April 20, 2006 - Issue 180

Bruce's Beat
The White Discursive 'Force Field'
The Immigration 'Crisis': A Consequence of 'Free Trade'
Cynthia McKinney and the Cowardly Caucus
Vouchers, Privatization, Stepping Stones: The Real Issues in Newark
Email from readers

Printer Friendly Plain Text Format

Note: The size of the type may be changed by clicking on view at the top of your browser and selecting "text size". The document will print in the size you select. For best results click on File on the top line of your browser to locate the Page Setup function and set the left and right margins to .5 inches.

In BC's April 6 Think Piece "Race, Place and Freedom", Professor Paul Street recounted what he called his most depressing classroom experience.

"It took place in the tragic aftermath of what I sometimes call 'Tropical Storm and Societal Failure Katrina.'  Only days before, the nation had been treated to a series of graphic televised images displaying poor and black New Orleans residents stuck on the roofs of their flooded homes, begging for assistance...

"As the debate proceeded, it became evident that most of my predominantly white and suburban Chicago-area students could grasp no compelling explanation for the terrible scenes on their television than poor blacks' alleged laziness, stupidity, and self-destructiveness...

"I had run head-first into a 'white discursive' force field composed of 'dominant white cognitive patterns of structured ignorance' that made 'the claims of people of color' seem 'absurd and radically incongruent' with common sense."

Every now and then you run across a simple, elegant unwrapping of a vexing social reality.  Having seen facts, common sense and morality bounce harmlessly off the "white discursive force field" again and again, we are all profoundly in Professor Street's debt for this apt descriptive term.  Both the phrase and Street's experience resonated with BC reader Jerel Shaw:

Paul Street's invocation of the "white-cognitive wall of indifference and ignorance both intentional and unintentional" took me back some over 40 years.

I was attending a political science class at a small South Texas college where the majority of students were white.  Mind you, these were the days where the "Black Power" Movement as well as "Viva La Raza" had reached a high fever pitch on college campuses across America.  I was the only Black student in that class when the instructor raised the question of racial injustice.

Of course, I can't remember the exact response I made, but I did declare that racial injustice was unfair and mean.  After saying that a white student reacted by saying that he was not responsible for racial injustice, he had been taught this by his parents and their parents.  He said that he should not be blamed for their teachings.  Of course most of the (white) class sympathized with him.  My reply was to admonish my fellow student to take personal responsibility for what is happening today; "momma and daddy can't speak for you now."

The point is that this cognitive wall that you speak of is a tough cookie to break.  Whites are quick to say that it happened a long time ago.  At the same time they are unable to own up to their responsibility to try to short circuit the systemic and structural racist cycle that his parents and their parents instigated. Katrina is a good example of how truth can't be hidden. Their laziness, indifference, and false innocence will be the things that undermine what this nation supposedly stands for.  The sins of the fathers visit.

If the occasional contributions by Professor Street reprinted in BC aren't enough for you, and they shouldn't be, visit his regularly updated blog.  Street's 2002 publication, the "Vicious Circle, Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois and the Nation" remains an indispensable explication on the effects of racially selective mass incarceration on family relations, the job market and nearly every facet of black life in America.

Back in July of 2005 frequent BC contributor Edward Rhymes began his cover article "Acting White" thusly:

I have heard a lot of static concerning African Americans and their supposed disregard for education. “Our black kids look down on education' say many of the black pundits, 'they tease the black kids who are doing well school and say they are acting white.”  I've heard this repeated over and over again by African-American personalities and celebrities (none of which, by the way, have any extensive, classroom teaching experience). Let me also add, that in all my years as an educator and youth program specialist, I have never heard any student equating scholastic achievement with whiteness....

Reader Maria Phillips took the time to write us and disagree with Dr. Rhymes:

I suggest that Edward Rhymes read the work of Dr. Signithia Fordham on the phenomenon of "acting white". Her work demonstrates that this phenomenon is not mere speculation, but the actual lived experience of a group of students in Washington DC. In addition, Meyerhoff Scholars at the University of Maryland Baltimore County have also articulated their academic experience in terms of the "acting white" phenomenon. I am growing weary of the industry that is emerging around denial of this phenomenon from non-ethnographic sources.

This editor has no experience as an academic researcher, classroom teacher, celebrity or ethnographer.  I have been a parent, step parent and foster parent.  I recall a discussion with my own eighth grade daughter in which I demanded an explanation for her lack of interest in trying to excel academically.

"I ain't tryin' to be white" she told me.

Eight years later, in 1999 or early 2000 I was the foster parent of another young lady.  Same age, same neighborhood, same Chicago public school, same conversation, and to my horror the same answer, almost word for word.

"I ain't even tryin' to be white".

So we respectfully disagree with Dr. Rhymes.  It appears to us that whether we like it or not, the phenomenon does seem to exist.  We can trace its causes and consequences, we can explore how it came to be and what we can do about it.  But like it or not, it appears to be part of life as it is being lived by some proportion of young African Americans.  So what ARE  we going to do about it?

Georgia's bold state legislators are into taking action on those crucial issues where the feds in Washington DC fear to tread.  Trouble is, not nearly enough of them are talking about repealing the state's anti-black voter ID law which the Bush Justice Department has OK'd anyway.  Few have been heard on the subjects of raising the minimum wage or restricting usury and predatory lending.  And so far, making Wal-Mart pay its fair share of Medicaid, which picks up the health care for many of its employees in the state remains a legislative non-starter.

