Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 31

The Fact of a Dual Society

I gave a talk earlier today which will be familiar to most of you. I try not to talk much in public. But I'm doing a lot more lately. I don't know what that means. I have this fear of becoming a dude more known for running his mouth than banging it out. (Which is why I left Twitter.) Anyway give this a listen while you do the dishes or while you're screwing around with the new SimCity. Or whatever else the kids are doing these days. 

Here's to forever banging it out.

       

'Immorality' and Obamacare, Cont.

There are many good critiques of my own critiques of Obamacare. Here is one, from David White, that stuck with me over the weekend. He is responding to my question, "Why is the radical approach—a health care expansion for the most vulnerable, or no health care expansion at all—ultimately wrong?"

White writes:

I wouldn't say it's "ultimately wrong," but it's not the choice I'd make. The flip side of your morality question is "is it moral to deny a health care expansion for poor black people in NY and IL because poor black people in Mississippi won't benefit?" How much longer would we have to fight, how many poor NYers would die while we're trying to convince some Mississippi segregationist legislator to extend healthcare there? Is it wrong to help those NYers now, and set up the framework by which those Mississippians will be helped in the future when that fight is won?

My concern is—and remains—the fact that the expansion of the safety net comes at the price of delaying its extension to a segment of the population in which poor black and brown people are overly represented. I am convinced that within the next five to 10 years forces beyond morality will make the Medicaid expansion national. But in the meantime there will be a benefits gap. Again. But with that said, the question isn't, "Should we be horrified?" It's, "Why is arguing that we should have a health-care expansion for the most vulnerable or no health-care expansion at all ultimately wrong?" And I think David pretty much get its right.

History is instructive here. After the Civil War, the country extended the vote (nominally) to black men. Feminists and lefties (like me) have spilled much ink noting that women did not get the vote. The position of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—who'd fought for years as radical abolitionists—was basically "the vote for white and black women and black men, or the vote for no one." (An enraged Stanton later took this further and argued "the vote for white women above all." Things got worse from there with the cause being taken up by feminists like the inveterate racist Rebecca Felton and slightly less racist Frances Willard.)

In her book, When and Where I Enter, the historian Paula Giddings focuses on the debates among black men and women over the prospect of only half the community getting the vote while the other half remained disenfranchised. Giddings argues that black women ultimately supported the vote for black men because there was at least the possibility of influence within the home and family. Extending the vote to white women exclusively—in addition to boosting the power of the white revanchists—would not have offered the same prospect.

Was it "immoral" to advocate, as Frederick Douglass did, for the extension of the franchise to black men, but not to women? Or was it moral to take what could be gotten, and then continue to argue for the franchise extending to women? (As Douglass also did.) I've said before that I actually have a lot of sympathy for Anthony and Stanton. Still, the answer is clear to me. Douglass was right. Obamacare isn't perfect—but it's what we could get. The question remains whether we shall always have to "get" things in this same manner.

I should add on a personal note that I can run hot sometimes. I hope to remain that way, but it doesn't always make for the tightest thinking. Sometimes it even makes me dead wrong. I have said before that you should not come here with the expectation that I will be "right." I'm often not—and frankly I believe that this is true of anyone who writes. But I try my best to be honest with you and giving you my thinking as it stands in the moment, though it might well change in the next. I have a lifetime's worth of questions. (Why is the train to Boston as slow as the bus? What really makes planes fly? When will Peter Parker get his body back? Will we be racist to the end? Am I too old to learn French? Why does raw cheese taste so good?) Unfortunately, I have very few definite answers.

