Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a genius and this article is a perfect example of why. In response to Tavis Smiley's TV special Stand (a film about a bus trip with Smiley and his "boys" exploring the black male experience--trailer above) she dissects the myopic view of identity politics, black history and social change that they explore through the film and the lens through which they determine that Obama doesn't talk about race enough.
She writes,
Its low production value, wandering narrative, flat history and self-important egoism did little to reveal the shortcomings of the Obama phenomenon. Instead, the piece exposed and embodied the contemporary crisis of the black public intellectual in the age of Obama.The film and its participants (two of them my senior colleagues at Princeton University) appropriated the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to implicitly claim that they, not Obama, are the authentic representatives of the political interests of African-Americans. They used King's images and speeches, gathered on the balcony where King was assassinated, and explicitly asserted their desire to play King to Obama's LBJ, and Frederick Douglass to Obama's Lincoln.
This question of authenticity in identity is a very frequent theme in argument between different types of feminists and specifically different generations of feminism. The older "watchdogs" are disappointed with what they see is a diluted brand and less than tough stance on issues by younger generations. The reality that material conditions have changed for women, people of color and other disenfranchised communities is not explored in depth, which has allowed for different types of political identifications, different types of movements.
She continues,
African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.The men of "Stand" yearned for an imagined racial past. By their accounting, this racial past had better music, more charismatic leaders and a more-involved black church.
Their romanticism ignores the cultural contributions of contemporary black youth, forgets the dangerous limitations of charismatic leadership and revises the fraught, complicated relationship of black churches to struggles for racial equality. And these men ignored the democratizing effect of new media forms, which revolutionized the 2008 election.
Black people were not duped by some slick, media-generated candidate. African-Americans were co-authors of the Obama campaign. Through social networks, YouTube videos, political blogs and new-media echo chambers, black people were equal partners in shaping the candidate and his campaign. There was no need for the entrenched pundit class to tell black voters what to think or how to behave; they figured it out for themselves.
Still, there is plenty to criticize in the young Obama administration: the refusal to prosecute those implicated in the torture memos, civilian casualties caused by drone attacks, bank bailouts and inadequate defense of gay rights to name a few. But black communities are already engaged in these critiques and many others. Black local organizers, elected officials, bloggers, pundits and columnists have taken substantive, specific positions on a broad range of issues.
Read the whole article as she lays out perfectly the tension and oversight by public intellectuals, thinkers and journalists that are resistant to new modalities of social change. It is interesting this tension between recognizing that political discourse around race has changed as have lived conditions for people of color, yet we are not in a post racial space.
As I have written about before, this tension between recognizing progress and claiming wins in the service of people of color verse the post-racial stance (most liked by moderates, where radical positions on race are ignored or made fun of) is at the heart of the tension in current racial dialogue. We are at a crossroads where we have to recognize the nuanced ways that racism (including tokenism) plays out, even in liberal politics and then the strategic and nuanced ways we are winning, at least in the conversation, if not via material conditions.
Obviously, my ideal hope is when we start to have a conversation so nuance that we see the way homophobia and sexism are tied into racism, but like I said last week in talking about Sonia Sotomayor, it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation (aka, I love you, I can't touch you anymore.)
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Well this is an interesting piece from Professor Lacewell, but I'd hesitate to call it brilliant. While Smiley & Professor Dyson undoubtedly have their own PR machines in mind with their critiques of Obama, Professor Lacewell undoubtedly has her's in mind as well.
In this sense Smiley & Lacewell are both right. Obama can't be the "black" President because he's the "American" President. Hence, outside agitators like Smiley, Dyson, Sharpton & others must push Obama & the Congress from the Left if only to counter the push of the Right. But if Lacewell thinks 2008 ushered in a transformative era of black ground roots politics she hasn't looked at the latest voting records. Just one month after BO's historic election, black turnout in GA plummeted back to historical levels & conservative Saxby Chambliss won re-election in what should've been a casualty of a Democratic tidal wave. The more things change the more they remain the same. Indeed.
Well I'll probably post a detailed critique of this on my own blog, but Lacewell is clearly in the Obama camp, has been and made some comments that I found particularly weak for someone of her intellectual stature.
Not to say that Tavis et.al. are any more correct than she is, but for example, how can she write in critique of those who make a buck outside of black communities when she does so herself? And what exactly is wrong with wealth transfer into black hands? Should Tavis et. al be broke like Malcolm X and many other black people who hoped the community would keep them afloat? Really? And historically, when black folk have made a living off of black folk's money, they have been called scammers. So which is it going to be?
awesome! you should put it up on the community site as a response to this post. There was def part of me that was feeling like, "wait a minute" but i went in this direction instead cuz i felt like her overall argument of the political dialogue growing up was astute. but seriously, would love to hear your criticism.
I love Melissa and I am not a huge Tavis fan but I actually saw the entire documentary. It was interesting, a group of friends traveling and at times being off the cuff.It was about waaaay more than Obama btw. Clearly Smiley doesn't care for Obama, he feels his sacred place as raceman supreme as lost some luster and is being overshadowed. Melissa doesn't care for Tavis because he was so peevish and petty about Obama not kissing his ring, she being an Obama supporter. What I'd really like to see her on his show or them having an extended conversation on the body politic. I think they find a lot of common ground on things not Obama.
...btw on Melissa's blog a few weeks ago she made an aside about her distaste for this documentary but didn't give any detail. She does make excellent points about the romanticism of the church and "back in the day", and the "watchdogs".
Yeah, I just like the points she is making, maybe calling her a genius went too far, LOL, but I will def check out the documentary. It is just a refreshing analysis.
I agree she is brilliant and I love her passion and that she is accessible. It's great how she is able to convey the complex matters she does in a way everybody can easily understand. A lot of the time the academic language is so off-putting you lose interest and don't even care what point they're making. Plus she has such a grasp of the intersections of feminism.
Good post... Great post even, especially as there's a tendency on this blog to post a link, put an ill thought-out comment, and then let the e-blood run slick and free in the comments section.
Seriously I thought it was a compelling article and a short but illuminating commentary from you Samhita. Don't want to belabour the point too much (now back to revision!)