhere. As the Chicana feminist Soon, those incited by Malcolm X’s and writer Cherrie L. Moraga recently call to action were everywhere, their recalled, “Forty years ago, there were numbers growing rapidly. The Student true activist visionaries and mass move- Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ments to enact those visions. . . . Forty (1960–1968), the influential student years ago, revolution was on the mind wing of the civil rights insurgency found- of all Americans, even the most timid ed in the wake of the sit-ins, began call- and conservative.”4 After our Dudley ing for Black Power in 1966. When the years, we entered adulthood in the ear- Black Panther Party for Self-Defense fol- ly 1970s, gyrating wildly between the lowed suit shortly thereafter, the shift intoxicating allure of racial integration toward blackness, or varieties of Black and the romance of the coming black Nationalism, as well as Black Power, es- revolution. calated. By 1970, as the Black Freedom The privileged among us who attend- Struggle grew in militant intensity, ex- ed formerly all-white colleges and uni- panding beyond civil rights and integra- versities, as I did, constituted an intrep- tionist demands to encompass Black id subset of the elite, college-bound Power and demands for self-determina- minority in our high school. We quick- tion, Negroes had by and large adopted ly lunged into a deeply paradoxical, at the self-referential term blacks to denote times quixotic, struggle. How does one the pivotal shift. foment black revolution within the priv- During our senior year (1968–1969) ileged con½nes of an elite, overwhelm- at Dudley High, we embraced the high- ingly white university? Others, no less ly charged air of impending revolution intrepid but committed to a more explic- that pervaded the globe as well as the it form of racial solidarity, enrolled at American nation. That year featured a historically black colleges and universi- series of rebellions on campus as we ties (hbcus), as had a very small but fought back against the school board’s special group of racial exemplars: our efforts to resist the changes wrought by college-educated ancestors. Even at the blossoming of Black Power. We de- hbcus, however, advocates of black manded the right to elect our own stu- revolution met a wall of resistance. dent leaders, to wear Afros, and, like Whether at hbcus or predominantly the predominantly white public high white colleges and universities, most of schools, to be able to leave the campus us were the ½rst in our families to go on for lunch.3 We were no longer, if we to post-secondary education. For us, the had ever been, integrationist, nonvio- revolution meant in part reforming the lent Negroes committed to civil dis- colleges and universities we attended. obedience. While we admired Martin The creation of Black Studies as a disci- Luther King, Jr., and respected his lead- pline, leading to the formation of Black ership, he no longer spoke as pointedly Studies Departments, was an important for us. Malcolm X and his radical, na- achievement. Equally signi½cant was the tionalist, separatist vision spoke far fact that a generation of black college more meaningfully to our innermost students had struggled successfully to

Dædalus Winter 2011 69 Precious help expand exponentially the number ous generations of graduating classes, African of black students at both hbcus and went to work locally and assumed a va- American Memories, formerly all-white institutions. riety of solid working-class, blue-collar, Post-Racial Another strong commitment for this and white-collar jobs. Many fought the Dreams & the cohort of black college students was a good ½ght. But when revolutionary fer- American socialist-inspired solidarity with work- vor waned and mundane reality beck- Nation ers, which demanded active support for oned, they, like their classmates who campus and local workers’ struggles. chased the American dream elsewhere, Black student solidarity with the work- embraced mainstream jobs. The imper- ing class often had a racial inflection: ative of making a living played a signi½- many of the students were from the cant role in the ultimate defeat of the working class, and many of the work- black revolution. ers on campus and in the community Co-optation likewise undercut the rev- were black. olution. Af½rmative action bought off The vision of the impending revolu- many of us, enabling us to assume novel tion for this cohort of students also in- jobs and realize the American dream. As cluded solidarity with the struggles for partners in formerly all-white law ½rms, liberation and democracy of oppressed M.B.A.s working for Fortune 500 com- peoples globally, notably in Africa and panies, doctors, medical specialists and throughout the African diaspora. In ad- researchers, independent entrepreneurs, dition to a vital pan-African front, this and professors at formerly all-white col- internationalist camaraderie extended leges and universities, we became racial to the liberation struggles in nations of exemplars in our own right. What about color, notably Viet Nam, and revolution- the impending revolution? Had it all ary regimes in China and Cuba. Black been a dream, an illusion, or perhaps students in the United States increasing- a delusion? The Last Poets offered an ly saw themselves as part of an interna- especially caustic critique, harsh yet tional Third World. revealing: “Niggers,” they observed, While dreams of revolution and its var- “are scared of revolution.”5 ious commitments beckoned, the hard, In the late 1960s and 1970s, we envi- cold realities of the domestic and global sioned a very different world: more situations dashed those aspirations. Of½- egalitarian, more democratic, more cial and unof½cial repression devastat- ethical–certainly less white suprema- ed radical movements. In particular, the cist. Events such as South Africa’s late- extreme backlash against Black Power twentieth-century abolition of racial helped defeat the impending revolution. apartheid suggests some progress to- The internal ½ssures within the move- ward this better world. Yet racial op- ments themselves also contributed to pression in South Africa and elsewhere their undoing. Combined with the severe as well as the inevitable struggles to domestic shock waves of the mid-1970s defeat it continue. Indeed, the battles oil crisis, the revolution proved stillborn. to create that better world have floun- My fellow graduates and I had been dered, at times miserably; but they per- raised to be strivers, to be respectable, sist. Moraga recently captured this deep even exemplary, Negroes. Very few of disappointment over the stalled revolu- us, college-educated or not, ever really tion: “Like so many of my generation,” understood “revolution.” Most of my she admitted, “I had imagined that by graduating class of 1969, like the previ- 2009 the seeds of radical transformation

70 Dædalus Winter 2011 that had been sown in the ½elds of . . . from the private domain of white lives– Waldo E. struggle would have by now sprouted their neighborhoods, schools, churches, Martin, Jr. into fully coalesced people of color self- clubs and other associations, friendship sustaining communities . . . throughout networks, marriage markets and families the country.”6 –as they were ½fty years ago.” He cogent- While far more desegregated than the ly concludes that for middle-class as well lives of our ancestors, our worlds–fami- as working-class and underclass African ly, home, church, school, and social and Americans, this segregation, plainly evi- cultural life–have remained preeminent- dent in hyper-segregated metropolitan ly black. Forty years later, racial segrega- areas and resegregated schools, remains tion has lessened but endured. Not sur- “a primary cause of the ongoing inequal- prisingly, therefore, when we came to- ity of black Americans.”7 gether in Summer 2009, the events constituted an emotionally charged re-cre- As one who is profoundly shaped by ation of black consciousness and black the radical Black Power ferment of the community, a series of powerful “pre- late 1960s and early 1970s, I view the cious memories” and revitalized con- late twentieth century as a variation on nections. It was at once a resounding the theme of “the changing same.” Put “call to home” –a black homecoming; another way, as a product of the radical a deeply spiritual moment–a joy-½lled Black Freedom movement, when I look and enthusiastic Southern black Baptist at the period from 1970 to the present, worship service; and, no less important, I see a complex mix of progress (mov- it was a down-home, exuberant black ing forward); standing in place (mark- house party. Far more than moments ing time); and regression (moving back- of sentimentality and nostalgia, these ward). I see more fundamental conti- experiences necessarily revitalized an nuity than real change in the status of af½rmative and empowering black con- African Americans in the late twentieth sciousness. and early twenty-½rst centuries. Regrettably, the persistence of racial As a product of the world I have desegregation has an extremely negative scribed, I was not at all prepared for side as well. The exclusion of African Barack Obama’s extraordinary success. Americans from private pathways of Like millions of others from similar and upward mobility and power has seri- different backgrounds alike, I suffered a ously undermined African American dramatic and telling failure of hope and progress. Sociologist Orlando Patterson imagination. Given my personal history, recently assessed the “profound para- as both a citizen and a historian, I could dox” of African American inclusion in not possibly have imagined that in my the public sphere and exclusion from lifetime our nation would elect an Afri- the private sphere. On one hand, the can American president. Not surprising- election of Barack Obama as president ly, the dominant topic of conversation of the United States, Patterson observes, during my fortieth high school reunion signi½es the relatively successful inte- was Obama’s election. No one with gration of African Americans into the whom I spoke that weekend confessed “political, cultural and civic fabric” of to believing at the outset that Obama America’s public sphere. On the other had a real chance to win. Most expect- hand, Patterson notes, “Outside elite ed a far better run than those undertak- circles blacks are as segregated today en by Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988,

Dædalus Winter 2011 71 Precious but not victory. In my lifetime, the in- derives from the fact that the election African tractability of white racism,8 I believed, of the ½rst African American president American Memories, rendered impossible the election of an is being used by many to diminish the Post-Racial African American president. enduring and determinative impact of Dreams & the On some level it is intensely gratify- white supremacy in the United States: American ing that a majority of the voting elec- the persistent and crippling reality of Nation torate, including a broad swath of the macro-level institutional racism and white electorate, could recognize and micro-level anti-black prejudice and opt for the clearly superior presidential discrimination. The authors of White- candidate in 2008, regardless of race. washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind This outcome strikes me as compelling Society persuasively demonstrate the evidence that anti-black prejudice is historic and contemporary persistence diminishing in our time. Far less clear of what they term “durable racial in- is whether Obama’s election and early equality.” Across the domains of status presidency signal a comparable lessen- and privilege, employment, education, ing of anti-black discrimination. A criminal justice, voting rights, political deeply troubling aspect of white su- power, and wealth accumulation, the premacy has been the inability and authors cogently demonstrate the stub- refusal of white Americans to take born intractability of white racial privi- African Americans and people of color lege and bene½ts, a key component of seriously. In the past, a by-product of white supremacy.9 this racism has been the inability and Historically speaking, racial progress refusal of white Americans to listen for African Americans has occurred not to and follow black leaders like Barack at the expense of white power and privi- Obama. I hope that his presidency will lege, but in spite of and alongside it. Af- demonstrate considerable white Amer- rican American progress has been per- ican progress in overcoming these dis- mitted to occur as long as that progress criminatory tendencies. does not substantially challenge econom- Viewing Barack Obama’s political as- ic inequality and the white supremacy cent through the lens of the enduring that directs and shapes that inequality. African American Freedom Struggle The two moments in our nation’s histo- leads me in two conflicting directions: ry in which white racism, and to a lesser renewed hope and persistent frustra- extent economic inequality, were chal- tion. The hope is real and palpable. lenged head on include nineteenth-cen- This energizing hope comes from the tury Reconstruction following the Civil fact that Obama’s success within the War and the civil rights–Black Power political mainstream signals that as a moment of the mid-twentieth century, nation we have made some racial prog- another kind of reconstruction experi- ress. Patterson’s observation that Presi- ment. Both white racism and racialized dent Obama’s election exempli½es the economic inequality easily survived the relatively successful integration of Afri- two challenges; indeed, they rebounded can Americans into American public quite robustly. life (as against the ongoing segregation President Obama’s ascent and election of African Americans in private life) certainly do not illustrate or prove that certainly con½rms as much. the structures of white power and privi- The frustration is no less real and no lege in this nation have in any substan- less palpable. This bitter disappointment tive way been minimized or challenged,

72 Dædalus Winter 2011 even rhetorically.10 Similarly, his rise ther eroded recent declines in the socio- Waldo E. does not have any real and immediate economic status of African Americans Martin, Jr. impact on the deep-seated and endur- relative to that of whites.12 ing material and structural inequalities A recent report by the Center for Re- that disproportionately afflict African sponsible Lending con½rms that the cur- Americans and other communities of rent home foreclosure crisis has hit Lati- color. President Obama himself has ob- nos and blacks especially hard. Since served that “nobody should have ever 2007, 17 percent of Latino homeowners, been under the illusion–certainly I 11 percent of black homeowners, and 7 wasn’t, and I was explicit about this percent of white homeowners have suf- when I campaigned–that by virtue of fered home foreclosures or have homes my election suddenly race problems that “are at imminent risk.” A black fam- would be solved.” In The Bridge: The Life ily home is 76 percent more likely to be and Rise of Barack Obama, David Rem- foreclosed on than a white family home. nick explains that President Obama’s The Center’s report concludes that the election has in no way settled “the foreclosure crisis “will be particularly most painful of all American struggles.” devastating to African-American and The very idea that the event signi½es Latino families, who already lag their as much, according to Remnick, is not white counterparts in terms of income, only “sentimental,” but also “mislead- wealth and educational attainment.” ing”–in effect, dead wrong. “Nothing Furthermore, the report strongly sug- has ended, of course,” notes Remnick, gests that the foreclosure crisis will not “and questions of race–cultural, legal, only undermine the ½scal strength of penal, educational, social–remain de- Latino and African American communi- spite all the evident progress and prom- ties, but that the crisis will also expand ise since the civil-rights movement.”11 the increasing income and wealth dis- There is one aspect of the hope that parities between non-whites and whites.13 the Obama presidency represents that To talk of the “Obama moment” as a I enthusiastically endorse. As a nation post-racial or even post-ethnic moment under President Obama, I hope we can is disingenuous and wrongheaded. I am truly begin to attack and alleviate not never quite sure what those terms even only the historic and enduring nation- mean. The views expressed by my col- al disgrace of economic and material league, historian David Hollinger, in his inequity. I also hope that we can truly essay “Obama, the Instability of Color begin to attack and alleviate the white Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic power and racial privilege that help Future,” are at times compelling. Hol- structure that economic and material linger maintains that Obama’s presi- inequity. According to the Institute on dency represents “a far-reaching chal- Assets and Social Policy, in the last thir- lenge to identity politics . . . [a] gradual- ty years African American median fam- ly spreading uncertainty about the sig- ily wealth has remained roughly the ni½cance of color lines, especially the same. In 2007, white family wealth was signi½cance of blackness itself.”14 Al- $100,000; for African American fami- though persuasive in some respects, lies, it was $5,000. By almost any mea- ultimately, I ½nd this line of argument sure–educational attainment, employ- unconvincing. ment, income, wealth, homeownership As I survey today’s historical land- –the current Great Recession has fur- scape, from popular culture to elector-

Dædalus Winter 2011 73 Precious al politics, from hip-hop to opera, from trouble adapting to the imperatives of African domestic to international politics, I rec- the Black Freedom Struggle over time American Memories, ognize that race, blackness, and, indeed, while remaining true to their core mis- Post-Racial identity politics still matter, and matter sion: to achieve black civil, political, and Dreams & the profoundly. Late-twentieth- and early- economic uplift. Still, these organiza- American twenty-½rst-century developments have tions remain vital. Similarly, in 2010, Nation altered and complicated, even chal- advancing and protecting the rights and lenged, blackness, identity politics, and status of blacks continue to necessitate notions of race more generally. Never- the work of the Congressional Black theless, all three have persisted and, from Caucus as well as analogous state and where I sit, show little evidence of real local caucuses throughout the country. decline. The multiple ways in which Black-identi½ed institutions continue African Americans, like other groups, to be necessary, though not suf½cient, identify–whether by class, work or pro- to meet the enormity of the challenges fession, gender, sexuality, generation, of the ongoing Black Freedom Struggle. and place–certainly crosscut and com- Historically black colleges and universi- plicate notions of African American ra- ties as well as the United Negro College cial identity. Identities, notably racial Fund are more important than ever, giv- identities, are complex and situational. en pervasive and ongoing private segre- Different aspects of individual and col- gation in America, the resegregation of lective identities assume greater or lesser American public schools, and the widen- signi½cance depending on the context in ing achievement gap between black and which they appear. African American white students. The extraordinary con- fraternity and sorority events might eas- tributions of African American studies ily call forth a different set of identi½- to intellectual life and scholarship in the cations than, say, an interracial work United States and beyond have cement- setting. ed the enduring importance of this trans- To the degree that anti-black racism formative body of knowledge. Further- has declined though persisted, the na- more, certain cultural institutions con- ture of racial identi½cation has done tinue to be important for their emphasis the same. African American identity on African American voices and talent. politics remain pivotal precisely because The Dance Theater of Harlem, for exam- of the ongoing oppression of African ple, is signi½cant for its encouragement Americans and the continuing depth of African Americans, notably African and power of white supremacy. Conse- American women, in ballet. quently, we need a revitalized Black I should emphasize that the dominant Freedom Struggle, one that is particu- tradition in African American identity larly attuned to this historical moment; politics has been inclusive; it has wel- we need comparable race-based strug- comed non-blacks into organizations gles among other communities of color like the naacp and has encouraged work as well. These efforts must be sensitive with non-black allies in any number of to and work in concert with related eco- coalitions. Exclusive, narrow, sectarian– nomic, class, and gender struggles. particularly separatist-nationalist–posi- Foundational black civil rights orga- tions have always been minority ones nizations like the National Association among blacks, even during the height for the Advancement of Colored People of the Black Power insurgency. For all (naacp) and the Urban League had its radicalism, the Black Panther Party

74 Dædalus Winter 2011 was more democratic socialist than al racial moment, one in which mean- Waldo E. racial nationalist. The party certainly ings of race are shifting. Perhaps we are Martin, Jr. was not anti-white; it simply opposed moving inexorably in the direction of a white supremacy. As a result, the party society where race matters less: where organized and mobilized around vari- opportunity and upward mobility are ous issues with a variety of non-black increasingly less determined by race; groups and institutions domestically where class-based economic initiatives and globally. will alleviate not only the national scan- Historically speaking, race has changed dal of economic and material inequality in some ways and remained the same in but also the no less dreadful and related others. In spite of important shifts and disgrace of racial inequality. Perhaps by challenges, identity politics –especially achieving economic equality, we will blackness–retain their force and viabil- achieve racial equality. ity because race continues to convulse I am not convinced that white su- the American nation in so many ways, premacy is subordinate to economic large and small, witting and unwitting. forces. The historical mutability and Race today is certainly not race as it ex- persistence of white racism suggests isted in 1950, nor even as it existed in otherwise. History shows the singular- 1970 or 1990. Changes in racial con- ity and power of white racism, however sciousness, racial status, and race rela- one views the relationship of racism tions have occurred. My point is that the to political economy. From the seven- evident range and depth of continuities teenth through the nineteenth centu- and stagnation in racial status and race ries in America, racism and capitalism relations–what has stayed the same or helped create and sustain one another even worsened–are as important and as separate yet interactive forces. From as revealing as what has changed. the ½fteenth century forward, the anti- African attitudes and practices that de- Obama’s election as president must humanized African peoples and that be understood as historical evidence of evolved into white supremacy have a powerful barrier-breaking measure flowed from social and cultural factors, of racial progress, especially (as noted such as Western European notions of above) in terms of the expanding inte- African mental inferiority and hyper- gration of African Americans into Amer- sexuality, as well as economic and mate- ican public life. From another angle, his rial factors associated with the develop- election must be viewed as evidence of ment of slavery and capitalism. Similar- growing racial tolerance and acceptance. ly, enduring racial segregation, like that It can–and I believe must–be read as of late-nineteenth- and twentieth-centu- a hopeful sign for America’s long-term ry Jim Crow, is as much psychological racial future. While it is far too early to and ideological as it is material and eco- take the full measure of the meaning of nomic. White supremacy, then, is as this moment, it would appear to augur much psychic as it is systemic.15 bigger dreams and brighter futures for In the early 1980s, sociologist William President Obama’s “children.” Julius Wilson created a stir with his ar- My intention here is to analyze this gument on the “declining signi½cance of moment soberly, critically, and cautious- race” for African Americans. Class, not ly, not to deny its historic and thrilling race, Wilson argued, was the key deter- dimensions. Perhaps this is a transition- minant shaping black lives and destinies

Dædalus Winter 2011 75 Precious in the age of Reagan.16 Similarly, Hol- Reflecting on my fortieth high school African linger roused audiences in the late 1990s reunion, where the all-black class of 1969 American Memories, with his vision of a post-ethnic America, from James B. Dudley High in Greens- Post-Racial a nation where we reject the notion, as boro, North Carolina, reconnected and Dreams & the he has recently framed it, that “descent talked about the meanings we attach American is destiny.”17 to our lives, is bittersweet. Like black Nation With Obama’s stunning election, the America generally, we fully expected dream of a post-racial future, a post-eth- that as blacks and Americans, we would nic future–a future where we can truly be much farther along the road to true declare “the declining signi½cance of racial equality. We expected a more ra- race”–has been invigorated. Dreams cially integrated nation in the private as can be hopeful, instructive, and inspir- well as the public realm. With the dis- ing, but they must not distract us from tance afforded by the last half-century, historical and contemporary reality or it is clear that African Americans have from the immediate future. Post-racial indeed come “a mighty long way.” It is dreams notwithstanding, our present equally apparent that they have a mighty and foreseeable future is intensely and long way to go. The struggle continues. fundamentally racial. Barack Obama’s Perhaps we can bene½t from insight the rich autobiography, Dreams from My Fa- venerable Frederick Douglass provided ther: A Story of Race and Inheritance, re- during a far worse moment in our na- veals as much. As a coming-of-age sto- tion’s history of race relations, a moment ry and a search for racial identi½cation that we have progressed beyond. in a highly racialized world, Obama’s In 1894, the year before he died, Doug- carefully crafted, self-constructed life lass critically assessed the dreadful state narrative ½ts well within the African of race relations in the United States. American autobiographical tradition.18 Outraged by the rampant racial terror- At present, the signi½cance of race ism–an increasing number of anti-black paradoxically persists even as it recedes. Jim Crow restrictions, disenfranchise- Obama’s election and his early presiden- ment campaigns, and white supremacy cy showcase the continuing viability and nationally and globally–the grand “Old signi½cance of identity politics. His elec- Lion” rediscovered his mighty roar. In tion and presidency illustrate that no- particular, the unconscionable rise in tions of blackness in particular persist lynchings of black bodies moved him to and, in important ways, have deepened, thunderous denunciation recalling the but also that they have diminished. Ra- moral authority and piercing insight that cial politics have shaped both Obama’s had guided his days as one of America’s campaign and his early presidency, in leading abolitionists–certainly the lead- spite of omnipresent efforts to deny and ing African American abolitionist. avoid them. From the controversy over On the cusp of the twentieth century, Reverend Jeremiah Wright during the Douglass trumpeted that we ignore the campaign, which forced Obama to sever fundamental problem of white suprem- his ties with his pastor of twenty years, acy at our peril: “this so-called but mis- to the racism coursing through the Tea called Negro problem” was an Ameri- Party and Republican Party opposition can problem, indeed a global problem.19 to his presidential leadership, race mat- He castigated the transparently evil trick ters profoundly. of racial scapegoating: a diversionary analysis in which powerful whites label

76 Dædalus Winter 2011 oppressed blacks as the problem, side- horror of white racism is not new. Simi- Waldo E. stepping the critical issue of white com- larly, blaming the victim, or racial scape- Martin, Jr. plicity in the structures of white power goating, is a time-honored ruse: and white racial privilege. This racial The device is not new. It is an old trick. It scapegoating has been oft repeated and with a similar springs out of a desire to throw off just purpose and effect. For truth, it gives us responsibility and to evade the perfor- falsehood. For innocence, it gives us guilt. mance of disagreeable but manifest duty. It removes the burden of proof from the Its natural effect and purpose is to divert old master class and imposes it upon the attention from the true issue now before Negro. It puts upon the race a work which the American people. It does this by hold- belongs to the nation. It belongs to that ing up and pre-occupying the public mind craftiness often displayed by disputants with an issue entirely different from the who aim to make the worse appear the real one in question.20 better reason. It gives bad names to good things and good names to bad things.21 To wit, the real issue is white supremacy and the material and structural in- Almost 120 years later, the struggle against equalities that create and sustain it. Un- white supremacy continues. Until white grounded in historical and contempo- America, and by extension the “white rary realities, claims of the post-racial world,” helps bring about the destruction and the post-ethnic are misguided and of white supremacy and the realization potentially dangerous. of human equality, “everywhere,” as Bob Douglass cautioned that seeing some- Marley cautioned, “is war.”22 thing more benign, even hopeful, in the endnotes 1 The recording of “Precious Memories” is available on Aretha Franklin, Amazing Grace (Atlantic Records, 1972). 2 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (New York: Grove Press, 1965). 3 William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 172–202. 4 Cherrie L. Moraga, “Si Fuera Posible: Upon the Fortieth Anniversary of Ethnic Studies,” La Voz De Berkeley (Spring 2010): 5. 5 The Last Poets, “Niggers Are Scared of Revolution,” The Last Poets (Varese Sarande, 1970; reissued, 2002). 6 Moraga, “Si Fuera Posible,” 5. 7 Orlando Patterson, “For African-Americans, A Virtual Depression–Why?” in “Inequal- ity in America and What to Do About It,” a forum, The Nation 29 (3 and 4) (July 19 and 26, 2010): 20. 8 The notion of “the permanence of racism” has perhaps best been articulated in the work of Derrick Bell. See Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1993). 9 Michael K. Brown, Martin Conroy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

Dædalus Winter 2011 77 Precious 10 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Pro½t from Identity African Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998); Ira Katznelson, When Af½rmative American Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New Memories, Post-Racial York: W.W. Norton, 2005). Dreams 11 Barack Obama, as quoted in David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama & the (New York: Knopf, 2010), 584; Remnick, The Bridge, 587. American Nation 12 Institute on Assets and Social Policy study (2007), as cited in Patterson, “Inequality in America,” 18. 13 Center for Responsible Lending report, as quoted in Annie Lowrey, “Race and the Foreclo- sure Crisis,” The Washington Independent, June 18, 2010. 14 David Hollinger, “Obama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future,” Callaloo 31 (4) (2008): 1033. 15 Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003). 16 William J. Wilson, The Declining Signi½cance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institu- tions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 17 David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Hollinger, “Obama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Post- ethnic Future,” 1034. 18 Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995); William L. Andrews, ed., African-American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1992). 19 Frederick Douglass, The Lesson of the Hour: “Why is the Negro Lynched?” (1894). See Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 4 (1950; repr., New York: Inter- national Publishers, 1975), 491, 517. 20Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Bob Marley and the Wailers, “War,” Rastaman Vibration (Island Records, 1976). Marley’s words draw upon a famous speech by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selaissie. The speech is quoted in Gladstone Wilson, “Reggae as a Medium of Political Communication,” in Mass Media and the Caribbean, ed. Stuart H. Surlin and Walter C. Soderlund (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990), 439.

78 Dædalus Winter 2011 Race & Inheritance in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father

Glenda R. Carpio

There is no getting over race–at least according to the Barack Obama of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995). The Obama that emerged during the primaries and through the 2008 presidential election tells a different story, both because Obama had to change his position in the decade between the publication of his autobiography and his remarkable rise in politics and because his “hope” mantra has been diluted and taken out of the context in which it ½rst appeared. Obama’s now infamous ex-pastor, Jere- miah Wright, is the source of the phrase, “the audacity of hope.” In Dreams, the Wright sermon in which Obama ½rst hears the phrase comes at the very end of the long third section, “Chicago,” just after Obama has been accepted to Harvard Law School and before he takes his ½rst trip to Africa to ½nd his paternal family.1 We are nearly three hundred pages into the text at this point, having been presented with plenty of evidence for Oba- ma’s dark view of race relations in America. Only GLENDA R. CARPIO is Professor in this context can one understand why, for Oba- of African and African American ma, it takes audacity to hope that they will change Studies and of English and Amer- for the better. ican Literature and Language at Writing for the National Review, Michael Gledhill Harvard University. She is the au- also notes the difference between the Obama of thor of Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Dreams and of the presidential race; however, he Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (2008) and is working on a new makes a number of facile conclusions. He writes book, tentatively titled Ambiva- that, while “Obama is touted as a post-racial states- lent Alliances: Black and Latina/o man who sees beyond the narrow issue of white Fiction in the Americas. versus black,” in his autobiography he is, “to the

Dædalus Winter 2011 79 Race & contrary, obsessed with race: almost all his ½rst wife safely tucked away in far- Inheritance of Dreams is about race and race conflict.” off Africa. in Barack Obama’s The Obama of Dreams does focus on race Obama believes that his mother “Dreams conflict, but this fact should not lead us came to love his father despite the ra- from My to repudiate him as “a racially obsessed cial romanticism that ½rst attracted Father” man who regards most whites as oppres- her to him. But he adds that the love sors,” and “who sees U.S. history as a nar- she had for him, a transformative love row, bitter tale of race and class victim- that allowed her to see Obama’s father ization.”2 Instead, it should allow us a as “everyone hopes at least one other better appreciation of the gravitas of person might see him,” is the kind of Obama’s audacity of hope. love most Americans do not believe really exists “between black and white: In Dreams, Obama presents his life, the love of someone who knows your from his parents’ courtship through life round, a love that will survive dis- to his birth, childhood, adolescence, appointment.” And according to Oba- and young adulthood, in terms of ra- ma, this is because interracial love has cial conflict. He portrays the conflict been tabooed and outlawed so intense- with such intensity that one marvels ly and for so long in the United States at how young Obama not only survived that Americans can hardly be “expect- but also thrived. Of his white mother’s ed” to believe in it.5 Early in the autobi- attraction for his father, an older black, ography Obama frames the interracial African man (she was eighteen and he identity his parents bequeath him in in his mid-twenties when they met), the following terms: Obama writes that it was probably “a Miscegenation. The word is humpbacked, reflection of the simple fantasies that ugly, portending a monstrous outcome: had been forbidden to a white middle- like antebellum or octoroon, it evokes im- class girl from Kansas, the promise of ages of another era, a distant world of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, dif- horsewhips and flames, dead magno- ferent.”3 These thoughts are prompted lias and crumbling porticos. And yet it when, as an adult, Obama accompanies wasn’t until 1967–the year I celebrated his mother to a screening of Black Or- my sixth birthday and Jimi Hendrix per- pheus and is made uncomfortable by formed at Monterey, three years after the romantic racialism that she reveals Dr. King received the Nobel Peace Prize, in her love of the movie. He turns away a time when America had already begun from her and the screen, concluding to weary of black demands for equality, that the “emotions between races could the problem of discrimination presum- never be pure, even love was tarnished ably resolved–that the Supreme Court by the desire to ½nd in the other some of the United States would get around to element that was missing in ourselves. telling the state of Virginia that its ban Whether we sought out our demons or on interracial marriages violated the Con- salvation, the other race would always stitution.6 remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.”4 Obama offers no theory for his The gothic images in this passage, which father’s attraction to his mother but sug- comes after a narrative break and begins gests that he enjoyed the attention and in italics, therefore standing out even kept secret the fact that he was already typographically, emphasize the distort- married when he met his mother, with ing and consuming violence of a racial

80 Dædalus Winter 2011 obsession. Meanwhile, the temporal ture. “tv, movies, the radio; those were Glenda R. shifts highlight the stubborn resistance the places to start,” he writes: Carpio against racial progress: Obama’s birth Pop culture was color-coded, after all, is barely legal (in 1960, when his par- an arcade of images from which you ents were married, “miscegenation still could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style. I described a felony in over half the states couldn’t croon like Marvin Gaye, but I in the Union”), while he celebrates his could learn to dance all of the Soul Train sixth birthday amid a political climate steps. I couldn’t pack a gun like Shaft or in which African Americans are accept- Superfly, but I could sure enough curse ed, even celebrated, at certain registers like Richard Pryor.9 (popular culture, global public space) yet still denied equality in their own Like Gunnar Kaufman, the protagonist country. (The irony of Dr. King’s receiv- of Paul Beatty’s satirical novel, The White ing the Nobel Peace Prize is particular- Boy Shuffle (1996), Obama must learn to ly piercing in this context.)7 Unlike the be “black,” though apparently he does “post-race” president some tout him to not suffer from Gunnar’s rhythm prob- be, Obama in Dreams is acutely aware of lems (signaled by Beatty’s title) since he not only the long history of racial strife has the aid of Soul Train.10 The connec- in America but also the fact that the gains tion to Beatty is not super½cial, however: resulting from the civil rights movement Obama heightens the satiric subtones of have not rid America of its cancerous the opening chapters in part to mock his racist past. He dryly notes that, instead adolescent trials and tribulations (and of resolving the problem of discrimina- thereby measure the height of his suc- tion, America, at the time of his birth, cess, in the style of Ben Franklin and, “had already begun to weary of black later, Booker T. Washington) but also, demands for equality,” suggesting that like Beatty, to control the rage he feels this weariness is as much a signi½cant against both his particular predicament part of the legacy of the civil rights move- (his fatherless and guideless journey) ment, albeit indirectly, as the legislation and the fact that black life can still be it fought to pass. caged centuries after slavery. Like other Having established the near miracle members of the “post-soul” generation, of his birth–a gesture that could be fault- Obama is keen to the “changing same” ed as histrionic were it not for the fact (to quote LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka) of that Obama grounds it in history and American race relations in the post–civil makes it emblematic of a larger set of rights era, in which essentialist notions experiences–he details the “½tful interi- of race have been questioned, further or struggle” of raising himself “to be a exposing the ½ction of race, but racism black man in America,” without the aid has been increasingly institutionalized of familial models.8 By the time Obama and made less visible, therefore also is a young adolescent, he is living with making it harder to combat.11 his white grandparents, his father hav- Again, like Beatty’s Gunnar, Obama ing gone to Africa, leaving him with only takes up basketball as his ticket into “a poet named Frank,” a nearly eighty- black culture but quickly acknowledges year-old black male friend of his grand- that, in doing so, he “was living out a father, as a guide. Obama is eager for caricature of black male adolescence, other sources, and with a satiric edge, itself a caricature of swaggering Ameri- he considers how he turned to pop cul- can manhood.”12 And yet it is on the

Dædalus Winter 2011 81 Race & basketball court, partly through his ghetto corners, “their hoods up, their Inheritance friendship with a young black man sneakers unlaced, stomping the ground in Barack Obama’s named Ray, that he begins meditating in a delusory rhythm.” He notes that “Dreams on the “maddening” racial distortions these young men inherit prison records from My he must sift through in the process of across generations.15 Here, the subtitle Father” becoming an adult. Obama observes, of Dreams, “A Story of Race and Inheri- almost bitterly, that black selfhood tance,” takes on darker tones than it seems prefabricated by a racist and ra- might ½rst suggest. As an individual, cially obsessed machinery with a long Obama may have survived the obstacles past. He writes, “[Y]ou couldn’t even be to black self-realization, but throughout sure that everything you had assumed his autobiography, he is acutely aware of was to be an expression of your black the gap between him and other young unfettered self–the humor, the song, black men who start as “boys with no the behind-the-back pass–had been margin for error.” Obama realizes that freely chosen by you.” He concludes: they live in environments far less “for- giving” than the one that was available Following this maddening logic, the to him.16 In Chicago, he looks “into the only thing you could choose as your eyes of the young men in wheelchairs,” own was withdrawal into a smaller and victims of gang warfare, “boys crippled smaller coil of rage, until being black before their prime, their eyes without a meant only the knowledge of your own trace of self-pity, eyes so composed, al- powerlessness, of your own defeat. And ready so hardened, that they served to the ½nal irony: Should you refuse this frighten rather than to inspire.” And defeat and lash out at your captors, they here, as throughout the autobiography, would have a name for that, too, a name Obama recognizes that the crippled and that could cage you just as good. Para- caged have inherited their predicament noid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.13 in ways that may be measured through By the time he arrives in Chicago to the “hard statistics” of prison records, do community work, Obama has real- unemployment, and health and hous- ized that even black rage can be part ing disparities that have come down of the prefabricated machinery; he is generations but that also include the aware that “like sex or violence on tv, more imperceptible “internal struggles” black rage always [½nds] a ready mar- that can lead to self-destruction.17 ket.”14 Ultimately, by stepping outside the bounds of his own struggle with race If Obama survives his internal struggles in America, and by stepping outside of by stepping out of his own con½nes and America altogether, as seen in the pas- even those of his country, the question sages on Indonesia and, in particular, remains: what propels this movement the long section dedicated to Kenya, out? Family does not seem, at least at Obama saves himself from following ½rst glance, to provide a source of inspi- the “maddening logic” he outlines here. ration. His father, as I have noted, is ab- His stepping out does not necessarily sent, while his mother’s notion of what free him from a dark view of racial con- it takes to raise a black man leaves much flict, however. In the section of Dreams to be desired. Obama notes that, for his dedicated to his Chicago experiences, mother, “to be black was to be bene½cia- Obama writes of “the knots of young ry of a great inheritance, a special des- men, ½fteen or sixteen,” hanging out in tiny, glorious burdens that only we were

82 Dædalus Winter 2011 strong enough to bear . . . [b]urdens we Dreams, one can easily see how the very Glenda R. were to carry with style.” While in Indo- books Obama ½nds wanting help shape Carpio nesia, she makes a concerted effort to his own acts of self-creation. acquaint young Obama with the histo- In “Invisible Man: How Ralph Ellison ry and culture of African Americans by Explains Barack Obama,” writer and showing him, in postcard-like fashion, journalist David Samuels rightly argues “books on the civil rights movement, that the structure of Dreams the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the loosely but deliberately mirrors the struc- speeches of Dr. King.”18 This kind of ture of Ellison’s novel–a picaresque, education leaves him wholly unprepared which shows an intelligent and bookish to face his maternal grandmother, who young black man’s struggle with intern- sends Obama deeper into a crisis when, al and external de½nitions of self as he after being harassed on different occa- moves through a series of institutional set- sions at her bus stop, she refuses to take tings and self-de½ning impulses cloaked in the bus to work because one of her ha- the garb of communal politics or culture: rassers is black. Obama notes sadly that, the campus anti-apartheid movement, while he never had a reason to doubt his black and anti-colonialist literature, com- grandmother’s love, her “rawest fears” munity organizing, the black church.21 could be stoked by “men who could have easily been [his] brothers.”19 Unlike Ellison’s novel, however, Dreams If family does not provide inspira- also takes into account what Samuels tion for Obama, books seem to fare calls the “global dimension of the color no better. Before the incident with his line,” a consequence that is, ironically, grandmother, Obama turns to W.E.B. the effect of his parents’ ineffectual ef- Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard forts to raise him. For it is his mother Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Elli- who, despite her shortcomings, takes son “to try to reconcile the world as young Obama to Indonesia, where he I’d found it with the terms of my birth,” begins to see, especially through his re- but ½nds no solace. Instead, he ½nds lationship to his stepfather Lolo, “the that, despite valiant efforts, each author poverty, the corruption, the constant ultimately falls prey to the “anguish,” scramble for security” that people of “doubt,” and “self-contempt” generat- color suffer in other countries.22 Later, ed by racism. “Even DuBois’s [sic] learn- and in the style of the African American ing and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s literary tradition that he so consciously humor eventually succumbed to its cor- invokes, Obama orders the lessons he rosive force,” he writes, “each man ½- gathers not only in Indonesia but also nally forced to doubt art’s redemptive in Kenya, where he goes in search of power, each man ½nally forced to with- his African heritage, propelled by the draw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one silence and absence of his father. deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but In Kenya, Obama observes the world all of them in the same weary flight, around him through a comparative lens. all of them exhausted, bitter men, the For example, an incident at a hotel, where devil at their heels.” Only Malcolm X’s African waiters rush to tend to American autobiography, with its “repeated acts of and European tourists, inspires a long self-creation” and expressions of “sheer meditation on old and new forms of co- will” and “martial discipline,” provides lonialism and their similarities to Amer- a vision of possibility.20 Yet reading ican apartheid. The waiters ignore Oba-