Since the anti-gay marriage bullet has already been shot, the state's Republican legislators hoped to rally their forces this time by making the everyday activities of undocumented immigrants in Georgia into felonies.  BC recently exposed Atlanta state senator Kasim Reed, a demagogic attorney who practices employment discrimination law for discriminating employers and civil rights law for the corporations that violate civil rights for his echoing Republican strategies with ridiculously punitive proposals of his own.  With or without Reed's help, Georgia legislators this week did pass their own horrendous and unenforceable immigration bill, and even produced a fire-eating black Republican from suburban Atlanta to address an anti-immigrant crowd in the capital steps.

Just as white supremacy has engineered complex discursive "force fields" to insulate whites and some blacks and browns too, from reality, similar force fields of fake history, of disinforming and misleading notions have been constructed around the issues of so-called "free trade" and its consequent globalization of labor markets.  America experiences labor market globalization as a massive influx of foreign workers, with and without papers.  Black America, already last hired and first fired, experiences the sharp end of this process in ways that we will be working out for some time.

Hence it is no surprise that BC readers are continuing to write us about the immigration aspects of the Kasim Reed article, on Senior Commentator Margaret Kimberley's April 6 offering, "Immigration and America's Bad Karma," and the April 13 Radio BC: "Immigration Militancy, Black Malaise."

We got this thought from BC reader Tom Hodges:

Good day Ms. Kimberly. I liked your column, “America's Bad Karma.”  I do think we should consider class warfare vs. racism as “being the heart of the anti-immigrant backlash.” That was where Dr. King was headed when he was assassinated. He hit a nerve!  Just a thought.

From Tokyo, Doss Thane channels Republican leaders to tells us this:

Machiavelli that the best way to keep peace at home is to have a war abroad.  So Bill Frist and the House Republicans – the hard-core right-wingers – have cast the immigration debate in exactly the same terms: "We've got to build a wall! We've got to put Them in prison! Rally around the flag and support Us, because We've got to stop Them before it's too late!”

The craven complicity of the Congressional Black Caucus in smearing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney was the subject of last week's BC cover story, and of a good deal of reader correspondence.

BC reader Marjorie Hammock said:

And thank you for the C. McKinney piece.  I was beginning to think that only I was understanding what was going on with McKinney.  There are very few sisters that I know (and I am 70 years old) who would not react to some white official hands on the person.

And we got this from Victor Pate:

Cynthia McKinney is the ONLY individual in the United States Congress that has represented the honest aspirations of ordinary African-american people and the majority of the world's population. And even if many of those people are not aware of her efforts, courage and honesty, it has not slowed her from the pursuit of justice.  But it has made Rep. McKinney a target.  The enemy doesn't fight fair, and we should not rule out the possibility that her accusers are lying or that there has been some kind of scripted set-up.

Alice Molloy agrees that McKinney was a target:

I can't stop thinking about what's being done to Cynthia McKinney.  In my opinion, "they" particularly want to destroy her and I do not doubt for a minute that she was targeted by Capitol cops. I would guess that such people are trained from birth to see a woman like her as someone to be arrested and sent to prison.  They probably can't stand that she's a member of Congress, and believe she needs to be brought down a peg.  Black Caucus members who are piously chastising her ought to be ashamed of themselves, and white members, like Nancy Pelosi, who it is said won't even talk to her, need to take a look at where they're coming from.  Thanks for speaking up about this.

Four years ago, BC's very first issue exposed the connections of Newark mayoral candidate Cory Booker with elements of the hard right.  The plan was to elevate a new, corporate subservient brand of black leadership into elected office, and use the city as a showcase for efforts to privatize public education and what remains of Newark's public sector.  Although Booker obtained the unanimous endorsement of every print and broadcast outlet in the tri-state area virtually none of them except BC saw fit to mention Booker's connections to the Walton Family Foundation, his outspoken advocacy of vouchers and privatization, or his endorsement by the Manhattan Institute.

Booker is back again this year for another grab at Newark's City Hall.  His right wing connections have raised him more than $6 million for a campaign in a city with less than 300,000 inhabitants.  They have produced him a feature length propaganda film which makes the incredible and insulting claim that Newark rejected Booker four years ago simply because he was fair-skinned and educated.  While Booker remains the recipient of almost universally fawning and uncritical media praise, BC is happy to report that a whiff of the actual issues in play may occasionally reach the public through a most unlikely source:  The New York Times.

An April 17 Times article breaks the establishment media embargo on one of the campaign's real issues.  "Cory Booker...supports school vouchers", the article says.   "Last time his opponents successfully used the issue against him."   With that single sentence, the article sheds more light on the real issues of Newark's mayoral campaign than dozens of interviews and puff pieces.  The Times piece barely touches on other pressing concerns Newark residents have over Cory Booker, such as his connections with the rich and Right, or the likelihood that City Hall would be a brief stopover on the way to higher office.  And even though it repeats the bogus claim that growing numbers of African Americans are joining the corporate funded "voucher movement," we do have to call it progress, in a minor sort of way.

We try to answer as much of our reader email as possible, and we print a little of it in this space each week.  Do send us your best.

Write to Bruce Dixon at [email protected].

Home

 

Your comments are always welcome.

Visit the Contact Us page to send e-Mail or Feedback

or Click here to send e-Mail to [email protected]

e-Mail re-print notice

If you send us an e-Mail message we may publish all or part of it, unless you tell us it is not for publication. You may also request that we withhold your name.

Thank you very much for your readership.