[Peace-discuss] Why the Democrats are as they are
E. Wayne Johnson
ewj at pigs.ag
Wed Jun 18 22:01:19 CDT 2008
The Gini coefficient is more useful if one constructs bootstrap
confidence intervals and also the Lorenz asymmetry coefficient with its
confidence intervals. Otherwise it might be misleading to simply
compare two numbers and say, hey this one is bigger (smaller) than that
one (therefore something meaningful is occurring).
Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>
> Civil rights matter enormously, and race is top of the list re
> that. Sure I agree w/ some of his points but not others. Mostly I
> think the essay is a buncha mental noise signifying not much, don't you?
>
> --Jenifer
>
> --- On *Wed, 6/18/08, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
>
> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Why the Democrats are as they are
> To: jencart13 at yahoo.com
> Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 8:42 PM
>
> So you agree with Benn Michaels?
>
>
> Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> > Hey check out the Demos report card on civil rights in the latest Crisis
> > Magazine (NAACP publication). With one or two exceptions Demos get
> > straight As, Repubs get straight Fs. May not matter to some of those who
> > post to this list, but it definitely matters to ME!!
> >
> > --Jenifer
> >
> > --- On *Wed, 6/18/08, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> >
> > From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> > Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why the Democrats are as they are
> > To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> > Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 11:20 AM
> >
> > Some Democrats are more equal than others:
> > Race and gender distract from class in US primaries
> >
> > Class is the great unmentionable in the Obama-Clinton campaigns. US
> > progressives
> > want to diversify the elite across colour, gender and ethnic
> background, while
> > accepting ever greater inequalities of wealth between the elite and
> the rest of
> >
> > the nation.
> >
> > By Walter Benn Michaels
> >
> > There have been two defining moments related to race in the Obama
> campaign, and
> >
> > more generally in United States progressive politics. The first was in
> January
> > on the night of the Illinois senator’s victory in South Carolina
> when, in
> > response to comments by Bill Clinton about the size of the black vote,
> the
> > Obama
> > crowd started chanting: “Race doesn’t matter.”
> >
> > “There we stood,” said the novelist and Obama activist Ayelet
> Waldman,
> > “in the
> > heart of the old South, where Confederate flags still fly next to
> statues of
> > Governor Benjamin Tillman, who famously bragged about keeping black
> people from
> >
> > the polls (‘We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not
> ashamed of
> > it’),
> > chanting race doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter. White people
> and black
> > people. Latinos and Asians, united in our rejection of politics as
> usual.
> > United
> > in our belief that America can be a different place. United. Not
> divided”
> > (1).
> >
> > The second moment was in March when, in response to the controversial
> sermons
> > of
> > his former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, Obama gave his “more
> perfect
> > union”
> > speech, declaring: “Race is an issue this nation cannot afford to
> ignore
> > right
> > now” and inaugurating what many commentators described as a
> supposedly
> > much-needed “national conversation on race”.
> >
> > I say supposedly because Americans love to talk about race and have
> been doing
> > so for centuries, even if today the thing we love most to say is that
> > “Americans
> > don’t like to talk about race”. What we aren’t so good at
> talking about
> > is
> > class, as Obama himself inadvertently demonstrated when he tried to
> talk about
> > class on 6 April at a closed-door San Francisco fundraiser
> (“Bittergate”).
> > He
> > tried to explain the frustrations of some small-town Pennsylvanians:
> “It’s
> > not
> > surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or
> antipathy to
> >
> > people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
> anti-trade
> > sentiment.”
> >
> > ’Change we can believe in’
> > There seems to be an obvious contradiction here. First, the chant of
> race
> > doesn’t matter; then the speech about why race does matter. But
> after
> > reflection
> > the contradiction fades, since the need for the speech, the history of
> American
> >
> > racism, is what prompted the promise of the chant: the idea that
> electing a
> > black man would be a major step toward overcoming that history. Which,
> of
> > course, it would.