Dædalus Winter 2011 83 Race & ma, his sister Auma, and other Africans Americans straddle similar worlds and Inheritance in favor of the tourists, prompting his for similar reasons. Yet in the compari- in Barack Obama’s sister to voice her bitterness but Obama son he makes between the fear that the “Dreams to imagine their position. “Did our wait- Mau-Mau rebels inspired and that in- from My er know that black rule had come?” he spired by Nat Turner and “coke-crazed Father” wonders. “Did it mean anything to him?” muggers,” he suggests that their strad- Perhaps he has “learned that the same dling may be more precarious. It is curi- people who controlled the land before ous in this respect that Obama did not independence still control the same land, choose a more recent ½gure to invoke that he still cannot eat in the restaurants uprising within the U.S. context. (He or stay in the hotels that the white man might have chosen Malcolm X or any has built.” Still, considers Obama, if “he’s major Black Panther ½gure.) He may ambitious he will do his best to learn the have wanted to emphasize the distance white man’s language and use the white between moments of black insurgency man’s machines, the same way the com- and disillusionment or to suggest the puter repairman in Newark or the bus dif½culty of maintaining the “balance” driver back in Chicago does, with alter- between anger and resignation (one nating spurts of enthusiasm or frustra- thinks of Obama’s own flirtation with tion but mostly with resignation.” The drugs and the despondency that fuels comparison here, as elsewhere, is strik- it, at least as he represents it early in the ing for its linkage of experiences span- autobiography). Perhaps more urgently, ning continents and centuries under the he may have wanted to offer a vision of common sign of black struggle against what happens when you cannot sustain the effects of racism. Obama notes that that balance. You become trapped by the the waiter is old enough to remember very categories that you want to strike the independence brought about by the against: “Militant. Violent. Nigger.” Mau-Mau rebellion and that “a part of Taking into account the global dimen- him may still cling” to its memory. Yet sions of the color line reveals a world earlier he also notes, in another striking many times as troubled as the one Oba- instance of comparison, that the Mau- ma observes in America; at times it al- Mau ½ghters, who at some point “played lows him to see, in even sharper focus, on all the fears of the colonial West, the how dire and persistent the problem same sort of fear that Nat Turner had is both at home and abroad. once evoked in the antebellum South Obama’s personal search for his in- and coke-crazed muggers now evoked in heritance in his paternal home yields the minds of whites in Chicago,” did not similar results. Upon arriving in Africa, leave a signi½cant legacy, as evidenced he enjoys the freedom that black Ameri- by the signs of neocolonialism to which cans often feel when they ½rst visit a pre- he pays witness. In the end, Obama imag- dominantly black country. “You could ines the waiter straddling “two worlds,” see a man talking to himself as just plain between resignation and anger, “always crazy,” he writes, “or read about the off balance, playing whichever game criminal on the front page of the daily staves off the bottomless poverty, care- paper and ponder the corruption of the ful to let his anger vent itself only on human heart, without having to think those with the same condition.”23 about whether the criminal or lunatic In the Chicago section of Dreams, Oba- said something about your own fate. ma repeatedly shows that poor African Here the world was black, and you were

84 Dædalus Winter 2011 just you.”24 He also enjoys what most In the context of Dreams, it is impossi- Glenda R. black Americans cannot enjoy when they ble not to think of bills of sale advertis- Carpio visit Africa: he is greeted by an extended ing chattel slaves in antebellum Ameri- family, one that he hardly knows. Yet as ca when reading this entry, particularly he searches for a way to understand the the categories emphasizing phenotypic mystery of his father, he ½nds only the traits. Obama reproduces the entry tragic story of his father’s self-destruc- along with reviews of his grandfather’s tion. Obama learns how, as David Sam- performance as a servant (one states uels puts it, his father became “a scary that he “performed his duties as a personal polygamist who abused his wives and boy with admirable diligence,” another that children and drank away his intellectual he “was not worth 60 shillings per month”), promise, then crippled himself in a car letters of inquiry to American colleges accident,” and ½nally killed himself in written by Obama’s father, and letters of another one. Obama also re-creates recommendation written by an Ameri- the long story he hears from his grand- can in support of his application (“given mother (amounting to twenty-eight Mr. O’bama’s [sic] desire to serve his country, pages of embedded text) through which he should be given a chance, perhaps on a he learns the story of his grandfather, one-year basis”). Reviewing this material an intense and proud man who worked at the end of his long narrative, Obama as a servant for a colonial family and declares: “That was it, I thought to my- whose troubled relationship with Oba- self. My inheritance.”25 The journey on ma’s father in many ways led to the lat- which Obama has taken the reader ends ter’s self-destruction. At the end of not with a resolution of the mystery sur- the grandmother’s long story, Obama rounding the father ½gure that opens the re-creates an entry from a book that autobiography and haunts the text. In- his sister Auma gives him, a Domestic stead, we are left with Obama imagin- Servant’s Pocket Register in which his ing the lives of his male ancestors in the grandfather’s identity as a colonial same way that he imagines the life of the servant is included: waiter who ignores him, using the little evidence he has. Name: Hussein II Onyango Native Registration No. Rwl A NBI 0976717 Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Greg- Race or Tribe: Ja’Luo ory Rodriguez called Dreams “lyrical yet Usual Place of Residence When Not interminable,” and, indeed, at times it Employed: Kisumu. feels as if Obama gathered every piece Sex: M. of evidence that there is no getting over Age: 35. race, in the United States as in the rest Height and Build: 6’0’’ Medium. of world, and interweaved this evidence with his own struggle.26 Yet the autobi- Complexion: Dark. ography is decidedly not bleak or bitter. Nose: Flat. Rather, it offers Obama’s own version of Mouth: Large. the image that purportedly inspired the Hair: Curly. “audacity of hope” sermon that he hears Teeth: Six Missing. in Chicago shortly before he leaves for Scars, Tribal Marks, or Other Peculiari- Kenya. It is the image of a woman “atop ties: None. a great mountain,” over which she sees a “fallen world” but still has the “audaci-

Dædalus Winter 2011 85 Race & ty” to hope for its deliverance.27 Obama mative love that he imagines existed Inheritance gives us an expansive vision of our fallen between his parents–that arguably in Barack Obama’s world, but he leaves ambiguous what sustains Obama’s audacity to hope that “Dreams fuels his own sense of hope. It is hard the fallen world he sees can and will be from My to imagine Jeremiah Wright as the ulti- changed for the better. It would seem Father” mate source of Obama’s hope (though then that despite Obama’s early rejec- he coined the phrase). As David Sam- tion of Baldwin as a source of guidance, uels notes, Wright is a “religious con the latter’s belief in the redemptive man who spread racist and anti-Semit- power of love resonates in Obama’s ic poison while having an alleged sexual adult life. For however alienated he affair with a white church secretary and feels from his family, Obama repeated- milking his congregation for millions ly emphasizes the love that he receives and a house in a gated community whose from both his black and white relatives. residents are overwhelmingly rich and And although he does not discuss his white.” And it is hard to imagine astute relationship with his wife, he ends his Obama falling for his charisma. autobiography with his marriage. But This is why it pays to read Dreams Obama is also no sentimentalist. Much carefully, for while the text may not has been made (and certainly by Obama reveal what ultimately fuels Obama’s himself ) of the fusion he represents as hope, it does make clear that it is found- the product of an interracial and trans- ed in a man’s hard look at his life and national family. But at least in Dreams, the world around him. At best, the text the effort to embody this fusion nearly offers possible sources for Obama’s au- tears him asunder. Love is there, like dacity. His peculiar inheritance may be faith, as a force that goes beyond the one such source, even if, as a result of his sheer will and martial discipline that parents’ marriage and their own strug- he can depend on; but neither faith nor gles in life, it turns out to be a dare to love alone can provide transcendence. fashion a self through the “sheer will” Listening to Jeremiah Wright’s sermon and “martial discipline” that Obama on hope, Obama notes: “part of me con- admires in Malcolm X’s autobiography. tinued to feel that this Sunday commun- Curiously, he imagines his paternal ion sometimes simpli½ed our condition, grandfather’s fate to have been similar. that it could sometimes disguise or sup- “He will have to reinvent himself,” Oba- press the very real conflicts among us ma thinks of the African grandfather and would ful½ll its promise only through who leaves the farms of his youth to action”; yet “I also felt for the ½rst time work for white people. “Through force how that spirit carried within it, nascent, of will, he will create a life out of the incomplete, the possibility of moving scraps of an unknown world, and the beyond our narrow dreams.”29 memories of a world rendered obso- Again and again, Obama seeks what lete.”28 From the retrospective view- will move him out beyond his “narrow point of writing, Obama projects his dreams,” though what propels him ar- own experience onto a ½gure whose life guably remains a mystery, despite the he hardly knows but whose legacy is to possibilities that I have here entertained. push him to search beyond his own nar- And this is because Dreams, like the row struggles. books by Wright, Du Bois, Hughes, Bald- Dreams reveals that, beyond circum- win, and Ellison that Obama turns to for stance, it is love–the kind of transfor- answers, emphasizes the struggle to face

86 Dædalus Winter 2011 the doubt, anger, and self-contempt pro- that book is not entirely devoid of the Glenda R. duced by racism, although Obama’s text piercing honesty so fundamental to the Carpio only partially sheds light on what tran- autobiography).31 If, as David Samuels scendence really entails. In the years notes, Obama could not use the identity since the original publication of Dreams that he “so painstakingly created for him- and, especially, since the publication of self” in Dreams once he became a presi- the second edition in 2004,30 the com- dential candidate, then the “price of his plex vision of race that the autobiogra- political success is that he is forced to phy offers has been watered down and sublimate the material he had so pain- marketed as slogans, its starker aspects fully excavated.” And yet the existence de-emphasized in order not to alienate of Dreams ensures that there is a record readers like Michael Gledhill (of the of Obama’s experiences and beliefs be- National Review). Certainly, The Audac- fore he became the political machine ity of Hope (2006) has gone a long way and the symbol of a supposedly post- toward achieving these goals (although racial America that he is now.

endnotes 1 In the sermon, Wright uses the phrase “the audacity to hope,” which Obama later changes to “the audacity of hope.” 2 Michael Gledhill, “Who is Barack Obama?” National Review 60 (16) (September 1, 2008): 37–40. 3 Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Times Books, 1995), 124. 4 Ibid., 127. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 11–12; bold emphasis added. 7 Of course, one might argue that anti-miscegenation laws worked both ways: whites were equally prohibited from interracial marriage as were blacks. Moreover, during the civil rights struggle, blacks strove to make the point that they were not mainly after marriage with whites, which is what many whites persistently claimed. Whites could say that there was no law prohibiting blacks from marrying other blacks or even people of certain other races, only laws that prohibited them from marrying whites. Finally, blacks themselves generally had complex feelings about interracial marriage: most black women bitterly resented black men marrying white women, and interracial marriages on the whole were condemned as a sign of lack of race pride. It is thus interesting that Obama avoids the very charged issue of what attracted his black father to his white mother. 8 Obama, Dreams from My Father, 76. 9 Ibid., 78. 10 Beatty’s novel takes place in the late twentieth century and follows Gunnar, the “only cool black guy at Mestizo Mulatto Mongrel Elementary,” the “all-white multicultural school” that he attends in Santa Monica. When his mother moves him and his family to a black and Latino ghetto in West Los Angeles, Gunnar undergoes a peculiar education: he must learn to transform from a slacker surfer, whose cultural associations are almost exclusively white, to a fast-talking street-smart ghetto kid who can hang with hard-core ballplayers and gangbangers. In other words, he must learn how to be “black.” Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle (New York: Picador, 1996); quote above appears on page 28.

Dædalus Winter 2011 87 Race & 11 Author, critic, and ½lmmaker Nelson George de½nes the members of this generation as Inheritance those born roughly between the March on Washington in 1963 and the landmark case, in Barack The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which imposed limitations on Obama’s “Dreams af½rmative action. See Nelson George, Post-Soul Nation: The Explosive, Contradictory, Tri- from My umphant, and Tragic 1980s as Experienced by African Americans (Previously Known as Blacks Father” and Before that Negroes) (New York: Viking Adult, 2004). One might also consider expanding the “post-soul” era to include the period immediately preceding it (1953 to 1964, or, the period between the end of the Korean War and the beginning of the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty). People born during that period would also have been too young to have directly participated in much of the civil rights movement. 12 Obama, Dreams from My Father, 79. 13 Ibid., 85. 14 Ibid., 203. 15 Ibid., 252. 16 Ibid., 270. 17 Ibid., 252. 18 Ibid., 50–51. 19 Ibid., 89. 20Ibid., 85–86. 21 The fact that the nameless protagonist of Ellison’s novel is a powerful orator, though not always in control of his own gifts, may have resonated with Obama, whose own capacity for oratory has carried him far but has also placed a certain uncanny burden on him. See David Samuels, “Invisible Man: How Ralph Ellison Explains Barack Obama,” The New Republic, October 22, 2008, http://www.tnr.com/article/invisible-man. 22 Obama, Dreams from My Father, 50. 23 Ibid., 311–312, 315. 24 Ibid., 311. 25 Ibid., 425–427. 26 Gregory Rodriguez, “Is Obama the New ‘Black’?” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2006, http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-rodriguez17dec17,0,7336980 .column. 27 Obama, Dreams from My Father, 294. 28 Ibid., 427. 29 Ibid., 294. 30 The 2004 edition includes a new preface written by Obama as well as the Democratic National Convention keynote speech that he delivered in July 2004. 31 As Michiko Kukutani puts it, The Audacity of Hope is “much more of a political document” than is Dreams. “Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech, and the bulk of it is devoted to laying out Mr. Obama’s policy positions on a host of issues, from education to health care to the war in Iraq”; Michiko Kukutani, “Obama’s Foursquare Pol- itics, with a Dab of Dijon,” The New York Times, October 17, 2006, http://www.nytimes .com/2006/10/17/books/17kaku.html. At the same time, an Ellisonian sensibility under- writes parts of the new book. David Samuels notes that the “tragic thrust of Ellison’s novel is often reduced to the banality that black people are invisible to white people.” Yet “Ellison’s deeper point is that the symbolic and actual baggage of race makes it dif- ½cult if not impossible for a black man to ever realize his full humanity in the eyes of anyone–white, black, communist, capitalist, or himself.” This insight echoes through-

88 Dædalus Winter 2011 out Dreams and resonates powerfully in passages of The Audacity of Hope, such as when Glenda R. Obama writes, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political Carpio stripes project their own views.” As Samuels argues, here “Obama seems to agree with Ellison about the effect of the racial baggage that people bring to his public performance as a politician. The black candidate is rendered invisible to his white audience, a fact that would appear to leave him with little choice but to use that blindness in a strategic way if he wishes to lead.” See Samuels, “Invisible Man.”

Dædalus Winter 2011 89 On Post-Racial America in the Age of Obama

Amina Gautier

I had the chance to travel to Washington, D.C., to witness the moment when U.S. Senator Barack Obama became President Barack Obama. Regret- tably, I passed up that opportunity to attend the inauguration of our forty-fourth president, a chance many I know would have immediately leaped upon. The offer to attend dropped into my lap at almost the ninth hour and was tenuous at best, resting on the whims of three people (only one of whom I knew) and on a road trip from the Midwest to the East Coast. Furthermore, my native New Yorker’s sensibility–ever-present despite having lived away from home and in numerous other cities for more than a decade–argued against the idea of joining record-breaking numbers in a D.C. crowd. Real New Yorkers leave the crowds, parades, and New AMINA GAUTIER is an Assistant Year’s Eve ball-drop to tourists and New York trans- Professor of English at DePaul plants, knowing that monumental events lose noth- University. She has published ing by virtue of being televised and that watching short stories in the Antioch Re- a televised parade or national observance is much view, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and Southern Review, among oth- safer than subjecting oneself to a crowd’s tramp- ers. She received the 2010 Flan- lers and snipers. Indeed, despite being the nation’s nery O’Connor Award, and the capital, Washington, D.C., has never struck me as University of Georgia Press will particularly safe. (There is, after all, a reason the publish her short story collec- Washington Bullets changed their name to the tion, At-Risk, in September 2011. Washington Wizards.) She has written critical essays I did not share with many others I knew the same for Libraries and Culture and Whit- man Noir and is currently work- level of enthusiasm that would have compelled me ing on a monograph, Wielding the to ride halfway across the country in a car with one Stronger: Charles W. Chesnutt and friend and two strangers only to arrive and stand the Politics of Gender. outside for hours on a blustery cold day. I would

90 Dædalus Winter 2011 be huddled among strangers, blocked by that has been bandying about the idea Amina much taller people in front of me, all to of black presidency for more than thirty Gautier see something I would almost certainly years. be standing too far away from to see in the ½rst place. Unlike the dignitaries, I For African Americans of my gener- would not have heating devices sewn ation (those born in the late 1970s), into my clothing (as Michelle Obama having a black president signi½es some- did) to keep me warm while I kept vigil. thing entirely different than it does for Therefore, I reasoned that if I had to African Americans born earlier. On the watch the event on a screen, I might as night of his presidential election, Barack well watch it on television from the safe- Obama spoke anecdotally about Ann ty of my own home, surrounded by such Nixon Cooper in his acceptance speech. creature comforts as food, heat, and an One hundred and six years old at the easily accessible restroom. time she cast her vote in the 2008 elec- So, on January 20, 2009, I sat in my tion, Ann Nixon Cooper was used to living room in my small apartment in symbolize the idea of change. Having St. Louis for most of the morning and lived more than one hundred years, watched the inaugural proceedings while Cooper exempli½ed the scope and na- preparing the class I was to teach later ture of change in our nation. She repre- that day. In the middle of the afternoon, sented how much can change in one’s I went to the university (Washington lifetime, how one can be born into a University in St. Louis, where I was on certain kind of life, molded and influ- a temporary postdoctoral fellowship) enced by the policies of the day, and to teach my class on African American yet live through them to see change literature written after the Reconstruc- that heretofore had been unimaginable. tion. I returned home afterward to watch Ann Nixon Cooper lived to see some- more inaugural proceedings. thing my great-grandmother could not My lack of enthusiasm to stand in the fathom. A woman who marveled at the crowd on Inauguration Day in no way new “trend” of babies being born with reflected a lack of enthusiasm for the their eyes open, who was warily per- incoming president. More important plexed and distrustful of the invention than the thoughts of inconvenience and of Pampers in the 1970s, my great-grand- potential danger to my person were mother lived long enough to hear only other thoughts, deeply embedded in my the rumor of black presidential candidacy. subconscious that encouraged my re- In April 1984, when I was seven years fusal to attend and, ultimately, led to the old and in second grade, my great-grand- missed opportunity. Unlike many white mother lay dying in a Brooklyn hospital. Americans, I had not been surprised by While visiting there, my mother told her Obama’s candidacy or election to the the news she had recently read in the presidency (nor would I have been sur- newspaper. prised by any other black person’s elec- “Mama,” my mother said to her, using tion). I was, however, at turns fearful the endearment by which we all called that the inauguration would go wrong her. “Guess what?” and the new president would be the vic- “What?” my great-grandmother asked, tim of a violent melee. My sense of being dispirited, weary, and in incurable pain. both nonplussed and fearful derived “A black man is going to run for from one source: the cultural memory president!”

Dædalus Winter 2011 91 On Post- “Really? He is?” my great-grandmother campaign as a write-in for the Freedom Racial asked in a voice ½lled with wonder, her and Peace Party, the 1972 bid by Shirley America in the Age pain momentarily gone. Chisholm–the ½rst black woman elected of Obama My great-grandmother died on Easter to Congress–for the Democratic presi- Sunday in 1984. She did not live to see dential nomination, and Jesse Jackson’s the Reverend Jesse Jackson run for presi- 1984 and 1988 bids for the Democratic dent, but she died in awe of the immi- presidential nomination accustomed nent possibility. America to the idea of a black president I knew of many stories like the one in the post–civil rights era. Media and that occurred in my family, of African popular culture went one step further, Americans who held out hope for a black embedding the idea of a black president president, yet who did not expect ever in the consciousness of African Ameri- to see such a momentous event occur cans. On the airwaves, hip hop verses within their own lifetimes. testi½ed to rappers voting for Shirley I was not one of those folks. Unlike Chisholm (Biz Markie and LL Cool J, those born before the 1970s, I never among others, have lyrics that directly asked if I would be so lucky as to live refer to Chisholm’s candidacy), and long enough to see the ½rst black presi- running commentary on black president in my country. Instead, the way dential candidates loomed large on playmates and classmates of mine cal- the silver screen. culated how old we would be when the As early as 1974, the pilot episode of millennium came, I asked myself how Good Times mentions such a possibility. old I would be when my country inaugu- When the Evans family must raise the rated our ½rst black president. What rent money necessary to prevent them existed as possibility in the eyes of my from being evicted, all the Evans chil- ancestors was an inevitability in mine. dren offer to contribute their meager I did not take the occasion for granted, savings. The youngest, Michael (Ralph however. I fully understood that the Carter), tells his father, “I’ll give you moment, when it came, would not have two dollars I’ve been saving up for law materialized out of thin air. Indeed, the school.” Although grateful and hum- idea of a black president is one that has bled, James Evans (John Amos) refuses been circulating in popular culture since his children’s money. In response to the beginning of the post–civil rights Michael’s dream, James pushes him era, of which I am a product. further: “Boy, I believe you can skip The idea that a black president was on lawyer and go right on to president!” the way had been planted–undoubtedly On August 17, 1983, clad in a red leath- –by the seeds of the civil rights era, nour- er jacket and matching pants, Eddie ished in American popular culture of the Murphy delivered his Delirious comedy 1980s and 1990s, and watered to grow routine at Constitution Hall in Wash- tall and willowy in African American ington, D.C. In his performance, he re- cultural memory. We (black Americans) ferred to Jesse Jackson’s presidential had spoken about the idea for quite some campaign: “Jesse knows that it can time. Whether in seriousness or jest, we happen. I see him running around the knew it to be a real possibility. track–I said ‘why are you getting in shape?’ He said ‘Because I’m about to On the political front, three black Amer- be the ½rst black president. I’ll have to icans paved the way. Dick Gregory’s 1968 give my speeches like this. My fellow

92 Dædalus Winter 2011 Americans, as your president I feel . . . .’” resulting when hope and determination Amina Impersonating Jackson, Murphy runs are forged together–a combination Gautier back and forth across the stage, pivoting called change. several times, making quick reverses, revealing quick and fancy footwork. He As a child, I grew up with the under- then switches characters and, holding an standing that a black American, male imaginary ½rearm in his hands, squints or female, could indeed become the one eye shut and cries, “He won’t stand president of the United States. It was still”–an impersonation of a white snip- not a hope as it was for my great-grand- er attempting to target Jackson and as- mother born in the early twentieth cen- sassinate the ½rst black president. tury. It was not a wish and the punch In 1989, an episode of A Different World line of a joke as it was for those–like titled “Citizen Dwayne” (the show was my mother–who matured in an era of a spinoff of The Cosby Show) juxtaposed war, national crisis, and the seemingly Dwayne Wayne’s (Kadeem Hardison) never-ending assassinations of civil run for student body president with the rights leaders. It was a reality, a truth, a Reverend Jesse Jackson’s unsuccessful part of my life, something I understood presidential bid. Running on a campaign would happen just as I understood that devoted to such issues as the need to I would attend college upon graduating charge admission to student dances in from high school. Because I had inter- order to fund scholarships and maintain nalized this expectation, I understand the campus paper and ½lm society–to the 2008 election as the start of a new “party with a purpose,” as he puts it– discussion on race relations in America Dwayne is smeared by his opponent rather than the end of a discussion that Teressa, who warns students, “Don’t has only ever been had in whispers and vote for Dwayne; he’s a wallet drain!” hushes and not full voices, through Appearing as himself, the Reverend monologue and soliloquy rather than Jesse Jackson tells Dwayne not to with- dialogue, through allegory, metaphor, draw his name from the race, despite and ½gurative language rather than di- Dwayne’s belief that “no one on this rect speech. Therefore, I must admit to campus cares about the issues. This is being utterly confounded by the claims the ME generation.” Jackson relates his that President Obama’s election signi½es own unsuccessful ½rst campaign, remind- the beginning of a “post-racial” America. ing Dwayne that the only reason people I ½nd the term post-racial to be not only listen to him when he speaks is because problematic and disconcerting, but gram- “I wouldn’t give up.” He tells Dwayne, matically incorrect. As elementary school “You must stand up if you want to be a students learn in language arts classes leader. You can’t cook with cold grease. across the country, post- is a Latin pre½x A man can’t be heard if he stops talk- meaning “after”; it is the opposite of the ing.” Dwayne doubts the effectuality of Latin pre½x ante-, which means “before.” just one individual, but Jackson assures In order for something to come “after,” him, “[I]t was always started by some something else must have come “before.” young person who thought they could Thus, post- always has something previ- make a difference. One person can make ous in mind. As a professor of African a difference. Hands that picked cotton American literature and, by extension, a can now pick presidents.” Jackson leaves student of history, when I hear the term Dwayne with a message about the power post-racial I am immediately reminded of

Dædalus Winter 2011 93 On Post- other terms that invoke the pre½x: post- distinguish themselves and attract Racial Reconstruction, post-feminism, post- members, using the usual methods of America in the Age colonialism, post-World War, post-Cold offering T-shirts and free food. Nearly of Obama War, post-civil rights. As becomes quick- every flyer I saw plastered to a pole or ly apparent, all other post- designations posted on a corkboard promised free follow the rules. They are temporal and pizza and soda for all who came. One ½nite, referring to a clearly de½ned move- student group, however, did not use ment or historical era by which they were free goodies to tempt the masses. A preceded. For example, the post-Recon- poster for the College Republicans destruction era is easily de½nable as the per- picted President Obama as the Joker iod after Reconstruction, ushered in by from Dark Knight, the 2008 ½lm that is the Compromise of 1877, which secured part of the Batman ½lm series. the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes Arriving early to teach my class, I over- and saw the removal of remaining fed- heard one student discussing the poster eral troops from Florida, Louisiana, and with another classmate. “It’s just the South Carolina. Joker,” she said. “It’s no big deal. It’s not The term post-racial seems an errant even racial.” Her willful resistance to phrase. In order for there to be a “post- consider what the Joker represents in the racial” America, there must previously ½lm struck me as particularly ignorant have been a “racial America.” To af½x and deliberately naive. The poster was the pre½x post- to a word implies a com- –and is–as undoubtedly “racial” as any pletion, hence the strident debates over picture of a black man in whiteface must the use of the term post-feminism, which be. The wide red lips and greasepaint many have argued diminishes the impor- recall minstrelsy, and invoking the Joker tance of feminism by implying that the as he appears in Dark Knight is an allu- movement is over, though its goals have sion to terrorism. The Joker of the Dark not been met. As history will attest, the Knight is not the joker of a deck of play- freedmen suffered terribly in the “posting cards: not the prank-playing court- Reconstruction” era, left as they were jester type of joker, but unquestionably for another one hundred years without a terrorist; a man who disguises his face any real enforcement of the civil rights while he commits acts of robbery, bur- that would have given meaning to the glary, and murder, a man who attacks word freedom. Indeed, reformers (con- agents of law enforcement, assaults in- vinced that the good ½ght was over now nocent men and women, partners with that the slave was free) turned their fo- crime lords, and prefers anarchy to de- cus to other projects, and the freedmen’s mocracy. That the white students could rights were repealed and repressed dur- design and defend the poster seems not ing “Bourbon-led Redemption.” only racial, but treasonous. The use of One recent experience brought home the poster to attract students, the ap- to me very clearly the fact that we are proval of the poster by residential life not actually “post-” anything. At the staff, and the denial of the poster’s in- beginning of the Fall 2009 semester at appropriateness and offensive nature the small liberal arts college where I assure me that–even if the rules of was then teaching, students clamored grammar would sustain the terminol- to join clubs and recruit members for ogy–the age of Obama is not a “post- their organizations. They turned to ad- racial” age by any de½nition whatsoever. vertising and marketing strategies to

94 Dædalus Winter 2011 Justice & Racial Conciliation: Two Visions

Tommie Shelby

Many Americans, from all racial backgrounds, are rightly proud that their nation has elected its ½rst black president.1 In a society long weary of its race problem, such a momentous event has led some to assert that we have, de½nitively, realized Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. King, though still reviled in some quarters, is widely regarded as one of the founders of our new post-segregation republic. His interpretation of the American dream is a touchstone for measuring racial progress in the post–civil rights era. It is therefore an appropriate time to revisit Dr. King’s vision for race relations in U.S. society. Indeed, Obama is frequently compared to King. Some of the comparisons flatter the president; others do not. However, I will not weigh side by side the personal character or practical achieve- ments of the two men. Clearly, both leaders are highly educated and charismatic; both have a gift for oratory and the ability to inspire; and both TOMMIE SHELBY is Professor have made indelible marks on U.S. history. But of African and African American because of differences in their respective voca- Studies and Professor of Philos- tions–mass movement leader and minister, on ophy at Harvard University. His the one hand; Democratic Party politician and recent publications include We elected of½cial, on the other–and because Obama Who Are Dark: The Philosophical is operating within a very different historical con- Foundations of Black Solidarity text than did King, any such comparison is likely (2005) and “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto,” Philosophy to be misleading and unfair. Yet we can reflect on, & Public Affairs (2007). He is also and learn from, these ½gures’ respective visions the coeditor of the magazine for American race relations. With this purpose Transition. in mind, I focus on ideas, on the philosophy that

Dædalus Winter 2011 95 Justice should underpin political practice. My struggled to maintain self-respect and & Racial primary concern is the mounting influ- self-esteem. Conciliation ence of a particular vision of race in the The Civil Rights Act (1964) and the United States, one that I believe deserves Voting Rights Act (1965) helped to break more skepticism, or at least much less through the legal barriers to black inclu- enthusiasm, than it is currently receiving. sion in American social life, to curb dis- Any vision for race relations in Ameri- crimination, and to empower blacks po- ca should ½rst be rooted in an honest and litically. King thus proclaimed in Where historically informed assessment of exist- Do We Go from Here? (1967) that many ing racial realities. Second, it should out- whites had come to accept racial equali- line basic ideals, the intermediate and ul- ty, at least in principle, and to reject de timate goals for which we ought to strive. jure segregation and discrimination. Nev- Finally, the vision should specify the ertheless, troubling racial disparities–in means by which we are to realize its stat- income, education, wealth, employment, ed ideals given prevailing racial realities. health, and poverty–caused by continu- I am not interested in utopian fantasies ing discrimination and centuries of gross but in realistic ideas. Though they often mistreatment and abuse, remained un- speak of their “dreams” and “hopes,” addressed. He argued that racist opposi- King and Obama are both practical think- tion was not the only reason these dis- ers. Their writings and speeches on race parities had yet to be met with an ade- explain where we are (including how we quate response. An equally if not more got here), where we should be going, and dif½cult obstacle was that most whites, how we can get there. Their visions have even many who rejected racism, resisted much in common. But Obama’s vision, racial justice measures that might have a politically shrewd and pragmatic though personal cost. As King wrote, “The great it may be, is marred by its defective mor- majority of Americans . . . are uneasy with al content. Comparing his vision with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a signif- King’s reveals this de½ciency. icant price to eradicate it.”3 In response to this resistance, King reminded us that In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech meaningful attempts to bring about a just (1963), King described the racial realities society have unavoidable costs. Quality of his day.2 He emphasized that although education for all children, decent and slavery in the United States had ended well-paying jobs for adults, and the erad- one hundred years before, black Ameri- ication of slums for the bene½t of the cans were still not free. Life chances for poor require great resources. blacks were severely diminished, “crip- King was committed to the fundamen- pled” by racial segregation and wide- tal ideals of racial equality and integra- spread discrimination. Blacks were most- tion. He understood the former as a de- ly poor despite living in a society with mand of social justice that could be de- tremendous wealth. A great many were scribed in terms of two principles. First, socially marginalized and isolated in each citizen, regardless of his or her race, slums. Blacks did not have equal citizen- should enjoy equal civic standing and ship because they were denied the rights the equal protection of the law. Justice to vote and hold public of½ce. They were does not permit second-class citizenship victims of police brutality and vicious on the basis of race. Second, government acts of domestic terrorism. Under con- should ensure that no one’s basic rights stant assault by racist ideology, blacks are curtailed or general life prospects

96 Dædalus Winter 2011 reduced because of the racial prejudice of racial justice. Certainly, in a market Tommie of others. It is not enough that the state society, where competition determines Shelby refrain from treating some citizens as if most people’s life prospects, “the pursuit they were civic inferiors unworthy of of happiness” as an equal right of all citi- equal concern and respect. Private indi- zens would not be guaranteed until blacks viduals and associations must be made were no longer handicapped by the lega- to follow suit, at least when individuals’ cy of white domination. basic liberties or vital socioeconomic According to King, justice, in its most opportunities are at issue. basic sense, means giving persons what Moving toward racial equality required they are due. Ful½lling this demand often a concrete policy of desegregation. The means treating everyone the same. But primary goal of desegregation was to sometimes it calls for treating people abolish the unfair exclusions and prohi- differently. This point has particular rele- bitions of Jim Crow, a social system that vance with regard to serious injustices, gave whites privileges and advantages whereby a certain class of persons has they did not merit, deprived blacks of suffered mistreatment and is disadvan- rights and opportunities they deserved, taged as a result. As King says in Why and generally stigmatized black people We Can’t Wait (1963), “[O]ur society has as inferior. To end discrimination in been doing something special against the housing, education, employment, and Negro for hundreds of years. How then lending, nondiscrimination laws needed can he be absorbed into the mainstream to be enacted and scrupulously enforced. of American life if we do not do some- In the political sphere, achieving racial thing special for him now, in order to equality meant granting blacks the un- balance the equation and equip him to fettered right to vote and hold political compete on a just and equal basis?”4 of½ce. Many people–perhaps relying on the The civil rights movement, through lit- familiar line about being judged by the igation and persistent pressure on Con- content of one’s character rather than gress and several presidents, abolished a by one’s skin color–wrongly believe hideous and terrifying race-based regime. that King rejected reparations and all Previously, the subordination of blacks other race-targeted, compensatory mea- was the law of the land in the South, and sures for black Americans. In fact, he discrimination against blacks was wide- supported such recompense: spread throughout the country. Many, Few people consider the fact that, in then and now, see this tremendous vic- addition to being enslaved for two cen- tory as the end of the struggle for racial turies, the Negro was, during all those equality. King did not share this view. years, robbed of the wages of his toil. He recognized that the many decades of No amount of gold could provide an slavery and Jim Crow had severely disad- adequate compensation for the exploi- vantaged blacks (especially in education, tation and humiliation of the Negro in employment, wealth, and housing) and America down through the centuries. had injured their self-respect and psycho- Not all the wealth of this affluent soci- logical well-being. Even if the new civil ety could meet the bill. Yet a price can rights laws were impartially and effective- be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient ly enforced, the damage inflicted by the common law has always provided a rem- long reign of white supremacy would edy for the appropriation of the labor of remain. Repairing it was an urgent issue

Dædalus Winter 2011 97 Justice one human being by another. This law should not be content with interracial & Racial should be made to apply for American détente; we should strive for interracial Conciliation Negroes. The payment should be in the civic friendship–that is, fraternity in a form of a massive program by the gov- multiracial society of equals. This unity ernment of special, compensatory mea- should be founded on mutual respect sures which could be regarded as a set- and understanding. King evokes the ethi- tlement in accordance with the accept- cal dimension of integration in his mem- ed practice of common law.5 orable line, “I have a dream that one day on the hills of Georgia, sons of former In addition to the ideal of racial equal- slaves and sons of former slave-owners ity, King advocated integration. From a will be able to sit down together at the political perspective, integration is linked table of brotherhood.”7 to the requirements of justice. Certainly, The goal of mere desegregation is de- blacks and other racial minorities should ½cient in part because it suggests that not be formally excluded from participat- we should be satis½ed if nondiscrimina- ing in the social, economic, and political tion laws are obeyed out of prudence life of the nation. But these previously (to avoid legal sanctions, for example) excluded groups should also be actively or out of general respect for the law. For included as equal and indispensable King, it was crucial that we obey these participants. Such inclusion should not laws not simply because we fear punish- amount to tokenism, in which a small ment or recognize the authority of law, non-white elite is created, integrated, but because such laws are morally right: and made to represent symbolically the because they embody the worthy ideal “progress” of their respective groups, of integration. leaving most in those factions still social- Racial equality and political integration, ly marginalized and politically power- King insisted, were pressing matters of less. Justice requires that whites fully justice and thus enforceable through law. share power and decision-making with On the other hand, he did not believe non-whites, erasing all signs of white that the ethical ideal of interracial unity domination. The members of different could be enforced. Implementing legisla- racial groups must ultimately recognize tion, along with its steadfast enforcement, their mutual dependence and equal sta- is de½nitely essential to regulating the tus; they must solve their problems to- behavior of those who refuse to respect gether. Integration, in this sense, is the the demands of justice. Furthermore, realization of the republican ideal of a racially just polity is a necessary con- collective self-determination in a multi- dition for genuine interracial fraterni- racial society. ty. However, trust, respect, and mutual King was also intensely concerned with concern cannot be achieved through law the ethical side of integration. In “The enforcement. A complete resolution of Ethical Demands for Integration” (1962), the race problem in America therefore he explained that our goal should not be requires that each individual willingly mere desegregation and nondiscrimina- commits to integration. tion.6 Rather, we must aim to build a so- To achieve his stated ends, King sup- ciety in which the members of different ported militant mass protest. He believed races have a sense of goodwill toward one in uncompromising dissent from and another and think of themselves as col- active agitation against racial injustice. lectively constituting one people. We This resistance should take the form of

98 Dædalus Winter 2011 organized boycotts, civil disobedience, political violence could achieve some Tommie and public demonstrations. These tactics intermediate goals–such as curbing po- Shelby sought to highlight egregious wrongs and lice brutality and discouraging white ter- expose hypocrisy, to awaken and motivate rorism–it would undermine the ultimate the morally complacent majority, and to goal of interracial fraternity. put economic and political pressure on King also rejected black separatism, not those with the power to change condi- only as an ideal but as a means to black tions. King is part of a long and venera- liberation. Undertaking the struggle for ble tradition of freedom ½ghters who racial equality and integration demand- fervently believe that injustices are never ed interracial cooperation. Beyond the corrected without the determination pragmatic point that blacks could not and hard work of individuals openly succeed alone, King objected to racial ½ghting together for what is right. separatism on moral grounds. Not all King held central the precept that in the whites are untrustworthy or malicious, struggle to achieve racial equality and in- he contended, and blacks should not treat tegration, we must use means that are as them as if they were. To reject white par- pure as the ends we seek. The principle ticipants in the movement would dishon- “by any means necessary” was not to his or those whites who made great sacri½ces mind a morally permissible stance, even –including the ultimate sacri½ce–in the for a severely oppressed people. More- pursuit of racial justice. Moreover, inter- over, he was convinced that morally sus- racial fraternity will arrive only after the pect measures could never realize our various racial groups in America recog- ideals; the ethical means available were nize that they have a “common destiny”: suf½cient. King further cautioned against to live together as one people. Such mu- destroying our chances of reaching our tual understanding and respect between ultimate goals by using means designed the races can come about only through to secure short-term or intermediate ends. frequent contact and cooperation. In For these reasons, King believed that Where Do We Go from Here? King makes the ½ght for racial justice and integration this point forcefully and eloquently: must be nonviolent. He frequently ad- “Since we [black people] are Americans monished blacks to reject political vio- the solution to our problem will not come lence and not to succumb to hatred and through seeking to build a separate black blanket mistrust of whites. To be sure, nation within a nation, but by ½nding violent resistance would be ineffective: that creative minority of the concerned blacks lacked the resources and tactical from the oft-times apathetic majority, means to win a confrontation with white and together moving toward that color- racists; black aggression would give white less power that we all need for security supremacists an excuse to slaughter blacks and justice.”8 not in the movement, thus undermining black communal support; and violence In his books and speeches (especially would alienate needed white allies and those focused on race), Obama frequently obscure the moral issues the struggle invokes, explicitly and implicitly, King’s meant to highlight. King also objected dream for America.9 He endorses King’s to political violence on moral principle. ideals of racial equality and integration, Such tactics were simply wrong, regard- regarding an end to discrimination and less of whether they could secure con- prejudice, the elimination of racial dis- cessions from those in power. Even if parities, and interracial unity as ultimate