       

Notes From the Blue Period

For no particular reason--or for a reason I can not articulate right now--I want to share something with you. At the end of the Civil War, when the United States was considering selling homesteads to black freedman, some number of white Southerners decided to turn to fraud. Whites would sell them painted sticks claiming that gave them possession of a particular parcel of land. They'd also sell them "deeds" to the land. One such deed reads as follows: Know all men by these presents, that a naught is a naught, and a figure is a figure; all for the white man and none for the nigure. And whereas Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also have I lifted this damned old nigger out of four dollars and six bits. Amen. Selah! Given under my hand and seal at the Corner Grocery in Granby, some time between the birth of Christ and the death of the devil. The recipient of this deed was a black man who could not read. His money was taken, and then he was mocked. The mockery is almost a show of cause. His illiteracy is a weakness and that weakness makes him worthy of contempt and suitable for plunder. When I was a child in West Baltimore it was a hobby to jump people who'd somehow wandered through your neighborhood. But you could not jump them for the hell of it--even if that's what you were actually doing. You had to make up some fraudulent reason for plunder--"Yo, ain't that the dude that was messing with your cousin?" or some other nakedly false show of cause. We could not accept the fact we were behaving thuggishly, that we had embraced villainy. Even in total cowardice we had to make ourselves heroic. I learned this. It was not natural to me. I was a tender boy, until I wasn't. And then I learned to despise weakness and to mask that contempt behind narrative and myth. If you have ever done this--and I suspect if you think about it, you will find you have--you can see how such cowardice could be practiced across a society. The people I was raised around were humans, and so it is not shocking that the same rituals we practiced there, the same feelings of contempt, are all around us--the Germans inventing reasons to invade Poland, the rapist who claims the short dress made him do it, an entire town organizing to back him up. Weakness, misery, does not always elicit sympathy. Perhaps that is because the weakness reminds of what we we fear for ourselves. Or perhaps it reminds us of our own complicity in some broad crime, and more, our presumed helplessness for it to be any other way. I don't know. There's no good reason to show you this. I think I just want you to know that this happened.

       

Notes From The Blue Period

For no particular reason--or for a reason I can not articulate right now--I want to share something with you. At the end of the Civil War, when the United States was considering selling homesteads to black freedman, some number of white Southerners decided to turn to fraud.  Whites would sell them painted sticks claiming that gave them possession of a particular parcel of land. They'd also sell them "deeds" to the land. One such deed read as follows:Know all men by these presents, that a naught is a naught, and a figure is a figure; all for the white man and none for the nigure. And whereas Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also have I lifted this damned old nigger out of four dollars and six bits. Amen. Selah!Given under my hand and seal at the Corner Grocery in Granby, some time between the birth of Christ and the death of the devil.The recipient of this deed was a black man who could not read. His money was taken, and then he was mocked. The mockery is almost a show of cause. His illiteracy is a weakness and that weakness makes him worthy of contempt and suitable for plunder.When I was a child in West Baltimore it was a hobby to jump people who'd somehow wandered through your neighborhood. But you could not jump them for the hell of it--even if that's what you were actually doing. You had to make up some fraudulent reason for plunder--"Yo, ain't that the dude that was messing with your cousin?" or some other nakedly false show of cause. We could not accept the fact we were behaving thuggishly, that we had embraced villainy. Even in total cowardice we had to make ourselves heroic.I learned this. It was not natural to me. I was a tender boy, until I wasn't. And then I learned to despise weakness and to mask that contempt behind narrative and myth. If you have ever done this--and I suspect if you think about it, you will find you have--you can see how such cowardice could be practiced across a society. The people I was raised around were humans, and so it is not shocking that the same rituals we practiced there, the same feelings of contempt, is all around us--the Germans inventing reasons to invade Poland, the rapist who claims the short dress made him do it, an entire town organizing to back him up. Weakness, misery, does not always elicit sympathy. Perhaps that is because the weakness reminds of what we we fear for ourselves. Or perhaps it reminds us of our own complicity in some broad crime, and more, our presumed helplessness for it to be any other way.I don't know. There's no good reason to show you this. I think I just what you to know that this happened to someone. 

       

'Immorality' and Obamacare

In an earlier post ruminating on Obamacare and the large swath of poor black people who will not be helped by it I used the term "immoral." I should not have done that. I think that's the kind of word that tends to excite, but not much else. I don't want to bring heat to this thing, I want to bring light. 