> >
> > It is the promise of overcoming the long history of racial division,
> the
> > promise
> > of solving in the 21st century what W E B Du Bois (2) described as the
>
> > overwhelming problem of the 20th century, the problem of the colour
> line, that
> > gives the Obama campaign its significance. The “change we can
> believe in”
> > is not
> > ideological, it’s cultural (Obama and Clinton are ideologically
> almost
> > identical; if people had wanted ideological change, we’d be talking
> about
> > John
> > Edwards). And at the heart of that cultural change is the fact that it
> cannot
> > be
> > proclaimed. It must be embodied, and only a black person can embody
> it. We can
> > elect white people who say that race shouldn’t matter, but only the
> election
> > of
> > a black person can establish that it really doesn’t.
> >
> > So the Obama campaign is and has always been all about race, and
> especially
> > about anti-racism as progressive politics. Whether or not he
> ultimately wins,
> > and especially if he doesn’t, we are still being shown the
> “progressive”
> > wing of
> > the Democratic Party leading Americans toward an increasingly open and
> equal
> > society, for African-Americans and also for Asians and Latinos and
> women and
> > gays.
> >
> > But the problem with this picture – a problem that is also a crucial
> part of
> > its
> > attraction – is that it is false. There has been extraordinary,
> albeit
> > incomplete, progress in fighting racism, but the picture is false
> because that
> > progress has not made American society more open or equal. In
> fundamental
> > respects it is less open and equal today than it was in the days of
> Jim Crow
> > when racism was not only prevalent but was state-sponsored.
> >
> > The hallmark of a neo-liberal political economy is rising sensitivity
> about
> > differences of identity – cultural, ethnic, sometimes religious –
> and
> > rising
> > tolerance for differences of wealth and income. Readers who are
> familiar with
> > the jargon of economic inequality will have an immediate sense of what
> it means
> >
> > to say that equality in America has declined when I tell you that in
> 1947, at
> > the height of Jim Crow and the segregationist laws in the South, the
> US Gini
> > coefficient was .376 and that by 2006, it had risen to .464. Since on
> the Gini
> > scale 0 represents absolute equality (everyone makes the same income
> as
> > everyone
> > else) and 1 represents absolute inequality (one person makes
> everything), this
> > is significant.
> >
> > Back then, the US was in the same league as the countries of western
> Europe,
> > albeit a little more unequal than them; today we’re up there with
> Mexico and
> > China (3). In 1947, the top 20% of the US population made 43% of all
> the money
> > the nation earned. In 2006, after years of struggle against racism,
> sexism and
> > heterosexism, the top 20% make 50.5%. The rich are richer (4).
> >
> > Legitimate the elite
> > So the struggle for racial and sexual equality – the relative
> success of
> > which
> > has been incarnated in the race and gender politics of the Democratic
> Party
> > over
> > the past six months – has not produced greater economic equality,
> but been
> > compatible with much greater economic inequality, and with the
> formation of an
> > increasingly elitist society (5). There is a reason for this. The
> battles
> > against racism and sexism have never been to produce a more equal
> society; or
> > to
> > mitigate, much less eliminate, the difference between the elite and
> the rest;
> > they were meant to diversify and hence legitimate the elite.
> >
> > This is why policies such as affirmative action in university
> admissions serve
> > such a crucial symbolic purpose for liberals (6). They reassure them
> that no
> > one
> > has been excluded from places like Harvard and Yale for reasons of
> prejudice or
> >
> > discrimination (the legitimating part) while leaving untouched the
> primary
> > mechanism of exclusion: wealth (the increasing-the-gap between the
> rich and
> > everyone else part). You are, as Richard Kahlenberg put it, “25
> times as
> > likely
> > to run into a rich student as a poor student” at 146 elite colleges,
> not
> > because
> > poor students are discriminated against but because they are poor.
> They have
> > not
> > had the kind of education that makes it plausible for them even to
> apply to
> > elite colleges, much less attend them.
> >
> > What affirmative action tells us is that the problem is racism and the
> solution
> >
> > is to make sure the rich kids come in different colours; this solution
> looks
> > attractive long after graduation, when the battle for diversity
> continues to be
> >
> > fought among lawyers, professors and journalists – in fact, any
> profession
> > with
> > enough status and income to count as elite. The effort is to enforce a
> model of
> >
> > social justice in which proportional representation of race and gender
> counts
> > as
> > success.
> >
> > If what you want is a more diverse elite, electing a black president
> is about
> > as
> > good as it gets. Electing a woman president would be a close second.
