Denver 2008: Hope Is For The Weak
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
You
know you're addicted to a drug when you need it just to feel normal.
By that standard, African Americans have been addicted to hope for a
long, long time. Nothing wrong with that. As Robert Jensen of the
University of Texas, from whom the title of this piece is borrowed
points out, hope is seductive, it's attractive, and when times are
hard, hope is absolutely necessary. We're all quite naturally
attracted to those full of hope, while we pity or shun those without
it. But if hope is much like a drug, it's also a lot like capital.
Hope can be invested, wisely based on facts and a sober analysis of
the forces in play, or it can be squandered foolishly, based on
wishful thinking and outright lies. The air in Denver the last week
of August will be full of hope. And full of lies.
Since
hope is a limited thing, and sometimes all that we have, Jensen
suggests that we ought to be realistic and tough-minded about where
we invest it and how. The nomination of the Democratic party's first black candidate is an historic occasion, to be sure. But what is there in Denver to invest our hopes in?
The
political conventions bill themselves as glittering spectacles of
participatory democracy. But those days, if they ever existed, are
long gone. Today's political conventions are week-long staged-for-TV
marketing spectacles, in which the permanent party of corporations
and wealthy individuals publicly crown their champions, frame the
issues and present the package to voters.
True
to the core marketing principal of avoiding fact-based arguments and
comparisons, striving instead to establish powerful, reason-proof
emotional connections to their brands, convention planners often
choose their dates to coincide with “historical” themes. Thus
the 2004 Republican convention was held in New York City on the
anniversary of 9-11, to facilitate the kind of fearmongering warlike
campaign in which Republicans excel. And this year's Democratic
extravaganza is scheduled to conclude with the acceptance speech of
Senator Obama at Mile High Stadium on the 45th anniversary
of the 1963 March on Washington and King's “I Have A Dream”
speech, a tenuous connection which we confidently predict will be
recycled and stressed endlessly.
No
less an historical authority than Oprah Winfrey herself has declared
Obama's career to be “the fulfillment of Dr. King's Dream”, as if
the 20th century Freedom Movement was exclusively about
overcoming prejudice without challenging America's empire overseas or
her inequalities at home. As usual, Oprah has the establishment
message dead-on. For more than forty years, the media have taught
and sold an eviscerated history of the Freedom Movement which they
have branded as “Dr. King's Dream.” According to the
authorities, “Dr. King's Dream” was about individual worth, about
judging people by “the content of their character” and affording
an equal opportunity for all to rise.
Even
though Dr. King died supporting a black union in the midst of a
militant citywide strike, the media-endorsed versions of his life, of
the Freedom Movement, and of “the Dream” (probably trademarked)
which the election of Barack Obama will supposedly “fulfill” are
never about collective action, or democracy in workplaces. They
never mention the right – won and held by people in most other
nations around the world --- to organize and strike without being
fired or penalized. Despite Dr. King's prescient warnings that if we
did not swiftly end the war in Vietnam and turn our energies to peace
abroad and justice at home we would be marching against US wars here,
there and everywhere, we will be told in Denver, on the 45th
anniversary of “I Have A Dream” that his legacy is being
satisfied by the elevation of a black candidate who celebrates
empire, who endorses the so-called worldwide “war on terror”, who
has assured us he will not end the war in Iraq while he, co-signs the
Bush threats to Iran and escalates the conflict in Afghanistan,
perhaps extending it to nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Despite
his African heritage, Obama shows no signs of ending, or even
publicly acknowledging the fact that the US has furnished arms and
military aid to more than 50 of 54 African nations, making it the
most war-torn continent on earth. Thanks in large part to US
policies, AK-47s are manufactured nowhere in Africa, but are cheaper
there than anywhere else on earth.
The
crowning of Barack Obama in Denver, and the linking of his brand to
King's “I Have A Dream” speech on its 45th anniversary
are the cynical triumphs of this limited, truncated version of
anti-racist struggle. The hollowness for ordinary people, and the
usefulness, for elites, of anti-racist struggle divorced from any
challenges to empire and inequality could have been, and were seen
clearly a long way off. But not by anybody on our side.
Vijay
Prashad reminds us that when the University of Michigan was
litigating its affirmative action lawsuit in the late 90s, DuPont,
Steelcase, Abbott Laboratories, Intel, Microsoft, Texaco, Lucent and
a raft of other Fortune 500 companies filed a brief in
support of affirmative action.
Racial
and ethnic diversity in institutions of higher education is vital to
amici's efforts to hire and maintain a diverse workforce, and
to employ individuals of all backgrounds who have been educated in a
diverse environment. Such a talented workforce is important to
amici's continued success in the global marketplace.
In
other words, without highly placed minority executives they could not
hope to penetrate minority markets, or influence the politics of those
communities to corporate advantage. The Pentagon filed similar
objections in support of affirmative action. With more than 800
military bases around the world in nearly a hundred countries, they
argued, the US military also needed a critical number of minority
officers to influence the politics of minority communities, and to
effectively make war in Africa, Asia and all the places Dr. King
predicted decades before.
When the struggle against racism is shorn of its living connections to the fights against American empire abroad and structural inequality at home, it's just a way of promoting a few black faces into high places with no positive effect on the rest of us. The
Denver co-branding of Obama with “I Have A Dream Day” (probably
trademarked too) is the triumph of America's official and elite
movement against racism, which was never a mass movement at all. It
was a survival strategy to superficially integrate the elite.
America's
structural inequalities, the vast eleven to one wealth gap between
white and black families, the staggering imprisonment rate of young
African Americans, the dispossession of hundreds of thousands from
the Gulf Coast --- all these and other racially disproportionate
structural elements of American life will remain as they have been.
Parasitic insurance companies will continue to eat a third of every
American health care dollar. And the pointless, predatory so-called
“war on terror” will continue, as Bush and Cheney intended under
a black Democrat, should he be elected, indefinitely.
The
air in Denver the last week of August will definitely be full of
hope. And full of something else too.
Bruce Dixon managing editor at Black Agenda Report is based in Atlanta
and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
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