Dædalus Winter 2011 99 Justice goals. Though many of his supporters– that, in his haste to quell the controver- & Racial and detractors, for that matter–view his sy, he did not retract–Obama made it Conciliation ascent to the presidency as con½rmation clear that he believes racial pro½ling of that the bounced check King lamented blacks and Latinos remains a serious has ½nally been cashed, and that we now problem. He has publicly registered his live in a “post-racial” society, Obama has opposition to a recent immigration law, consistently cautioned against this inter- passed in Arizona in April 2010, on the pretation of current racial realities. In grounds that it will invite racial pro½l- The Audacity of Hope (2006), for example, ing and harassment of Latinos. In his he writes, “[T]o say that we are one peo- Philadelphia speech on race, he called ple is not to suggest that race no longer the racial achievement gap a result of the matters–that the ½ght for equality has segregated and inferior public schools been won, or that the problems that mi- that serve minorities. Black families are norities face in this country today are often weak or broken not just because of largely self-inflicted.”10 irresponsible fathers, but because black In “A More Perfect Union” (2008), the men have been denied equal economic famous speech Obama delivered in Phil- opportunity. He claimed that a lack of adelphia (“the city of brotherly love”), basic public services in poor black neigh- he forthrightly stated that, while we have borhoods (effective law enforcement, made undeniable progress, the problem parks, regular garbage pick-up, and of race has not been solved.11 Existing building-code enforcement, for exam- racial disparities–in education, wealth, ple) has fostered urban violence and and income–are, he claims, in part the blight. Though some blacks, he noted, debilitating consequences of slavery and have heroically triumphed over many Jim Crow. Pervasive discrimination in obstacles to succeed (sometimes aided the past–in housing, employment, and by af½rmative action policies), others lending–explains the current racial dis- have been unable to defeat these unfair parities in wealth and income. The fact odds. Instead, they often dwell in our that blacks were prevented from amass- deteriorated urban centers or languish in ing assets they might pass on to their our prisons without hope or prospects. children largely accounts for urban and What is to be done? As Obama said rural poverty. As he observed in his reon the one hundredth anniversary of the marks at the 2009 naacp Centennial establishment of the oldest civil rights Convention, the highest barriers to ra- organization in America, “[T]he ½rst cial equality today are the structural in- thing we need to do is make real the words equalities that are the legacy of racial of the naacp charter and eradicate prej- injustice in the United States.12 udice, bigotry, and discrimination among Indeed, while Obama often empha- citizens of the United States.” He has also sizes how the injustices of the past still consistently made clear the need to vig- shape our present, he also highlights orously enforce nondiscrimination and current racial injustices. In The Audacity civil rights laws. In other words, a per- of Hope, he explains how degrading ra- son’s ability to acquire a stable and well- cial stereotypes and unconscious bias paying job, decent and affordable hous- lead to discrimination in employment ing, credit at fair interest rates, or quality and law enforcement. In his controver- education should not be hampered by sial statements about the arrest of Pro- the racial prejudice and bias of others. fessor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.–remarks Moreover, it is the responsibility of gov-

100 Dædalus Winter 2011 ernment to ensure that this principle is garner multiracial support, including Tommie realized; market forces are not suf½cient. white support. Like King, Obama is Shelby Obama also believes that we must guar- convinced that we cannot establish a antee fairness and impartiality in our just society without interracial cooper- criminal justice system. Due process is ation. Thus, we must chart a course to a basic civil right, and racism, whether bridge the racial divide and foster ra- conscious or not, must not be allowed cial conciliation. to abridge this fundamental liberty. But there are further obstacles to the How are we to respond to the racial realization of this vision, and Obama is disparities and inherited disadvantages keenly aware of them. In “A More Per- caused by historical injustices? Obama fect Union,” he explained that as a result does not support reparations for the of our history of racism and the pain it descendants of slaves or the victims of has caused, many blacks remain angry– the segregation regime, though he con- at times, bitter. Though sometimes jus- cedes that af½rmative action in higher ti½ed, anger can be counterproductive. education can be a useful, if limited, Not only can it blind blacks to their re- tool to expand opportunity for under- sponsibility to improve their own con- represented racial minorities. Instead, dition, but it can prevent the formation he favors universal programs that aim to of interracial alliances essential for real help all who are disadvantaged, regard- social change. Obama noted that some less of race, over policies that aim to working- and middle-class whites are compensate or aid speci½c racial groups. angry, too. They do not believe they are Because racial minorities are dispropor- privileged by their race; they believe they tionately disadvantaged, he reasons, they have earned everything they have. They will reap a large share of the bene½ts of were not the ones who committed the such policies. injustices against blacks and thus feel no In The Audacity of Hope, Obama offers obligation to correct historical wrongs. two reasons to explain why an emphasis Besides, they face serious economic chal- on universal programs over race-speci½c lenges of their own, challenges that threat- ones makes good political sense. The en their hopes and dreams. They resent ½rst is that white guilt has run out. White when desegregation efforts mean their Americans now resent blacks’ continu- children are bused to schools outside ing grievances and sense of victimhood. their neighborhoods; when af½rmative Thus, they do not support policies that action allows racial minorities to gain ad- grant the legitimacy of black claims of vantages in employment and education; injustice. Second, whites perceive that and when they are accused of racism for spending our limited public resources on expressing fears about black crime. further attempts to create racial equality As with black anger, Obama insists that or end ghetto poverty runs contrary to white resentment toward racial minori- their self-interest. Such efforts not only ties is often counterproductive. It dis- mean higher taxes; they mean fewer pub- tracts, he said, from the “real culprits” lic resources to aid whites. Obama con- behind the economic insecurity that all cludes that policies to help all in need– working- and middle-class people expe- which would, in theory, disproportion- rience: namely, a corporate culture of ately aid racial minorities–should be greed, a government that answers to cor- favored in the current context. He be- porate interests but is unresponsive to lieves universal policies will more likely the needs of ordinary citizens, and eco-

Dædalus Winter 2011 101 Justice nomic policies that favor the wealthy. At on King’s birthday at Ebenezer Baptist & Racial times, Obama seems committed to an Church, where both King and his father Conciliation underlying social theory that considers it had served as pastor. The lessons we are counterproductive to challenge whites to take from the story are, I believe, these: directly for clinging to racist ideologies. whites who lack economic security should These ideologies, so the theory goes, are not blame blacks and Latinos but, rather, ultimately rooted in a widespread sense should seek them out as allies against the of economic insecurity and political pow- injustices caused by corporate greed, cor- erlessness among whites. It is better to rupt political leadership, and the super- attack the roots of the problem–corpo- wealthy who want to keep all bene½ts rate dominance over our lives and our of economic growth for themselves and democracy–without condemning whites their progeny; blacks and Latinos, in for harboring racist attitudes and accept- turn, should not allow their racial griev- ing racial stereotypes. If, through inter- ances and sense of victimhood to prevent racial cooperation and collective resolve, them from forming productive alliances we ½x these underlying problems, then with whites who have similar problems. this kind of racism should, more or less, take care of itself. In the meantime, we Obama’s fundamental goals of racial shore up enforcement of nondiscrimina- equality and integration are worthy. tion laws so that blacks and Latinos are Moreover, his assessment of current ra- protected from the most serious conse- cial realities and their historical roots is, quences of white racism. I believe, accurate. However, I am trou- Obama thinks we can, or at least should, bled by his proposed way forward. I see set aside old racial divisions and work four related problems, all of which stem together to achieve common goals. For from Obama’s failure to heed King’s pre- blacks, such cooperation is not possible cept: to use means as pure as our ends. without equal citizenship and just treat- First, Obama asks blacks to shoulder too ment in all dimensions of American life. much of the burden of racial conciliation But blacks should not insist that their and demands too little of whites. Indeed, particular grievances be addressed inde- in the name of interracial unity, his ap- pendently of measures designed to en- proach would actually reward white re- sure justice and opportunity for all. There sistance to racial-justice measures. Sec- are non-blacks, including whites, who ond, Obama’s vision would require that also need government to protect them we use morally suspect tactics, includ- and provide economic opportunity. He ing compromising with, and remaining calls on the white community to acknowl- silent in the face of, injustice and racial edge that black disadvantage is caused in prejudice. Third, setting aside their ques- part by discrimination, past and present. tionable moral standing, the means Nonetheless, he thinks we should address Obama advocates are not aligned with these inequities not through race-speci½c his stated ends of racial equality and in- policies but through enforcement of non- terracial fraternity, appearances notwith- discrimination laws and universal poli- standing. Finally, his strategy, though cies that create more opportunity for all. perhaps it would secure some interme- The famous Philadelphia speech on diate and worthwhile goals, might in- race ends with an anecdote about two hibit our ability to reach the ultimate campaign workers, one white and one objectives of racial justice and inter- black, a story Obama says he ½rst told racial comity.

102 Dædalus Winter 2011 Obama has consistently stated that ties in a subordinate or disadvantaged Tommie both current discrimination and the leg- position in relation to whites as a group. Shelby acy of past discrimination help explain Though they are reluctant to admit it existing racial inequalities and black dis- publicly (and maybe even to themselves), advantage, and he believes these injus- some whites seem determined to hold tices have not been adequately addressed. on to their comparative advantages; they If this interpretation is correct, then view policies that promote the cause of blacks’ sense of grievance–their continu- racial justice as threats to white domi- ing anger–is warranted. Of course, when nance.13 On grounds of self-respect, this anger becomes rage and thus leads blacks should not seek a political solu- to cathartic violence or irrational hatred tion to the problem of racial inequal- of all whites, which it sometimes has, it ity that compromises with or yields is not just counterproductive but abhor- ground to this sentiment. This attitude rent. It is not hard to see why whites must not be accommodated, worked would be put off by such anger, especially around, or ignored. those with a demonstrated commitment In both “A More Perfect Union” and to racial justice. But when properly tar- The Audacity of Hope, Obama rightly geted and proportionate to the wrong points out that Republican politicians that has elicited it, anger can be politi- and right-wing demagogues have long cally constructive and a healthy sign of exploited white anger over welfare and self-respect. It can open one’s eyes to af½rmative action and white fear of black similar injustices suffered by others; it crime. Where he falters is in failing to can inspire one to take action; and, when hold accountable working-class whites understood to be widely shared, it can who scapegoat blacks and Latinos for lead to collective mobilization. Indeed, problems caused by corporate and polit- a lack of anger among persons unfairly ical elites. He might believe such scape- treated and burdened by injustice would goating is racist; calling it racist, however, be disquieting, suggesting that the afflict- might seem unwise or divisive. Perhaps ed had either given up hope or lacked he is simply counseling disadvantaged self-respect, that they had succumbed to racial minorities to swallow their anger, cynicism or surrendered to injustice, and bite their tongues, and console them- that they had ceased to put up a ½ght. Jus- selves with the thought that economic ti½ed indignation should not alienate causes underlie resentment toward non- whites. And if whites respond to this kind whites. He wants racial minorities to of anger with resentment toward racial recognize what they share with low- to minorities, dismissing their just claims moderate-income whites: a common for redress as a desire for handouts or interest in altering these damaging excuses for their own failings, then the economic forces. darker races should be angry about this However, it is unreasonable and im- reaction, too, and deeply suspicious. practical to expect racial minorities sim- I suspect that some of the opposition ply to overlook or excuse such racist atti- to racial justice measures runs deeper tudes. How can they regard reactionary than the desire of economically vulnera- whites as allies if these whites will not ble whites not to lose further ground in confront their own racism? How can peo- an economy that no longer satisfactorily ple of color work together with whites rewards their hard work. It also springs who believe that blacks and Latinos have from their desire to keep racial minori- caused the economic problems that the

Dædalus Winter 2011 103 Justice white working class faces? Whites who don that set of policies (which some & Racial scapegoat darker peoples do not yet see states already have), then any serious Conciliation who the common enemy is; therefore, effort to deal with black educational they cannot be relied on as allies in the and employment disadvantages will ½ght against that enemy. In this way, require us to devote more resources Obama’s compromise with white racial to the task, which again means higher resentment cannot achieve his stated taxes, including higher taxes for whites. aim of interracial unity. These costs cannot be escaped–at least p But let us suppose that this kind of rac- not if we intend to take racial justice ism is a minor problem, one that can be seriously. One response, not without p adequately contained with vigorous en- merit, is to insist that the wealthy should forcement of civil rights laws. The real bear these ½nancial burdens; those who problem, Obama might argue, is that are themselves struggling economically many whites believe that policies aimed should not. This tactic would mean col- at correcting racial injustices are contrary lectively pushing for a more progressive p to their economic self-interest. They har- tax scheme and higher estate taxes. But bor no ill will toward racial minorities; many middle-class and working-class nor are they attracted to white national- whites do not favor this approach either; ist ideas. They simply do not want to pay presumably, they doubt they would bene- p the costs associated with ½ghting or cor- ½t from such efforts–though some might recting racial injustice. say it has more to do with their legitimate As King emphasized, we cannot possi- opposition to “big government.” bly realize our ultimate ideals if we allow Obama’s response to this political this stance to reign unchallenged. We all reality is to combat the legacy of racial must accept that justice, including the injustice by advocating universal mea- correction of injustice, comes at a cost– sures that aim to help the members of all though one well worth paying. Any effort racial groups, including whites. The idea to respond effectively to racial injustice is that if whites will bene½t, and the pol- will inevitably cost whites something. icies are not explicitly tailored to aid or Indeed, it will cost many racial minori- appease “angry” racial minorities, we ties as well. For example, given residen- can gain greater support for progressive tial segregation patterns, there is no way goals. But even with backing from a to abolish de facto segregated schools number of whites, this strategy would without either integrating neighborhoods intentionally obscure the morally impor- or busing some students to schools out- tant difference between creating more side their neighborhoods. Why should opportunity for all and remedying the all the kids who are bused be racial mi- effects of past racial injustices. From a norities? Though it would mean aban- moral point of view, these are not the doning King’s ethical ideal of integration, same goals, even though they are com- p we could try to improve urban public patible and might both be furthered by schools without regard to their racial the same policy. Obama advocates uni- makeup, but that would take a lot of versal policies that he believes would, resources, which means higher taxes, as a by-product, reduce glaring racial dis- including higher taxes for whites. parities. But he purposefully refrains Many whites dislike af½rmative action from construing these policies as racial policies because such measures offend redress. Therefore, whites are not re- their sense of fairness.14 But if we aban- quired to concede the legitimacy of

104 Dædalus Winter 2011 blacks’ grievances. To establish genuine [black people] work to get rid of the eco- Tommie racial conciliation, though, whites must nomic strangulation that we face as a re- Shelby willingly support policies that reduce sult of poverty, we must not overlook the racial inequality because doing so is what fact that millions of Puerto Ricans, Mex- racial justice demands. ican Americans, Indians and Appalachian Some would reply that if universal pol- whites are also poverty-stricken. Any se- icies will reduce racial disparities and im- rious war against poverty must of neces- prove the lives of minorities, there is no sity include them.”15 Rather, the issue good reason to insist that race-speci½c is whether we can openly defend a policy policies be used instead. But the question on the grounds that it is, at least in part, is not which policies will most effectively a response to racial injustice and still garner reduce racial inequality; rather, it is why wide support for it. If we cannot gener- race-targeted policies are off the table. ate such support, especially among whites, There is nothing intrinsically wrong with what does such an outcome say about policies designed to help speci½c groups the state of race relations and the possi- of people rather than everyone. From bility for further racial progress in this the standpoint of justice, we should not society? If we have good reason to sus- have to conceal the intent behind the im- pect that a signi½cant number of whites plementation of such policies. Sometimes seek to hold on to their advantages– speci½c classes of persons (women, dis- despite the fact that some of these have been abled persons, immigrants, rural resi- gained because of a history of racial injustice dents, victims of natural disasters, and –or, worse, that a signi½cant number of so on) have needs that require specially whites want to keep racial minorities tailored remedies. Indeed, so-called uni- trapped in an inferior social position, versal policies are not really universal then people of color have reason to re- since they are not meant to help every- sent this lack of support and to withhold one, just those who have been socioeco- solidarity from those who would deny nomically disadvantaged by recent gov- them what they are due. ernment action and changes in the struc- Moreover, we should not have to pay ture of the economy. It is at least possible off–in essence, to bribe–the white ma- that the black urban poor is another group jority in order to secure justice for racial in need of special intervention. Again, it minorities. Already, many whites refuse seems that the only reason to preemptively to accept the costs associated with achiev- rule out such remedies is that they would ing racial justice. Now, in order to reduce arouse the unjusti½ed hostility of many racial inequalities caused by nearly four whites. centuries of injustice, we must adopt only Nor is the issue whether speci½c poli- those measures that provide whites with cies should be unmistakably labeled “for material bene½ts? The moral perversity poor black people” or “to reduce racial of this approach should be readily appar- disparities.” Policies designed to help all ent. Blacks ought to demand that their those who are unfairly disadvantaged, fellow citizens not only acknowledge that regardless of race, are also justi½ed and, black disadvantages are caused, at least given the overlapping interests involved, in part, by past and ongoing injustices– no doubt easier to enact. In our determi- a position that Obama himself articu- nation to heal black wounds, we must lates–but they should also continue to not ignore the fact that others are suffer- insist that their fellow citizens demon- ing, too. As King reminds us: “As we strate a commitment to remedying these

Dædalus Winter 2011 105 Justice disadvantages, even if the necessary their fair share of the burden to end ra- & Racial remedies do not bene½t these citizens cial inequality. And it tries, futilely, to Conciliation directly. This admittedly dif½cult route build interracial fraternity on the basis is the only path to true racial concilia- of overlapping material interests rather tion. There is no bypass. than on a shared commitment to justice. Perhaps we should not expect Obama If, despite his lofty rhetoric, Obama’s to be a moral leader on issues of race. vision is less about achieving racial jus- After all, he is a black elected of½cial tice and interracial fraternity than sim- who largely depends on other elected ply making disadvantaged racial minor- of½cials to enact domestic policy. He is ities somewhat better-off materially– therefore constrained by a sometimes re- using whatever means, morally tainted calcitrant and racially divided populace. or not, that are available–his vision has It is no doubt dif½cult to insist that one’s obvious merit. It offers a pragmatic strat- fellow citizens rise above their unjusti½ed egy for navigating hazardous racial waters anger, prejudices, and sel½shness if, to in a way that could improve the socioeco- get their votes and campaign donations, nomic circumstances of disadvantaged one must remain silent in the face of, or racial groups. If this political maneuver even reward, these very attitudes. That works, numerous people, including many Obama has not openly defended the need members of racial minority groups, will to reduce racial inequality and ghetto receive much-needed help. poverty on grounds of justice but has However, if Obama’s racial philosophy instead relied on stealth methods and is to be understood as an updated version “universal” policies is revealing. It shows of King’s vision–a recalibration to ½t that he believes he must accommodate the racial realities of our time–then it race-based hostility and illegitimate leaves much to be desired. Judged along- white group interests to make modest side King’s transformative vision of ra- improvements in the lives of disadvan- cial equality and integration, Obama’s taged racial minorities. Regrettable and philosophy is morally de½cient and un- distasteful as it is, perhaps this is the inspiring. Relying as it does on dissimu- price that must be paid to protect the lation and subtle bribes, it does not keep weak and vulnerable from grave harm. faith with King’s precept: to use means But such actions should be seen for what as pure as our ends. Obama’s vision they are: moral compromises necessi- would ask racial minorities to give up on tated by the imperative to meet urgent true racial equality and to form bonds of needs. They should not be cast or inter- solidarity with whites who refuse to rec- preted as recti½cations of racial injus- ognize blacks’ legitimate demands for tice or stepping-stones to interracial redress. It fails to insist that whites carry fraternity.

endnotes 1 For helpful feedback on earlier drafts, I thank Lawrence Blum, Gerald Early, Andrew Fine, Lani Guinier, Randall Kennedy, Lionel McPherson, and Jessie Scanlon. 2 Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (New York: Harper- Collins, 1991), 217–220.

106 Dædalus Winter 2011 3 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Tommie Beacon Press, 1968), 11. Shelby 4 Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet Classic, 2000), 124; emphasis in the original. 5 Ibid., 127–128. 6 Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Ethical Demands for Integration,” in A Testament of Hope, ed. Washington, 117–125. 7 King, “I Have a Dream,” in A Testament of Hope, ed. Washington, 219. 8 King, Where Do We Go from Here, 54. 9 I should clarify my interpretive method used in analyzing Obama’s vision. It is generally understood that in order to be elected and stay in of½ce, politicians often use deceit; sometimes they lie. For the purposes of this essay, I take Obama’s considered public statements at face value. I assess the vision itself, a vision that many, including many racial minorities, support or ½nd attractive. I make no claims about whether the vision is offered in good faith, about the authenticity of Obama himself, or about the extent to which his actual policy choices and political tactics square with his stated vision. 10 Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Crown, 2006), 232. 11 The speech, both in transcript and video form, can be found at http://www .barackobama.com/speeches/. 12 An of½cial transcript of the speech can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ the_press_of½ce/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-naacp-Centennial-Convention -07/16/2009/. 13 This claim is not uncontroversial, but it does have substantial empirical support. See Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided By Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David O. Sears, Jim Sidanius, and Lawrence D. Bobo, eds., Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Lawrence D. Bobo and Mia Tuan, Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). 14 The case that af½rmative action is not unfair is forcefully made in Bernard R. Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, rev. ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Little½eld, 1992), chap. 7; and Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), chaps. 11–12. 15 King, Where Do We Go from Here, 132.

Dædalus Winter 2011 107 “We dreamed a dream”: Ralph Ellison, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Barack Obama

Eric J. Sundquist

When he spoke at the May 1965 conference organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the topic of “The Negro Ameri- can,” Ralph Ellison found himself at odds with fellow participants. Although the proceedings took up a variety of interlocking issues–Was desegregation alone suf½cient to bring about racial justice? Would true integration require racial balancing? Was the goal cultural pluralism or a surrender of black identity to the melting pot?–much of the discussion was predicated on the idea that there were “two Americas.” That concept was reinforced three years later in the 1968 Report of the National Advisory Com- mission on Civil Disorders, which was published the same month that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated and warned that the nation was moving toward “two societies, one black and one white–separate and unequal.”1 Ellison, however, strenuously resisted the idea of two societies, two Americas–or “two ERIC J. SUNDQUIST, a Fellow of worlds of race,” to borrow the title that histori- the American Academy since 1997, an John Hope Franklin chose for his contribu- is the Andrew W. Mellon Profes- tion to the American Academy conference.2 sor in the Humanities at Johns Ellison did not deny that, by law and custom, Hopkins University. His publica- the color line divided the nation in hundreds tions include King’s Dream (2009), of ways both tragic and petty; nonetheless, he Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (2005), insisted that this view was myopic and counter- and To Wake the Nations: Race in productive to understanding American culture, the Making of American Literature for blacks and whites alike. “One concept that (1993). I wish we would get rid of,” he argued, “is the

108 Dædalus Winter 2011 concept of a main stream of American novel, the work of ½ction from that era Eric J. culture–which is an exact mirroring of most likely to endure. His masterful col- Sundquist segregation and second-class citizenship.” lection of essays, Shadow and Act, was He asserted his allegiance to a form of enjoying wide praise following its publi- pluralism in which the “right to discover cation a year earlier, and although only what one wanted on the outside and what his panel comments appeared in the one could conveniently get rid of on the issues of Dædalus that grew out of the inside” was an essential means of nego- American Academy conference, The Na- tiating American identity shared by all tion published “Tell It Like It Is, Baby,” a ethnoracial groups. Ellison went on to surreal essay that had its origins in Elli- reject cultural Jim Crow in terms specif- son’s response a decade earlier to the ic to his craft: “I wish that we would dis- Southern Manifesto, the states-rights pense with this idea that we [Negroes] are declaration of war on Brown v. Board of begging to get in somewhere. The main Education signed by more than 90 percent stream is in oneself. The main stream of of Southern congressmen. Refusing to American literature is in me, even though join Robert Lowell and others who dis- I am a Negro, because I possess more dained an invitation to the White House of Mark Twain than many white writ- Festival of the Arts and Humanities in ers do.”3 protest of the war in Vietnam, Ellison The year 1965 was momentous for the welcomed President Johnson’s recogni- civil rights movement. In March, the tution. In 1965, he also published the short multuous, bloody voting-rights march story “Juneteenth,” a beautifully mod- from Selma to Montgomery concluded ulated antiphonal dialogue between a with King standing in the shadow of black preacher and his child protégé. Jefferson Davis, where his declamatory The story turned a vernacular rendition call-and-response reached backward to of Ezekiel’s prophecy in the Valley of a crusading hymn of Union soldiers and Dry Bones into a rousing allegory of forward to a day of redemption: the black nation Israel raised up from captivity in the Babylon of America How long? Not long, because the arc of and America itself reborn in justice. the moral universe is long but it bends “Juneteenth” was the fourth of eight toward justice. excerpts, published between 1960 and How long? Not long, because “Mine eyes 1977, from Ellison’s novel-in-progress. It have seen the glory of the coming of the showed him at the height of his powers, Lord.” poised to make good on the great promise of his ½rst novel. At the time of his In his own speech about Selma, Presi- death in 1994, however, Ellison left be- dent Lyndon Johnson made the move- hind twenty-seven boxes of manuscript ment’s anthem, “We Shall Overcome,” materials, including some three thousand into a national pledge to end “the crip- pages in computer ½les he had obsessive- pling legacy of bigotry and injustice.” ly revised starting in 1982, when he pur- And by August 1965, he signed the Vot- chased one of the ½rst Osborne comput- ing Rights Act. ers–but he left no second novel. With It was a good year for Ralph Ellison, the publication of Three Days before the too. A Book Week poll of two hundred Shooting . . .,4 a 1,100-page compilation of prominent writers, editors, and critics manuscript drafts dating back as far as named Invisible Man, his esteemed 1952 the early 1950s (some of which appeared

Dædalus Winter 2011 109 Ralph in truncated form in 1999 under the title Improvement Association; the year Ellison, Juneteenth), readers may ponder anew the Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi.6 Martin Luther prolonged creative indecision that has But Adam Sunraider is a man of masks. King, Jr. made Ralph Ellison the most highly re- He is born to a white woman who was & Barack Obama garded disappointment in the history of raped, but not by the black man lynched American literature. for the crime, and is midwifed by the Although critical assessment of Three dead man’s brother, the one-time jazz Days, as well as the Ellison archive at the trombonist Alonzo “Daddy” Hickman, Library of Congress, will take years, what who christens the boy Bliss and raises immediately becomes clear is the fact that him, despite his white skin, to be a Negro the novel was visibly, vibrantly responsive preacher like himself. Hickman accepts to the question of “the Negro American.” the convoluted grounds of atonement Ellison composed Invisible Man, which that Bliss’s birth mother offers up as a led its nameless protagonist through a salve for the boy’s likely bitterness–“let sequence of episodes that symbolically him learn to share the forgiveness your replicated the past century of African life has taught you,” she says–and he American life, from slavery through Jim believes he can instill in this “marvelous Crow, at a time when the end of segrega- child of Ishmaelian origin and pariah’s caste” tion could not have been predicted with the African American’s “stubborn vision any con½dence. Three Days, in turn, was and blues-tempered acceptance of this coun- meant to measure the political and social try’s turbulent reality.” He hopes to turn turmoil unleashed by Brown v. Board of Bliss ½rst into a spellbinding man of the Education in 1954. “Eyeballs were peeled, gospel and then into a new Abraham nerves were laid bare, and private sensi- Lincoln, through whom “the combined bilities were subjected to public lacera- promises of Scripture and this land’s Consti- tion,” Ellison would later say of the Su- tution would be at last ful½lled and made preme Court’s decision. Life became “so manifest.”7 theatrical (not to say nightmarish),” he As a child preacher, Bliss is trained to observed, “that even Dostoevsky’s smok- rise from a small cof½n on the cue, “Lord, ing imagination” could have stayed bare- why hast Thou forsaken me?” He acts ly a step ahead of what was happening in out this mock resurrection to dramatize, the streets.5 as Ellison explained in an interview with The present-day action of Three Days, writer and journalist John Hersey, “the which revolves around the attempted signi½cance of being a Negro in Amer- assassination of Adam Sunraider, a race- ica” in relation to “the problem of our baiting New England senator, occurs democratic faith as a whole.”8 After he is sometime during the years 1954 to 1957. traumatized by a demented white wom- Ellison once calculated the date with an’s attempt to claim him as her son, precision, ½xing the action in 1955: the however, Bliss nurses the delusion that year of Brown’s decree of implementa- the screen star Mary Pickford is his tion, with its notorious concession that mother and eventually escapes into the desegregation was to be undertaken world of whiteness where, for reasons “with all deliberate speed”; the year Rosa only hinted at, he becomes Adam Sun- Parks refused to give up her seat on the raider. But ½rst he reappears as an itin- bus to a white man; the year an unknown erant ½lmmaker who, while traveling minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., through Oklahoma circa 1930, seduces was elected president of the Montgomery a young woman named Lavatrice, who is

110 Dædalus Winter 2011 part black, part white, and part Ameri- Three Days was conceived before King Eric J. can Indian. He leaves her pregnant with became a national ½gure, as Ellison was Sundquist a boy who will be named Severen, who constrained to point out when work on will grow up hating the father he never the novel stretched into its fourth decade; knew, and who will, at length, attempt to but the promise that King stood for ani- kill him as he is making an impassioned mates the novel. Although Ellison thought speech on the floor of the Senate, an event the national adulation subsequent to witnessed by Reverend Hickman and King’s assassination was a case of “mar- members of his congregation who have tyrdom endowing the martyr with a hell come to Washington, D.C., to warn the of a lot more following than he had dur- senator. This is the point at which Three ing his struggles,”12 his judgment was Days begins. directed not at King but at the nation. He Attempting to solve the riddle of Bliss’s was intrigued, too, by the fact that King life and death, more than one character had effectively entered “the realm of poli- asks, “What’s the plot of this thing?” In tics while trying to stay outside of it,”13 several instances, the question is patent- which may have been Ellison’s way of ly self-referential, effectively Ellison’s reflecting not just on his character Hick- own admission that, after forty years of man but also on his own role in the civil writing, he had produced, as another rights movement. Ellison’s refusal to be character puts it, only a “mare’s-nest, enlisted as a spokesman for black activ- jumble-riot of loose ends.”9 ism and his impatience with race nation- Having started with the premise of alists, whether black or white, are leg- Sunraider’s attempted assassination, endary.14 He was not, however, entirely Ellison may have been ambushed by aloof from the political arena. He ap- current events. As he remarked in 1974, peared at a 1964 conference organized the “eruption of assassinations” during by the Student Nonviolent Coordinat- the 1960s–John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, ing Committee and in 1965 at an event King, and Robert F. Kennedy–disorient- staged by the naacp’s Legal Defense ed his work on a book whose prevailing Fund, where he spoke on the meaning of mood he had intended to be comic.10 It Selma. Still, his art was his voice, and if may also be that he could not settle on a he granted in 1963 that King’s Birming- way to connect the Western and South- ham campaign proved that “marching ern imaginative geography of the book barehanded before police dogs and cattle he considered his “Oklahoma novel,” prods” expressed moral and physical cour- rich in the kind of African American lore age of the highest order, it was neither and autobiographical underpinning that disingenuous nor uncourageous for him prompted Invisible Man, with the politi- to say that he could best serve his people cal action unfolding in Washington. In “by trying to write as well as I can.”15 his working notes, Ellison characterized Ellison’s true purpose in Three Days may the city as “a place of power and mystery, well remain elusive, but the manuscripts frustration and possibility,”11 and it was contain daring writing whose eloquence also, of course, a place where King, on and invention rival, and sometimes sur- August 28, 1963, had seized the national pass, the best parts of Invisible Man. It is stage and come closer than anyone since possible, moreover, to discern a story that Lincoln to making manifest the “com- responds to the hard questions confront- bined promises of Scripture and this ed, but by no means solved, in Brown– land’s Constitution.” questions thrown into high relief once

Dædalus Winter 2011 111 Ralph again by the presidential campaign and Ellison would more likely have seen Ellison, election of Barack Obama. him as an agent of historical chaos. Martin Luther Reflecting on Ellison’s failure to com- King, Jr. he “action takes place on the eve of plete his second novel, Toni Morrison & Barack T Obama the [Civil] Rights movement but it fore- told literary scholar Arnold Rampersad casts the chaos which would come later,” that Ellison was trying to revive the Ellison remarked in a working note ap- “senile ‘tragic mulatto’ genre,” which parently meant to turn the temporal frac- Faulkner had mastered in novels such tures and anachronisms introduced by as Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!, his protracted composition into a virtue and which might have served Ellison rather than a liability.16 “Chaos” was a well had his novel appeared soon after recurrent, almost totemic term in Ellison’s Invisible Man but was of no use after the vocabulary. It spoke ½rst to the obliga- civil rights revolution. By then, she said, tions of the writer, whose role, he said, “the story was dead.”20 Ellison was clear- was to reduce “the chaos of human ex- ly alert to the destructive logic of the one- perience to artistic form.”17 But it spoke drop rule that governed most American also to the debilitating conditions of Afri- discourse about race until well after the can American life and to trans½guring 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. moments of national crisis when hier- Virginia overthrew anti-miscegenation archies are toppled and the social order laws still in force in more than twenty wrenched apart. Through King, he be- states. Even as he passes with seeming lieved, the black church had made itself ease, Ellison’s character Bliss may also visible in the political life of the nation share the combined rage, guilt, and des- and counteracted the “imposed chaos perate confusion of Joe Christmas, Faulk- which has been the Negro American ex- ner’s white Negro. But Morrison’s infer- perience.”18 In an essay on Lyndon John- ence misconceives Ellison’s purpose, son, Ellison called Abraham Lincoln an which is only tangentially concerned embodiment of “democratic grandeur with race-mixing as such. (“We are all and political sainthood,” yet he remind- mongrels in America,”21 he once ob- ed us that Lincoln was an unpopular served.) Rather, the burden of the book and “troubled man who rode the whirl- was spelled out in a letter Ellison wrote wind of national chaos until released by his former Tuskegee professor Morteza death.” A great president, he said admir- Sprague two days after Brown was hand- ingly of Johnson, is “one through whom ed down: the essential conflicts of democracy . . . So now the Court found in our favor and are brought into the most intense and recognized our human psychological creative focus. He is the one who releases complexity and citizenship and another chaos and he creates order.”19 Ellison battle of the Civil War has been won. did not live long enough to witness The rest is up to us and I’m very glad. . . . the rise of Barack Obama, who self-con- Now I’m writing about the evasion of sciously unites the combined promise identity which is another characteristi- of King and socially transformative pres- cally American problem which must be idents like Lincoln and Johnson, and about to change. I hope so, it’s giving me whose degree of “blackness” has pro- enough trouble. Anyway, here’s to inte- duced its own riddles. Where others gration, the only integration that counts: have been inclined to see Obama as the that of the personality.22 ful½llment of King’s dream, however,

112 Dædalus Winter 2011 An arch-segregationist, Adam Sunraid- you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, Eric J. er seems to stand in stark contrast to ½g- and giveth thee a sign or a wonder.” King Sundquist ures such as Lincoln, King, and Johnson, took up this language on a number of oc- not to mention Obama. It is the preacher casions, including his 1960 address “The Hickman, Ellison once noted to himself, Negro and the American Dream.” “In a who foreshadows King, while Sunraider real sense,” King argued on that occasion, represents “the betrayals of the past.”23 “America is essentially a dream–a dream When he ½rst took shape as a character yet unful½lled.” The sublime promise of in the mid-1950s, however, Bliss derived the Declaration of Independence was an directly from Bliss Proteus Rinehart, the “eloquent and unequivocal expression of con man and trickster of Invisible Man the dignity and worth of all human per- whom Ellison considered the “personi- sonality.” And yet ever since “the found- ½cation of chaos.”24 A political and cul- ing fathers of our nation dreamed this tural hybrid of uncertain progeny, Bliss/ dream,” he continued, stating a familiar Sunraider is a variation on the mythic idea that dates to the ½rst abolitionists, Icarus, who perishes when he flies too the nation had manifested “a schizo- close to the sun after escaping the Mino- phrenic personality,” professing liberty an labyrinth on waxen wings fashioned to all and paradoxically denying it at the by his father, Daedalus; and he is also, same time.28 as Hickman thinks of him, a “mammy- This conception of the Founders’ made American Adam shaped out of this ter- dream as a kind of self-verifying truth rible confusion. Neither black nor white but as that makes the nation and the dream one much a mystery as when some folks hear thick and the same, reiterated in our own day lips give voice to Shakespeare, Lincoln, or the from King’s speeches through Barack Word.”25 As a trickster in whom lethal Obama’s repeated appeals to the Consti- contrary impulses are united, he embod- tution’s promise to “form a more perfect ies the “whirlwind of national chaos” union,” might be dismissed as so much set loose by the nation’s long-delayed at- beguiling rhetoric–the province of “I tempt to end its own evasion of identity. have a dream” and “Yes we can.” As Elli- Hickman’s congregation expected that son asked at the American Academy con- Bliss would dispel the shadow of slavery ference, “[W]hy do we demand that ter- and Jim Crow and hoped that “a little gift- rible, encyclopedic nuances be found in ed child would speak for our condition from the slogans of the civil rights movement? inside the only acceptable mask,” the mask No slogans have ever had that kind of of whiteness. More succinctly, Hickman complexity.”29 Ellison was, however, recalls, “we dreamed a dream,”26 a tauto- keenly interested in the strange tautolo- logical formulation with a resonant Afri- gy of the “dream the dreamers dreamed.” can American typology. For him, as for King and Obama, the in- “Let America be the dream the dream- strumental ½gure was Abraham Lincoln, ers dreamed,” wrote Langston Hughes in whose “great soul” and “perfect capacity his 1936 poem “Let America Be America for sacri½ce,” as W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, Again,”27 a lyrical redundancy with bib- derived not only from his self-schooling lical overtones: consider, for instance, and his integrity but also from “his Genesis 37:5, “And Joseph dreamed a dreaming.”30 dream, and he told it [to] his brethren: and they hated him yet the more”; or When Senator Barack Obama an- Deuteronomy 13:1, “If there arise among nounced his presidential candidacy in

