I used to be one of those conservatives who largely just denied that there were any racial problems left in the United States. And while I still think that crazy people can vastly overstate the problem and end up doing more harm than good, the traditionalist and communitarian tendencies that have grown in me over the past year have made me more aware and more sympathetic to the problems that minority communities can face.
If, as I suspect, Barack Obama becomes the next president, the most notable thing about his time will probably not be a failure or success in the policy realm. It will be the fact that he is the first black president. But this is so not because Obama can top the long list of "First African-American to do ____", but because of the huge consequences it would have for the way black Americans think about themselves. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but I will take the liberty to quote a little from this fascinating article from The Root, which I'm not accustomed to enjoying so much.
On the prospect of a black president:
We don't know how to act. We don't have a plan. We're searching for our equilibrium. And until we regain our footing, we can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior from people who ought to know better. Hold on to your hat.We haven't really been in a place this confusing since 1954, when the NAACP's crusade against segregation culminated in the Brown vs. Board decision and the walls came tumbling down. It's fair to say that we were so focused on winning that fight that we weren't prepared for the victory or its aftermath. We've spent nearly 60 years since then trying to figure out what kind of relationship we want to have with America and with each other. For the most part, we, like [Jesse] Jackson Sr., have seen ourselves as outsiders battling for justice and a seat at the table. Our default has been to protest. And while that mindset has served us well, it has, in a flash, been made damn near obsolete by the prospect, even the likelihood, that one of us may soon become the most powerful man in the world. If that happens, how can we seriously argue that we're being held back by anything but the limits we place on ourselves?
On Obama's shifts to the center:
There's an interesting question left on the table. What happens to the mentality of the black community if Obama loses? Having already been labeled a racist by Noah by virtue of being on the right, and having spent the last month knee-deep in Obama-worshiping African-Americans, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if Obama loses, there's a small chance that the entire south side of Chicago will burn to the ground. And you know what? I don't think I could blame them for being frustrated with their cultural and political situation. While I think the whole "hope" schtick is both without policy content and downright silly for the majority of Obama supporters, the possibility for a black president does present the self-examining black community hope for a change in their collective mindset. Even if this hope is much more symbolic and abstract than the campaigning Obama means it to be, you might even say that for the first time since 1954, the black community can look to the horizon and see change they can believe in.But they, like Obama's Father's Day speech urging black men to take more responsibility for their children, are more than political posturing. They represent the first stirrings of a new consensus that places more emphasis on a public discussion of personal responsibility than on protest, on publicly delving into our own shortcomings and dysfunctional behavior.
There's nothing new about this kind of self-examination, but in the past we've conducted it mainly in private, in barbershops and beauty parlors, and churches. We've bristled when whites in power like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, joined in the critique of, for example, our soaring rate of out-of-wedlock births. We've moaned about the negative consequences of washing dirty laundry in public. But such a self-protective mindset no longer makes sense because Obama is one of us, who has taken part in our private handwringing about the self-inflicted wounds that bedevil segments of the black community. He hasn't said anything most of us haven't heard or said at the dinner table. But now, because Obama is who he is, the whole world is listening in to the conversation.
The attention makes us uncomfortable and disoriented. So does the prospect that one of us might soon be in charge of trying to fix this mess instead of simply complaining about it.
Now if only he didn't enjoy partial-birth abortion so much...
3 comments:
To be fair to Noah, calling the conservative movement racist is different from saying that conservatives are all individually racist. In fact, I think a big part of his question is how the non-racist conservatives he knows at Yale deal with the historical racism of American conservatism.
Matt, I really enjoyed this post. You are so right that conservatives can go too far in denying the historical and cultural roots of racism and its very real presence today. People will always be racist on some level, for the unformed human mind is inherently suspicious of difference. As conservatives, we should actually be MORE willing to recognize the prevalence of racism in America, because we recognize that beneath even the most cultivated intelligence lurks the "untaught feelings" that we must take into account when we evaluate and perpetuate our social and cultural institutions. Very often, Burke is right to point out, these "untaught feelings" are so valuable that those institutions should exist to protect them. For example, the deep sense we all have that some things are right and others wrong, no matter how we try to slice it, is a very useful untaught feeling. But an assumption that someone is inferior or threatening because he or she is of a different skin color can be one of the most dangerous feelings we experience.