> But if you
> >
> > want to address the inequalities we have, instead of the inequalities
> we like
> > to
> > think we have (inequalities produced by inherited wealth and poverty);
> if you
> > want a political programme designed to address the inequalities
> produced not by
> >
> > racism and sexism, which are only sorting devices, but by
> neo-liberalism, which
> >
> > is doing the sorting, neither the black man nor the white woman have
> much to
> > offer.
> >
> > They are two Democrats who can’t even bring themselves to
> acknowledge
> > publicly,
> > in their last debate in April, that Americans making between $100,000
> and
> > $200,000 a year hardly qualify as middle class. Clinton committed
> herself “to
> >
> > not raising a single tax on middle-class Americans, people making less
> than
> > $250,000 a year” and Obama (who was, as a commentator put it, “a
> lot
> > squishier”
> > about it) also committed himself to not raising taxes on people making
> under
> > $200,000.
> >
> > Root of inequality
> > But only 7% of US households earn more than $150,000; only 18% earn
> more than
> > $100,000; more than 50% earn under $50,000 (7). Once you have
> Democrats who
> > consider people on $200,000 as middle class and in need of tax relief,
> you
> > don’t
> > need Republicans any more. Clinton and Obama are the emblems of a
> liberalism
> > which has made its peace with a political ethics that will combat
> racist and
> > sexist inequalities, while almost ignoring inequalities that stem not
> from
> > discrimination but from exploitation. The candidates’ death match
> prominently
> >
> > features charges of racism and sexism.
> >
> > In 1967, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and at the
> beginning
> >
> > of the effort to make the rights guaranteed by that act a reality,
> Martin
> > Luther
> > King was already asking “where do we go from here?”
> >
> > King was a great civil rights leader but he was more than that, and
> the
> > questions he wanted to raise were not, as he pointed out, civil rights
>
> > questions. They were, he told the Southern Christian Leadership
> Conference,
> > “questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution
> of
> > wealth”.
> >
> > There were then, as there are now, more poor white people than poor
> black
> > people
> > in the US, and King was acutely aware of that. He was aware that
> anti-racism
> > was
> > not a solution to economic inequality because racism was not the cause
> of
> > economic inequality, and he realised that any challenge to the actual
> cause,
> > “the capitalistic economy”, would produce “fierce opposition”.
> >
> > King did not live to lead that challenge and the fierce opposition he
> expected
> > never developed because the challenge never did. Instead, not only the
>
> > anti-racism of the civil rights movement but also the rise of
> feminism, of gay
> > rights and of all the new social movements proved to be entirely
> compatible
> > with
> > the capitalistic economy King hoped to oppose.
> >
> > It is possible but unlikely that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton might
> some day
> >
> > take up King’s challenge. Neo-liberalism likes race and gender, and
> the race
> > and
> > gender candidates seem to like neo-liberalism.
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > Walter Benn Michaels is professor at the University of Illinois,
> Chicago, and
> > author of The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity
> and
> > Ignore
> > Inequality, Metropolitan, New York, 2006
> >
> > (1) http://my.barackobama.com/page/comm ...
> >
> > (2) William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), the black civil
> rights
> > leader,
> > Pan-Africanist historian and writer who became a naturalised citizen
> of Ghana
> > in
> > 1963.
> >
> > (3) France is .383, Germany is .283, Sweden is .250.
> >
> > (4) Social mobility in the US has declined. In a recent study for the
> Pew
> > Foundation, Isabel Sawhill and John E. Morton report that by some
> measurements
> > the US is actually a less mobile society than Canada, France, Germany
> and most
> > Scandinavian countries; http://www.economicmobility.org/ass .... They
> suggest
> > that if you want to pursue the American dream today, you need to learn
> German
> > and move to Berlin.
> >
> > (5) See Serge Halimi, “US: Republican deficits”, Le Monde
> diplomatique,
> > English
> > edition, November 2006.
> >
> > (6) See John D Skrentny, “US: whose land of opportunity?” and
> Christopher
> > Newfield, “Education for sale in the land of the free”, Le Monde
> > diplomatique,
> > English edition, May 2007 and September 2007.
> >
> > (7) American Census Bureau; http://factfinder.census.gov
> >
> > <http://mondediplo.com/2008/06/05equality>
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
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