Dædalus Winter 2011 113 Ralph Spring½eld, Illinois, he challenged his had at last begun to proceed “according Ellison, supporters to “take up the un½nished to the original script–by which I mean Martin 32 Luther business of perfecting our union” and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” King, Jr. prepare to “usher in a new birth of free- The extent to which Obama’s election & Barack 31 Obama dom on this earth.” These Lincolnian signals the conclusion of the post-Brown aspirations, borrowed from the Gettys- age can be clari½ed if we turn to the more burg Address, became a staple of Obama’s complex ways in which King and Ellison campaign rhetoric, but they were inev- used Lincoln. itably ½ltered–both in the words he At a 1961 White House luncheon for spoke and in the very fact of his candi- civil rights leaders, King noticed an en- dacy–through the image and language graving of the Emancipation Proclama- of King. Although Obama often used tion in the Lincoln Room. He challenged King instrumentally, linking him to President Kennedy to “stand in this room past leaders of civil rights organizations and sign a Second Emancipation Procla- whose support he courted, his allusions mation outlawing segregation, one hun- were just as often oblique. Examples in- dred years after Lincoln’s.”33 Fearful of clude Obama’s frequent borrowing of alienating Southern Democrats, the pres- King’s phrase about “the arc of the moral ident limited his recognition of the cen- universe” bending toward justice (which tennial to a banal prerecorded message King had borrowed from the abolitionist played at the Lincoln Memorial on Sep- Theodore Parker) and his nomination tember 22, 1962 (the centennial of the acceptance speech, delivered on the forty- Preliminary Emancipation Proclama- ½fth anniversary of the March on Wash- tion) and a reception for black leaders ington, when he identi½ed King only as to commemorate Lincoln’s birthday in “a young preacher from Georgia” whose February 1963. Ellison gladly accepted interracial message gave the nation hope Kennedy’s invitation to the reception that “together, our dreams can be one.” and refused to add his name to a letter By the night of November 4, 2008, when calling on the president to take a tough- the president-elect declared that “we as er stand on civil rights. King signed the a people will get there”–namely, to the letter and declined the invitation, elect- Promised Land that King had envisioned ing instead to issue his own Second on the eve of his assassination in Mem- Emancipation Proclamation at the phis–and that “this is our time . . . to March on Washington. reclaim the American dream,” Obama’s King’s commemoration of Lincoln’s election was bound to be perceived as “momentous decree” in his “I Have a the prophesied ful½llment of the dream Dream” speech was captivating not only “deeply rooted in the American dream” for its cascading rhetoric–the Proclama- made famous by King in 1963. tion, he said, came as “a great beacon Obama’s allusions to Lincoln and King light of hope to millions of Negro slaves were a carefully tuned means to acquire who had been seared in the flames of the aura of their authority, much as King withering injustice . . . as a joyous day- himself had done with Lincoln in his break to end the long night of their cap- opening words at the March on Wash- tivity”–but also for what it assumed ington. More than clichés, however, they about the deeper signi½cance of Lincoln’s also seemed to portend the triumphant dry military order. In his opening words, end of a political age that started with “Fivescore years ago,” so antique and Brown, when, as Ellison put it, the nation magical, King evoked Lincoln before not

114 Dædalus Winter 2011 quite naming him in the remainder of his political birth of a nation,” Douglass con- Eric J. sentence: “a great American, in whose tended, but the other date will determine Sundquist symbolic shadow we stand today, signed whether the nation’s “life and character the Emancipation Proclamation.”34 Inso- shall be radiantly glorious with all high far as King’s purpose, as he immediately and noble virtues, or infamously black- stated, was to address the meaning of the ened, forevermore.”35 Proclamation in its centennial year, his The Emancipation Proclamation, allusion to Lincoln’s best-known speech, like Lincoln, became the stuff of myth the Gettysburg Address, might at ½rst among African Americans, whether in seem a rhetorical trick. After all, how the tall tales that “Father Abraham” him- many people would recognize “Whereas self had appeared at Southern plantations on the twentysecond day of September,” to announce freedom or in the legend the Proclamation’s opening words? In that news of emancipation reached slaves his subtle merging of the two documents, in Texas only on June 19, 1865, thus lead- however, King underlined his belief that ing to the black folk holiday of Juneteenth. the salvation of the Union, Lincoln’s top- Ellison celebrated the centennial of June- ic in the Gettysburg Address, depended teenth ½rst by publishing his 1965 short on the emancipation Lincoln had pro- story of the same name and then, as claimed one year earlier. though in tribute to Douglass, by setting King’s emulation of Lincoln was even an incident critical to the plot of Three more explicit in “The Death of Evil upon Days before the Shooting on an Oklaho- the Seashore,” a sermon he ½rst preached ma Juneteenth observed on the Fourth on the second anniversary of Brown and of July. “By celebrating Independence then revised for inclusion in Strength to and Emancipation on the same day,” he Love (1963) and also in Where Do We Go writes of the revelers, “they were mak- from Here? (1967). Adapting the story of ing the Fourth of July both more glori- the biblical Exodus to the century-long ous and more American.”36 struggle for black freedom, King located In his book on the Emancipation Proc- the “moral foundation” of the Emanci- lamation, written for its centennial, John pation Proclamation in the explanation Hope Franklin lamented that this “great Lincoln offered to Congress on Decem- American document of freedom” had ber 1, 1862: “In giving freedom to the long been unjustly neglected.37 But in slave, we assure freedom to the free,– Ellison’s post-Brown imagination, no less honorable alike in what we give and what than King’s, Lincoln and his decree had we preserve.” The South had once again very much come to life. His essay “Tell risen up in rebellion against federal au- It Like It Is, Baby” recounted a personal thority, King argued, and a Second Eman- nightmare provoked by the Southern cipation Proclamation was needed to re- campaign of massive resistance against deem the principles of the Declaration Brown. In the dream, Ellison’s dead father of Independence and the Constitution. turned into the body of Lincoln in its He buttressed his argument by quoting funeral cortege, and Ellison, “fallen out Frederick Douglass’s commentary on of time into chaos,” took on the role of the Day of Jubilee: “The Fourth of July a young slave powerless to stop a white was great,” said Douglass, but January 1, mob’s rowdy desecration of the corpse 1863, “when we consider it in all its rela- of the president, “the old coon.”38 The tionships and bearings, is incomparably racial ambiguity sarcastically attributed greater. The one had respect to the mere to Lincoln in Ellison’s nightmare re-

Dædalus Winter 2011 115 Ralph appears in Three Days, though with a segregationists of his own day who fea- Ellison, different tenor, when Hickman and his tured Lincoln’s opposition to intermar- Martin Luther congregants interrupt their search for riage in speeches and publications, such King, Jr. Senator Sunraider to make a pilgrimage as Tom Brady’s 1955 broadside Black Mon- & Barack Obama to the Lincoln Memorial. Contemplat- day, so named for the day on which Brown ing the “mystery being cast by the great was handed down and subtitled Segrega- sculptural form before him,” Hickman tion or Amalgamation . . . America Has Its falls into a long meditation on Lincoln’s Choice. What Hickman sees in Lincoln’s inscrutable motives and his trans½xing “sorrowful eyes”–what all African Amer- gaze, its “shadowed lids [open] toward icans who brought their protests to the some vista of perpetual dawn that lay far Lincoln Memorial, from Marian Ander- beyond in½nity.” Regardless of the com- son and Paul Robeson to King and the bination of political calculation, military Black Panthers, saw in them–is a man necessity, and idealism that drove him, who struggled “to reconcile all of the con- Hickman decides, it is enough to know tending forces of his country” and point the only that Lincoln “signed the papers way “for all who are willing to pay the hard that set us free” and “dealt us into the price of true freedom.” “So yes,” Hickman game.”39 concludes, “he’s one of us.”42 More intriguing, however, is Hickman’s Along with his identi½cation of Abra- reflection on the possibility that it was ham Lincoln as the ½rst “black” presi- Lincoln’s brooding expression, not “the dent, Ellison’s rendition of the Eman- darkness of his flesh, the cast of his features, cipation Proclamation in the raucous or what he did on our behalf” that made his Juneteenth sermon relived by Bliss/ enemies accuse him of “being one of us.” Sunraider and Hickman, as Sunraider Ellison’s interest here lies less in Lincoln’s lies gravely wounded and delirious in repeated need to insist, as in his debates the hospital and Hickman keeps vigil at with Stephen Douglas, that he did not his bedside, is a vernacular expression wish to marry a black woman, in lam- of his deep conviction that only when poons of his “Miscegenation Proclama- emancipation has been completed tion,” or in charges that he was secretly through the dismantling of segregation black.40 Ellison meant to answer not the can the dream the dreamers dreamed racists of Lincoln’s day but later segrega- begin to become a reality. tionists who had reclaimed Lincoln as a The sermon proceeds through a long friend of the South, among them Thomas exposition of exile and dispossession Dixon, whose novels The Leopard’s Spots derived from Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry and The Clansman inspired D. W. Grif½th’s Bones (Ezekiel 37:1–14) in which the infamous 1915 ½lm The Birth of a Nation, Negro people, reborn into a new sense as well as the dignitaries overseeing the of nation time, a new cadence of history dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in and culture, are raised up from captivity: 1922, when black guests were seated in “We lay scattered in the ground for a a segregated section and Robert Russa long dry season. And the winds blew and Moton, successor to Booker T. Wash- the sun blazed down and the rains came ington as head of the Tuskegee Institute and went and we were dead. Lord, we during Ellison’s student days, had his were dead!” But at last “the nerves of speech censored by those determined to organs and limbs are joined together, erase any hint of racial or sectional con- one by one, and the body of the dead flict.41 Ellison likewise meant to answer Negro people is resurrected,” until “we

116 Dædalus Winter 2011 sprang together and walked around. All speech seems mainly a paean to the Eric J. clacking together and clicking into place. glorious ideals of the Founders. “It is Sundquist All moving in time!”43 In the rhythmic our nature to soar and by following the idioms of the black gospel, the sermon courses mapped through the adventur- magni½es the down-home delight Elli- ous efforts of our fathers we af½rm and son took in writing to his friend Albert revitalize their awesome vision,” he Murray about Brown in 1956. “Mose,” he declares. Although “our sublime and said, collectively naming black people by cornucopian dream” will be ful½lled the colloquial rendering of Moses, a wily only at great anguish and cost, it is the visionary forever bound for the Promised challenge of a “rash dream” to which Land, “is ½ghting and . . . he’s turned the “only a great and uni½ed nation, a na- Supreme Court into the forum of liberty tion conditioned to riding out the cha- it was intended to be, and the Constitu- os of history as the eagle rides out the tion of the United States into a briarpatch whirlwind, can arise.” As overwrought in which the nimble people, the willing as it is opaque, Sunraider’s barnstorm- people, have a chance.”44 ing dream speech appears to have little Read in the context of the attempted to do with race until he drifts into a meta- assassination of Sunraider, however, the phoric illustration of the power of “the Juneteenth sermon’s baroque mixture of dark side” to offer a “corrective to the holiness and theatricality seems more bedazzlement fostered by the brightness foreboding: “the celebration of a gaudy illu- of our ideals and our history.” Who can sion,”45 as the delusional Sunraider thinks doubt our future, he exclaims, suddenly of it. We are led to the same conclusion veering into a parable, when from the fact that Ellison chose a June- even the wildest black man rampaging teenth holiday celebrated on the Fourth the streets of our cities in a Fleetwood of July as the occasion on which Bliss, [Cadillac] knows that it is not our fate returning to Oklahoma as a white ½lm- to be mere victims of history but to be maker known only as Mister Movie-Man, courageous and insightful before its as- dresses the black townspeople appearing saults and riddles. Let us keep an eye on in his ½lm in garish Halloween costumes the outrages committed by the citizens and seduces the young mixed-race wom- I’ve just described, for perhaps therein an who gives birth to the son who will lies a secret brightness, a clue. Perhaps attempt to kill him. the essence of his untamed and assertive How Ellison ultimately intended to or- willfulness, his crass and jazzy de½ance chestrate all these symbolically charged of good taste and the harsh, immutable elements of his story we may never know. laws of economics, lies [in] his faith in In the grandiloquent speech Sunraider is the flexible soundness of the nation. making when Severen rises in the Senate gallery and brings him down in a hail of “Much mystery here,” Sunraider goes bullets, however, we can identify a further on to say, a comment we are apparently point of contact for reading Three Days meant to connect to his counsel earlier as Ellison’s meditation on the turbulent in the speech that “great nations shall confusions of the post-Brown world. not, must not, dare not evade their own Full of wild rhetorical flights, but noth- mysteries but must grapple with them ing resembling the Southern Manifesto and live them out.”46 or the states-rights oratory of a George Sunraider’s seemingly incongruous Wallace or a Ross Barnett, Sunraider’s parable refers to a chronologically prior

Dædalus Winter 2011 117 Ralph episode of Three Days (one Ellison pub- man remembers that when Bliss “seceded Ellison, lished in 1973 as the short story “Cadil- by losing himself in the black-denying world Martin Luther lac Flambé”) in which the character of skin whiteness,” once again, “as in the days King, Jr. LeeWillie Minifees protests Sunraider’s of our fathers, we were left puzzled by the wreck & Barack Obama radio speech denouncing the African of our dreaming. For in the mysterious spell of American penchant for stylish Cadil- our yearning our little orphan of mixed identi- lacs by ostentatiously setting his own ty had become one of us”–the new Lincoln Cadillac ablaze on the senator’s lawn. who would redeem the nation’s betrayal By itself, the episode is an extravagant of blacks after the ½rst Reconstruction tour de force, one of several in the novel, by leading the way to the second Recon- but it is Sunraider’s recurrence to the struction. Hickman hopes that Bliss, by mysteries of identity that the nation “devious scheming” in the guise of Senator “dare not evade”–Ellison’s premise Sunraider, is playing a part through which for the novel–that should catch our “the child’s promise will be made manifest in attention here. the present–here in the District of Colum- In his notes for Three Days, Ellison bia!”; yet he is left to conclude ruefully presented conflicting motives for Sun- that he and his congregation will proba- raider’s racist demagoguery, speculating, bly have to leave “the Founding Fathers’ on the one hand, that he sees himself as dream of eternal bliss to the future.”49 “putting pressure on Negroes to become “There lies the nation groaning on its more powerful through political action” bed,”50 Ellison writes of Sunraider after and yet, on the other, that he feels humil- the shooting, as though to say that the iated by his own racial ambiguity and generation still beholden to the mythol- thus uses the “agency of racism to punish ogies of white supremacy is in its death Negroes for being weak, and to achieve throes, slain by the generation that has power of his own.” At the same time, transcended racialized identity. In Sun- Ellison surmised that Sunraider is to be raider’s parable of the Cadillac, however, killed by way of proving that Severen, Ellison appears to offer “a secret bright- the “unexpected emotional agent of ness, a clue,” in the senator himself. Small chaos,” was “free of [the] acceptance hint though it may be, Sunraider’s asser- of whiteness which was [the] source of tion that the Cadillac driver’s “crass and Bliss’s confusion.”47 Whereas Sunraid- jazzy de½ance” is evidence of “his faith er wrestled with the demon of his own in the soundness of the nation” suggests belief in the superiority of whiteness, that Sunraider may indeed have been that is to say, Severen, for ½lial as well as scheming to speak for his people, Hick- allegorical reasons, was destined to slay man’s people, from behind the mask of the father who remained tragically shack- whiteness. As a new and more cunning led to the racial dichotomies of Jim Crow. invisible man, he may even have been “If you accept the fact that you’re neither preparing to divulge his racial secret, his black nor white, Gentile nor Jew, Rebel- own evasion of identity, when he is cut bred nor Yankee-born,” Severen is told down by his son the assassin. Whether by a black American Indian shaman who or not it foreshadows the revelation of a seems to be glossing the conclusion of new Lincoln from within the trickster’s King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, “you racist disguise, Sunraider’s parable illus- have the freedom to be truly free.”48 trates, as Ellison said in nearly countless Reflecting on his prodigal son in the formulations stretching from the early hours leading up to the shooting, Hick- 1950s to the end of his life, that the Negro,

118 Dædalus Winter 2011 both morally and linguistically, had en- rative to the point of being utopian, may Eric J. tered “the deepest recesses of the Ameri- also put him in strange company. Having Sundquist can psyche,” there becoming “the keep- denounced the Supreme Court’s deci- er of the nation’s sense of democratic sion in the Dred Scott case as doing vio- achievement, and the human scale by lence to “the plain unmistakable lan- which would be measured its painfully guage” of the Declaration of Indepen- slow advance toward true equality.”51 dence, Lincoln was quick to add in a well- known passage that the Founding Fathers Whatever Three Days may say indirect- had not created the conditions of equally about the dream dreamed by Martin ity; rather, they set forth “a standard Luther King, Jr., it can, of course, in no maxim for free society . . . constantly way refer to Barack Obama, except by looked to, constantly labored for, and the happenstance of its publication in even though never perfectly attained, 2010. It is useful to note, however, that constantly approximated, and thereby Obama’s casting back to Abraham Lin- constantly spreading and deepening its coln and Frederick Douglass by way of influence, and augmenting the happi- King’s belief that the Declaration of ness and value of life to all people of all Independence and the Preamble to the colors everywhere.” In a 1987 lecture, Constitution formed a long-standing none other than future Supreme Court and still valid “promissory note” was Justice Clarence Thomas embraced the not only a political strategy for which need “to recover the moral horizons” he was especially well suited. It was also of Lincoln’s views, as stated in this a means of demonstrating, as he wrote passage.54 in Dreams from My Father, that the law is Having set forth in quest of the pres- the record of “a nation arguing with its idency when contention over af½rma- conscience”–or, as Ellison put it, a means tive action had somewhat receded from of playing out the “nation’s drama of public consciousness, Obama had the conscience.”52 As Obama explained it in luxury of returning to perspectives on his March 2008 speech on race, entitled equal opportunity that often sounded “A More Perfect Union” and designed to less like King and Johnson and more counter attacks provoked by his associa- like Kennedy.55 In his nomination action with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, ceptance speech, for example, he de- “the answer to the slavery question was ½ned the American “promise” as one already embedded within our Constitu- based on the ideal that “each of us has tion,” which promises “liberty, and jus- the freedom to make of our own lives tice, and a union that could be and should what we will,” a principle he reaf½rmed be perfected over time.” in his inaugural speech, calling it “the Whereas Obama’s election itself may God-given promise that all are equal, all seem to meet the requirements of the are free, and all deserve a chance to pur- “American Creed” set forth in economist sue their full measure of happiness.” It and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 may be that only an avowedly biracial study An American Dilemma–faith in “the candidate who styled himself a “citizen essential dignity of the individual human of the world,” as Obama did in a July being, of the fundamental equality of all 2008 speech in Berlin, and who put im- men, and of certain inalienable rights to migrants who “traveled across oceans in freedom, justice, and a fair opportuni- search of a new life” on the same plane ty”53–his Lincolnian language, amelio- as slaves who “endured the lash of the

Dædalus Winter 2011 119 Ralph whip and plowed the hard earth,” as he “requires all Americans to realize that Ellison, did in his inauguration speech, could your dreams do not have to come at the Martin Luther ½nally hope to escape stalemated argu- expense of my dreams.” King, Jr. ments about the “two worlds of race” Infelicitously, we might say that Obama & Barack Obama and the color blindness of the Consti- took the part of the trans-racial Severen, tution. slaying the father who, like Adam Sun- Questions that have reached a stale- raider, was unable to overcome “the mate, however, are questions that have betrayals of the past.” Or did candidate yet to be answered. For all that Obama’s Obama more resemble Hickman’s fanta- diffusing the issue of race might seem to sy of Bliss the redeemer? “We saw in him imply about an end to the post-Brown age, an answer to our hopes that this divided land his choice to designate himself “black” with its diversity of people would at last be –and black alone–in the 2010 Census made whole,” Hickman remembers, “a acknowledged that a national dilemma means of breaking the slavery-forged chains centuries in the making could not be which still bind our country.”57 If Barack resolved by one exceptional man’s life Obama’s election ful½lled King’s dream story and aspirations, still less by one as it has been distilled in popular iconog- campaign-saving speech. raphy, however, the notion that he could After he recalled Reverend Wright’s heal the divided land and usher in a post- many good works in his Philadelphia racial age was bound to be revealed as a speech, Obama attributed Wright’s in- fantasy in its own right. cendiary language about racial and eco- Ellison, no doubt, would be appalled nomic injustice at home and abroad– by such a naked attempt to discover ana- language that had much in common with logues to his novel in quotidian politics. King’s later jeremiads–to Wright’s out- Politicians are not preachers, and novel- dated, “distorted view of this country– ists are neither. Yet what he seems to a view that sees white racism as endem- have been after in Three Days before the ic, and that elevates what is wrong with Shooting . . .–what apparently eluded his America above all that we know is right agonized, decades-long effort to capture with America.” Obama emphasized that it to his own satisfaction–was a way to he had “brothers, sisters, nieces, neph- portray in novelistic fashion his belief ews, uncles and cousins, of every race that political integration and cultural in- and every hue, scattered across three tegration, even if they carried with them continents,” but he also strove to recog- distinct histories and proceeded by dif- nize the racial grievances of whites and fering logics, were intimately entangled recall that the old poison of Jim Crow in the nation’s long effort to form a more lingered in his own white grandmother perfect union. As he wrote in “What no less than in Jeremiah Wright. Having America Would Be Like Without Blacks,” made himself a “racial Everyman,” to a 1970 Time magazine essay that returned use writer and editor David Remnick’s to Ezekiel’s prophecy, the “jazz-shaped” phrase,56 he chose once more to stand history of black Americans had enliv- in the mythic shadows of King and Lin- ened the “dry bones of the nation” with coln, and through them the Founders a “tragic knowledge we try ceaselessly to themselves. “This union may never be evade: that the true subject of democra- perfect,” he conceded, but continuing cy is not simply material well-being but on the path toward a more perfect un- the extension of the democratic process ion, the only option for a great nation, in the direction of perfecting itself.”58

120 Dædalus Winter 2011 Ellison’s curiously but appropriately dis- can only wonder how his words and Eric J. tended syntax suggested a project with- deeds, like those of Lincoln and King, Sundquist out end–a project, perhaps, not unlike would have registered in Ralph Ellison’s his novel. As Barack Obama rides his imagination. own whirlwind of national chaos, we

endnotes 1 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), 1, 236. 2 John Hope Franklin, “The Two Worlds of Race: A Historical View,” Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 899–920. 3 Ralph Ellison, “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro Ameri- can–May 14–15, 1965,” Dædalus 95 (1) (Winter 1966): 414, 409, 437. 4 Ralph Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . .: The Un½nished Second Novel, ed. John F. Callahan and Adam Bradley (New York: Random House, 2010). The ellipsis in the title was devised by the editors to indicate the un½nished nature of the novel. The editors provide a fair amount of information about the state of Ellison’s manuscripts and his process of composition, but I have also bene½ted from Adam Bradley’s book Ralph Elli- son in Progress (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010) and, for additional bio- graphical information, from Arnold Rampersad’s Ralph Ellison: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). 5 John Hersey and Ralph Ellison, “‘A Completion of Personality’: A Talk with Ralph Elli- son” (1974), in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 803. 6 Ibid., 814; Bradley, Ralph Ellison in Progress, 88. 7 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 526–527. Passages in italics represent Hickman’s interior monologue, which at times seems as much an authorial assessment as a character’s meditation. 8 Hersey and Ellison, “‘A Completion of Personality,’” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. Callahan, 791. 9 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 85, 74. The editors have organized the materials into three “books.” A long sequence designated as Book I traces the steps of Hickman and members of his congregation after they are rebuffed at Senator Sunraider’s Washing- ton, D.C., of½ce and try to track him down before at last witnessing his attempted murder from their seats in the gallery of the Senate. Other scenes, presented as Book II and built on a dialogue between Hickman and Sunraider as he lies dying in the hospital–most of which were published in a somewhat different sequence as Juneteenth–are a kaleidoscopic improvisational assemblage of conversation, memory, and hallucination reaching back to Hickman’s life before and after Bliss’s birth, and dwelling on their evangelical tent show, Bliss’s trauma, and events surrounding the affair that leads to the birth of the son he aban- dons. Still other scenes comprise the shooting and its immediate aftermath, narrated largely from the perspective of a white reporter named Welborn McIntyre, or follow Hickman on a picaresque journey through Georgia and Oklahoma as he attempts to unravel the mystery of Bliss’s transformation into Adam Sunraider and at the same time discover enough about Severen to warn the senator of the plot against his life. 10 Hersey and Ellison, “‘A Completion of Personality,’” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. Callahan, 791.

Dædalus Winter 2011 121 Ralph 11 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 972. Ellison, 12 Martin Hollie West, “Ellison: Exploring the Life of a Not So Visible Man” (1973), in Conversations Luther with Ralph Ellison, ed. Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh (Jackson: University Press of King, Jr. Mississippi, 1995), 243. & Barack 13 Obama Hersey and Ellison, “‘A Completion of Personality,’” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. Callahan, 814. 14 Take, for example, Ellison’s response to Irving Howe, who had championed Richard Wright’s politicized naturalism as the only authentic black aesthetic in the essay “Black Boys and Native Sons.” Ellison famously took Howe to task for assuming that black art could be nothing but the “abstract embodiment of living hell” and charged him with practicing his own brand of segregation: “I found it far less painful to have to move to the back of a Southern bus . . . than to tolerate concepts which distorted the actual reality of my situation or my reactions to it”; Ralph Ellison, “The World and the Jug” (1963), Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 112, 122. 15 Allen Geller, “An Interview with Ralph Ellison” (1963), in Conversations with Ralph Ellison, ed. Graham and Singh, 82. 16 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 972. 17 Richard Kostelanetz, “An Interview with Ralph Ellison” (1965), in Conversations with Ralph Ellison, ed. Graham and Singh, 97. 18 Hersey and Ellison, “‘A Completion of Personality,’” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. Callahan, 813. 19 Ralph Ellison, “The Myth of the Flawed Southerner” (1968), Going to the Territory (New York: Random House, 1986), 82, 84. Ellison concluded his essay by saying that Johnson would be recognized “as the greatest American President for the poor and for the Negroes”; see page 87. In a 1965 interview, Ellison had argued that Johnson’s famous commencement speech at Howard University–arguably the era’s most forceful statement that compensatory treatment was needed to bring about racial justice–spelled out “the meaning of full integration” in a way that neither Lincoln nor Franklin Roosevelt had ever done: “There was no hedging in it, no escape clauses.” Johnson reiterated the essential points from that speech in the Foreword he provided for the ½rst of the two Dædalus issues on “The Negro American.” See Ralph Ellison, “A Very Stern Discipline” (1965), Going to the Territory, 291. 20 Toni Morrison, quoted in Rampersad, Ralph Ellison, 359. 21 David L. Carson, “Ralph Ellison: Twenty Years After” (1971), in Conversations with Ralph Ellison, ed. Graham and Singh, 198. 22 Ralph Ellison, letter to Morteza Sprague, May 19, 1954, in John F. Callahan, “‘American Culture is of a Whole’: From the Letters of Ralph Ellison,” The New Republic, March 1, 1999, 38–39. 23 Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Random House, 1999), 356. 24 Ralph Ellison, “The Art of Fiction: An Interview” (1955), Shadow and Act, 181. 25 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 741. In one Washington scene, Hickman muses on a tapestry of Brueghel’s painting Landscape and the Fall of Icarus and associates it with, among other things, Bliss’s self-destruction as Adam Sunraider; see 592–599. Cf. Bradley, Ralph Ellison in Progress, 49–50. 26 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 271. 27 Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” (1935), in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 189.

122 Dædalus Winter 2011 28 Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Negro and the American Dream,” September 25, 1960, in Eric J. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson et al., 6 vols. to date (Berkeley: Sundquist University of California Press, 1992–), vol. V, 508. 29 Ellison, “Transcript of the American Academy Conference on the Negro American,” 409. 30 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Abraham Lincoln” (1907), in The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 249, 252. 31 For all quotations from the speeches of Barack Obama as a presidential candidate (including his inaugural speech), see http://www.barackobama.com/speeches. 32 Ralph Ellison, “Address to the Harvard Alumni, Class of 1949” (1974), in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. Callahan, 423. 33 Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 518. 34 All quotations from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech follow the text reprinted in Eric J. Sundquist, King’s Dream (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), from which some of the ideas in this essay are drawn. 35 Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” in Strength to Love (1963; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 77–86. See also Frederick Douglass, “January First, 1863” (January 1863), in The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, ed. Philip S. Foner, 5 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1950), vol. III, 306. 36 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 896. 37 John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1963), vi. 38 Ralph Ellison, “Tell It Like It Is, Baby” (1965), in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. Callahan, 36–37. 39 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 575–576, 609–610. 40 On the racist responses to Lincoln, see Forrest G. Wood, Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 53–79. 41 See Adam Fairclough, “Civil Rights and the Lincoln Memorial: The Censored Speeches of Robert R. Moton (1922) and John Lewis (1963),” The Journal of Negro History 82 (Autumn 1997): 408–416. 42 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 575–576. 43 Ibid., 320–321. 44 Ralph Ellison, letter to Albert Murray, March 16, 1956, in Trading Twelves: The Selected Let- ters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 117. 45 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 314. 46 Ibid., 238–243. 47 Ellison, Juneteenth, 360; Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 974–976. 48 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 850. When we let freedom ring, said King in the memorable ending of his speech, “we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” 49 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 527–529. 50 Ibid., 316.

Dædalus Winter 2011 123 Ralph 51 Ralph Ellison, “Perspective of Literature” (1976), Going to the Territory, 335. Ellison, 52 Martin Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995; repr., New Luther York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 437; Ellison, “Perspective of Literature,” Going to the King, Jr. Territory, 335. & Barack 53 Obama Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 2 vols. (1944; repr., New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1996), vol. I, 4. 54 Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Spring½eld, Illinois,” June 26, 1857, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), vol. II, 405–406; Clarence Thomas, “Why Black Americans Should Look to Conservative Policies,” The Heritage Lectures (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Founda- tion, 1987), 8. “Equality of rights, not of possessions or entitlements, offered the opportunity to be free, and self-governing,” argued Thomas. He contended that the last prominent American to appeal to this “natural law,” which “both transcends and underlies time and place, race and custom,” was Martin Luther King, Jr. 55 See, for example, President Kennedy’s televised speech of June 11, 1963, on civil rights; he said that blacks had a right to expect that “the Constitution will be color blind” and insisted, therefore, that all children must have an “equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.” John F. Ken- nedy, “Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights,” June 11, 1963, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 1963 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of½ce, 1964), 471. 56 David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 524. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., went further, telling Remnick that Obama, in his Philadelphia speech, had become a “post-modern Frederick Douglass,” a trickster capable of mediating seemingly irreconcilable positions. 57 Ellison, Three Days before the Shooting . . ., 526–527. 58 Ralph Ellison, “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” (1970), Going to the Territory, 110–111.

124 Dædalus Winter 2011 “We’re losing our country”: Barack Obama, Race & the Tea Party

Clarence E. Walker

The United States is not as racist as it was when I was born in 1941. Asians have become citizens, blacks can vote in Southern elections, and interracial marriage is now legal nationwide. However, these advances in racial justice do not mean that racism is dead in the United States; indeed, it continues to exercise a powerful hold on the Ameri- can imagination. How could it be otherwise? American democracy was created on a racial foundation, and although the election of a black president represents a historic step in the nation’s racial modernization, it does not signal “the end of white America.” Even if it did, this development would not mean that Asians, blacks, Mexicans, and other Spanish speakers would get along with each other.1 Race will continue to plague Ameri- can politics even as the demographic composition of the nation changes. The idea that the death of whiteness might usher in racial nirvana rests on a demographic determinism that the history of the CLARENCE E. WALKER is Profes- American Republic renders problematic. sor of History at the University If we take a long view of race and politics, the of California, Davis. His publica- demise of white hegemony is an interesting but tions include The Preacher and the premature notion suggesting that contemporary Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack American racial liberalism, like the Garrisonian Obama, and Race in America (with abolitionists in the nineteenth century, has been Gregory D. Smithers, 2009), Mon- swept up in a moment of self-congratulatory wish- grel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings ful thinking. Both the end of slavery and the elec- (2009), and We Can’t Go Home tion of Barack Obama constitute important turn- Again: An Argument about Afro- ing points in the history of race in America. And centrism (2001). both events shed light on the Republican Party. I

Dædalus Winter 2011 125 Barack refer to the Republicans not because I Race is never absent from American Obama, think the Democrats have wonderful politics, and this is no less true of the Race & the Tea Party racial politics but because the gop has Tea Party movement, though it claims become the voice of white victimology not to be racist and has some black mem- in a supposedly post-racial and multi- bers. Yet according to a recent cbs/New cultural world. York Times poll, white Tea Party mem- Contemporary Republican victimology bers think “too much has been made of expresses itself in the Tea Party move- race in America and that the policies ment. The Tea Party is the latest phase pursued by the Obama administration of a transformation that has been tak- promote the interests of poor blacks over ing place in the Republican Party since those of the white middle class.”3 Given 1968, when the Nixon administration these attitudes, why would blacks be began pursuing its “Southern Strategy” members of the Tea Party? to woo the South. The issues that galva- The answer to this question is not to nized the Republicans to court white be found solely in the history of black Southerners in the 1960s were the civil people but of minorities in general. The rights movement and the expansion of desire to be accepted cuts across lines federal power; today, according to intel- of ethnicity, race, and sexual preference, lectual historian Mark Lilla, three issues and thus is not limited to black people. energize the contemporary Tea Party: The quest for acceptance can be seen in “A ½nancial crisis that robbed millions the history of court and assimilated of their homes, jobs, and savings; the Jews in Central and Western Europe, Obama administration’s decision to in Booker T. Washington’s program of pursue health care reform despite the cultural rehabilitation during the last crisis; and personal animosity toward quarter of the nineteenth century in the the president himself (racially tinged American South, and in the careers of in some regions) stoked by the right- gay men like Roy Cohn and David Brock. wing media.”2 The Tea Party, then, is Cohn denied he was gay and actively per- an extreme right-wing or conservative secuted gays during the Army-McCarthy outgrowth of the Republican Party. Not hearings. Brock, like Cohn, was a clos- all conservatives are Tea Partiers, but eted gay conservative activist who made Tea Partiers are radical conservatives. a reputation smearing liberal politicians Some of the party’s spokespeople have and black women. Brock came out of the called for the elimination of government closet after he found the conservative agencies such as the Departments of movement’s homophobia intolerable. Education, Energy, and Environmental It would be easy to call these people op- Protection and the Federal Reserve and portunists, but to do so would be an over- for either abolition or privatization of statement and would simplify the com- Social Security and Medicare. Several plicated history of minorities generally of these programs have bene½ted blacks and black people in the United States in the United States because the post– speci½cally. World War II bureaucratic state has What we have here are groups and in- been central to leveling the so-called dividuals who want to normalize their playing ½eld between blacks and whites. history and escape the stigma of being So what role does race play in the Tea thought of as outsiders. In the case of Party members’ claim that they have black Tea Partiers, this effort means dis- lost their country? associating oneself from the history of

126 Dædalus Winter 2011 black welfare dependence, crime, and Membership in the Tea Party situates Clarence E. racial militance. Charles Butler, a black black conservatives, as it does white ones, Walker Tea Partier, told a Chicago radio station in a libertarian enthusiasm centered on that “the Democratic social welfare poli- the idea of an autonomous self. Tea Par- cies of Roosevelt and Kennedy negative- tiers view government as the enemy of ly affected Black people then and con- freedom, and Obama, who they call a tinue to affect Blacks today.”4 Butler is proponent of big government and social- not alone in thinking the government ism, is likewise an enemy of freedom. is the enemy of black people. Lloyd Tea Party opposition to Obama is reli- Marcus, another black member of the gious in its intensity. I say this because Tea Party, has been quoted as saying when I see Tea Party rallies on television, that “the Democrats are focused on they remind me of the revivals I attended keeping Blacks thinking they are vic- as a child in Texas. At these camp meet- tims and dependent on social welfare.”5 ings, the faithful, shouting and in the grip To escape the stigma of welfare, if you of religious ecstasy, would be rendered are black, you have to be baptized in unconscious at the altar by the power of the cult of individualism and self-help the holy ghost. A similar enthusiasm char- to overcome the notion that your col- acterizes Tea Party gatherings, where a or marks you as a victim; you must be version of Greta Garbo’s mantra, “I want reborn as a tax-producing rather than to be left alone,” activates the crowd and tax-consuming citizen. works it up into a frenzied state reminis- Instead of viewing these black con- cent of religious possession. Inspired by servatives as race traitors or individ- right-wing saint Margaret Thatcher, the uals with false consciousness, they former prime minister of Great Britain, should be placed in the context of a the Tea Party grounds its faith in the be- black conservatism that predates the lief that “there is no such thing as socie- accommodationist policies of Booker ty. There are individual men and women, T. Washington. Frederick Douglass, and there are families. And no govern- the Civil War champion of black equal- ment can do anything except through ity, delivered a speech in 1862 that an- people, and people must look to them- swered the question, “What shall we selves ½rst.”8 Thatcher’s comment is do with the Negro?” Douglass replied, highly seductive if you have, as black “Do nothing with them, but leave them Americans do, a history of being thought like you have left other men, to do with of as losers in a nation whose “national themselves.”6 He went on to say that imaginary” is based on ideas of individ- “the bitterness of the black man’s for- ual achievement and success.9 tune is the fact that he is everywhere I use the term “national imaginary” regarded and treated as an exception here to mean “a system of cultural repre- to the principles and maxims which sentations that makes the contours of the apply to other men.”7 Later on, Doug- nation-state emotionally plausible.”10 In lass changed his mind about govern- the United States, people, regardless of ment aid for the freed men. My point their color and whether their ancestors here is that black hostility to govern- came from Asia, Africa, Europe, or Latin ment programs designed to aid black America, are bound together by the myth people is not new and, in fact, has a of individual success that sits at the cen- distinguished genealogy. ter of the American “national imaginary.” It is the power of this idea that may have

Dædalus Winter 2011 127 Barack erased racial divisions in the Tea Party. als constitutes an imagining of black and Obama, Religious movements and political parties American history as fanciful as Walt Dis- Race & the Tea Party create their own realities; in the case of ney’s Song of the South. Hard though they the black and white Tea Partiers, that re- may try, conservatives cannot rewrite the ality is a shared sense of persecution by American past to elide the fact that both government. Combining both cultural slavery and Jim Crow oppressed blacks politics and economic interests, the Tea as a group and not as individuals. Racism, Partiers have created a new political as I noted earlier, has diminished in Amer- phalanx. ican society but not disappeared. What unites black and white Tea Par- tiers is not social class but the Marxian Racism reared its head during Obama’s concept of “political class.”11 The black election campaign in a variety of venues, economist and historical sociologist including newspapers, the Web, and pub- Oliver Cox wrote, “[P]olitical class is a lic discourse. One white supremacist power group . . . organized for conflict.”12 website expressed a crude form of racial The recent history of the Tea Party in animus that most blacks of my genera- Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Utah tion associate with an earlier period of suggests that Cox’s estimation is true. The American history. The site called Obama Tea Party in those states has factionalized a “subhuman-black-supremeist[sic]-shit- and disrupted the Republican Party oper- skin beast.”14 This was not an isolated ating as a “political class.” In South Caro- expression of hate. In Florida, for exam- lina, for example, a woman of Asian de- ple, a seventh-grade school teacher told scent, Nikki Haley, will become that her students that Obama’s campaign state’s next Republican governor. As win- slogan “change” meant “Come Help ner of that contest, Haley corroborates a Nigger Get Elected.”15 These two ex- Cox’s claim that “political class . . . may amples of racial antipathy indicate that include persons from every position.”13 America is not a post-racial society and Cox does not use the word race, but I that Obama is not perceived with equa- think the phrase “persons from every nimity by a segment of the country’s position” may be interpreted as suggest- white populace. For these people, the ing that a “political class” does not have election of a black president was un- to have a singular racial subjectivity. thinkable. Obama is their worst night- “Political class” can thus unite black mare because his presidency may be and white conservatives against a black the gateway to the establishment of an president deemed to be an enemy of interracial democracy and a departure individual freedom. from the norm of an America ruled by But this alliance of black and white white men. conservatives rests on an imagined past. Because conservatives, like the Tea Like the Afrocentrists and Neo-Confed- Partiers, seem incapable of accepting a erates, the Tea Partiers want to create a number of the changes that have over- history that is a ½ction. To say that “too taken the nation since the 1950s, it is, as much has been made of race” is delusion- I observed at the beginning of this essay, al because it erases both slavery and Jim premature to proclaim “the end of white Crow from the master narrative of Amer- America.” This notion assumes too much ican history. The idea that blacks from and ignores a recurring reality in Amer- the seventeenth century to the present ican history, namely, the ability of seg- were perceived and treated as individu- ments of the American populace to be-

128 Dædalus Winter 2011 lieve things that are not true: that Jap- riety has led to the dispossession and Clarence E. anese Americans were disloyal during genocide of Native Americans, the en- Walker World War II, for example, or that fluo- slavement of blacks and their subsequent ridation of municipal water supplies is suffering under Jim Crow, the invasion a threat to public health. Both of these of Mexico and colonization of Mexicans, ideas were harmful and fallacious but and the exclusion of Asians. Because also powerful and seductive. Similarly, each of these groups occupies a partic- the Tea Party’s assault on Obama is dis- ular space in the structure of American turbing and based on untruths. What racism, each is open to the blandish- this means is that even though the na- ments of a recon½gured racism based tion’s white majority is going to decline on culture. In the West and Southwest, in numbers, the future of race relations this process can be seen in the hostility in the United States is not unproblem- between blacks and Mexicans over con- atic. Further, conservatives may even tests for political of½ce, competition for pro½t from that contested future. jobs, race riots in the high schools of Conservatives have already shown Los Angeles involving black and Mexi- that they can use race as a wedge issue can students, and prison disturbances in their appeals to Mexicans in the West such as the recent one at the detention and Southwest and their construction of center in Chino, California. These con- Asians as a “model minority.” At some flicts point not to a post-racial America time in the future, both of these groups but to a country riven by racism. could, as a segment of black America Finally, although Obama was able has, decide it is in their best interest to to put together a coalition comprising ally themselves with a party that con- Asians, blacks, and Mexicans, this alli- ceives of itself as the agent of tradition- ance rests on a precarious foundation. If al American values. What if whiteness the economy continues to be depressed, is constructed as a culture rather than the Tea Partiers have an opening to in- color? tensify their attacks on the nation’s ½rst The idea of some uni½ed coalition of black president by emphasizing his un- the so-called people of color is a doubt- suitability for the job. It would be a mis- ful proposition. The history of Ameri- take to say that Obama’s election reignit- can racism has never been a single “ined racial conflict in the United States, variant [process] but a number of racisms, but, sadly, his ascendency does not prove forming a broad open spectrum of situ- that those divisions are a thing of the ations.”16 In the United States, this va- past. endnotes 1 Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?” The Atlantic, January/February 2009. 2 For discussion of the Tea Party movement, see Joan Swirsky, “We’re Losing Our Country but What Can We Do?” http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/02/25/commentary/op-eds/ doc49a4f20b4a04f416814151.txt; Bob Cesca, “The Weird Contradictions of the Tea Bag Revolution,” http://www.huf½ngtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-weird-contradictions_b _176476.html (accessed January 31, 2010); Mark Lilla, “The Tea Party Jacobins,” The New York Review of Books, May 27, 2010; Charles Postel, “Tea Party: Dark Side of Conservatism,” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37217.html (accessed May 16, 2010); Peter Schrag, “At the Tea Party: Minutemen and Birchers, Yes; Birthers No,” http://www .californiaprogressreport.com/site/?q=print/7675 (accessed May 22, 2010).