In the Baptismal Covenant, which a congregation in New Haven renewed on my behalf at my baptism 13 years ago and which I have renewed countless times since (including at my Confirmation), we promise, with God's help, to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being." That is what conservative aims to do through deference to the cultural institutions that have enshrined human dignity since before history was ever recorded. However, racism, present in some small innate measure, has been brought out to an unnatural extent by countless people. Racists pervert the function of culture by deciding that their dignity depends on putting down that of another. While this is easy for us to recognize here in a blog post in 2008 in America, in reality we know that we do not think in a vacuum. We have inherited systems, attitudes, and modes of living which allow racism to continue living, even if in a less openly pernicious form. The point is not for us to freak out and decide to blow up everything we have inherited in a "new conquering empire of light and reason." We should recognize the value of the project begun by our ancestors. Yet at the same time, it would be an insult to their effort if we did not also recognize that their means became confused at times.
Thus, I have to confess that I come down with Beverly Daniel Tatum, who, even though she was wrong on some of her examples and not always helpful in her tone, was right to point out that only active antiracism will vindicate the good in the culture we have inherited and reduce the peversion that racism represents.
So to bring this back to American politics, I completely understand why a black American would want to give Senator Obama at least a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. However, I personally don't think that the message of hope he represents can justify a lot of what he has in store for this country (if we even know what that is).
If only J.C. Watts could come back to politics. How tragic that the very character that made him such a wonderful politician led him to retire in 2002 ... so that he could spend more time with his family. Why can't more politicians be like that? The nature of the system, I suppose. Yet another disadvantage of our liberal democracy.
I absolutely agree with this post as well. As conservatives, I think we must be the first to recognize that the conservatives have been the ones perpetuating racism for some time now - this is partly because racism doesn't make sense in the liberal framework of individual Reason, and also for the simpler reasons that we're slower to change, we like institutions, we see the value in what we have, etc. All those things are good, of course; it just means that we are the last to come to terms with the flaws in our traditions.
David, the liberal question "how do conservatives today deal with the historical racism of American conservatism?" is strange to a conservative because it implies that we could cut ourselves off from our tradition, simply because it has flaws - but we (or I, at least) view history, and past human shames, as a continuum that I couldn't extricate myself from even if I wanted to; it's a matter of continuing to build on a context that dwarfs any individual aspect. I would never reject America just because America has been racist - that would involve being blind to everything else that America is, or else seeing America as something you can break into parts, which it isn't.
Gabriel, I would note in response to your post that the covenant phrase you cite is the kind of thing the American Left talks about much more than the American Right. It's also worthwhile to note that even people like our beloved Former Secretary are turned off by some of the people at ISI because they haven't totally let go of their racism. I'm not saying you're wrong about the potential of conservatism to recognize racism even more fully than liberalism - in fact, I think it's an excellent point - just noting the stark difference between the heights of conservatism and its greatest failings.
To go on a tangent that you're all going to hear me talk a lot about in the next few months, I wonder whether this kind of conservatism fits better in the Democratic or Republican Party. For example, affirmative action at colleges is a policy that makes actively antiracial change in one of our most vital social institutions, which seems conservative in the way that you described, Gabriel. Democrats are also the ones who try to use the institution of the government to fix racism and other social ills, whereas Republicans tout the greatness of the individual man and argue that leaving him alone will solve our problems. On the other hand, they have this nasty tendency to focus always on change, on new things away from the old, on hope - of course, so does the American Dream.
I would say that institutions are the battlegrounds of culture, and that one of the most important institutions in that respect is government. Among other things, government determines our understanding of our history, which is a primary source of understanding justice in our own society. Obama's symbolic importance comes largely from the fact that he will head one of the great institutions of our society, which shows the depth of our cultural change. Perhaps the line we draw between culture and government is as foolish as it would be to draw a line between culture and education or culture and religion.
I was astonished by the quotes you posted, Matt. Obama's election could be miraculous for the black community. I'm not sure if I want him to win yet, but - wow.
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