SWOPblogger

Lou!

Condi!

Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!!!

In my sparse free moments I have been re-reading a book – celebrated historian Eric Foner's "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War." If you want to get an idea of how electoral politics took shape in the US, or of our own history of multi-party political engagement, check it out.*

A key piece of the foundation of Foner's brilliant study is his examination of the "Free Labor" ideology that became a centerpiece of Republican political thought, of which Lincoln became the most prolific spokesperson. He helps us understand key aspects of why we think the way we do today, regardless of ideological bent or political persuasion. And he takes time and care to point out that both Africans and women, as well as Native Americans, Mexicans and Chinese, were considered "other," and outside the bounds of the public discourse through which the Free Labor ideology developed. In other words, Free Labor – a cornerstone of so much of what are considered American ideals, with their right as well as their left variants – was a construct reserved for white men.

Given the state of collective memory in US society, it is not surprising that the reference points of the Civil War are reduced in most peoples' minds to monuments that kids climb on in small towns east of the Mississippi, or for an older generation to Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," or for a younger generation to the recent serving from Hollywood, "Cold Mountain."

Lost is the reality that when push has come to shove this society has consistently resolved serious social, economic and political contradictions through violence, as exemplified by the enforcement of slavery and then the Civil War 1861-65, itself. During the Civil War 1865-present it has continued in both systematic and implicitly endorsed and encouraged forms, during Reconstruction and "Redemption," during the Civil Rights years, and today in the prison system and in poor communities of color throughout the land.

Now comes Condi Rice, of all people, whose troubled mind at least in limited fashion recalls this history and present day realities.

A couple of weeks ago Barack Obama did the unthinkable and actually gave a serious statement on racism in the midst of the national presidential campaign with, literally, the whole world watching. His words opened up a space that has been unavoidable for even our illustrious Secretary of State – a pedigreed former member of the Boards of the Carnegie, Charles Schwab, Chevron, Hewlett Packard, Rand and Transamerica Corporations, all bastions of white supremacy in our society.

While walking down the street in Washington, DC last Friday, I shot a glance at a vending box of the Washington Times – the same right wing paper founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon – and noticed the headline: "Rice hits U.S. 'birth defect'," with a subheading mentioning "race." I walked a little further down the street, something snapped, and I did a beeline back to the box. The message was on just about every street corner in DC.

According to Rice, "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together – Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding."

She added in her discussion with Times editors "That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today."

All this just drove home once again just how pregnant this society is to actually discuss ethnicity and racism, something that has become increasingly obvious in the two weeks since Obama's March 18 address.

Hard charging on the "guilt by association" tip, the Times and so many other media outlets keep using statements taken out of context by a former pastor at Obama's church to attack not only the candidate but, in Monday's edition of the paper, even the mainline protestant United Church of Christ – which arose out of the Pilgrim and "founding father," and later abolitionist, Congregational Church.

The Times editors, however, must divert their precious resources to give Condi play. After all, isn't she Secretary of State and the very example of token ethnic diversity considered essential to the Bush-Cheney team? Putting myself in their shoes for a moment, the Times editors must be left wondering just what the hell the Bush team was thinking regarding strategy on this one.

While many welcome the growing public discourse on race, many do not, particularly a lot of whites in this country who are utterly flipped out about it. Lou Dobbs is a case in point, and he unfortunately speaks the minds of a significant number of people.

“Not a single one of these cotton… these… just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race!” (Check out the video.)

He caught himself before he added the word "picking," but it seemed pretty clear that Obama and Rice are the "cotton pickers" he had in mind.

In the end, even the right in the US is going at it about racism.

I suppose that I am to think that we have come a long way since the period that Foner writes about. After all Dobbs, like Bush and Cheney, at least acknowledges the ethnic diversity of the US.

Yeah right. Dobbs reflects the same attitudes of a lot of liberals and corporate executives, that we live in a society that has changed its discourse in line with a more sophisticated practice of institutional racism. Some have gotten some help from an occasional racism training as well, in vogue over the past twenty years or so. It should be recalled that even the most radical labor leaders in the mid-19th Century, as well as most white abolitionists, for that matter, left both Africans and women, as well as the Native Americans, Mexicans and Chinese of the day, out of their equation of justice. This was in spite of the admirable and progressive moral convictions that they expressed and acted on.

I think the Rev. Al Sharpton got it right Monday night on the Tavis Smiley Program, paraphrased here: "Whites have to learn to go beyond saying they like this or that black (or brown, or red or yellow) person, or that they will even vote for this or that black person. Whites must begin to put their bodies on the line in the struggle against racism."

Ha! At the risk of being attacked on the "guilt by association" tip (to who, you ask - Sharpton? Smiley?? Obama?!?!), I hope that the debate continues. I hope that we can all speak the words “white supremacy” and discuss what this means. And I hope that a growing number of us white folks commit to putting our bodies on the line.


* Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. 1995. Oxford University Press, Oxford - New York.

Labels: Civil Rights, Condoleeza Rice, Eric Foner, Racism, Reconstruction, White Supremacy

# posted by elmolestoso @ 8:35 PM