Dædalus Winter 2011 129 Barack 3 Cited in Lilla, “The Tea Party Jacobins,” 53. Obama, 4 Race & the “Black Tea Partiers Speak,” The Root, http://www.theroot.com/views/black-tea Tea Party -partiers-speak; “ap Discovers That Black Tea Party Members Exist,” http://hotair .com/archives/2010/04/06/ap-discovers-that-black-tea-party-members-exist; “A Black Tea Party Member Speaks,” http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/04/15/black -tea-party-member; all sites accessed June 18, 2010. 5 Ibid. 6 Frederick Douglass, “Free the Slaves, Then Leave Them Alone,” in Afro-American His- tory: Primary Sources, ed. Thomas R. Frazier, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1988). 7 Ibid. 8 “Epitaph for the Eighties?: ‘There Is No Such Thing As Society,’” http://briandeer .com/social/thatcher-society.htm. 9 The phrase “national imaginary” is found in Katherine Pratt Ewing, Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), “Introduction,” 2. 10 Ibid. 11 Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class & Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1959), 154. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Quoted in Clarence E. Walker and Gregory D. Smithers, The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America (Charlottesville: University of Vir- ginia Press, 2009), “Introduction,” 3. 15 Ibid. 16 Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (New York: Routledge, 1991), 40.

130 Dædalus Winter 2011 At Last . . . ?: Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Race & History

Farah Jasmine Grif½n

Late in the evening on January 20, 2009, newly sworn-in President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama made an appearance at The Neigh- borhood Ball. One of ten balls they would attend that night, The Neighborhood Ball was the ½rst of its kind. Conceived as a “people’s ball,” a celebration for ordinary citizens and the residents of Wash- ington, D.C., it launched the administration’s efforts to establish a relationship with the city and to make the White House itself more accessible to the broader public. The ball featured such popular music entertainers as Shakira, Alicia Keyes, will.i.am, Mary J. Blige, and Stevie Wonder. In the most memorable part of the evening, su- perstar Beyoncé Knowles serenaded the ½rst couple during the ceremonial “½rst” dance. Because the event was televised live on abc, the staging was dramatic. The ½rst lady and president stood FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN alone on a circular stage. Cued by the lush instru- is the mental introduction to the R&B classic “At Last,” William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Litera- the couple began to dance atop the presidential ture and African American Stud- seal that had been painted on the stage floor. Across ies at Columbia University. Her from them, on a stage in the middle of the audi- books include “Who Set You Flow- ence, the elegantly clad Beyoncé began to sing Etta in’?”: The African-American Migra- James’s timeless song. Smiling sweetly at the cou- tion Narrative (1995), If You Can’t ple like Lena Horne’s gorgeous Good Witch Glen- Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of da in The Wiz, Beyoncé began her performance in Billie Holiday (2001), and Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, a stately manner. Mid-song, she reached into the John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz guttural depths of her range to pull from the deep Collaboration Ever (with Salim traditions of Black American music and, in doing Washington, 2008). so, expressed a range of emotions, from celebra-

Dædalus Winter 2011 131 Michelle tion to de½ance. By the song’s end, she at elite institutions during the Reagan Obama, was lyrically soaring. The Obamas ap- 1980s, we saw ourselves: our generation’s Beyoncé, Race & plauded her; she bowed to them, over- response to the dif½cult struggle that History come with emotion, before leaving the had made our ascension possible. We stage. saw ourselves and thought: “At last.” The moment was memorable for a All these perspectives represent a ten- number of reasons. The romance of the sion that has and will characterize the president and ½rst lady, which had cap- Obama years. Conflicting viewpoints are tivated many during the campaign, was not evenly divided between generations. now on full display. Mrs. Obama, dressed Instead, each generation has its share of in a floating, feminine white gown that those, on the one hand, who are eager to offset her brown complexion, was danc- get over “race”–to put it behind us, to ing to the same song the president had regard it as a relic of a past for which we selected for the ½rst dance at their wed- have little use. On the other side are those ding. Here, they seemed to re-create that who are often cast as so pessimistic about moment, as if renewing their vows be- our nation they believe it incapable of fore a nation of witnesses. But even more change; they are considered too invested, signi½cant, because this was the inaugu- either in their identities or their liveli- ration of America’s ½rst black president, hoods–in their “narratives of victimiza- because “At Last” is an R&B song, and be- tion”–to accept the reality of our post- cause Beyoncé sang it in a style most of- racial present. Somewhere in between ten associated with soul and gospel, the are the pragmatists, who believe, “We’ve song signi½ed the triumphant culmina- come a long way, baby, but we still got a tion of what had long been a rather one- long way to go.” sided romance between black Americans and their nation. The ful½llment of our We do not live in a post-racial time. In democratic principles? The achievement fact, to use that term is lazy. We do occu- of a color-blind, post-racial America? py a historical moment in which race and The performance of both the dance and racism operate differently than they have the song struck a chord across race and in the past. Our society has removed all generation. For the enthusiastic young race-based legal barriers to equality. To people in the audience that night, it rep- claim things have not changed is wrong- resented the promise of youth, of their headed; to claim that struggles for racial own experience of race as something sig- equality are behind us, or that they can ni½cant–important, even–though not be taken care of solely by attention to limiting or constrictive. This was the hip- class, is equally so. We are witnessing the hop generation, after all. For old-timers, death of an epoch of white supremacy. particularly black old-timers, the perfor- All around us we experience its dying mance may have represented a bitter- gasp–a desperate, dangerous gasp. But sweet sense of victory. As witnesses of white supremacy is an old man who will the painful struggles that produced this not go gently into that good night. He moment, they watched it in memory of will continue to ½nd breath in elements the many thousands gone–and with of the Far Right, in the thinking of many some continued trepidation and fear. mainstream white Americans, in other They wondered, “Have we come this racial and ethnic groups, and, unfortu- far? Really?” For my generation of mid- nately, in far too many black people dle-aged black professionals, educated around the world. Nor are we at the

132 Dædalus Winter 2011 “end of the African American narrative”; who shared the spotlight: First Lady Farah there has never been just one such narra- Michelle Obama and the multitalented Jasmine Grif½n tive anyway. And, as with all narratives, Beyoncé Knowles. What might we learn those that deal with the black experience about the relationship between history in the United States have always been and the ongoing signi½cance of race by constructed to meet the contemporary attending to their images and their cul- needs, desires, and aspirations of black tural impact? Both Knowles and Obama people in a constantly shifting racial ter- occupy a space unimagined by earlier rain. generations. A singing, dancing, acting A nation without racism is not an im- black woman, who is also an entertain- possible achievement. Also, there are ment mogul, and an Ivy League-educat- other forms of oppression and exploita- ed, Harvard-trained lawyer-cum-½rst tion that act powerfully in the lives of lady clearly herald something new (the black people. However, it is indeed pre- latter even more so than the former). mature to claim that we need no longer Yet these extraordinary women each be aware of the existence of white su- represent something profoundly Ameri- premacy and racism. The baleful racism can, something deeply rooted in Ameri- that has been unleashed since the elec- ca’s racial past, and something familiar tion of our ½rst black president should but outwardly unrecognized by much of be suf½cient evidence of this reality. their public. Each has chosen to reveal That large numbers of white Americans and/or hide particular aspects of that voted for a quali½ed, intelligent black history in order to move more easily into candidate certainly is evidence of prog- the American mainstream. By focusing ress. It is proof that large portions of on these women –their relationship to a white America are becoming less racist. particular aspect of America’s racial his- But “less racist” does not mean “post- tory and how they mobilize it–we may racial.” (Civil rights activist and scholar reach a better understanding of the place Cornel West, among others, has also of race in the contemporary historical made this distinction.) Too often in pub- moment. lic discourse the phrase “post-racial” is used to suggest that black people and I am married to a black American who their allies should cease raising concerns carries within her the blood of slaves about continued racial inequality. and slave owners. Legal theorist Roy L. Brooks notes that –Barack Obama, Philadelphia, 2008 “the problem of race in the Age of Obama is not racism but racial inequality.” For Brooks, racial inequality can be found not Our ½rst glimpse of Michelle Obama only in differences in ½nancial resources was at the 2004 Democratic National but also in “human (education and skills) Convention in Boston. Along with two and social (public respect, racial stigma, small daughters, she joined her husband the ability to get things done in society)” onstage following his triumphant and resources as well.1 inspiring convention address, his his- The major problem with the stance of toric introduction to the nation. Tall post-raciality and with refusals to admit and trim, dressed elegantly in a white substantive change is that both are ahis- skirt suit with fashionable three-quar- torical and shortsighted. Let us return to ter-length sleeves, hair conservatively The Neighborhood Ball and the women coiffed, she looked polished, poised,

Dædalus Winter 2011 133 Michelle professional. She was very much like any And not just because Barack has done Obama, number of black women in any major well, but because I think people are hun- Beyoncé, Race & American city, but there was something gry for change. And I have been desperate History striking and unexpected about seeing to see our country moving in that direc- her on that stage. Black communities tion and just not feeling so alone in my were abuzz. They not only wanted to frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen know more about him, but just as often people who are hungry to be uni½ed they asked, “Did you see his wife?” around some basic common issues, and Observing her in the role of political it’s made me proud. spouse struck a chord. And, because This was a simple statement of a feel- people almost immediately began to talk ing shared by many for whom the Obama about him as a future president, many campaign gave a sense of hope, a sense of black Americans began to imagine her national belonging, a sense of purpose. as a ½rst lady. To be proud of one’s country should be It was dif½cult to imagine any black seen as something good. It is a step in woman in that role, but Mrs. Obama’s a process. Mrs. Obama was suggesting unmistakable “blackness” made it an that people like her gain a sense of pride especially amusing possibility. Once through working to make their nation Senator Obama announced his candida- better. In the words of James Baldwin cy, Michelle Obama authenticated his via Richard Rorty, this is the work of blackness for many African Americans. “achieving” our country. Rorty writes He was not the descendant of enslaved of a national pride that induces us to act ancestors; he had not grown up in a on a vision of our country and the possi- black community. But she was, and she bility that we may perfect it. This kind of had. The phrase, “He married her,” was pride encourages us to think of our citi- stated as proof that he made a conscious zenship “as an opportunity for action.”2 choice to identify with black people and The vision Michelle Obama, the descen- to raise his children as African Ameri- dant of slaves, put forth is one in which cans. While she legitimated his racial Americans of every race and ethnicity can authenticity for many African Ameri- take part in making our country even bet- cans, for some whites she became the ter. In so doing, she seemed to build on lightning rod, the persistent reminder the contention James Baldwin made at of his race. His opponents sought to the end of The Fire Next Time: paint her as the “angry,” unpatriotic black woman. After all, she was the one If we–and now I mean the relatively con- who brought him into Pastor Jeremiah scious whites and the relatively conscious Wright’s orbit. And then, in February blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or 2008, she made the comment: “For the create, the consciousness of the others– ½rst time in my adult lifetime, I am real- do not falter in our duty now, we may be ly proud of my country.” More precisely, able, handful that we are, to end the racial she said: nightmare and achieve our country and change the world.3 What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is mak- Cindy McCain, wife of Barack Obama’s ing a comeback. And let me tell you some- opponent, said she was genuinely offend- thing–for the ½rst time in my adult life- ed by Michelle Obama’s remarks. She be- time, I am really proud of my country. gan to pepper her own campaign speeches

134 Dædalus Winter 2011 with, “I have always been proud of my tinued to socialize in largely same-race Farah country.” What she and the press failed groups. Jasmine Grif½n to state is that the two women claimed Michelle Obama’s story is more ex- signi½cantly different historical relation- treme than what most of us experienced. ships to their nation. Cindy McCain is a When Obama, then Michelle Robinson, wealthy blonde heiress of a beer distrib- arrived on Princeton’s campus in Fall utorship. Michelle Obama is the daugh- 1981, she met one of her freshman room- ter of working-class African Americans mates, Catherine Donnelly, a native of and the descendant of slaves. Barack New Orleans who was shocked to learn Obama’s political opponents seized on that her roommate was black. Donnelly’s Michelle Obama’s statement as yet mother, Alice Brown, who had driven another example of her husband’s lack her daughter to campus, was “horri½ed.” of patriotism–an opportunity to ques- She went to the campus housing of½ce tion his relationship to America. Later, and demanded that her daughter be John McCain and Sarah Palin would pur- moved to another room. “I told them sue this path until it unleashed some we weren’t used to living with black of the most hateful and frightening in- people,” Brown recalled in 2008 to The stances of racism in recent memory. If Atlanta Journal-Constitution.4 There is Ivy League-educated, upper-middle-class no evidence that Obama was aware of professional Michelle Obama could ever Brown’s reaction; nonetheless, her col- have appeared militant or “threatening,” lege thesis focused on racial issues at then, indeed, we are far from a post- Princeton. The thesis itself would be- racial society. come the subject of controversy in campaign press coverage. In it, Obama had It may not be surprising that many written, “No matter how liberal and white people in the small towns and open-minded some of my White profes- rural areas of so-called middle America sors and classmates try to be toward me, had never encountered someone like I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; Michelle Obama. What is stunning is as if I really don’t belong. . . . Regardless how unfamiliar she appeared to main- of the circumstances under which I in- stream media and to many of her peers. teract with Whites at Princeton, it often Michelle Obama and her white female seems as if, to them, I will always be counterparts had attended similar col- Black ½rst and a student second.” Right- leges, worked in similar environments, wing pundits used the thesis as fodder and shopped in the same stores. Perhaps to accuse Obama of lacking gratitude this lack of familiarity is simply evidence and engaging in identity politics. They of just how segregated our generation suggested she was ungrateful for the remains in spite of the proximity in opportunities America had afforded her. which we live our lives. As was the case As the press pursued stories about with Mrs. Obama, few of us continued Michelle Obama’s days as a college stu- to room with our freshman roommates dent, the campaign commissioned gene- after our ½rst year of college. We chose alogical research as well. With the assis- instead to live with people of the same tance of the Obama campaign, The Wash- race. For the most part, we attended dif- ington Post reported Mrs. Obama’s pater- ferent parties and listened to different nal family tree, while The New York Times music. After graduation, we most likely covered the history on her mother’s side. attended different churches and con- Obama’s lineage demonstrated a trajec-

Dædalus Winter 2011 135 Michelle tory familiar to the descendants of U.S.- us, it’s our family, it’s that story, that’s Obama, born slaves: enslavement, Reconstruc- going to play a part in telling a bigger Beyoncé, Race & tion, and the Great Migration. On both story. . . . [It is a process of] uncovering History sides, researchers uncovered ancestors the shame, digging out the pride that is who had been enslaved as well as evidence part of that story–so that other folks feel of anonymous white ancestry. They found comfortable about embracing the beauty evidence of each generation’s efforts to and the tangled nature of the history of provide its children with education and this country.5 opportunity. They found family members Signi½cantly, the Post reported that some who escaped the strictures of the Jim of Obama’s relatives were reluctant to Crow South by migrating to Chicago. talk too much about or “delve too deep” Two ancestors in particular stand out: into the family’s past for fear “of stoking the one-armed boy, Fraser Robinson, and racial tensions and damaging”6 Barack the ½ve-year-old slave girl Melvinia. Fras- Obama’s chances of winning the election. er Robinson, Michelle Obama’s pater- Their fears were not unwarranted. nal great-grandfather, was born in 1884 Michelle Obama’s ancestry may have to a former slave. When Fraser was ten been a cause for an honest discussion years old his arm was amputated because about our nation’s painful but inspiring it had been broken by a tree limb. Francis history. Instead, for much of the cam- Nesmith, the white son of an overseer, paign, she was consistently criticized became fond of the young boy and em- from a number of quarters. She was too ployed him as a live-in servant. The one- aggressive, too angry; she was not suf½- armed young man taught himself to read ciently demure and adoring. Through- and write and became a shoemaker and out the campaign she was caricatured as a newspaper salesman. Less is known a Sapphire-like loud-mouth matriarch. about Obama’s maternal ancestor, Mel- The National Review published a cover vinia. She appears in the will of her master story calling her “Mrs. Grievance.” The as a “6 year old Negro girl” who would opposition website TheObamaFile.com be bequeathed to his daughter. By the seemed dedicated to portraying her as a time she turned ½fteen she gave birth to gun-wielding black militant. It wasn’t a child, the son of an unknown white fa- just right-wing bloggers who portrayed ther. Melvinia and the anonymous white her this way. The liberal New York Times man are the maternal great-great-great columnist Maureen Dowd launched a grandparents of Michelle Obama. continuous diatribe against her that From its construction to the servants continues to the present. In fact, it was who worked there, the history of the Dowd who unearthed the old problemat- White House has always been intertwined ic adjective emasculating in her descrip- with that of slavery. For the ½rst time, a tion of Michelle Obama. Other outlets descendant of the enslaved lives there as reported the existence of a mysterious ½rst lady. Michelle Obama sought to pre- recording of Obama using the epithet sent her family tree as evidence of a pain- “whitey” in a talk she gave at Trinity ful period of our nation’s past, a history United Church of Christ, in Chicago. with which we should be familiar so that When asked about these charges, she is we can move beyond it. She told the Post: reported to have denied ever using the It’s good to be a part of playing out history phrase, remarking, “It’s such a dated in this way. . . . It could be anybody. But it’s word. I’m much cooler than that.”7

136 Dædalus Winter 2011 When she and her husband celebrated a Beyoncé Giselle Knowles ½rst emerged Farah primary victory with a ½st-bump, a Fox as the lead singer of the successful 1990s Jasmine Grif½n News anchor called the gesture “a terror- girl group Destiny’s Child. From the be- ist ½st jab.”8 ginning, it was evident that she had been Focus groups run by the Obama cam- groomed as the group’s star and was paign found that, among white Ameri- poised to break out as a solo act. Her fa- cans, Michelle Obama was perceived as ther, Matthew Knowles, was the group’s “unpatriotic,” “entitled,” and “angry.” manager; her mother, Tina Knowles, In the weeks leading up to the 2008 Dem- their designer and fashion and hair styl- ocratic National Convention in Denver, ist. Beyoncé’s ½rst solo effort, Danger- the campaign worked hard to transform ously In Love, released in 2003, earned her image. The culmination of these ef- ½ve Grammy Awards. Since Destiny’s forts was her speech before the conven- Child disbanded in 2005, Knowles has tion on August 25, 2008. The speech was released two other solo albums, B’day preceded by a video, South Side Girl, which in 2006 and I Am . . . Sasha Fierce in 2008. documented her “American” story, fol- Each album has been a commercial lowed by a loving introduction by her and critical success. In addition, she brother. During her speech, she was ar- has starred in a number of ½lms, most ticulate and empathetic, patriotic and notably Dream Girls, in which she played visionary. She stressed education with- Deena Jones, a character inspired by out referring to her own elite education- Diana Ross, and Cadillac Records, in which al pedigree. She acknowledged her debt she played a young Etta James. Knowles to the civil rights and women’s move- has also launched her own clothing line, ments without lingering on these sub- House of Déreon, as well as a fragrance jects for too long. She was neither threat- line. She has endorsement deals with ening nor loud. She was soft and femi- L’Oréal, Tommy Hil½ger, Pepsi, and nine. She said, “I love this country.” By Emporio Armani. In 2008, she earned the end of her speech, when she was more than $87 million. In the course of joined by her daughters, she had won her career, she has sold more than 400 over a large number of Americans. Her million records. approval ratings soared. Knowles’s father is African American; As ½rst lady she is the most popular her mother is black Creole. Tina Knowles member of the Obama administration. was born in Galveston, Texas, to Agnes She is Mom-in-Chief, the fashion plate DeRouen, originally of Delcambre, Lou- whose every sartorial choice is scruti- isiana, and Lumis Albert Beyince of Ab- nized, and she has chosen a meaningful beville, Louisiana. After marrying, the and necessary cause: the ½ght against couple moved to Galveston. Both were childhood obesity. The minute she steps mixed race French-speaking Creoles out of this safe zone, however, charges claiming African, French, and Native of “entitlement” return. Thus, she suf- American heritage. While Beyoncé iden- fers the fate of many of her forbearers, ti½es as African American, she has always from Jacqueline Kennedy to Nancy claimed her Creole heritage, which has Reagan. However unlike them, she has been central to how she markets herself been very careful not to do anything and her music. that might portray her as the “black” Beyoncé follows in a long line of tal- ½rst lady. ented and beautiful black women enter-

Dædalus Winter 2011 137 Michelle tainers such as Josephine Baker, Lena Diana Ross is perhaps one of the ½rst Obama, Horne, and Dorothy Dandridge. Diana black women whose involvement with Beyoncé, Race & Ross and Tina Turner have also been in- a black male entrepreneur, Berry Gordy, History spirations. A powerful singer and equally resulted in full-scale superstardom. Fur- dynamic dancer, Beyoncé has cultivated thermore, Beyoncé’s music is not relegat- an image that alternates between the ed to urban radio. She can pack stadiums. good Southern girl; the couture glamour She brings different kinds of audiences of Baker, Horne, and Ross; and the high- to the movie theaters. She is beloved, ly sexualized, near-athletic dancing abil- and imitated, across race, class, sexuali- ity of Turner and, to a lesser degree, the ty, generation, and national borders. young Josephine Baker. Though she Beyoncé ½ts within the niche of the played Etta James, she shares little with fair-skinned, possibly mixed race, sexual the more “tragic” heroines of the tradi- beauty: a category that was born in the tion: James or James’s idol, Billie Holi- New World centuries ago. That she seems day. Nor does she share their artistry. neither angry nor tragic, that she did not Beyoncé occupies the status she does rise from material poverty, that she is because these pioneers carved a place never heard lamenting the lack of options for her in American popular culture. Like available to her because of her race: all them, she can sing, dance, and act, but make her a pop diva of and for our times. she is also able to reap the full rewards She represents a new America. She is not of her labor and to control fully the direc- of the Obama era; she helped usher it in. tion of her career. She writes most of her And yet Beyoncé is also deeply rooted own songs and has served as executive in aspects of American history. She calls producer or co-producer for a number of on and mobilizes both a personal and her ½lms. Unlike her predecessors, she collective racial past to market herself has not been forced to choose between to contemporary audiences worldwide. “respectable lady” and “bombshell.” Beyoncé’s very speci½c mixed race iden- She comfortably occupies both spaces, tity is entangled within the histories of having selected the alter ego Sasha Fierce New World racial slavery and the racial to express the latter. However, that she hierarchies that the institution bore. In has chosen two public personas to sepa- short, Beyoncé builds on the fantasy of rately convey her respectable and sexual the mulatta temptress, which has origins selves suggests that black women have in New World cultures from Brazil to yet to be granted the full privilege of ex- Cuba to the American South, especially pressing their sexual agency without pay- New Orleans. By highlighting her Lou- ing a price. On the other hand, Beyoncé’s isiana Creole ancestry, her fair skin, two personas signify an intelligent career blond weave, and hyper-sexualized per- choice; she may be able to age gracefully formance style, she has parlayed a cen- into the more elegant persona. The men turies-old stereotype into a lucrative behind Knowles–her father Matthew and dynamic career. (She has done so Knowles and her husband Jay-Z–are without the highly public meltdowns powerful, successful black men, but the of stars such as Whitney Houston and degree to which they manage her career Britney Spears.) Thus, she has opened is minimal; and she appears to have es- doors for other artists while reinforcing caped the need for white-male sponsor- certain notions–sometimes destructive ship. Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan –of what is desirable and beautiful. were both managed by black husbands;

138 Dædalus Winter 2011 The mixed race or ethnically ambigu- By 1897, the city had established two Farah ous woman is considered at once beau- vice districts, the most famous of which Jasmine Grif½n tiful because of her proximity to white- was Storyville. The fancy girl slave trade ness and sexual because of her black and the brothels were only two aspects “blood.” Historically, she was portrayed of what Long refers to as “the commer- as a temptress or a seductress in order cial sexual culture of New Orleans.” The to justify her sexual exploitation. Over institution of plaçage was not a form of time she has been the object of fantasy prostitution but represented “the formal for both black and white men, from the and sometimes even contractual arrange- slave South to contemporary Brazil. She ments between white men and women has even found her way into the panthe- of color . . . which spelled out the ½nan- on of new world deities in the forms of cial terms of the relationships.” These Erzulie in Haiti and New Orleans, Oshun relationships and the terms by which in Cuba, and Oxun in Brazil, all of whom they were governed were often negotiat- manifest as La Mulatta, a deity of beauty, ed by the young women’s mothers, who creativity, and all things sensual. presented their daughters at the famous Either Beyoncé herself or those who octoroon or quadroon balls. have styled her visual image are fully Beyoncé has presented an image that aware of this legacy. In early campaigns signi½es both the brothel and plaçage for her clothing line, in photographs traditions. In 2005, she and her mother that accompany B’day, and in the video launched their clothing line, House of for “Déjà Vu,” the ½rst single released Déreon, inspired by her seamstress from that album, Beyoncé is portrayed grandmother, Agnes DeRouen. In the as a ½gure in two separate but related advertising campaign, Beyoncé was fea- narratives that derive from speci½c as- tured, with her mother in a supporting pects of the histories cited above: the role as either a seamstress providing al- “fancy girl” trade of antebellum New terations or a beloved mother who of- Orleans, which morphed into the Story- fers an admiring glance or affectionate ville Brothels featuring “quadroon” and touch. In a few ads, Tina Knowles ap- “octoroon” women in the late nine- pears literally to present her daughter teenth century; and free women of col- for the viewer’s admiration and con- or in Louisiana involved with the institu- sumption. In one, both women wear tion of plaçage, a form of concubinage. evening gowns. In another, Beyoncé New Orleans has long been known for stands in front of a full length mirror its permissive interracial sexual culture. in satin and lace lingerie, or in a slip or The city’s slave market was among the slip-dress, while her mother can be seen nation’s largest and was characterized in the mirror’s reflection. All photo- by its fancy girl trade, which sold mixed graphs are set in a boudoir or a lushly race women into various forms of sex designed seamstress studio, and each slavery. Historian Alecia P. Long notes has a photograph of the Creole matri- that following the Civil War, “[t]he city arch in gilded frame. The ad campaign ceased to be the nation’s largest slave for Spring 2010 featured a portrait of market and most permissive port. In- Beyoncé, bare shouldered and with her stead, it became a tourist destination head wrapped elaborately in blue and that encouraged and facilitated indul- green silk. The head wrap was adorned gence, especially in prostitution and with a huge broach made of green stones, sex across the color line.”9 an image that recalled the tignons worn

Dædalus Winter 2011 139 Michelle by Creoles of color in New Orleans. The number of mixed race women who par- Obama, head wrap, which resembles a West Afri- layed both concubinage and prostitution Beyoncé, Race & can gele, was worn by free women of col- into economic independence, property History or in New Orleans during the Spanish ownership, and entrepreneurship. A se- colonial period and later. In 1785, tignon lect few became highly successful mad- laws were passed to enforce a dress code ams, and an even greater number were for gens de couleur, especially women, as successful seamstresses and hairdressers. a means of distinguishing them from The high degree of black property own- white women. The women of color ri- ership in New Orleans has been attrib- valed white women in fashion, style, uted to the estates left by mixed race and beauty. Once the laws forced wom- foremothers. Certainly, Beyoncé earned en of color and black women to cover her wealth with hard work and virtuosic their heads, the Creoles created highly talent. Nonetheless, the marketing of stylized head wraps, decorating their that talent via a visual vocabulary that tignons with jewels, feathers, ribbons, references commercial sexual culture and other embellishments in order to has helped ensure her success. Most of distinguish their class standing. Beyoncé’s audience, consumers of her If the ads for House of Déreon suggest clothing and music, are unaware of the plaçage, then the photos that accom- history behind the images. For her styl- pany B’day and the video for “Déjà Vu” ists, that particular history may be part are more explicit in their association. of an endless source of cultural refer- In them Beyoncé wears a series of cos- ences that they can refer to for inspira- tumes, almost all of which resemble tion. What is signi½cant is the way that sexual costumes–from dominatrix to this particular set of images resonates French maid. The most obvious ½nds with an important part of our nation’s her walking down a railroad track clad past. While any number of young wom- in a ruffled white cotton romper: a com- en performers may choose to market bination of blues singer Robert Johnson themselves in similarly sexualized roles, at the crossroad and photographer E. J. Beyoncé’s lineage signi½es a particular Bellocq’s Storyville whores. Bellocq was kind of relationship to the images of best known for his images of Storyville’s herself that she projects. octoroon prostitutes. His photos inspired Beyoncé’s enormous success heralds the 1978 ½lm about child prostitution in an America where race no longer neces- New Orleans, Pretty Baby, starring Brooke sarily bars achievement but where old Shields, as well as Michael Ondaatje’s mythologies continue to resonate and 1976 novel about mythical New Orleans sell. Furthermore, if she signals the dawn trumpeter Buddy Bolden, Coming through of a new day in which mixed race heri- Slaughter. The “Déjà Vu” video features tage is valorized, a notion of a post-ra- Beyoncé as a sex-crazed woman, dancing cial culture does not necessarily follow. in the wilderness or alternately lying se- The veneration of mixed race identity ductively across velvet couches. At one may challenge white supremacist hierar- point she appears poised to perform fel- chies, but it can also accommodate a con- latio on her partner, Jay-Z. tinued degradation of blackness. One What is important here is the way that need only study the history of mixed Beyoncé’s image is grounded at the nex- race societies such as Brazil and the Do- us of race, sex, and commerce. Signi½- minican Republic, where black people cantly, New Orleans history boasts a still sit at the bottom of the racial hierar-

140 Dædalus Winter 2011 chy. Within the boundaries of the United ance is more tenuous. She occupies a Farah States, we continue to live in a culture thoroughly new role for black women Jasmine Grif½n that devalues blackness, as is evident in a and thus walks a very ½ne line; she must variety of contexts, from children’s pref- exercise discretion lest she express too erence for white dolls, to the value placed ½rm an opinion or appear too con½dent. on white and mixed race adoptees versus The mainstream acceptance of talented that placed on black children, to the pro- black individuals is not without signi½- found racial disparities that continue to cance. That blackness is relegated to the plague black communities nationwide. super½cial or the sexual suggests a continued devaluation of black people, their The emergence and acceptance of history, and their experiences. Never- Michelle Obama and Beyoncé as em- theless, images of Michelle Obama and bodiments of American womanhood Beyoncé are available to all our nation’s indeed signal a new racial era for our girls; that they may now aspire to the nation. Beyoncé has been easier for the previously unimagined heights occu- public to accept because she is an enter- pied by their idols is perhaps the great- tainer, a long-accepted role for black est indication of our nation’s progress. women. As a sex symbol, moreover, she Unfettered access to these heights will does not present a threat to established be the true test of our post-racial future. categories. However, Obama’s accept-

endnotes 1 Roy L. Brooks, Racial Justice in the Age of Obama (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), 12. 2 Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 11. 3 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Vintage, 1993), 105. 4 Brian Feagans, “Georgian Recalls Rooming with Michelle Obama,” The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, April 13, 2008. 5 Shailagh Murray, “A Family Tree Rooted in American Soil: Michelle Obama Learns About Her Slave Ancestors, Herself and Her Country,” The Washington Post, October 2, 2008. 6 Ibid. 7 John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (New York: Harper, 2010), 253. 8 “Fox Anchor Calls Obama Fist Pound A ‘Terrorist Fist Jab,’” The Huf½ngton Post, June 9, 2008, http://www.huf½ngtonpost.com/2008/06/09/fox-anchor-calls-obama-½_n_106027 .html. 9 Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865–1929 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 1.

