The End of Black Politics? Ludacris!

Barack Obama has made it clear that he is not down with Ludacris's Clinton- and Bush-baiting pop-rap single, "Politics: Obama Is Here,"--an understandable political decision. As an ambivalent consumer of hiphop, Obama, like many other responsible African-American commentators and public figures, is loathe to endorse gangsta's crude excess. 

           Luda does use the "b-word" to describe Hillary, but given recent revelations that the Clinton campaign pushed to attack Obama's "alien" roots  it would seem that he was accurate in assessing the hate emanating from her aides. And calling George W. the "worst of 43 presidents" is hardly "outrageously offensive." But is Obama's distancing from harsh rhetoric a harbinger of a new era of "post-racial" politics? 

              New York Times writer Matt Bai spent quite a few pages wondering if this were true. By assembling a series of interviews with prominent African-American politicians who presumably represent a "new generation" of lawmakers not "defined" by their blackness, Bai tries to make the case that Obama is not tied to an era of  "divisive" politics, when leaders were more likely "community activists" rather than Ivy League educated lawyers "comfortable inside the establishment."

               The idea that Obama is "not black enough," or speculation about just how black Obama is, has been with us since the early stages of the campaign. While many have suggested that such questions are insulting, and that the Illinois senator should be judged on the basis of his positions on and agendas for the pressing issues of the day, it is a delusional to think that race is not at the center of his candidacy.

                Obama has been careful not to associate himself with the progressive edge of black politics, as evidenced by his recent encounter with hecklers confronting him in St. Petersburg about sub-prime mortgage crisis, the Sean Bell and Jena 6 incidents, or his lack of commitment to reparations for slavery. This shouldn't be a surprise, since he has fallen short of progressive positions regarding issues like the Iraq war (he favors shifting the theater of the "war on terror" to Afghanistan) and energy (he favors increasing reliance on nuclear energy and is leaning toward allowing off-shore drilling). 

                This strategy is of course in line with corporate interests, and in the game of big-time electoral politics, would seem a winning one. But suggesting that the country is entering a "post-racial" era by comparing different generations of African-American politicians, as Bai does, is rather Ludacris.

                 The post-racial black politician, rather than being a sign of progressive change, is clearly a product of the relentless neo-con stranglehold on ideas that has afflicted the US since the age of Reagan. It is a form of discourse parallel to Fukuyama's famous "end of history" obfuscation, used to declare an end to grievances that galvanized the Civil Rights Era and a political constituency.

                Bai takes the "high" liberal road, suggesting that black politicians are tired of being "pigeonholed" as spokesmen for their race. After letting (white?) readers in on his embarrassment of recognizing the racist attitude of his hometown peers, he throws Newark mayor Cory Booker a bone. A Rhodes scholar who knows were the Middle East is on the map, Booker pleads that "I don't want to be the person that's turned to when CNN wants to talk about black leaders."

                  The fuel for this new black secularism is the notion that, finally, like so many immigrant groups who have long passed by African Americans on the affluence totem poll, blacks are showing statistical evidence that they are getting a grip on the American dream. "According to an analysis by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, almost 37 percent of black families fell into one of the three top income quintiles in 2005, compared with 23 percent in 1973," says Bai. 

               "At the same time," Bai continues, "these black leaders are constantly confronted in their own cities and districts by blighted neighborhoods that are predominately black, places where poverty collects like standing water, breeding a host of social contagions." Disease, contagion, stagnation. We've heard these metaphors before, haven't we?

               So, the essential post-racial dynamic is one of a burgeoning core of talented tenths grappling with their newfound freedom to be themselves and those--despite the efforts of a now-obsolete generation of activists--who are left behind. "For a lot of younger African-Americans," writes Bai, "the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama’s candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle." Then again, maybe their resistance was more symbolic of the national political pecking order and debts due to the Democratic political machine.

               Finally, it doesn't take much digging to reveal that the measure of "the success of their own struggle" is in question. If there was ever any momentum to the notion that we are at the "end of black politics," this recent study about the increasing instability of the black and Latino middle class, should put that to rest. Without strong footing in class-based educational opportunities, it would seem almost impossible for this generation of "post-racial" politicians to reproduce itself.