Dædalus Winter 2011 141 “Obligations to Negroes who would be kin if they were not Negro”

Werner Sollors

At the present moment there is no one dominant note in Negro literary expression. As the Negro merges into the main stream of American life, there might result actually a disappearance of Negro literature as such. If that happens, it will mean that those conditions of life that formerly de½ned what was “Negro” have ceased to exist, and it implies that Negroes are Negroes because they are treated as Negroes. [ . . . ] If the expression of the American Negro should take a sharp turn toward strictly racial themes, then you will know by that token that we are suffering our old and ancient agonies at the hands of our white American neighbors. If, however, our expression broadens, assumes the common themes and burdens of literary expression which are the heritage of all men, then by that token you will know that a humane attitude prevails in America WERNER SOLLORS, a Fellow towards us. And a gain in humaneness in America of the American Academy since is a gain in humaneness for us all. When that day 2001, is the Henry B. and Anne M. comes, there will exist one more proof of the one- Cabot Professor of English Litera- ness of man, of the basic unity of human life on ture and Professor of African and this earth. African American Studies at Har- vard University. His publications –Richard Wright, “The Literature of the Negro 1 include Ethnic Modernism (2008) in the United States” (1957) and Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997). He edited A New Richard Wright, who died in Paris in 1960, was Literary History of America (with not quoted or mentioned in the special issues of Greil Marcus, 2009). Dædalus on “The Negro American” in 1965 and

142 Dædalus Winter 2011 1966. However, many contributors to If the Negro does not wear one of the Werner the issues shared Wright’s interest in many uniforms of deference or of pov- Sollors confronting the conditions that have erty or play some role in which we ex- de½ned the lives of American Negroes pect Negroes to appear, the Negro-ness and have caused them to suffer agonies might not be noticed. On the other hand, at the hands of their white neighbors.2 there might be situations in which it Wright’s forward-looking comment, would be doubly noticed. Imagine a his imagining of a different and per- handsomely purple-black Negro wom- haps better future, anticipated a possi- an in a decolleté white gown at the ball ble exhaustion of the African Ameri- celebrating her husband’s inauguration can narrative,3 and the Dædalus contrib- as President of the United States.6 utors likewise made cautious predic- Hughes thought about Negroes “in tions for the future. Returning to those prestigeful positions” in order to con- prophecies from several decades ago template such questions as “does the makes for a fascinating enterprise. of½ce outshine race or does race dim The most intriguing prophet from the the luster of the of½ce?” He imagined Dædalus issues was Everett C. Hughes, the broader possibility that in the fu- whose essay “Anomalies and Projections” ture there might be “the full extension focused on the disturbance that racial of the American bilateral kinship sys- distinctions have created in the Ameri- tem to include mixed couples and can kinship system.4 At the time Hughes their in-laws on both sides.” Although was writing, people from other races Hughes was writing two years before could not be or become white people’s Loving v. Virginia, he ventured the claim, kinfolk, and the proverbial Negro who “Perhaps there will come to be cases married a white man’s sister would not where mixed couples and their chil- only sever the kin relationship between dren will be able to lead normal lives, brother and sister, but would also bring with real uncles and aunts and cous- shame upon the white man that would ins on both sides.”7 justify violence, even to the point of killing the Negro. As Hughes explained, “there is a great moral fault–in the The parallel between Hughes’s hypo- geological sense, and let us not quibble thetical scenario and Barack Obama’s about the other sense–in American presidential campaign, election, inau- society when it comes to obligations guration, and family history is dif½cult to Negroes who would be kin if they to ignore. In his famous “race” speech, were not Negro.” Hence, race could delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, “mean the difference between friend 2008, then-candidate Obama reiterat- and enemy, one’s own to be trusted ed his place within a multigenerational or outsider to be feared, between life family network: and death.”5 No wonder the white eye I am the son of a black man from Kenya was trained to detect racial difference, and a white woman from Kansas. I was though its ability to do so could vary raised with the help of a white grandfa- in certain circumstances. ther who survived a Depression to serve Hughes wrote his essay in 1965, but in Patton’s Army during World War II his examples surprise the reader still and a white grandmother who worked today: on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leav-

Dædalus Winter 2011 143 “Obliga- enworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone Obama, the ½rst lady.” The article con- tions to to some of the best schools in America cludes that this genealogy “for the ½rst Negroes who would and lived in one of the world’s poorest time fully connects the ½rst African- be kin if nations. American ½rst lady to the history of they were slavery, tracing their ½ve-generation not Negro” Positioning himself as an ideal media- journey from bondage to a front-row tor between races, continents, and class- seat to the presidency.”10 Hughes’s es precisely because of his interracial fam- observations about American society ily background, he added his marriage to and its “obligations to Negroes who the story: “I am married to a black Ameri- would be kin if they were not Negro” can who carries within her the blood of would seem to apply very directly to slaves and slave owners–an inheritance the white and the non-white branch- we pass on to our two precious daugh- es of the ½rst lady’s family. ters.” Obama employed his complex fam- Of course, it was the inauguration ball ily story not only to suggest harmonious that offered the uncannily literal ful½ll- American fusion (“it is a story that has ment of Hughes’s prophecy. Michelle seared into my genetic makeup the idea Obama’s white dress received much that this nation is more than the sum of media attention on its own: New York its parts–that out of many, we are truly Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn even one”) but also to stress that having both called it “a bit revealing.”11 black and white relatives gives him a Though it lacks an inaugural ball scene, more sober perspective on what is secret- best-selling writer Irving Wallace’s 1964 ly felt on both sides of the color line. He novel The Man, which imagines the ½rst pledged that his presidency would help black president, perhaps inspired Hughes. overcome this racial “stalemate,” and he (When Obama was inaugurated, Wal- offered unusually candid critical com- lace’s son David Wallechinsky reminded ments to both blacks and whites in an the public of his father’s novel, the ½rst effort to reach for this goal and heal old American novel about a black president; racial wounds.8 however, the book seems to have been After the inauguration, The New York largely forgotten.12) In The Man, Presi- Times (with the help of genealogist Megan dent Douglass Dilman is not elected but Smolenyak) researched Michelle Obama’s ascends to his of½ce as pro tempore Senate ancestry, following up on Obama’s hint leader after the president and vice presi- that his wife carries “the blood of slaves dent die in an accident abroad. Wallace and slave owners.” Illustrated with an calls attention to the signi½cance of Dil- interactive family tree,9 the Times story man’s ½rst name with an epigraph by mentions a “union, consummated some Frederick Douglass.13 Dilman’s late-night two years before the Civil War,” repre- swearing-in ceremony inspires newspa- senting “the origins of a family line that per headlines ranging from sensational- would extend from rural Georgia, to Bir- ism to segregationism to racial pride: mingham, Ala., to Chicago and, ½nally, to the White House. Melvinia Shields, the nation gasps! a negro is presi- enslaved and illiterate young girl [‘per- dent of the usa! haps as young as 15,’ we are told elsewhere . . . in the story], and the unknown white negro senator made chief man who impregnated her are the great- executive by fluke; judiciary great-great-grandparents of Michelle committee meets to debate

144 Dædalus Winter 2011 constitutionality; citizens into a utopia; that bigotry, racism, and Werner protest “unfair” rule of major- struggles over resources and for power Sollors ity by minority; representative will remain with us. Yet he concludes on miller predicts “dissension, the hopeful note that Friday’s/Obama’s disunity, violence” “talent is the ability to overcome the . . . paralysis induced by multiple conflict- hallelujah! equal rights ing narratives and selves by ½nding and at last! colored president of inventing new connections between senate becomes president of us them.”16 Ishmael Reed, who comment- all! world applauds true ed critically on the public responses “to democracy! the election of the ½rst Celtic-African- American president,” saw a sharp con- Wallace’s narrator mediates these var- trast between a celebratory façade and ied reactions; he comments: “Several the media’s continued practice of ignor- things were evident at once. To no one ing black voices: “On the day after the would he be simply a public servant who, election the New York Times announced by the law of succession, had become in its headline that Obama’s election President of the United States. To both had broken a barrier, yet on the edito- sides, and the middle, too, he would rial page all of the poets who were invit- be the ‘Negro’ who had become Presi- ed to chime in were white. Some bar- 14 dent.” riers remain.”17 Wallace’s narrator reminds us of the question Hughes raises in his Dædalus es- What relevance does Richard Wright’s say, as well as how it might apply to the “The Literature of the Negro in the Unit- present: that is, does President Obama’s ed States” have for contemporary Afri- of½ce outshine race, or is the country di- can American literature?18 What themes vided between people who think it does emerge in literary works by young au- and others still preoccupied with his an- thors who achieved ½rst recognition in cestry? Contemporary responses to this the twenty-½rst century, who have Face- question vary from high optimism to book sites and are Internet savvy? Do deep skepticism. In “Our Man Obama: their works conform to one or the other The Post-Imperial Presidency,” the Viet- of Wright’s choices? Do poetry, drama, namese American essayist Andrew Lam and ½ction in “the age of Obama” en- views Obama’s election as a boost for a gage with some semblance of Everett multicultural America because it sym- Hughes’s notion of extended kinship? bolically strengthened the culturally Younger contemporary African Ameri- subservient role Friday plays to Robin- can writers address race in many differ- son Crusoe. The victory opened “the ent ways in their works. Amina Gautier, door wider to that growing public space a ½ction writer in her early thirties, uses in which Americans with mixed back- the thwarted fantasy of a happy extend- ground and complicated biographies– ed family gathering for Thanksgiving to Latino Muslims, black Buddhists, gay explore themes that transcend race. In Korean Jews, mixed race children–can her melancholy short story “Been Mean- celebrate and embrace their multiple 19 15 ing to Say” (2008), she follows the re- narratives with audacity.” Lam tem- cently widowed grandfather Leslie Sin- pers his enthusiasm when he adds that, gleton, his surname a signal of his lone- with the election, America has not moved liness. His younger white neighbor, Joey

Dædalus Winter 2011 145 “Obliga- Leibert, is about to sell his house, which is men.” Narrative subtlety and the full tions to semi-attached to Leslie’s but which Les- development of Leslie Singleton’s char- Negroes who would lie has never seen from the inside. And acter carry the story, but there is little ex- be kin if though Leslie tells Joey that his daughter, ternal action, no dramatic turning point they were not Negro” Carole, his son-in-law, Martin, and his or conflict, no epiphany. eight-year-old grandson, Amir, are all The same is true of Gautier’s “Pan is coming for Thanksgiving, his false hope Dead” (2006), a short story about Blue, becomes excruciatingly evident. Carole, a runaway dad who comes back to his an assistant professor whom the reader wife, son, and stepdaughter (who nar- encounters only through cell phone calls, rates the story) after a long absence. seems distant from her father. Leslie, ex- Blue is still charismatic, but he is also hibiting the ½rst signs of senility, desper- still a junkie and before long he leaves ately misses his late wife, Iphigenia, and the family once again. Though pub- does not seem to want to pronounce his lished two years before Obama’s elec- grandson’s Arabic name: Leslie thinks of tion, one moment in the story looks it as “mumbo jumbo.” When a black fam- different now from the way it might ily arrives on Thanksgiving to look at the have in 2006. The narrator’s brother Leiberts’ house, Leslie feels strongly that says to her, “I don’t want to be a doc- they should not buy a house for their tor. [. . .] But I could be a lawyer. Most children: “They will grow up and they presidents are lawyers ½rst.” She re- will leave it. They will leave you,” he feels sponds: “‘Boy, you can’t be president.’ like saying to them.20 The turkey is in This much I knew. Everyone knew that the oven, underdone, but Mr. Singleton the president was always white and spends the holiday alone seated in front never from Brooklyn.”22 Four years of the television with his remote control. later, Gautier’s Facebook pro½le lists “Been Meaning to Say” is a short story her as a member of the “We Love of manners in which race plays no dom- Michelle Obama!!!!” group.23 inant or plot-constitutive role. Perhaps it does explain why Singleton has never A tragic moment of high tension is seen his closest neighbor’s house from the background to Heidi W. Durrow’s the inside, but that might also be due to ½rst novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Singleton’s character. While Joey is de- (2010).24 Durrow, born in 1969, was scribed as a “lanky white man,” and the inspired by Nella Larsen, whose words Leiberts are identi½ed as “the last white serve as an epigraph for the novel. Like family to move off the block,” Singleton Larsen, both Durrow and her protago- is never given a racial label.21 There are nist, Rachel, are biracial Danish-African speci½c references to African American American ½gures.25 Rachel’s mother naming practices from the generation of Nella, whom she calls “Mor,” is Dan- Eunettas and Anna Maes to that of Sin- ish; Rachel’s grandmother is black; her gleton’s grandson, whose Arabic name father Roger is a black gi (her parents means prince or ruler, as Carole tells her met at an army base in Germany); and father on the phone. Yet the themes of Rachel is biracial. At one point in the intergenerational and neighborly alien- novel, Rachel, who now lives with her ation, of an aging man’s grief and loneli- paternal grandmother, receives a pack- ness, belong to Richard Wright’s “com- age with two books that symbolize her mon themes and burdens of literary situation: Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, expression which are the heritage of all White Masks and Hans Christian Ander-

146 Dædalus Winter 2011 sen’s fairy tales. As the form of the nov- The novel moves on to other external Werner el indicates, William Faulkner’s experi- perspectives and glimpses of the more Sollors ments with point of view in The Sound distant past (there was an earlier child, and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying Charles, who died; Rachel knew nothing (1930), as well as Toni Morrison’s re- of him) and the later present (Rachel is construction of a traumatic moment becoming a woman). Finally, Durrow of flying in Song of Solomon (1977), un- confronts the event through Nella’s and doubtedly also influenced Durrow. Rachel’s own voices. Nella claims the The two-part novel is divided into for- children as her own against other peo- ty-four sections, nineteen of which are ple’s (and especially her white boyfriend told in the ½rst-person present tense by Doug’s) racist perceptions: “They’re Rachel, seven in a more staccato ½rst- mine. If people can’t see it–how can I person present by her mother Nella, keep them safe? . . . They will go where I two in the third-person past tense from go.” Rachel recounts the jump from the her father Roger’s point of view, and the rooftop more fully: “I saw above me and others by friends and neighbors, also in around, beyond the day’s fog. I felt my cells the third-person past tense. This chorus expanding into space and felt larger than of voices surrounding the central pres- ever before. And then I met the ground.”27 ence of Rachel and her mother slowly In a Readers’ Guide found on her web- reveals and offers various attempts to site, Durrow raises the question, “Do understand, from different points of you think that in the age of Obama, bi- view, the terrible moment that is the racial/bicultural people will continue core of the novel: when the deeply de- to experience the same kinds of stereo- pressed Nella takes her three children, types and stigma that Rachel did?”28 Robbie, Ariel, and Rachel, and jumps The Girl Who Fell from the Sky thematizes off the rooftop with them in an act of not only the still common misperception utter despair. Only Rachel survives. A that a white mother of mixed-race chil- ½rst glimpse of the story comes through dren must be an adoptive parent, but the eyes of a little boy, Jamie, who loves also Rachel’s sense of biracial and semi- bird-watching and thinks at ½rst that he Danish estrangement in her grandmoth- sees birds when he witnesses the event: er’s black world. Though the novel may ultimately ½nd its source of horror in a When he ½nally reached the courtyard, good mother’s growing mental distur- he saw that his bird was not a bird at bance more than in social conditions or all. His bird was a boy and a girl and a race relations, there is little hope here mother and a child. that Hughes’s American problem of The mother, the girl, the child. They those “who would be kin if they were looked like they were sleeping, eyes not Negro” has reached a happy resolu- closed, listless. The baby was still in tion in 2010. Yet the horrifying maternal her mother’s arms, a gray sticky por- act that has de½ned Rachel’s life has ridge pouring from the underside of also given her–she who was not meant her head. The girl was heaped on top to have a future–a new life in which of the boy’s body, a bloody helpless pil- she ½nally is able to express under- low. And yet there was an old mattress, standing and love of her mother. doughy from rain, just ten feet from the bird-boy’s right arm, which was folded mong young playwrights who like a wing beneath him.26 A emerged in the ½rst decade of the

Dædalus Winter 2011 147 “Obliga- twenty-½rst century, Thomas Bradshaw they learned their place in the South tions to stands out for his satirical edge and his again!” Later, the play juxtaposes Thur- Negroes who would broad, poster-like employment of the mond’s own segregationist statements be kin if repertoire of American racial histories –“We have segregation because God they were not Negro” and sexual fantasies in an aggressive doesn’t want blacks and whites to mix” black-humor mode that makes audi- –with his daughter’s sad and critical ences initially think they are watching observation: a comedy.29 Born in 1980 in New Jersey, You become a different person when you Bradshaw wanted to go beyond the mid- stand in front of cheering crowds giving century protest tradition: campaign speeches. You’re unrecogniz- There’s the black literature of the ’40s, able to me. You act and speak completely ’50s and ’60s–white oppression is bad, different from the man I know. The man I reparations, apologizing. It was aware- know is loving and wonderful to me, the ness building, really. That work was man on stage speaks venomously of my really necessary and important. . . . But kind. It makes me wonder which is the there hasn’t been much work done since real you or [if] there’s a real you.32 then. What is a modern presentation of In a conversation between Strom and race? What kind of issues do upper mid- his father, Bradshaw reveals how the dle class blacks have to deal with? After public rhetoric against “nigger-loving” you assimilate into the mainstream, (a phrase employed by both men) is what are the issues?30 only the flipside of what Strom’s father His ironically titled play Strom Thur- calls “a right of passage for most south- mond Is Not a Racist (2007)31 addresses ern gentlemen.” His father says: “We the paradox that, at the core of racial learn about women from the promiscu- segregation, there was also miscegena- ous nigress. They tantalize us. There’s tion. The thinly veiled hypocrisy in the something irresistible about them. We case of South Carolina Senator Strom demonize them by day and crawl into Thurmond’s lifelong but secretive sup- their beds at night.” Strom responds: port for his and Carrie Butler’s illegiti- “But we never let the truth be known. mate biracial daughter, Essie Mae Wash- It’s our open secret.” The play ends ington-Williams, provides the source with Essie Mae’s funeral eulogy for material for the play. Bradshaw follows her father, which she concludes with, the story chronologically, from Thur- “I’m going to miss you daddy.”33 In mond’s seduction of the sixteen-year- explicitly naming the open secret and old Carrie to the spiriting away of their ending with the word “daddy,” Strom child through various encounters he has Thurmond Is Not a Racist crisply illumi- with his daughter later on, all while his nates Everett Hughes’s notion of un- political career as a segregationist and met white American “obligations to opponent of civil rights unfolds. This Negroes who would be kin if they path gives Bradshaw the opportunity to were not Negro.” contrast Thurmond’s infatuation–he Racist obstacles to public recognition recites Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” to and acceptance of interracial kinship Carrie–with his prayers for purity and take center stage as well in Bradshaw’s his wish to please his excessively racist lurid play Cleansed. While wearing a Klan father, who says such things as, “We mask her white grandmother gave her, had to lynch a thousand Niggers before Lauraul, a mixed-race daughter who

148 Dædalus Winter 2011 wishes to be white, kills her black fa- Hayes likes to compose pecha kucha Werner ther, a heart surgeon, for having con- poems, a word he explains as “a Japa- Sollors taminated her white blood. This play nese adaptation/loanword of the word is a ritual-like revision of black politi- picture, pronounced in three syllables, cal drama in the wake of the 1960s, in like ‘pe-chack-cha.’”36 This format, which a daughter might kill her father Hayes writes, is derived from Japanese for being a sell-out Negro according business presentations of twenty con- to her newly acquired revolutionary nected images of twenty seconds each. black nationalist views (as was the case Perfect for polished cycles or sequences with M’Balia in Richard Wesley’s Black of poems, the PowerPoint model has Terror of 1971). But in the twenty-½rst inspired a highly contemporary, non- century of Cleansed, the confused bi- traditional poetic genre that is tech- racial daughter is accepted into a white nology-based and removed from any supremacist group because she hates claims of American or African Ameri- Negroes even more than the whites do. can authenticity. In one twenty-slide In Bradshaw’s theatrical world, an ex- poetic sequence, titled “For Brothers of tended interracial family sitting down to the Dragon,” Hayes imagined Malcolm a happy Thanksgiving dinner in a post- X’s brothers on the day Malcolm was racial setting seems unthinkable. In a buried; he includes such self-reflexive New Yorker review, Hilton Als con½rms slides as: the sense that Bradshaw’s plays “take a [how fiction functions] sharp turn toward strictly racial themes” (in Richard Wright’s formula). “It’s However else ½ction functions, it ½lls fairly easy to get beyond Bradshaw’s you with the sound purposefully thin surfaces,” Als writes, of crows chirping, alive alive alive. But “unless, of course, you’re unwilling to that’s temporary too. look at what contorts all America: rac- Tell my story, begs the past, as if it was ism, and the bullshit notion that it a prayer doesn’t affect our view of sex and love for an imagined life or a life that’s bet- 37 in a so-called post-racial country.”34 ter than the life you live. “What if blackness is a fad?” Hayes Born in South Carolina in 1971, the asks in “[malediction],” a slide of poet Terrance Hayes engages oblique- another pecha kucha with the general ly and self-reflexively with the past as title, “Arbor for Butch.” It is inspired shaped by the civil rights movement, by the African American artist Martin and he does so while experimenting in Puryear, the titles of whose works serve new poetic forms and with an impres- as headings for each one of the pecha sive cultural openness. In his collection kucha. Hayes suggests readers search of poems Lighthead (2010), he ½nds in- online for these headings and look at spiration in a mélange of greats: from the related images. A photograph of David Bowie, Fela Kuti, and Etta James Puryear’s sculpture Malediction38 is thus to Gwendolyn Brooks, Wallace Stevens, to be imagined as the inter-artistic back- and Elizabeth Alexander (who received ground of Hayes’s quatrain that con- broader international attention for her tinues, after his opening question, with inauguration poem for Barack Obama) “Dear Negritude, I live as you live, / 35 to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. waiting to be better than I am.”39

Dædalus Winter 2011 149 “Obliga- Self-reflexive and ironic uneasiness world in the age of Obama. Yet perhaps tions to also characterizes his poem “The Avo- there never was only one dominant Afri- Negroes who would cado,” a sustained conceit on the lega- can American narrative, for writers from be kin if cy of civil rights and black nationalist Phillis Wheatley and Frank Webb to they were not Negro” actions. The poem casts the avocado Albert Murray and Andrea Lee have as the ideal emblem for a hypothetical written about many themes besides abolitionist flag: race–though racial themes may have been what their readers were looking “In 1971, drunk on the sweet, sweet juice for most often. of revolution, Ironically, no writer makes that more a crew of us marched into the president’s apparent than Richard Wright. Although of½ce with a list his most frequently read and taught of demands,” the black man tells us at the works emphasize the prototypical Afri- February luncheon, can American narrative of victimiza- and I’m pretending I haven’t heard this tion, from the legacy of slavery to the one before as I eye ethics of living Jim Crow, he turned black tortillas on a red plate beside a big away from writing such black proletar- green bowl ian protest poems as “I have seen black of guacamole made from the whipped, hands” and instead experimented with battered remains free-floating and untitled haikus that of several harmless former avocados.40 might be of interest to Terrance Hayes: Hayes articulates the distance between for example, “Crying and crying, / Me- the red, black, and green of the black na- lodious strings of geese / Passing a grave- tionalist flag and the commodi½cation of yard” or “Holding too much rain, / The that historical moment, with its sense of tulip stoops and spills it, / Then straight- political advocacy (a word related to avo- ens again.” Wright also shifted from cado) for such goals as reparations, into imagining socially determined and con- the “money-colored flesh of the avoca- strained black characters, as in Uncle do.” The transformation of the avocado Tom’s Children and Native Son, to focus- into guacamole provides a visual analo- ing on a much broader range of human gy to a recounting of the past that is so motivation and psychology in The Out- palatable and trite that the listener has sider and Savage Holiday; he expanded to pretend not to have heard the story from the legacy of American history before. in 12 Million Black Voices to take on truly global concerns with tradition and “A t the present moment there is no one modernity, decolonization, and the dominant note in Negro literary expres- emergence of a Third World voice in sion”: Richard Wright’s comment from Pagan Spain, Black Power, and The Color 1957 echoes still today. Reading Amina Curtain.41 Wright’s own willingness to Gautier, Heidi Durrow, Thomas Brad- address “strictly racial themes” while shaw, and Terrance Hayes, one encoun- also searching for “the common themes ters rather heterogeneous suggestions and burdens of literary expression which about possible story lines for African are the heritage of all” is worth remem- American literature, as well as diverse bering, for writers and readers alike, approaches to the question whether the in a world that seems to be post-racial country is moving toward a post-racial and racial at the same time.42

150 Dædalus Winter 2011 endnotes Werner Sollors 1 Richard Wright, White Man, Listen! (1957; repr., Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1964), 104–105. 2 Wright’s spirit surely was present in the Dædalus issues–in comments on Negroes and Communism in the 1930s; in discussions of the importance of decolonization in the Third World for African American civil rights in the 1950s; and in an essay by St. Clair Drake and references to Horace Cayton, whose joint study Black Metropolis Wright had written an introduction for in 1945. Furthermore, the African American writers who were cited in the issues, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, started their careers under the wings of the older Wright. 3 See Charles Johnson, “The End of the Black American Narrative,” American Scholar 77 (3) (Summer 2008); http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-end-of-the-black-american -narrative/ (accessed March 24, 2009). 4 The essay was originally published in Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 1133–1147. I quote from the expanded paperback reprint, The Negro American, ed. Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). Hughes also reprinted his essay in The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971). 5 The Negro American, ed. Parsons and Clark, 698, 700. 6 Skeptics may wish to consult the original passage in the Dædalus issue, at page 1139; quote here taken from The Negro American, ed. Parsons and Clark, 700. See also Hughes’s interventions in the discussions of the papers included in Dædalus 95 (1) (Winter 1966): 287–441. No one seems to have asked a question about this passage in Hughes’s essay from the ½rst Dædalus issue, though Hughes reiterated his reflections on American kinship in the second issue; see page 352. 7 The Negro American, ed. Parsons and Clark, 700, 705–706. 8 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88478467 (accessed February 28, 2010). 9 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/08/us/politics/20091008-obama -family-tree.html (accessed February 28, 2010). 10 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/politics/08genealogy.html?_r=1 (accessed February 28, 2010). 11 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/21/us/politics/20090121-michelle -audioss/index.html (accessed February 28, 2010). 12 http://www.huf½ngtonpost.com/david-wallechinsky/flashback-the-½rst -black_b_159301.html (accessed May 7, 2010). 13 Irving Wallace, The Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), unpaginated front matter. I do not know of a novel by an African American author that anticipated the emergence of a black president. 14 Ibid., 62–63. 15 Andrew Lam, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 2010), 115; a slightly different version of the essay is available at http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id =e96674231b31155c9ae5adeca7c1ec08 (accessed October 24, 2010). 16 Ibid., 121. 17 Ishmael Reed, Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers (Montreal, Québec: Baraka Books, 2010), 75, 80; cited from page proofs.

Dædalus Winter 2011 151 “Obliga- 18 Two ½rst novels from the twenty-½rst century should also be mentioned. Edward P. tions to Jones’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Known World (New York: Amistad, 2003) is a Negroes sweeping historical novel set in slavery-time Virginia that untypically represents who would slaveholding blacks. Michael Thomas’s Man Gone Down (New York: Black Cat, 2007), be kin if impac they were the winner of the International Dublin/ Literary Award and one of The New not Negro” York Times’s “Top Ten Best Books of 2007,” is a breezy ½rst-person singular account narrated by an interracially married black father living in Brooklyn who confronts his crisis-ridden past and present in four intense days. 19 Originally published in the Southwest Review (2008): 287–297, “Been Meaning to Say” was included in Gerald Early and Nikki Giovanni, eds., Best African American Fiction 2010 (New York: One World, 2010), 106–116, which is the source used for the quotations here. 20 Gautier, “Been Meaning to Say,” in Best African American Fiction 2010, ed. Early and Giovanni, 109, 115. 21 Ibid., 106, 110. 22 Amina Gautier, “Pan is Dead,” Chattahoochie Review (Fall 2006): 6; http://www.gpc .edu/~gpccr/gautier.php (accessed February 26, 2010). 23 http://www.facebook.com/people/Amina-Gautier/1339033752 (accessed May 15, 2010). 24 Heidi W. Durrow, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010). 25 Heidi W. Durrow, “Dear Ms. Larsen, There’s a Mirror Looking Back,” pms–poem– memory–story 8 (2008): 101–109. 26 Durrow, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, 19–20. 27 Ibid., 247, 238. 28 http://heidiwdurrow.com/readers-guide/ (accessed May 10, 2010). 29 This aspect of Bradshaw’s work has af½nities with the raucously irreverent tradition Glenda R. Carpio has delineated and analyzed in her book Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 30 http://www.brooklynrail.org/2006/12/theater/pushing-buttons-an (accessed May 14, 2010). 31 Thomas Bradshaw, Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist and Cleansed (New York: Samuel French, 2007). 32 Ibid., 20, 26, 29. 33 Ibid., 32, 39. 34 http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2009/09/28/090928gonb _GOAT_notebook_als#ixzz0o1GF6dV6 (accessed May 15, 2010). 35 Terrance Hayes, Lighthead (New York: Penguin, 2010). See also http://www.pbs.org/ newshour/video/module.html?mod=0&pkg=24042008&seg=4 (accessed May 12, 2010). 36 Hayes, Lighthead, 94. 37 Ibid., 18. 38 http://updateslive.blogspot.com/2008/06/martin-puryear-exhibition-at-national.html (accessed May 10, 2010). 39 Hayes, Lighthead, 18. 40 Ibid., 27. 41 Because Wright included observations about the Western dress of Eurasian elites in The Color Curtain, one is tempted to imagine how he might have reacted to Michelle Obama’s

152 Dædalus Winter 2011 dress at the inauguration ball. The fact that her white gown was designed by Asian Werner American Jason Wu might have added a mediating or “third” dimension to the black- Sollors white divide that had dominated the discussion of race at a time when the new Asian immigration wave had not yet started–all the more so since Wu commented on the color choice by saying, “White is the most powerful non-color.” See http://www .huf½ngtonpost.com/2009/01/20/jason-wu-michelle-obamas_n_159519.html (accessed February 28, 2010). 42 I am grateful to Kelsey LeBuffe for research assistance, to Stephen Burt, Gerald Early, Glenda Carpio, and Sara Sollors for helpful comments, to Jennifer Kurdyla and Suzanna Bobadilla for proofreading this essay and suggesting revisions, and to Micah Buis for copyediting it.

Dædalus Winter 2011 153 Poetry in a New Race Era

Korina Jocson

The buzz is on. It is the beginning of summer and the anticipation is thicker than the layer of smog above the skyline. More than ½ve hundred youth poets from across the United States and around the world are gearing up for the 13th Annual Brave New Voices (bnv) International Youth Poetry Slam Festival, to be held in Los Angeles, Califor- nia, in July 2010. I can feel the excitement in the city. I imagine intimate words bouncing off the walls inside the Saban Theater on a night co- hosted by rapper and actor Common and actress Rosario Dawson. Who knew the convening power of poetry could reach so far? I remember my days as a novice educator, when poetry was con- ½ned to classrooms and, during open mic nights, to select cafés and clubs. More than ½fty thousand youth poets converged KORINA JOCSON is an Assistant in local and regional competitions to determine Professor of Education at Wash- who would constitute the representative teams ington University in St. Louis. that moved on to the July nationals. Once in Los Her research and teaching focus Angeles, these teams faced rounds of competi- on literacy, youth, and cultural bnv studies in education. Her recent tion during the weeklong festival to narrow publications include “Unpacking the ½eld even further. In the end, four teams– Symbolic Creativities: Writing in Albuquerque, Denver, New York, and the San School and Across Contexts,” Re- Francisco Bay Area–battled onstage for this year’s view of Education, Pedagogy, and crown of new grand slam champion. Cultural Studies (2010); “Steering While the competition remains an integral part Legacies: Pedagogy, Literacy, and Social Justice in Schools,” The of the festival, the chance to consider the themes Urban Review (2009); and Youth that youth participants tackle in their writing– Poets: Empowering Literacies In and voice, identity, citizenship, and leadership in the Out of Schools (2008). twenty-½rst century–is equally important. What

154 Dædalus Winter 2011 do these themes suggest about the possi- presence of racism shape the world to- Korina bilities of poetry in a new race era? Indeed, day, in even the mundane interactions Jocson what do they convey about inhabiting a of daily life; to ½nd language to express new race era? what may at times be dif½cult to invoke; In the age of Obama, race has surfaced and to acknowledge indignation without in new ways. Terms such as post-racial concretizing victimhood, disregarding have been used liberally. With the elec- optimism, or eschewing possibility. Post- tion of the ½rst black president of the race thought calls for moving forward United States, the notion that race has and facing race head on, maintaining become a thing of the past is indicative hope–the audacity of hope–in (re)con- of the politics and vestiges of color blind- ½guring steps toward a more democrat- ness. With Obama in the highest posi- ic order. As Leonardo conceives it, this tion of power, it has been argued that moment is an opportunity to express American society has either entered or ambivalence toward racialization with- reached the promise of a post-racial era.1 out encouraging race-blind analysis. Whether we embrace Obama’s politics His conception envisions not a society or critique his administration’s domes- without race, but one aspiring to that tic and foreign policies is beside the point. goal–and getting there by going through On the one hand, the stage was set with race, not around it. the historic electoral win on November 4, 2008. On the other, the stage was also I was in Washington, D.C., last year when extended for new conversations to take the subject of this essay ½rst came to me.4 place, inspired, perhaps, by a renewed It was late October, nearly one year since sense of the need to ask, what is at stake President Barack Obama’s historic elec- in these new times? To say that we are toral win in 2008. I was thinking about in a post-racial era without acknowledg- youth culture in America today: who is ing the historical permanence of race shaping it? What has transpired, and and the everyday processes of racializa- what has been signi½cant in recent years? tion in America is not enough. That is, What is it about the growing literary arts race as skin color and racialization based movement in various metropolitan areas? on difference continue to perpetuate In particular, what is it about poetry? It assumptions and produce hierarchy in seemed to me that there is a window of society.2 It is still necessary to pry open opportunity through which discourses such matters in discursive spaces and about youth and, in turn, youth culture envision hope without shying away from are being shaped. I wondered about the politics. The age of Obama–reflecting connection between this window of op- the cultural intricacies of the man him- portunity, the new race era, and poetry. self–is not the end of race but rather In youth poetry, identity and cultural the beginning of new ways of engaging politics are central to the art. Youth poet- the complexities of it. In other words, ry encourages conversations that make it is an opportunity to assess the future explicit the asymmetrical relations of of race. power based on various markers of dif- According to social and education the- ference, including, but not limited to, orist Zeus Leonardo in an essay on race race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, ambivalence,3 post-race thought in a so- ability, age, and language. It merges a called post-racial era requires vision: the particular genre of writing with existing vision to recognize how the history and practices of hip-hop culture. It differs

Dædalus Winter 2011 155 Poetry from an essay, play, or novel partly be- Listen to me when I tell you in a New cause it blends elements of literary pre- What’s on my mind Race Era cision and performance with the univer- The truth sal cache of hip-hop music, language, Twisted up but I spit it out and style. The af½nity for poetry is not So let it be known without the influence of the culture in What the guns in their hands is all about which it is embedded, and vice versa. You Youth poetry allows micropolitics to Don’t see me converge, individuals to mobilize differ- You see right through me ent identities (sometimes collectively), You want me locked up as much as the and norms of identi½cation to play out.5 next man It makes apprehensive truths transparent. Do I look like a hoodlum to you? Poetry resonates with many individ- I’m not the black you know uals in various contexts; its language I’m the black you will know exposes social realities that are often So I ask steeped in the margins, especially for Once more the young who are frequently attracted Can you see me? to reading and writing it because it is Poetry is not a new phenomenon, but accessible to experimentation in a way it has (re)emerged as more inclusive than that prose is not. In a study conducted ever, as well as more visibly connected to in northern California, for example, I politics. For instance, President Obama’s found that many high school students inauguration consisted of a celebration turn to poetry as a literacy practice of the arts with world-renowned musi- inside and outside the classroom.6 cal guests and artists. It also featured a Carolyn, a seventeen-year-old African commissioned poem, “Praise Song for American student, wrote the following the Day,” by Yale University professor poem to denote everyday experiences: Elizabeth Alexander. The moment was Can you see me? not the ½rst of its kind. Robert Frost When you think black shared a poem at the inauguration of You think guns going glack glack President Kennedy, as did Maya Ange- Sending shots through your neighborhood lou and Miller Williams, respectively, Stores at the ½rst and second inaugurations of There’s no turning back President Clinton. Every inauguration You wack, you scared has had its share of artistic performanc- Can you compare es. But Obama’s choice of Alexander To all the lashes I got across seemed a conscious attempt to reach out My back to a particular school of black poetry– Seek represented by Cornelius Eady, Toi Der- The curse in my eyes ricotte, Carl Phillips, Nathaniel Mackey, The flare of my nose and Yusef Komunyakaa–that distinctly The adrenaline in my chest blends poetics and cultural politics, and The grinch in my teeth that is both complex yet accessible in The bitch in my breath many of its references to readers of col- Why the hell or. These poets are the children of the You gotta be so black literary and performance poets of Dif½cult the 1960s and 1970s, just as Obama him-

156 Dædalus Winter 2011 self is. At such a highly visible event, tal- tion, and, in some instances, coordinat- Korina ented artists ½ll the stage and let their ed group performance. The power of this Jocson craft do its work. On a smaller scale, and collective voice in one room is bracing. complementary in spirit, are the local, re- Not long ago, emerging and seasoned gional, and national venues where emerg- poets alike graced the same stage in an ing writers, who range in age and hail hbo series called Russell Simmons Presents from various cities and towns, share their Def Poetry, hosted by rapper and actor passion, thought, and experience. Mos Def. Successful in its late-Friday- Literary arts organizations such as night time slot, the show ran for six sea- Youth Speaks in the San Francisco Bay sons. The bnv slam competition and Area and Urban Word in New York City documentary series demonstrate a re- lead the way in serving youth ages thir- surgence of literacy as a means for young teen to nineteen, providing them with people not only to write about their lives mentorship and learning opportuni- and share their words with a large audi- ties through after-school writing work- ence but, more important, to craft life shops, internships, and, most of all, trajectories with a literary cadence that formal spaces for sharing their work challenges social norms and inequali- in front of large audiences. The peda- ties. The writing is a celebration of life gogical approach to spoken word poetry and its meanings. has been modeled after successful pro- Putting such passion, thought, and grams such as Poets in the Schools and experience into the language of poetry Poetry for the People, which not only has real-world implications; it is indica- have influenced how poetry is taught in tive of the everyday practices of young the classroom, but also have led to the people. Featured poems from the 2009 proliferation of other programs.7 Inno- slam competition include titles such as vative in its approach, bnv (with repre- “Fish, Grits & Buttermilk Biscuits” by sentative teams from San Francisco, eighteen-year-old African American New York, Chicago, Hawaii, Santa Fe, Britney Wilson, a bnv poet from New Fort Lauderdale, Ann Arbor, and Provi- York. The challenge of having cerebral dence, to name a few) now includes a palsy intertwined with the courage to Brave New Teachers program. Train- break social molds takes on a particular ing sessions and workshops have be- force as she describes her own battles, come a critical component of the week- ambitions, and dreams. Another poem, long festival. “Change,” by nineteen-year-old African Aside from its popularity in hip-hop, American B. Yung, also a bnv poet from theater, and literary arts circles, bnv is New York, points to the historical strug- also a documentary series on the hbo gles of being a young black male in Amer- cable network.8 The series is approach- ican society. He performed his four-min- ing another season, featuring rapper ute poem at the Urban Word nyc Slam and actress mc Lyte as narrator (Queen Finals; here is an excerpt: Latifah narrated previously). The pro- Every time I write a slave poem, my paper vocative topics presented onstage, pro- bleeds jected by a single or by multiple micro- [ . . . ] phones, are complex and often person- Society never wanted me to make it al. Social issues and forms of inequality So I guess the gravity ain’t the only thing that teen poets encounter in their lives That’s been holding me down lately take the form of words, gestures, intona-

Dædalus Winter 2011 157 Poetry But I don’t hate you, as a matter of fact I Never, nowhere, anywhere in a New don’t even despise you This is why–NO WAR Race Era I think I love you more than I can love half In an artist’s statement released by Zu of my ignorant brothers Zu Films,11 twenty-something Kelly Tsai And I know, I know my brothers ain’t as noted the relevance of the spoken word personable video: But you got to understand, it’s kind of hard Teaching high school boys that whips and In 2003, I was asked to perform at the Not chains In Our Name Rally in Chicago, which over And “whips” and “chains” are symmetrical 4000 people ultimately attended. I felt So from the bottom of my heart moved and compelled to write a poem at I am sorry that we are the way we are the most human level that spoke to the But you got to understand, these mother- existence of war throughout our lives even fuckers told us in times of so-called peace. My hope was That change was going to come to tear ourselves away from polemics and And I am just so tired of waiting9 rhetoric to understand at a fundamental level that war affects us all and that for every one person that suffers at our hands ther examples of poetry come in a O whether near or far, we all bear the conse- variety of multimedia formats. Chinese quences as we deprive each other and our- Taiwanese American Kelly Tsai’s “By- selves from the essential human right to Standing: The Beginning of an Ameri- peace that gives us the opportunity to live can Lifetime,” a ½ve-minute spoken our lives however we choose. Unfortunate- word video and winner of the War and ly nearly 4 years later, the message is still Peace Award from Media That Matters, relevant today. was featured in its Seventh Annual Film Festival in New York.10 The following Similarly, numerous spoken word art- excerpt signals humanity and responsi- ists have produced their own videos and ble action in a multiracial society: used YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and other social media sites to share or dis- My friends, my family, my lovers, myself tribute their work. Armed with such new We who sit back into what our lives were media technology, artists have a growing like before interest in taking poems from the page Making our convictions seem trendy to the stage and onto the screen. Conver- Yesterday, I went to study happy people at gence and remix are at the fore of pro- Navy Pier duction. A recent example involves the They don’t go to rallies or conferences ½ctional character Claireece Precious They don’t talk about war Jones, from novelist and poet Sapphire’s They wait for a sunny day and go to Navy Push.12 In the novel, writing poetry plays Pier a key role in various stages of Precious’s They smile beneath their sunglasses life. The character pens her pains and They hold each other–close struggles and, in the end, offers many They eat ice cream that they paid too much lessons about life as it is experienced money for by some youth in impoverished urban They take advantage of the opportunity– communities. One of the poems that to love appears in Push, “Everi morning,” con- They are lucky and everyone in this world veys that experience: should be as lucky

158 Dædalus Winter 2011 everi morning of words in the movement toward indi- Korina i write vidual and social transformation. My Jocson a poem own research af½rms the idea that poet- before I go to ry can be used as a form of critical litera- school cy both inside and outside school. That marY had a little lamb is, rooted in the poetry process are litera- but I got a kid cy practices that assess traditional and an hiv social texts to negotiate the relations of that folow me power that inform them. As a medium to school of expression, poetry can be one means one day. for moving educators a step closer to improving educational practices and, ulti- Precious, the 2009 ½lm adaptation of Push, mately, can accelerate literacy achieve- garnered critical acclaim: directed by Lee ment for traditionally underserved stu- Daniels, the ½lm received various major dents. It creates learning environments awards, including the 2009 Sundance that allow youth to take part more fully Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize and three in their own learning process. Likewise, Screen Actors Guild Awards.13 Although it can give adults a way to make sense my intention is not to argue for the per- of youth’s social worlds–to enter every- petuation of the culture of poverty or the day imagination and lived experience. commodi½cation of youth culture, it is It extends words into action for the sake important to note that there are econom- of alleviating human struggle. Words ic as well as political and cultural factors as speech acts perform actions in them- that open up different opportunities and selves or convert to action in the process spaces for minorities to be represented of recontextualization. In my encounters in the media. Some representations chal- with youth poets and other emerging lenge existing stereotypes, for example, writers, I have discovered that the dia- of black and brown youth from impov- logue we have through writing is some- erished communities as pathologized times a necessary reflection to ease the beings; others reinforce them, often to pain of experience with courage and great success at the box of½ce.14 How- clarity. Sometimes, it is about releasing ever, it is beyond the scope of this essay fantasies and taking pleasure in the sub- to address the role of culture industries, lime, or celebrating the randomness that media marketing strategies, and com- springs up daily in our lives–the kid who plex economic apparatuses in building jumps at the chance to play, laugh, and on the “popular” to create and sell cul- love or be loved. Other times, it is about tural products and, in turn, shape cul- working through indignation without ture.15 The primary point here is that dwelling on anger and deepening wounds. poetry has emerged in youth culture as A personal anecdote is illustrative of more powerful than ever. It is worth ex- my point. I teach at Washington Uni- ploring the possibilities for verse to in- versity in St. Louis, live in a residential form ongoing programs and policies neighborhood near campus, and speak that support young people. English. (I also speak Tagalog and Span- ish.) I am a Filipina American. Recently, As we negotiate matters of identity I approached a white local contractor and cultural politics in a new race era, to erect a fence in my backyard. In our we must remember the potential power interaction, he asked what I am, where

Dædalus Winter 2011 159 Poetry I come from, what I do for a living, and for a linguistic accent, and being treated in a New how I learned to “speak English well.” It as inferior: all these experiences occur in Race Era was as if I needed to legitimize my status day-to-day interactions, making them and personhood to this white male con- mundane and ordinary; yet when sus- tractor. In hindsight, and perhaps in fair- tained over time, they can produce ness, this small business contractor may harsh and extreme effects. To chal- have found it necessary to ask such pre- lenge the contractor during our inter- liminary questions because of problem- action, I posed the same questions atic experiences with past clients; it may back to him. Later, I jotted down what have been a wise business practice to transpired between us. It was the impe- gather a bit of information before com- tus for an art-making process. I drew mencing a job. Perhaps I reacted hastily on the experience, rei½ed it in words, to my suspicion that, had I been white, and in the end transformed it to share the interrogation would not have oc- with you, the reader. The process paral- curred. Whatever the case, the encounter lels what emerging and seasoned writ- triggered memories of other moments in ers have done with their subjective which I had been made to feel similarly experiences. The following poem at- singled out. Was it a race moment that tempts to capture my experience: called forth the stereotypic assumption Microaggression. When are racist and of Asian as “forever foreigner”? Did sexist jokes not the English language binding us in that Racist and sexist? One could argue that moment evoke a common yet shifting they depend on ground of who is American (or who is The context, person, or tone. To whom? not)? Perhaps it was a matter of gender Too many have and gender relations underscoring who Let their guards down and dangerously had power in that moment. Perhaps it assume jokes are was a matter of attribution or even para- Only jokes. Subtle ones, at best, betwixt. noia prompted once again by difference. Comfortability Such thoughts came to my mind. And camaraderie at each end, inevitably In the ½eld of critical race theory, such soft laughter negative interactions have been labeled In between. The privileged (in this case a microaggressions.16 There are different middle-aged forms, some subtle, others more explic- White male) does not realize the joke, the it in nature. In documented studies of rami½cations African Americans and their families, Of the joke or transparency through which psychologists and sociologists have long the joke reveals held that microaggressions result in Itself. Normalcy of ignorance and sense of stress over time.17 The stress of having entitlement suffered repeated indignities, whether Privilege the teller to say what is really on they are committed wittingly or not, his/her mind. impacts the psyche and worldview of There are untold stories here. Stones still individuals whose lives are shaped by unturned. It is such seemingly small yet ubiquitous Time once again to rage about curiosities, and constant forms of oppression. Be- the elephant ing refused service, being followed in a In the room. It is time to revisit the past. store, being ridiculed for having particu- Otherwise, we lar observable traits, being stigmatized

160 Dædalus Winter 2011 Risk the chance of bequeathing dangers us. Naming infractions and injuries Korina we have known offers a beginning for expanding dis- Jocson For several generations. All bets are on the course in a new race era. As youth po- table. ets have demonstrated in notebooks, classrooms, workshops, slams, and elsewhere, writing about what matters The quest for answers continues– most is where the possibilities lie. Our whether in thought, in poetry, or in lives–and the lives of those who have other forms of writing. If we are to en- yet to put their truths into words– vision a hopeful world, a place rid of depend on it. Time will tell who will oppression, then we ought to will our- broadcast the loudest chants and de- selves to engage in deeper conversa- liver the most compelling poems.18 tions. The stakes are higher in these times, yet they are opportunities for

endnotes 1 Thomas L. Friedman, “Finishing Our Work,” The New York Times, November 4, 2008; Shelby Steele, “Obama’s Post-Racial Promise,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2008. 2 Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992). 3 Zeus Leonardo, “After the Glow: Race Ambivalence and Other Educational Prognoses,” Educational Philosophy and Theory (forthcoming). 4 Many thanks to Zeus Leonardo for an engaging conversation then and the continued dialogue present here. 5 Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Politics of Identity,” Dædalus 135 (4) (2006): 15–22. 6 Korina Jocson, Youth Poets: Empowering Literacies In and Out of Schools (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). 7 Maisha Fisher, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (New York: Teachers College Press, 2007); Korina Jocson, “‘Taking It to the Mic’: Pedagogy of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People and Partnership with an Urban High School,” English Edu- cation 37 (2) (2005): 44–60; Ruth Kim, “Spoken Art Pedagogies: Youth, Race & the Cul- tural Politics of an Arts Education Movement,” unpublished dissertation (University of California, Santa Cruz); Jen Weiss and Scott Herndon, Brave New Voices: The Youth Speaks Guide to Teaching Spoken Word and Poetry (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2001). 8 For more information on each organization, visit Youth Speaks, http://www.youthspeaks .org, and Urban Word nyc, http://www.urbanwordnyc.org. For schedule and details on bnv’s Annual Youth Poetry Slam Festival, visit http://www.bravenewvoices.org. Video clips of past episodes on hbo as well as sample poems performed by various teams are available at http://www.hbo.com/bravenewvoices. The series based on the bnv Festival held in Los Angeles aired on hbo in Fall 2010. 9 These and several other poems from teams Ann Arbor, Fort Lauderdale, Hawaii, Phila- delphia, San Francisco, and Santa Fe are featured on hbo’s website, http://www.hbo .com. Full episodes of the bnv series, interwoven with narratives about each poet, may also be viewed via hbo On Demand or purchased as a dvd set. 10 The video can be accessed via http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/½lms. For more information on the artist, visit http://yellowgurl.com. 11 http://www.zuzu½lms.com.

Dædalus Winter 2011 161 Poetry 12 Sapphire, Push (New York: Vintage, 1996). in a New 13 Race Era Precious was also nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Pic- ture, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama), and Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Drama); actress Mo’Nique was nominated, and won, in the latter category. Additionally, Precious was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Actress in a Leading Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Di- rector, Film Editing, Best Picture, and Adapted Screenplay. Mo’Nique won in the category of Actress in a Supporting Role, as did Geoffrey Fletcher for Adapted Screenplay. 14 For a related discussion, see Zeus Leonardo and Margaret Hunter, “Imagining the Urban: The Politics of Race, Class, and Schooling,” in International Handbook of Urban Education, ed. William T. Pink and George W. Noblit (New York: Springer, 2007). 15 Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry, Classics Series (New York: Routledge, 1991); Henry A. Giroux, Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth (New York: Routledge, 1996); Henry A. Giroux, Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability (New York: Palgrave, 2009). 16 Daniel Solorzano, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso, “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggres- sions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students,” The Journal of Negro Education 69 (1–2) (2000): 60–73. 17 Grace Carroll, Environmental Stress and African Americans: The Other Side of the Moon (West- port, Conn.: Praeger, 1997); Chester M. Pierce, “Offensive Mechanisms,” in The Black Sev- enties, ed. Floyd B. Barbour (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1970), 265–282. 18 I would like to thank Gerald Early for the invitation to contribute to this volume. His critical feedback pushed the writing and further shaped the ideas presented in this essay. I would also like to thank all the poets and writers whose works are included, allowing for a fuller illustration of the topic.

162 Dædalus Winter 2011 Seeing Jay-Z in Taipei

Hua Hsu

My father left Taiwan for the United States in the mid-1960s at the age of twenty-one. He would be nearly twice as old before he returned. In the interceding years, a willing maroon far from home, he acquired various characteristics that might have marked him as American. He studied in New York, witnessed and participated in student protests, and, according to photographic evidence, once sported long hair and vaguely fashionable pants. He acci- dentally became a Bob Dylan fan, thanks to secondhand exposure through the floorboards of his apartment building. He subscribed, very briefly, to The New Yorker. He acquired a taste for pizza and rum raisin ice cream. He and my mother spent their honeymoon driving across the country, and among the items that have survived my parents’ frugal early years are weathered paperback copies of the bestsellers The Pentagon Papers and Future Shock. For a brief spell he toyed with anglicizing his name and asked to be called Eric, though he soon realized that assimilation of that order did not suit him. I often try to spin these details into a narrative of my parents’ early years in America. How did they imagine themselves? How did they acquire a sense of taste or decide which movies to see? Did any HUA HSU is an Assistant Pro- minutiae betray some aspirational instinct, a desire fessor of English at Vassar Col- to ½t in? Would they have recognized themselves lege. His work has appeared in Artforum, The Atlantic, The New in Future Shock? And who was the influential Eric York Times, and Slate. He served after whom my father had named himself, if only on the editorial board for A New briefly? These were the raw materials for their Literary History of America (2009). new American identities, and they foraged only as

Dædalus Winter 2011 163 Seeing far as their car or the subway line could Of course, they had chosen all this: Jay-Z in take them. In those days, as my parents the occasional loneliness, the itinerant Taipei never tire of reminding me, their sense of lifestyle, the language barrier. They had identity was bound by geography: prox- arrived to study at American graduate imity to these American effects, on one schools far superior to their Asian coun- hand, and profound distance from home, terparts, though the reward for such a on the other. Back then, they explain, it mad pursuit had not yet come into focus. required a small fortune and months of Despite their acceptance of this fact of careful planning to return home. They displacement, what they had not chosen remember, with the kind of nostalgic was to relinquish the place they held in fondness assigned to experiences that their hearts in order to become Asian need not be repeated, that when they Americans, a category then coming into were young like me it took weeks sim- fashion. They had little in common with ply to schedule a long-distance phone the American-born Chinese and Japan- call and ensure a quorum of the family ese students organizing on the other side would be available on the other side of of their campuses for free speech or civil the line. rights; they knew nothing about the Chi- This speci½c detail has long captivated nese Exclusion Act, Charlie Chan, or why me. What must it have been like to leave one should take deep offense to the slurs home willingly and cross into a different “Oriental” or “chink.” My parents and world, with only the haziest plans for re- their cohort would not have recognized turn? I could not fathom the idea that the that they were representatives of a “mod- rare phone call and the occasional trans- el minority.” In fact, they hadn’t even paci½c letter–which might announce a planned on becoming Americans. It’s not future phone call–constituted the entire- that they were unconcerned: they simply ty of their connection to their gradually did not know such categories of identi- more distant homeland. In the absence ½cation–national, racial, ethnic–were of available connections, they held on to available to them. Their allegiances re- an imaginary Taiwan, more an abstrac- mained with the communities they had tion, a beacon, a phantom limb than an left. They subscribed to a narrative of actual island. The available technology return, and for the most part, they were could deliver them home only occasion- not deeply invested in where they ½t in ally. So they would search for traces of the American racial landscape, even as it in the faces of their classmates; they it reoriented itself to accommodate would hear it wafting above the din when their kind. they visited Chinatown. My parents– Many of them–my parents and their usually rational, reserved, mellow people classmates, clustered at engineering –would drive hours in search of neigh- schools–were the moving pieces in boring immigrant colonies that prom- someone else’s grand abstraction, one ised Chinese restaurants, grocers, news- that promised flexibility and improvi- papers, and marathon lunches with old sation rather than the strict contingen- classmates. It was the same for my fa- cies of identity politics. “For the ½rst ther’s entire collegiate graduating class, time in history,” wrote the urban theo- all of whom pursued their futures rist Melvin Webber in 1964, around the abroad. Any encounter was enough time my parents arrived stateside, “it to nourish them and remind them of might be possible to locate on a moun- who they were. tain top and to maintain intimate, real-

164 Dædalus Winter 2011 time and realistic contact with business of my father’s generation. As an engineer, Hua Hsu or other associates. All persons tapped he was essentially building a bridge back into the global communications net across the ocean, one made of silicon would have ties approximating those chips and wafers, circuits and micro- used today in a given metropolitan re- processors, the essence of a computer gion.”1 A visionary of telecommunica- and the raw materials of the digital age. tions, Webber was one of many 1960s He was helping solve the problem of theorists and planners to describe a cheap, ef½cient communication that future in which traditional notions of had been one of the de½ning limitations “identity,” tied to geography or tribe, of his early years in America. The great would no longer matter. Instead, ad- distances that once separated various vances in technology would allow us human outposts–that mystery of what access to the world’s farthest corners, lay beyond–had inspired artists and inaugurating a new era of global simul- inventors and entranced conquerors, taneity. Encounter and contact, the explorers, travelers, stowaways, and Grand Tour, and ethnographic explo- heads of state. Now there were better ration would no longer be the pastimes things to think about. Posed another of the intrepid few. As the distance way: why af½liate with arbitrary cate- between here and there was abridged, gories of race or ethnicity when connec- Webber foresaw global possibilities: tivity empowers us to seek out those “By now there is a large class of per- with whom we share interests, opin- sons around the world who share in ions, or background? the world culture, while simultaneously participating in the idiosyncratic lo- But what if our imaginations do not cal cultures special to their regions of progress accordingly, at the same rate residence,” he observed in a later essay. as theories or technological advances? “Their range of opportunity is far larger What if we are unable (or choose not) and far more diverse than the most pow- to imagine something beyond the sim- erful and wealthy man of past eras could ple yearning for home comforts, or the have imagined.”2 tendency toward tribalism? The prob- What were these men “imagining?”3 lem with such universalist thinking is This vision of “world culture” was meant its tendency to efface difference: to of- to supplement, possibly even supplant fer an inevitable, common future as anti- the more local expressions of identity dote to our disparate, occasionally con- that had arisen in the 1950s and 1960s. tentious pasts. While my parents had We had to rebuild our beleaguered ur- been pragmatic and unsentimental about ban centers, Webber and others agreed the decisions that landed them in the –riot-wounded places like Watts, New- United States, there was something ark, and Detroit. But in this “post-city about their relationship to their identi- age,” we also had to anticipate the new ty that de½ed such reason; it was irra- social con½gurations of the future be- tional, if not steadfastly provincial. It yond the quaint, limiting city and the was something that seemed to emerge provincialism of local spaces. Suddenly, instinctually.4 Over time, as I approached “encounter, contact, communication” the age they were when they left home, I were no longer problems. This revolu- became mysti½ed. I carefully listened to tion in “global communication” would my parents’ stories about coming to the be fomented and ½ne-tuned by people United States, desperate to locate some

Dædalus Winter 2011 165 Seeing bit of myself in their wanderings, unex- vaguely laughable. Which is not to say Jay-Z in plainably hopeful that some essential that the legacies of familiar racial hierar- Taipei quality had passed through generations chies were invisible. When my parents and geography to me. I wanted to feel were growing up, a famous toothpaste some primordial connection, if only to brand throughout Asia was called Dark- shade in some long-imagined vector of ie; its yellow box was illustrated with a my identity. It was an intoxicating, mys- garish black man in a top hat, his black terious, secondhand nostalgia. If any- skin the void out of which shone a set thing, with ease of travel and globe- of impossibly white, sparkling teeth.5 In spanning technology, this desire only Taiwan, Darkie toothpaste was probably grew. The advances of “world culture” the closest many came to encountering did not efface the need for identity pol- an actual black person, just as seeing itics or resolve the past’s yearnings; it Rock Hudson and Elvis Presley (whose merely gave that need a wider platform, hairstyle my uncle would dutifully mim- new articulations, unheralded claims. ic) in magazines or on television consti- Years later, when my father returned tuted their exposure to white Americans, to Taiwan to pursue a job, this problem intrepid Christian missionaries notwith- of distance returned–only we now had standing. Converging in these ½gures– the technology to bridge it nightly. We the grinning cartoon minstrel, the deb- bought a fax machine. Each night my onair leads–were speci½c origins, histo- mom and I would detail, in the smallest ries, and contexts. But projected across type possible, our daily activities. Each the Paci½c, they could seem like degrees morning, before I left for school, his re- of the same American effect. turn message would be waiting for me. Faxes gave way to email, which was ren- “We are all bewildered by the movie,” dered quaint by Skype, and so on. young Rio Gonzaga remarks, “which is Taiwan was no longer a mere abstrac- probably too American for us.”6 The tion for them, but it remained a mystery movie in question is A Place in the Sun, to me. That distant place provided an George Stevens’s 1951 adaptation of approach to questions of identity that Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, were frequently posed in terms of black and Rio’s environs–the 1950s Manila and white. I spent most of my vacations of Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters–are there in middle school and high school, not ideally suited for this tale of for- and upon each visit, I felt ever more dis- bidden love and murder, which stars located. Was I just another American, Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, my faint grasp of the spoken language and Shelley Winters, among other an unbridgeable gulf? Or was I, warmly models of alien, American beauty. Rio’s welcomed by my parents’ Taiwanese envies are familiar: the “casual arro- born-and-raised friends, just another gance” of a “modern” American hero- version of them? ine, the “blond, fair-skinned” looks of To import American racial categories her own cousin Pucha.7 And while Rio achieved little. The notion of “Asia” is and Pucha hail from the local elite, in not immediately intuitive to many with- relation to the American splendor they in this continental grouping, and the lasso- see on-screen during their retreats to ing of different Asians into the category the air-conditioned movie theater, Asian American once they enter the Unit- they are only marginally more privi- ed States seemed, to those over there, leged than their lowly chaperones.

166 Dædalus Winter 2011 But there is something about Rio’s rela- There is something familiar, possibly Hua Hsu tionship to this American otherness that even heartening about this anecdote. It resists it. Though not yet critical of her flatters our sense of how connected the adoration for exclusively white stars, she world is or can be. Even in a remote strip is beginning to understand that this is of Central Asia, Michael Jordan is recog- someone else’s version of the good life. nized. But what lay beyond this mere For Rio, the margin of her privilege fact of recognition? Did these itinerant manifests itself in an awareness that Tibetans perceive Jordan as an African this American ½lm was not meant for American–a pioneer of black style and her, even if she ½nds something seduc- status and (prior to the election of Pres- tive in its images, themes, possibilities. ident Barack Obama) possibly the most “I decide that even if I don’t understand famous black man ever–or just as an it, I like this movie,” Rio explains, and American? Were they familiar with his her desire to translate this feeling of skills as a basketball player or his inter- bewildered enchantment into some- changeability with Nike? Which ver- thing more concrete distinguishes her sion of Jordan did we hope to project? as one of the novel’s most astute voices. Which qualities stayed af½xed to Jordan She doesn’t understand America, yet as his image traveled the globe? she draws closer, and with caution. I was visiting Taiwan with my parents This is how much of the world ½rst ex- in Fall 2006 when I learned that the rap- periences America: as an image. Once per Jay-Z was bringing his elaborate as a racist tube of toothpaste, now as a world tour to the Taipei Dome. Jay-Z’s YouTube clip of kids in Oakland invent- status as hip-hop’s iconic 2000s hero ing a new dance. Today, this range of was already, at the time, assured. This images is far greater and less singular tour, with United Nations-cosponsored in quality; American culture no longer dates throughout Africa, was ambitious privileges the fair-skinned cowboys and, in some way, heartening. It was sup- or superheroes exclusively. Accessing posed to make him a global presence, America from abroad is no longer the and not just in London and Tokyo. Each fancy of the affluent or the intrepid. time he left an African city–traveling The infrastructure for the “post-city beyond Cape Town and Johannesburg age” exists: the logic of social network- to Dar es Salaam, Accra, Lagos, and ing websites or crowd-sourcing and the Luanda, too–startling photographs of proliferation of cheap, ef½cient cellular Jay-Z aiding humanitarian water secu- phone technology mean that we are rity missions, touring rural lands in mod- connected in previously unimaginable est, utilitarian dress, or meeting heads ways. There is the famous, oft-repeated of state would circulate the Internet. story of Max Perelman, an American These photographs suggested new col- college student lost in western China in lective possibilities. the late 1990s. He encountered a group This had long been hip-hop’s promise. of Tibetans traveling to their capital, When the former gang leader-turned-dj Lhasa. They had never wandered far Afrika Bambaataa became hip-hop’s ½rst from their village; they did not know philosopher in the early 1980s, he imag- what a camera was. At one point, while ined a form that would be voracious, in- partaking in a feast of raw meat, one of clusive, and global. Anything with a beat the wandering Tibetans asked Perel- could be assimilated into his genre-resis- man, how was Michael Jordan doing?8 tant dj sets: why couldn’t he and the

Dædalus Winter 2011 167 Seeing young men and women of the South ½nds any meaning whatsoever in those Jay-Z in Bronx found a culture on roughly the vague, fraught words. To those who rec- Taipei same principle? The cosmopolitan pos- ognize that minorities are no longer to- sibility of hip-hop was captivating, and ken contributors to our cultural self-im- as it traveled the nation and then the age, this news only con½rms what has world–thanks to epochal singles and been felt for some time. The audience one-hit wonders, bootlegged documen- for such news will have experienced a tary videos and self-published maga- culture that moves free of city or space, zines–its potential for change grew as where mixture and multiculturalism well. For the most optimistic, hip-hop’s are valued. The primacy of the idea of global reach was predicated on its capac- “whiteness” only makes sense in isola- ity to coalesce different groups around tion, abstracted from history or culture, notions of justice or foster a new creativ- protected from the larger, global flows ity perched on the possibilities of “sam- of majorities and minorities within pling.” This cultural form was a piece which Americans, white or otherwise, of my identity, and it was founded on a will always fall into the minority cate- sense of community or “nationhood” gory. Whiteness will only matter inso- as abstract as my parents’. far as people continue to choose the cate- Hip-hop’s entry into the cultural main- gory, to validate it with their hopes and stream introduced a new kind of proud fears; along these lines, perhaps hip-hop antihero to the American imagination. has charmed the world’s stage more suc- Even as the music produced a multibil- cessfully than “white America” (if such lion-dollar industry, allying itself with a concept still holds) ever did. the forces that had once tried to stymie But did hip-hop’s importance as an in- its growth, there was a sly and almost tervention in America’s racial hierarchy, residually subversive quality to it. The if only cosmetically, travel? Was its glob- music became a business, and the artists al rise predicated on a vague black cool- blossomed into savvy, swaggering business or its symbolic overturning of a nessmen. Men like Russell Simmons, heretofore lily-white American order? Sean Combs, or Jay-Z were unimagin- How far could style translate, and was ably famous for reasons beyond music. it a suf½ciently durable, transferrable, Often, they were the least powerful men translatable quality? in the boardroom–but the only ones From the American perspective, these who, with a squint or a frown, could issues formed the subtext of the photo- make everyone else feel uncomfortable, graphs of Jay-Z, the living embodiment beholden to their charisma. How far of hip-hop’s victory. The photographs could this swagger take us? were his appeal to all who had ever considered themselves members of the The rise of hip-hop and the general underclass. They portrayed a globally “colorization” of American culture pre- famous black pop star returning to his pared us to see ourselves anew. Demog- ancestral lands, rewarding their patron- raphers predict with some degree of cer- age with an image of success. One could tainty that, in the next three decades, have anticipated different versions of the population of the United States will these photographs dispatched from all ½nally become “majority minority”; it the obscure parts of the globe where he will be the “end of white America,” at would perform. This tour was not for least to the slab of the population that America; it was for the rest of the world.

168 Dædalus Winter 2011 We grafted our struggles onto his, and “We relate to struggle,” Jay-Z shouted Hua Hsu now the rest of the world could do the to the audience midway through his pro- same. gressively lackluster set. “We relate to As I approached the Taipei Dome and y’all.” It was a somewhat generic thing spied the throngs of locals, all of them for him to say, more a performance of recognizable as versions of the “global empathy than a gesture of sincerity. citizens” I grew up with in California, I Struggle: such a common, universal, oft- thought about that symbolic victory for uttered condition. Could solidarity really the underclass. As an American versed be forged through so vague a notion? in the codes and meanings of hip-hop, I What were the consequences of taking was a somewhat protective spectator. one’s struggle abroad? Was Jay-Z actual- Did the triumphs that Jay-Z represented ly introducing the youth of Taiwan to a translate? Were people here to revel in new vocabulary for understanding their the spectacle, or to share in acts of sub- lives? Where “struggle” in the Ameri- version? When the local fans thrilled can context might describe the minori- to every move of the opening act, a Tai- ty’s struggle against a power structure wanese rapper named mc Hot Dog who or cultural mainstream, here it meant had carefully studied the playbooks of something else. What hip-hop helped his American peers, I scoffed. His very achieve in the United States was the vic- name made me cringe, yet the fans tory of the image: kids of color, kids adored him. After a brief intermission, with attitude who could not be under- Jay-Z took the stage. The audience sat estimated–who took that underestima- politely through most of the set, rising tion and made billions of dollars off it. only in the presence of the easy hits. I But projected abroad–and complicated felt an irrational sense of alienation. by language–hip-hop’s valences were Perhaps this, in a way, was hip-hop’s different. In the context of American victory. A local version had mastered race politics, it represented the ascen- the moves, and at least the fans could sion of an underclass, and its effects understand what mc Hot Dog was say- could be felt economically, politically, ing: he both rapped in their language and even spiritually; in Taiwan and else- and ½lled his rhymes with de½antly lo- where, hip-hop could just as easily rep- cal references. He was oppositional in resent the ascension of American cul- a way they could relate to. ture in general. The divide between Jay-Z and the Efforts at solidarity approached farce audience only widened as the evening later during the concert, when the enor- dragged on. Often, it seemed they had mous screen behind him flashed the logo only the faintest clue what he was talk- for Jay-Z’s record label, roc (short for ing about between songs, and his raps Roc-A-Fella, a riff on Rockefeller). The lost them altogether. The African Amer- crowd awakened with ferocious, unex- ican star’s swaggering charisma didn’t pected energy. In Taiwan, “roc” reads translate either. Still, the spectators as the abbreviation for “Republic of craned their necks and climbed atop China.” The name is a reminder of Tai- seats merely to see an American in our wan’s strained relations with the Chi- presence, validating this market by show- nese mainland. Some argue that Taiwan ing up. They may not have understood and China must reunite, while others him, but they knew they were supposed rally for formal independence: this to like him. schism, in some way, de½nes Taiwanese

Dædalus Winter 2011 169 Seeing identity. The crowd assumed that their now have their own strip malls, shop- Jay-Z in American hero was referring to their ping centers, and newspapers. Indeed, Taipei struggle. the predictions went slightly awry. In- stead of creating a “world culture” of From a distance, the bare facts of this uniform desires and tropes, the new scene might describe the “world culture” flows of information merely gave co- of Webber and others. But within this herence and credence to more micro- set-piece of globalization, the transla- regionalisms. Categories of identi½cations–of culture, symbol, language– tion became segments of a market remain vexed. The coming together of share, and the logic of this “world cul- different localities does not always result ture” became that of the neoliberal in the kind of solidarity we would have market or a social network online. hoped for. In this case, was it empathy, This outcome is a version of what an- or something else? What happens when thropologists John and Jean Comaroff these immense distances collapse and describe in their book Ethnicity, Inc. There we surrender our long-held, reliable no- was a certain kind of claim, the Coma- tions of authenticity or essence, memory roffs explain, to essence or invisible af½n- and imagination? As the opportunities ity, which was supposed to wither away for new moments of contact proliferate in the modern age. We were supposed –and as the ½gures and images circulat- to stray from binding myths–of origin, ing along those pathways change as well tradition, belief, and culture. The seem- –what will be the basis of our “world ingly archaic, vernacular meaning of culture”? Do these notions of struggle, community was supposed to flounder in community, or identity politics translate the “post-city age,” in which geography across such vast spaces, or does the aston- was suddenly incidental, or at least sur- ishing rate of circulation loosen them mountable. These new associations, it from intent and meaning? was predicted, would cause the abstract, The circulation of images happens at not-quite-rational core of identity poli- a rate that is either terrifying or exciting, tics to shrink, causing us to act more given your age. Suddenly it is impossi- rationally or sensibly toward the world ble to ignore the interconnectedness of around us. We would access far corners American fates with those worldwide. of the world as an endless stream of im- Many Americans were introduced to ages and data, customizing our prefer- this idea only recently, in the wake of ences and tracking usage statistics along 9/11; others may have read it in our shoes the way. and socks, shirts and appliances, most Instead of advancing past our provin- of which are crafted overseas and will cial af½liations, however, we have found travel farther distances than many of us reasons to return to and properly mark ever will. The circuits that implicate us these delineations. The feeling of au- are in½nite. Against such a backdrop of thenticity, that alluringly vague line di- extreme possibilities and energies, what viding two tribes, the abstract outline of of our older allegiances to seemingly a community, could now be monetized. outdated notions like race or ethnicity? New forms of consumption activated Those who venture to America, as my identities in novel, almost chillingly prag- parents did forty-odd years ago, no matic ways, creating a need to crystallize longer face the same light homesick- or codify boundaries that previous gen- ness. Wherever immigrants live, they erations had never thought to demarcate.

170 Dædalus Winter 2011 There is belonging in the nebulous, home- they rely on a shared, universal logic. Hua Hsu sick sense, and there is a legal type of “be- We possess unprecedented forums for longing,” which entitles you to claim a instant, global contact, but too often this piece of a Native American gaming casi- connectedness merely means that we are no or an obscure, mountainous Japanese implicated as slivers of a market whole. tea ceremony. “Neither for consumers Rarely does the potential to connect on nor for producers,” the Comaroffs write, a global scale embolden us to seek mutu- “does the aura of ethno-commodities ality or discover radical new possibili- simply disappear with their entry into ties for feeling and transferring empathy. the market; sometimes, as we have seen, Perhaps this is asking too much. it may be rediscovered, reanimated, re- Furthermore, amidst all this possibili- gained.”9 We know that identity can ty, it becomes dif½cult at the individual enter into commodity relations–the level to feel all that unique or original. idea that blackness can signify “cool” to How does one orient oneself in a sea of American consumers or that an ethnic such endless connective possibilities? rite can be trademarked. But to presume that this marketability automatically As I began recollecting the scraps of compromises the integrity of that iden- conversation that constitute the opening tity is to presume a kind of original au- pages of this essay, I had to take care to thenticity, which simply locks us in a remember what was mine and what I circle. Instead, the Comaroffs’ idea of had read in someone else’s memoir, or the “ethnicity industry” is useful for overheard in a class. Was the shape of considering what entry therein does this narrative cliché or easily predict- not guarantee. The rise of entertainment able? Did I just rearrange the details of marketed speci½cally to white Ameri- my parents’ lives according to a recog- cans–the Blue Collar Comedy Tour or nizable script? It was like that line in auto racing are two sturdy examples– Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman might help us reorient our understand- Warrior about the impossibility of dis- ing of racial hierarchy and the emer- tinguishing Chinese Americanness gence of a white claim to identity poli- from the unique weirdness of your tics that follows the example of actual own family.10 minority groups. But accepting the fact It was a somewhat generic strategy on of the “ethnicity industry” discourages my part, though, as Kwame Anthony us from scrutinizing related broader Appiah has observed in his discuss- notions: the very idea of blackness or ions of culture, “[O]ne is bound to be whiteness, for example. formed–morally, aesthetically, politi- The conditions of identity haven’t cally, religiously–by the range of lives changed so much as our ability to artic- one has known.”11 Just as markets exist ulate, choose, express, and complicate for a certain kind of by-the-bootstraps them has. The end of white America– ethnic art, its opposite now courts au- a numerical majority–is assured; the diences as well. This is exactly the form end of whiteness–an idea, a hegemon- of ethnic knowledge Nam Le assails in ic center–will not die so easily. The par- his recent short story, “Love and Hon- adox of all these new ways of articulat- or and Pity and Pride and Compassion ing and embracing difference–of cus- and Sacri½ce.” Le describes a wry, frus- tomization and connectivity, lifestyle trated young Vietnamese-Australian choices and segmented markets–is that writer at the University of Iowa’s

Dædalus Winter 2011 171 Seeing M.F.A. program. He struggles to com- lates every rule he and his friends have Jay-Z in plete a ½nal assignment. “How can you agreed upon. Ultimately, his father can- Taipei have writer’s block?” a friend (presum- not accept his son’s desire to ½ctionalize ably white) wonders. “Just write a story the past. But he chooses to write it. about Vietnam.”12 But he resists, even There are speci½cities we lose when as instructors assure him that ethnic lit- we surrender to the universal, a fear that erature is “hot” and lusty literary agents Le’s short story seeks to express. It does encourage him to mine his “background not overcome the stinging criticisms and life experience.” Ethnic literature is Le’s characters set out for their creator, “a license to bore,” its stories stocked nor does Le seek to reclaim or own such with “flat, generic” characters and “de- stereotypes by turning them on their scriptions of exotic food,” his classmates head. Instead, Le embraces identity’s decry, and Le’s young proxy in the story current contradiction: he wants to have agrees.13 Instead, he chooses the right- it both ways, to possess and control his eous path: he writes fantastical stories identity, but without being completely about vampires, assassins, and painters beholden to it, without letting it overde- with hemorrhoids. termine his actions. The story is skepti- There is something disarming about cal and ironic about identity politics Le’s seemingly ironic take on identity, while passionately defensive about our the way the short story anticipates read- right to claim our sense of self. erly expectations. It’s a knowing, brac- The ½nal paragraph in Le’s story be- ingly logical put-down of ethnic litera- gins, “If I had known then what I knew ture–and from an insider, no less. When later, I wouldn’t have said the things I the story turns, slightly, upon the arrival did.” The writer’s father has just de- of the young writer’s father, a witness stroyed the only existing copy of his to unimaginable wartime atrocities, it son’s story, and a strained relationship is unclear whether the reader is merely is about to disintegrate altogether. This being set up for a savage fall. After a writer–so unimpressed and otherwise series of wrenching, relationship-ad- ironic–never reveals this secret. He vancing conversations with his father keeps it for himself, to defend his father. about his experiences during the war– Certain details in this life simply can- the type of wondrously food-½lled con- not be assimilated into a larger whole, versations the characters within the whether that whole is a story or a mar- story mock–the young writer begins ket economy. They should be allowed writing his “ethnic story.” It abides by to serve no end. certain generic conventions, and it vio-

endnotes 1 Melvin Webber, “The Urban Place and the Non-Place Urban Realm,” in Explorations into Urban Structure, ed. Melvin Webber, John Dyckman, Donald Foley, Albert Guttenberg, William Wheaton, and Catherine Wurster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 79–153. 2 Melvin Webber, “The Post-City Age,” Dædalus 97 (4) (Fall 1968): 1099. 3 I am reminded here of Arjun Appadurai’s stirring discussions of how globalization– another way of approaching Webber’s “world culture”–expands the imaginative scope

172 Dædalus Winter 2011 of its subjects. See Arjun Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagina- Hua Hsu tion,” in Globalization, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001) and Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapo- lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). 4 While these forms of sentimental yearning were important to people like my parents, I do not want to overstate or generalize their effects. Aihwa Ong, for example, has written about how flows of migration and capital across the Paci½c have inaugurated “flexible,” pragmatic, new approaches to citizenship. See Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultur- al Logics of Transnationality (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999). 5 Over time, and in what ranks as possibly the most tepid exercise of political correctness ever, the manufacturers of Darkie toothpaste decreased the resolution of the image so it was merely the shadow of a black face and renamed the toothpaste Darlie. 6 Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 15. 7 Ibid., 4. 8 Walter Lafeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (New York: Norton Books, 1999), 14. 9 John L. and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 20. 10 Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 5–6. 11 Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1991), ix. 12 Nam Le, The Boat (New York: Knopf, 2008), 8. 13 Ibid., 9.

Dædalus Winter 2011 173 The Concept of Post-Racial: How Its Easy Dismissal Obscures Important Questions

David A. Hollinger

Why are so many people afraid of the concepts p post-racial and post-ethnic? Both are often brushed v aside amid a competition over who can declare the most resoundingly that racism is still a vital problem in the United States, and that the physical marks of descent remain highly determinative T of an individual’s destiny. One pundit after another proclaims sanctimoniously that all one must do is look at the color of the prison population, or at b the 2009 arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his own home, and one will see that all this talk about a post-racial Amer- b ica is nonsense.1 Yet almost none of the people who have sympathetically used the terms post-ethnic and post- b DAVID A. HOLLINGER, a Fellow racial have advanced the claims now being refut- of the American Academy since ed with such ease; rarely have they used the terms 1997, is the Preston Hotchkis Pro- in a manner that could leave one wondering, what fessor of American History at the were those prophets of post-ethnicity and post- University of California, Berkeley. He is the current President of the raciality smoking when they started talking in Organization of American Histo- such terms? The gap between what is being re- b rians. His publications include The futed and what is being af½rmed is a discursive Humanities and the Dynamics of In- Grand Canyon. clusion Since World War II (2006), What is being af½rmed? I tried to summarize for which he served as editor; Cos- it in an essay for the journal Callaloo in 2008. I mopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies suggested that the election of Barack Obama as in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Profes- sional Af½liation in the United States president–that historic event of the election of (2006); and Postethnic America: a black president of the United States–made it Beyond Multiculturalism, third ex- easier to contemplate “a possible future” that panded edition (2006). might be called post-ethnic or post-racial:

174 Dædalus Winter 2011 a possible future in which the ethnora- racial analytic project acknowledges the David A. cial categories central to identity politics reality of an ethnoracially intensive past; Hollinger would be more matters of choice than as- it tries to assess and understand the dim- cription; in which mobilization by ethno- inution of that intensity in a variety of racial groups would be more a strategic contexts. The point has been to confront option than a presumed destiny attendant and examine the contingency of ethno- upon mere membership in a group; and race in America–past, present, and fu- in which economic inequalities would be ture–while registering the effects of confronted head-on, instead of through descent-related experiences that survive the medium of ethnorace.2 the loosening of attributed or chosen connections between an individual and Almost no one calls into question the his or her community of descent. Given desirability of such a future. Few will this trajectory, the post-ethnic–post- deny that the election of a black man as racial project inevitably has focused on president is a step in that direction. But the problematic character of the concept virtually every journalist and academic of race; on the historicity of group for- savant who gets press attention in rela- mation and deformation; on boundary- tion to post-raciality wants to talk only crossings; and on the internal diversity about whether that future has arrived. of the descent communities that is ob- This scenario is true of even ambitious scured by the ½ve gross categories of the and thoughtful scholars, such as histo- ethnoracial pentagon (white, black, yel- rian Thomas J. Sugrue, whose recent low, brown, and red). So, too, has this book, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and project promoted direct and honest con- the Burden of Race, will convince anyone frontation with economic inequalities still in doubt that racism continues to that are historically speci½c but are too be a problem for black people in the Unit- often dealt with only through the proxy ed States.3 Once that becomes the ques- of ethnorace. tion–usually understood as, “Are we beyond racism or not?”–there is no room for discussion other than to ex- The term post-ethnic is broader and claim, “Of course not!” deeper than post-racial. The former rec- Questions so easily answered are not ognizes that at issue is all identity by the ones most deserving of our attention. natal community, including that which Might the rush to deny what almost no- is experienced by or ascribed to popula- body af½rms betray an eagerness to avoid tion groups to which the problematic more challenging issues, including those term race is rarely applied. These mat- explored by people who have popular- ters affect the status of Latinos, Arabs, ized the terms post-ethnic and post-racial? Jews, and other immigrant-based popu- These concepts were generated to lations not generally counted as “races.” sharpen our vision of what a society A post-ethnic social order would encour- long accustomed to invidiously ascribing age individuals to devote as much–or as and enforcing ethnoracial distinctions little–of their energies as they wished might look like if those abhorrent proto- to their community of descent. It would cols could be weakened. This decidedly discourage public and private agencies historical undertaking is quite different from implicitly telling citizens that the from a debate about “color blindness” most important thing about them is in the abstract. The post-ethnic/post- their descent community. Hence, to be post-ethnic is not to be anti-ethnic, or

Dædalus Winter 2011 175 The even color-blind, but rather to reject the of self by drawing from a rich repertoire Concept idea that descent so determines destiny of rhetorics and identities,” uncon½ned of Post- Racial: as to render suspect trans-descent pro- by such narrow and singular roles as How Its grams that seek to diminish inequality.4 “ethereal integrationist” or “vernacular Easy 7 Dismissal Politically, a post-ethnic perspective black man.” Obscures actively encourages strategic enclaving; Yet when a basic idea is widely accept- Important what this perspective opposes is the as- ed while the words that ostensibly em- Questions sumption that people are deeply obligat- body the idea are resisted, one wonders ed in the nature of things to make com- if the words can possibly be right. Post- mon cause with others of the same skin racial and post-ethnic may be inadequate color, morphological traits, and kinship to take on the tasks some of us have as- system. Post-ethnicity considered as a signed to them. One of the interesting goal is a choice-maximizing ideal that challenges of our historical moment encourages cultural and political dynam- is to ½nd a vocabulary adequate for the ics responsive to individual perceptions meanings many of us are struggling to and ambitions. Post-ethnicity as a con- get “out there” in public discourse. dition–now largely in effect for Ameri- Some of the terms that are literally ac- cans of European ancestry, who can de- curate are even more awkward: post- cide just how Irish or Polish they want ethnoracially-intensive, post-pentago- to be–is the experience of being able to nal, post-identitarian, post-ascriptive, really choose. Political scientist Robert post-primordial, and post-descent-de- Putnam is right to describe as “post-eth- ½ned all convey part of the action, but nic” his sense that “it seems important none is viable. To be sure, there are so to encourage permeable, syncretic, ‘hy- many posts these days–postmodern, phenated’ identities . . . that enable previ- post-Marxist, postcolonial, postfemi- ously separate ethnic groups to see them- nist, post-structural–that one must selves, in part, as members of a shared bring a certain skepticism to the whole group with a shared identity.”5 enterprise of “posting” things. There is Literary scholar David Mastey gets it no doubt this popular practice reflects a exactly right when he observes that “a lack of invention. What keeps the prac- post-ethnic policy” of “af½liation by rev- tice of posting alive with regard to eth- ocable consent” was reflected in Colum- nicity and race, however, is a determina- bia University graduate Barack Obama’s tion to keep track of the past, to register decision to become a community organ- its legacy without denying the reality of izer among the black poor of Chicago, in change. The post- is designed to flag this that young man’s later decision to leave meaning. Ironically, it is this sensitivity that community to attend Harvard Law to the legacy of the past that users of the School, and in the decision of many of terms post-racial and post-ethnic are rou- his black friends in Chicago to accept tinely accused of lacking. his departure from their community to When I ½rst pushed the term post-eth- pursue a law degree at Harvard.6 When nic in essays of 1992 and 1993, I was look- sociologist Jonathan Rieder describes ing for an alternative to cosmopolitanism, Martin Luther King, Jr., as “a post-ethnic which seemed too abstract, too ahistor- man,” he implies nothing to the effect ical, and too encumbered with ambigu- that King thought he was living a color- ous ideological associations.8 The term blind life, but rather that King had the post-ethnic appealed to me then–and still capacity to “articulate his complex sense does–because it implies a strong hold-

176 Dædalus Winter 2011 over from the past, but a re½nement of jor demographic group. Thirty-one per- David A. that legacy in relation to new opportuni- cent of Asian Americans who married Hollinger ties and constraints. So, too, with post- in that year took a non-Asian spouse, racial. On the closely related notion of while 26 percent of Hispanics took a post-blackness the writer Touré remarks, non-Hispanic spouse and 16 percent “Post-blackness sees blackness not as a of black Americans took a non-black dogmatic code worshiping at the altar of spouse. Nine percent of whites took a the hood and the struggle but as an open- non-white spouse.11 source document, a trope with in½nite Black out-marriage thus remains rare uses.”9 A similar dynamic is invoked in comparison to the statistics for out- under the flag of “post-Jewishness” as marriage among Hispanic Americans, de½ned, for example, by the organizers American Indians, and the various groups of a highly successful exhibition of post- of Asian Americans. Nonetheless, the Jewish art at the Spertus Jewish Muse- black case demands all the more atten- um in Chicago in 2008. “The post-Jewish tion because of the long and deep oppo- generation,” in the words of the Spertus sition to black-white marriages, which catalogue, “focuses on self-de½nition has lasted well beyond 1967, when the and on balancing lived experience and U.S. Supreme Court ½nally eliminated heritage in intellectual and daily prac- laws prohibiting such marriages in the tice,” fostering “an internal, highly per- dozen states where they still existed. sonal consciousness as to how one con- The current trend is unmistakable, espe- nects with Jewishness today.”10 cially for males. The Pew study found 22 percent of the black men who married In this essay, I focus on two highly diver- in 2008 were married to non-black wom- sifying demographic trends that contin- en, up from 15.7 percent in 2000 and 7.9 ue to inspire post-ethnic/post-racial writ- percent in 1980. Only 9 percent of black ers, and that get short shrift in the com- women acquired non-black husbands petition to show just how bad racism in 2008, which is consistent with earlier still is. One is the extent and character surveys showing that black men marry of cross-group marriage, cohabitation, non-black women much more frequent- and reproduction. The second is the ex- ly than black women marry non-black tent and character of recent immigra- men.12 tion, especially of dark-skinned peoples. Yet marriage statistics do not measure The role of “race mixing,” as it is often the full extent of the blurring of color called, in blurring the lines between the lines. Sociologists Joel Perlmann and standardized ethnoracial groups is now Mary C. Waters argue convincingly that widely acknowledged. It was even regis- these statistics underestimate the rates tered in the Census Bureau’s decision to of ethnoracially mixed families, espe- include in the 2000 Census the option to cially when black people are involved. identify with more than one ethnoracial “Low levels of black marriage and high- group. Yet critics of the post-racial con- er levels of black-white cohabitation cept almost never address this reality, de- than of black-white marriage,” they ex- spite its ever-growing salience. The Pew plain, “radically complicate the inter- Research Center recently studied the 3.8 pretation of intermarriage rates.”13 million marriages that took place in the One of the most distinctive and reveal- United States during 2008 and found rec- ing yet rarely cited of the relevant stud- ord levels of out-marriage for every ma- ies calculates the percentage of families

Dædalus Winter 2011 177 The who had a mixed race marriage with- empirically visible in the composition of Concept in their extended kinship network. De- families within the United States.15 of Post- Racial: mographer Joshua Goldstein found that How Its among U.S. Census-identi½ed whites, by second demographic trend that has Easy A Dismissal the year 2000 about 22 percent of white engaged post-racial/post-ethnic writers Obscures Americans had within their kinship net- is the diversi½cation of American society Important work of ten marriages over three genera- by immigration during the past several Questions tions at least one white–non-white mar- decades. This development, too, is wide- riage; in that same year, nearly 50 per- ly acknowledged, but its signi½cance for cent of Census-identi½ed black Ameri- our inherited intellectual and institution- cans had a black–non-black marriage in al apparatus for dealing with diversity re- their kinship system. The percentage for mains to be fully recognized. Increased Asian Americans with Asian–non-Asian immigration from Asia and Latin Amer- families was 84 percent. These ½gures ica was not anticipated by the Congress rose dramatically from earlier Censuses. of the United States when it enacted the In 1960, only about 2 percent of Census- Hart-Celler Act of 1965. But Latin Amer- identi½ed whites and 9 percent of Cen- ican immigrants, once they began to ar- sus-identi½ed blacks had in their kinship rive in unexpected numbers, were at network a single marriage across the least more familiar to empowered Ang- color line. As late as 1990, these ½gures los than were the previously rare immi- were only 9 percent for Census-identi- grants from Asia. The more striking and ½ed whites and 28 percent for Census- category-disrupting change was the many identi½ed blacks.14 Goldstein’s statis- millions of new Americans emigrating tics suggest that acceptance of cross- from China, India, Taiwan, Korea, the boundary marriage and reproduction, Philippines, Pakistan, and other Asian already registered in popular culture countries. These immigrants and their and opinion polls, will continue to in- descendants have not only greatly diver- crease. Our social psychologists tell us si½ed the society; in their diversity they that hostility to mixed race couplings, have made a mockery of the pan-ethnic like opposition to same-sex relation- concept of “Asian American.” Was an ships, diminishes with intimate famil- immigrant from Syria, Anatolia, or Iran iarity: when someone in your own fam- an Asian American? ily is in one of these traditionally stig- The character and extent of the post- matized relationships, the stigma loses 1965 immigration was apparent even in some of its power. the 1980s, but as late as 1998 President The signi½cance of the increase in Clinton’s “Initiative on Race,” One Amer- cross-group families can be exaggerat- ica in the 21st Century, the only presiden- ed. Occasionally someone will be bold tial commission to deal with race since enough to predict the end of standard- the Kerner Commission of thirty years ized communities of descent within the before, resoundingly reinforced the “old next two or three generations. But the religion.” The report systematically de- fact that this surely extravagant predic- nied that there were salient differences tion is more often ridiculed than serious- between African Americans, Asian Amer- ly advanced is another example of the icans, and Hispanic Americans. It will- complacent refutation of a claim rarely fully obscured the differences in lan- made. We need an honest discussion of guage, culture, and economic position the blending of ethnoracial lines that is within the Asian American group. It

178 Dædalus Winter 2011 offered ½fty-three speci½c recommen- The juxtaposition of the pre-immigra- David A. dations for multicultural programs and tion social circumstances of migrants Hollinger anti-discrimination remedies, not a sin- from Latin America with those of mi- gle one of which dealt with the histori- grants from several East and South Asian cally unique situation of the black Amer- countries reminds us that attention to icans whose lives had been affected by particular histories, especially to the ed- centuries of legally sanctioned slavery, ucational and economic backgrounds of violently enforced discrimination, and immigrants, presents us with a radically cataclysmically inadequate educational different picture of diversity than the one opportunities.16 we inherited from the civil rights era. Do One America in the 21st Century massive- Hispanic Americans have a claim on spe- ly denied the diversity of American life cial treatment? Perhaps they do, but the while ostensibly celebrating it. Central most plausible justi½cation for such treat- to this failure was a determination to ment would surely be an economic one, treat all immigrant-based populations pivoting on the fact that the United States from Asia and Latin America as compa- persistently encourages, and indeed de- rable to the descendants of American mands, an underclass of workers who slavery and Jim Crow. Dissenters from will do low-skilled work for relatively this old religion have been rare among low wages and who are not likely to join established politicians, though in 2010, labor unions. Our system, however, deals Senator James Webb of Virginia wrote with the Hispanic population as an eth- that all “diversity programs” should be noracial group. We use ethnorace as a terminated for immigrant-based popu- proxy for economic inequality, design- lations and yet be preserved for “those ing programs targeted at an ethnoracial- African-Americans still in need” of gov- ly de½ned population when the most ernment-directed assistance.17 salient property of that population is The relative success by standard indi- instead its economic status. Support cators of many speci½c immigrant groups for af½rmative action for Hispanics has from different parts of Asia is too often waned in the context of the theoreti- overlooked rather than analyzed in rela- cal and practical obstacles to creating tion to the dynamics of racism, inequali- a politically viable justi½cation for it.19 ty, and incorporation into a society of The history of discrimination against predominantly European origins. The Hispanic Americans includes school seg- great majority of adult immigrants from regation and exclusion from juries in sev- Korea are college graduates, and a sub- eral states prior to sixty years ago. But stantial segment of immigrants from unlike immigrants from Mexico, those several other Asian countries are highly from East Asia and South Asia were not skilled and literate in English when they even able to achieve naturalized citizen- arrive. This is not the case with most im- ship in 1952, and we cannot remind our- migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and selves often enough that Asian Americans other Latin American countries that proof Japanese ancestry were taken from vide so much of the low-skilled labor their homes and thrown into internment force in the United States. According to camps less than a generation ago. (Indeed, the most recent study, 34 percent of for- Japanese internment occurred in my own eign-born Hispanics of all ages who re- lifetime and within a few miles of where side in the United States have had no I now live in California.) The different education beyond the eighth grade.18 trajectories of Mexican Americans, on

Dædalus Winter 2011 179 The the one hand, and of an array of Asian grants and their children have managed Concept Americans, on the other, should refute to overcome the barriers created by anti- of Post- Racial: the idea that the operative force is racism black racism to a greater extent than non- How Its in the eye of the empowered white be- immigrant blacks. Study after study by Easy Dismissal holder. In the twenty-½rst century, we our social scientists and journalists doc- Obscures do not have to claim that empowered ument the gaps in economic position and Important whites have emancipated themselves educational attainments between the im- Questions from racism in order to confront the migrant-based and non-immigrant-based fact that the power of this racism to dam- black populations.21 These studies imply age its victims now varies enormously that blackness itself is not enough to ex- according to the economic and educa- plain the enduringly weak class position tional circumstances of those victims. of the bulk of American black people. This truth has been shown to apply to There is good reason to believe that the black people, too, on account of another educational and economic circumstances dimension of the immigrant transforma- of immigrants from Africa and the Carib- tion of American society. President Oba- bean provide an advantage. As with im- ma’s status as the son of an African immigrants from Asia and Latin America, migrant has heightened public awareness the speci½c social character of the new- of the migration of black-skinned people comers exercises great influence over from Africa and the Caribbean, but pub- their destiny in the United States. His- lic discussion of immigration still takes tory makes a huge difference. little account of the magnitude of this migration. The federal government’s sta- The more we recognize the historical tistics show that between 2000 and 2008, particularity of the circumstances sur- 636,938 immigrants from African coun- rounding the various descent communi- tries obtained permanent legal resident ties in the United States and of the indi- status. During the entire decade of the viduals within them, the more dif½cult 1980s, only 141,990 did so. People from it is to avoid a conclusion that I have al- Africa accounted for only 1.7 percent of ready argued for in the pages of Dædalus. immigrants obtaining such status dur- If the problem of the twentieth century ing the 1970s, but now account for about was, as W.E.B. Du Bois declared, the 7 percent of the total. African countries, problem of the color line, the problem taken together, produce more legally per- of the twenty-½rst century appears to manent immigrants than does India, Chi- be one of solidarity.22 With precisely na, or Russia. The even larger migration whom does one try to af½liate, and for from the Caribbean includes many in- what purposes? This is the problem of dividuals who, whatever their status in solidarity, and it looms larger or smaller their nations of origin, are black by the depending on the extent to which willed American one-drop rule. More than one af½liation becomes a possibility. Ethno- million immigrants from Caribbean racial mixing and massive immigration countries obtained permanent legal res- have changed the United States, which idence in the United States during the continues to operate with an increasing- 1990s.20 ly anachronistic ethnoracial system that That the ½rst black president is of im- assumes each group is an enduring, migrant stock is an emblem not only for clearly bounded, color-coded entity. the sheer magnitude of this migration, The more that we come to see the but also for the fact that black immi- color-coded “races” as artifacts, as con-

180 Dædalus Winter 2011 tingent results of human action rather elites. This move from the problem of David A. than primordial causes of it, the less color to the problem of solidarity can Hollinger prominently the color line factors be described as a “post-racial” or “post- among other social distinctions that ethnic” step, but the step is worth mak- may or may not be the basis for the ing even if those terms do not accompa- assigning or choosing of af½liations. ny it. The very question, “With whom The less ½xed ethnoracial categories should one af½liate and for what pur- and their socially prescribed meanings poses?” is precisely the sort of challeng- become, the more opportunities people ing question that is pushed aside when have to ask what is meant by “we” and folks rush to answer the easy question, to choose their af½liations rather than “Are we beyond racism?” accept roles assigned by empowered endnotes 1 A quick Internet search turns up countless examples of what I am describing; for example: “Whoever came up with the insipid term ‘post-racial’ ought to be forced to sit down and read aloud the vile commentary that pours into any newsroom after it publishes or airs a story on race. . . . That would quickly cure the urge to insist we’ve ½nally reached that harmonious other side of the rainbow”; Mary Sanchez, The Kansas City Star, June 26, 2010, http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/26/2109308/post-racial-america-is-an-obvious .html#ixzz0vkAxqOaB. 2 David A. Hollinger, “Obama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Post- ethnic Future,” Callaloo 31 (2008): 1033–1034. This essay is also available in Randall Kennedy and Gerald Early, eds., Best African American Essays 2010 (New York: One World/Ballantine, 2010), 44–51. See also Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2000). 3 Thomas J. Sugrue, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010). 4 For a rare example of journalistic commentary that demonstrates a nuanced understanding of post-ethnic/post-racial writings, see media scholar Mary Beltran’s posting on Flowtv: “As deployed by some conservative commentators, [the concept of post-racial] has implied an end to racial disparities and practices and achievement of the privileges of whiteness by all Americans, [but] other de½nitions, in contrast, offer no such reassurance to white America or claims that an ideal has been achieved. As de½ned by Paul Gilroy, post- racial, similar to David Hollinger’s notion of post-ethnicity, refers to a future in which racial notions, racialized hierarchies, and the hegemony of whiteness are in fact upended. Such a de½nition has far more subversive implications for equality and social power”; Mary Beltran, “What’s at Stake in Claims of Post-racial Media?” Flowtv, June 3, 2010, http://flowtv.org/2010/06/whats-at-stake-in-claims-of-post-racial-media/. 5 Robert Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century,” Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2006): 161, 169. 6 David Mastey, “Slumming and/as Self-Making in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father,” Journal of Black Studies 40 (2010): 493, 495. 7 Jonathan Rieder, The Word of the Lord is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2008), 9. 8 The ½rst reference I saw to post-ethnic was in Werner Sollors, “A Critique of Pure Plural- ism,” in Reconstructing American Literary History, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 277. I developed the notion in a number of publications

Dædalus Winter 2011 181 The of the 1990s and 2000s, especially Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Concept Basic Books, 1995; tenth anniversary expanded edition, New York: Basic Books, 2006). of Post- 9 Racial: Touré, “Visible Young Man,” The New York Times Book Review, May 3, 2009. How Its 10 Staci Boris, ed., The New Authentics: Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation (Chicago: Spertus Easy Dismissal Press, 2008). Obscures 11 For a convenient summary of this study, see Sam Roberts, “Black Women See Fewer Black Important Questions Men at the Altar,” The New York Times, June 3, 2010. 12 Ibid. 13 Joel Perlmann and Mary C. Waters, “Intermarriage Then and Now: Race, Generation, and the Changing Meaning of Marriage,” in Not Just Black and White: Historical and Con- temporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States, ed. Nancy Foner and George Fredrickson (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 275. 14 This study was reported in “Nation’s Many Faces in Extended First Family,” The New York Times, January 20, 2009. See also Joshua R. Goldstein, “Kinship Networks that Cross Racial Lines: The Exception or the Rule?” Demography 36 (1999): 399–407. 15 For a discerning commentary, see Jennifer Lee, “A Post-Racial America? Multiracial Iden- ti½cation and the Color Line in the 21st Century,” Nanzan Review of American Studies 30 (2008): 13–31. See also Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean, “Reinventing the Color Line: Im- migration and America’s New Ethnic/Racial Divide,” Social Forces 86 (2007): 561–586. 16 Advisory Board for the President’s Initiative on Race, One America in the 21st Century: The President’s Initiative on Race (Washington, D.C., 1998). 17 James Webb, “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege,” The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2010. Although this column was organized around the claim that some groups of impecu- nious white people are no less deserving of government help than some ethnoracial minorities, the most striking turn in the piece, given the prevailing discourse, was Webb’s sharp distinction between black people and other long-standing target groups for diversity programs. 18 Joseph Berger, “The Latino Lag,” Education Life, The New York Times, July 25, 2010. 19 See, for example, Gregory Rodriguez, “Af½rmative Action’s Time is Up,” Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2010. “When af½rmative action was established, it was intended to bene½t a small percentage of the U.S. population, but as the rationale and scope of the program evolved, so did the number of people it included,” Rodriguez observes, stating truths that the civil rights coalition has rarely wanted to discuss. “Large-scale post-1965 immigration also complicated the equation and ultimately upset the political calculus that made af½rmative action politically viable.” Rodriguez is the author of one of the most probing and discerning books ever written about Hispanics in the United States: Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007). The persistent avoidance by political leaders of the contradiction between af½rmative action and immigration policy is the theme of an underappreciated book by the late Hugh Davis Graham, Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Af½rmative Action and Immigration Policy in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 20 See http://www.dhs.gov/½les/statistics/publications/LPR08.shtm. These tables were ½rst called to my attention by Jennifer Hochschild. 21 One of the most widely publicized of these studies showed that among black students at Ivy League colleges, immigrants and the children of immigrants were greatly overrepre- sented. See Douglas Massey et al., American Journal of Education (February 2007). 22 Here I refer to my essay, “From Identity to Solidarity,” Dædalus (Fall 2006): 23–31. In that essay, I describe “the problem of solidarity” in some detail, and argue that its character and signi½cance have been largely obscured by the popularity of the concept of “identity.”

182 Dædalus Winter 2011 Pursuit of the Pneuma

James Alan McPherson

When the invitation from Gerald Early to contribute to this issue of Dædalus arrived in late Feb- ruary last year, I was commencing a ritual of mile- long walks and conversations with Phil Jones, an old friend and colleague at the University of Iowa. I had been trying to control the physical symptoms of diabetes, and Phil was kind enough to suggest that we walk for a mile or so every two days at a nearby mall. Phil had only recently been ½red from his position as vice president for student services and dean of students at the University of Iowa. The public reason for his dismissal was that university of½cials were not satis½ed with his handling of an incident involving several black student athletes and a white student. A white male JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON, a of½cial had also been ½red for the very same al- Fellow of the American Academy leged “neglect.” Phil had served the University since 1995, is Permanent Faculty for forty years, but he was let go without a hear- at the University of Iowa Writers’ ing. In return, Phil sued the University for what Workshop. He is the author of he believes was his unjust dismissal. Then he be- the short story collections Hue and Cry (1969) and Elbow Room gan to write a book about his experiences at Iowa, (1977), which was awarded the beginning in the early 1960s, when he ½rst ar- Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1978. rived as a student, and tracing his career there His other publications include until the time of his dismissal as a vice president. the memoir Crabcakes (1998) and Phil asked me to read drafts of each section A Region Not Home: Reflections of the work-in-progress so that we could discuss from Exile (2000), a collection them while we walked. His vivid recollections of essays and reviews. His many national literary awards include prompted me to recall my own encounters with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Mac- institutional powers, not at Iowa but elsewhere. Arthur Prize Fellows Award, and What struck me about Phil’s writing was not his several Pushcart Prizes. anger, which was not at all visible, but the affec-

Dædalus Winter 2011 183 Pursuit tionate relationships he had shared with Greek word pneuma, meaning “the vital of the his colleagues and peers. From universi- spirit of life itself,” whether at work or “Pneuma” ty presidents to departmental chairmen during times of worship, and especially to bureaucratic of½cials he encountered during times of giving. Indeed, pneuma during his years at Iowa, he wrote noth- is foundational in all systems of religious ing negative about anyone. Rather, he belief, but it seems to me that, as a civic captured the nuances, the day-to-day conviction, it is still vital as well in com- actions of his well-meaning colleagues, munities rooted in rural mores. Why who were deeply involved in creating a else would construction workers feel bureaucratic structure of af½rmative more comfortable beginning their work action–the Educational Opportunity at dawn? Why else would farmers’ mar- Program (eop)–intended to include, kets remain so popular among residents support, and nurture students from mi- of urban areas that are overstocked with nority groups. Reading Phil’s detailed discount supermarkets? And why else recollections, I saw the portrait of a mus- would communities like Iowa City, as cular bureaucratic structure that must well as its university, go to such great have evolved within universities in all lengths to attract, and then to maintain parts of the country during the 1960s, –long before the advent of “af½rmative 1970s, and 1980s. action”–so many black students, as well What was striking to me was Iowa’s as those from other minority groups? institutional receptivity to non-white And what, particularly now, is causing students, especially black Americans. so many institutions to retreat from this Phil described one major contributor to noble stance? There are the tensions the University, a philanthropist named caused by the Tea Party and its increas- Roy Carver, who said to him in 1971, “I ing numbers in all areas of the country. told you I was going to do something There is the legislative focus on Latino for the colored boys.” The same Roy immigrants and the rising call to exclude Carver also contributed to the build- them from the protections offered by the ing of the Carver-Hawkeye Arena and Fourteenth Amendment. Add to this list additions to the University Hospital. the declining popularity of Obama as the For many years I had wondered what nation’s ½rst black American president. formed the basis of that receptivity and generosity, but could only speculate on During our long walks and conversa- the effectiveness of laws promoting in- tions I found myself repeating to Phil clusion and “af½rmative action.” Now Jones a phrase I had absorbed many I truly believe that these developments years ago from my conversations with at Iowa evolved out of a unique spiritual Henry Nash Smith, a Mark Twain schol- dimension of the state of Iowa’s popula- ar and professor at the University of tion. One senses this trait, which I have California, Berkeley. Touching on the begun to call “neighboring,” in Iowa political and aesthetic polarization of store clerks, garbage collectors, post- the 1960s and 1970s, Professor Smith men and women, young people, and, employed, repeatedly, the term “bureau- most especially, in senior citizens. cratization of the pneuma,” meaning When Phil and I walk through the mall, that the spiritual dimensions and pro- we are constantly greeted by passing cesses of American life were increasing- strangers. If I had to capture this quality ly being subjected to bureaucratic con- in language, I would employ the ancient trol. In my interactions with Phil Jones,

184 Dædalus Winter 2011 I tried to recall a time when bureaucratic South.” For several years I worked with James Alan power was not as visible in Iowa City as Dr. Arnold on coming to terms with my McPherson it is today. I was inspired by a telephone own emotional complexities and on call I received from a friend in town, in- what she termed my “neurotic need to forming me that a woman we both knew, rescue needy people.” But most of all, Dr. Jean Arnold, had just died at age Dr. Arnold helped me endure extreme ninety-seven. personal pains. She advised me to do all This news took me back to the early that was humanly possible to maintain 1980s, my ½rst years in Iowa City, when my bond with Rachel. I was recovering from the trauma I had These memories of such a kindhearted experienced by means of the bureau- white Southern female helping me regain cratic structures in Charlottesville, Vir- my emotional balance return to me now ginia. Before leaving that city, I had gone as I read, almost daily, the news accounts through a brutal divorce, had lost even of reactionary, racist developments in the joint custody of Rachel, my young daugh- South and Midwest, as well as in other ter, and was trying hard to heal a broken parts of the country. Beyond the racist heart. Dr. Arnold herself was a South- focus of the Tea Party, there are muscu- erner, born in Alabama in 1921, and was lar legislative efforts to end the reach of the ½rst disabled graduate of the Univer- “diversity” in public education. A recent sity of Alabama Medical College in 1941. issue of The Progressive, exploring such Ten years later, she became the ½rst fe- trends, featured an essay on the rise of male psychiatrist to open a private prac- fascism in the United States. One of the tice in Iowa City. She practiced for twen- country’s most conservative magazines ty-eight years and helped a great many recently ran a striking cover story on the people, including me, all of us coming dangerous threat of “multiculturalism” from radically different backgrounds. to the settled racial identities of the U.S. Our bond of friendship became almost population. as close as the one that I had shared with Faced with such developments, one is Breece Pancake, one of my most gifted almost forced to fall back on “liberal” writing students. I disclosed to Dr. Ar- rhetoric and “internationalist” clichés. nold that Breece had shot himself to But it does seem, once again, that rural death on the very same night–April 9, states like Iowa, and especially small 1979–that Rachel was born. communities like Iowa City, offer alter- Our sessions focused to some extent natives to such trends. At the basis of on my growing awareness that many of these alternatives is the American belief my wounds were grounded in the racial in the sacredness of the individual. This attitudes that had shaped most of Char- belief is embedded in most of the coun- lottesville’s perception of me: a black try’s sacrosanct documents, but it also male who had been elevated from the plays an active role in the personal lives lower class in Savannah, Georgia, to of most U.S. citizens. Moreover, it also Harvard Law School and beyond. “You seems to me that when two individuals, are a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Mac- reared within the mores of the same re- Arthur Fellow,” she leveled with me. gion but who grow up separated by race “You should never forget your early up- and caste, discover each other outside bringing in Savannah, Georgia, and you of their native region, they are often should not have expected to be treated inclined to reconnect through common any other way in certain regions of the strains of cultural background. When

Dædalus Winter 2011 185 Pursuit this connection happens, as I have expe- to stand in his own place and project of the rienced in my relationships with Breece himself into the places of all else God “Pneuma” Pancake, Dr. Jean Arnold, and countless has created. The human imagination, students and friends, a profound personal in other words, is integrative. and cultural interaction can take place. We are so used to associating certain essentially human traits with color, or with It is my belief that this “partial integra- its absence, that we are often tempted to tion” of cultural selves, as it occurs be- impose stereotypes, and even dos and tween individuals from old, different don’ts, on what we are being asked to read, caste levels of the South, is becoming solely in relation to the color or the cul- the basis for “integration” between tural background of the person who has those from somewhat different cultur- done the writing. Or to avoid the com- al backgrounds. Perhaps it is the rural plexities of this trap, we sometimes tend landscape of the state of Iowa and the to imagine the writer as “white.” On the small-town intimacy of Iowa City that other extreme, when an unquestionably encourage this subtle interaction. I do “white” writer attempts to explore the know that during my many years in cultural mores that extend beyond those Iowa City, I have worked with and be- usually associated with “whiteness,” the friended individuals from a great vari- writer is often accused of trying to “pass” ety of ethnic, cultural, and color back- as “non-white” or of playing with the ex- grounds; I have learned from them cul- ploitation of a different cultural perspec- tural and emotional dimensions root- tive. We can easily forget that the human ed in levels of expression that go deep- imagination was created to be democrat- er than language. They may be called ic as well as integrative. “white,” “Chinese,” “Korean,” “Japan- In my view, the safest and most ideal- ese,” “Indian,” “Arabic,” or “African.” istic place for a writer is where he main- In the past few months, I have received tains contact with as many cultural tra- novels from three former students who ditions as possible. I am fully aware that are Chinese American: All Is Forgotten, I am stating this belief as a teacher of Nothing Is Lost by Samantha Chang, Gold writing, one who works with students Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li, and World from a wide variety of cultural back- and Town by Gish Jen. But the integra- grounds. Still, I introduce the idea as a tive processes of the human imagina- mode of preparation for certain com- tion are almost always the same. In the plexities that are evolving in American classroom setting, the “teacher” learns cultural life. It seems inevitable that more just as much about the cultural dimen- and more people from a great variety of sions through which the “student-writer” cultural backgrounds will eventually ar- expresses himself as do the other stu- rive on American shores. They will learn, dents. Here I am tempted to recollect and probably practice, the mores of an ancient bit of spiritual wisdom, an American life. We can also learn from insight that might still prove useful. It them, in order to put ourselves in better states that God did not create all exis- touch with a broader range of the non- tence in six days and then rest on the European worlds and the mores of their seventh day. Rather, God created imagi- people. nation on the seventh day and gave this I try to keep in mind the sage advice gift to his human creations. The person passed on to me by my old mentor, the who is blessed with imagination is able novelist and critic Albert Murray, who

186 Dædalus Winter 2011 criticized the advocates of “black nation- University of Virginia, and cultivate a James Alan alism” during the 1960s and 1970s. In his place as a token individual on the out- McPherson book of essays, The Omni-Americans, Mur- skirts of a racially polarized Southern ray argued that black American cultural community. Or I could take a great expressions had evolved through a tradi- chance on a less polarized community tion of “abstraction and recombination.” in which I could nurture my daughter That is, beginning in the earliest colonial in the best possible human environ- days, slaves had begun to absorb cultural ment. Luckily for me, the Fellowship and linguistic elements from the variety from the MacArthur Foundation ar- of peoples they encountered: Anglo-Sax- rived just when the Charlottesville on, Scottish, Irish, German, Spanish, In- judge was writing his divorce decree. dian, and so on. A friend recently point- (I was, of course, called “inferior” by ed out to me that the “trademark word” the judge in his decree.) But I had al- in the black American vernacular idiom, ready accepted the job at Iowa. The “motherfucker,” is rooted in the idiom central focus of my life then became that the early Irish employed to degrade Rachel, and my care for her. their Anglo-Saxon masters. The slaves I decided not to use the MacArthur synthesized such idioms into something money for any purpose beyond my fresh and new. It was this new, all-inclu- care of Rachel. I moved to Iowa City sive Negro idiom, Murray observed, that to begin my job in the Writers’ Work- provided “white” Americans with in- shop, but I maintained an apartment sights and perspectives not native to their in Charlottesville, and after I had set- own ethnic groupings. This tradition con- tled in Iowa City I flew back to Char- tinued until the idioms of black nation- lottesville several times each month to alism obscured it or shut it down. But in spend weekends with Rachel. Those its day, Murray’s arguments favored a years marked the beginning of our historic perspective. Along with his col- close bonds with friends in Richmond, league Ralph Ellison, Murray provided in Washington, D.C., in Baltimore, in black people with a linguistic model for cities north along the East Coast to the “integration” of the imagination, de- Boston and Cambridge. During her spite the narrow currents of black nation- school vacations, I would travel to alism. This approach formed much of the Charlottesville and bring Rachel to basis for Albert Murray’s “omni-Ameri- Iowa City. We would see friends in can” perspective on American life.1 Chicago, in Cedar Rapids, and, of course, in Iowa City. Looking back on what may seem an Over a number of years, Rachel and abstract reflection of the American pneu- I built a multiracial, extended family ma, I realize that, during all these years unit. As she grew older, Rachel enjoyed in Iowa, there was a pragmatic motive deep bonds with a diverse group of beneath my efforts to explore and culti- friends in many parts of the country vate an omni-American perspective and and in Iowa City in particular. The long- sensibility. The source of my motivation er her stays became, the deeper her was largely Rachel. When Rachel’s moth- bonds with an extremely diverse group er ½led for divorce, claiming complete of young and very talented writers. custody of our child, I was presented with Most important, Rachel learned from a tragic choice. I could stay in Charlottes- them. She learned much about the vi- ville, maintaining employment at the tal spirit of life, and, I suspect, she has

Dædalus Winter 2011 187 Pursuit grown to anticipate this pneuma as an evening, taking into account the seven- of the essential dimension of human experi- hour time difference. Most evenings “Pneuma” ence. she is out with friends, taking walks, in I still maintain relationships with a restaurants or bars, on a beach, or teach- great number of the young writers with ing. Often during our conversations she whom I worked during those years. invites her friends to say hello to me. The More often than I care to keep track of, cheerful conversations of this diverse I receive manuscripts or just-published group of European people remind me books from these talented people. The that Rachel, possibly drawing on her ex- bonds we have are lifelong ones, despite periences here in Iowa City, has formed the differences in our ethnic or racial her own multicultural group of friends. backgrounds. We are, and will remain, I want to believe that, even in Spain, friends. Rachel is becoming an omni-American. Rachel now works as a teacher of Eng- I want to believe that her pneuma is a lish in Barcelona. I try to call her each muscular one.

endnotes 1 Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy (1970; New York: Da Capo Press, 1990).

188 Dædalus Winter 2011 Chair of the Board & Trust Louis W. Cabot President Leslie Cohen Berlowitz Treasurer John S. Reed Secretary Jerrold Meinwald Editor Steven Marcus Cochair of the Council Gerald Early Cochair of the Council Neal Lane Vice Chair, Midwest John Katzenellenbogen Vice Chair, West Jesse H. Choper

Inside back cover: Barack Obama poses with his maternal grandparents, Stanley and Made- lyn Dunham, in an undated family snapshot. Photograph © Reuters/Obama for America/ Handout.

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