I come to this as a card-carrying lefty and Black Panther diaper baby (is that a thing?) who believes the 2008 election to be one of the great events of my life. At the same time I am worried that we are effectively conceding that any expansion/improvement of the social safety net will likely be done on racist terms. Perhaps it was inevitable that Obamacare would exclude a lot of poor black people. I don't think it's a good idea to accept that on face value. If I must accept it, I will do so begrudgingly, greedily demanding more. I will not make the perfect the enemy of the good. And I will not allow the good to masquerade as the perfect.   Again, I want us to think about politics beyond the ballot box, and consider that which shapes the options that come before us. In that sense, this is beyond the man Barack Obama. I have no particular enmity toward him, on the contrary I have a great deal of pride. I think that using the term "immoral" was unhelpful. More later.
       

'Immorality' And Obamacare

In an earlier post ruminating on Obamacare and the large swath of poor black people who will not be helped by it I used the term "immoral." I should not have done that. I think that's the kind of word that tends to excite, but not much else. I don't want to bring heat to this thing, I want to bring light. I come to this as a card-carrying lefty and Black Panther diaper baby (is that a thing?) who believes the 2008 election to be one of the great events of my life. At the same time I am worried that we are effectively conceding that any expansion/improvement of the social safety net will likely be done on racist terms. Perhaps it was inevitable that Obamacare would exclude a lot of poor black people. I don't think it's a good idea to accept that on face value. If I must accept it, I will do so begrudgingly, greedily demanding more. I will not make the perfect the enemy of the good. And I will not allow the good to masquerade as the perfect.Again, I want us to think about politics beyond the ballot box, and consider that which shapes the options that come before us. In that sense, this is beyond the man Barack Obama. I have no particular enmity toward him, on the contrary I have a great deal of pride. I think that using the term "immoral" was unhelpful. More later.

       

Obamacare and the Conscience of a Radical

Last week someone alluded to the liberal critiques of radical leftism arguing that the limits of dwelling "too long and too angrily on the systemic racism of America" should not be ignored. This amused me. As I noted, the problem is not that I dwell too long and too angrily on America's systemic racism, but that America's systemic racism has tended to dwell too long and too angrily on me. The commenter replied and expanded, pointing out that he had not expressed himself well. I actually think he addressed the liberal political consensus quite well. And as a point about electoral politics it probably is true. I just reject the idea that "politics" begins with the voting booth, the nominating convention, or the pocket veto.

I was talking to Eric J. Miller, a law professor at St. Louis University, for a magazine piece the other day. He made the point that talking about white supremacy as foundational to America is not merely cathartic— it's citizenship. More, it is providing correct information that helps us understand what ideal policy might look like — even if we don't get there:

The political sphere is where you engage with your humanity. You have not merely a right, you have an obligation to participate, to make sure the people, as a whole, are able to make good decisions, and pass good laws and treat you as a human. And if one group subjugates another, if it says 'You can talk about anything you want, except everything that matters to you,' then you are not a full member of the polity. So then voting is not enough because we can't even have the debate.

Voting is not enough. Defining the terms of the debate is politics too. To a great degree (though not totally) the politics which define the debate around the expansion of our social safety net are the politics of white supremacy. To understand how true this has been across history, it's worth checking out Robert Lieberman's tome Shifting the Color Line. His conclusions are bracing. "Deracialization, the side-stepping of direct confrontation of difficult racial issues," Lieberman writes. "Can have grim consequences." Like leaving the majority of the most vulnerable class of Americans uncovered, while the rest of the country enjoys the expanded safety net.    What you must understand is that this is actively harmful. Black wealth in America is roughly a tenth of white wealth. Black people are the most segregated people in the country. What this means is that even black people who do personally reap the benefits of Obamacare will reap them less. They will live in communities where there is less coverage. (Remember Patrick Sharkey's work on neighborhoods.) They will have family members and friends who will be uncovered. In this way one can see how an ostensibly, and well-intentioned, progressive and color-blind policy proposal can actually expand a wealth gap. I want to be careful with that last sentence. I don't know that that will actually happen. My sense of this is historical — selective expansions of the safety net and of wealth-building opportunities have not been helpful to black people.   Lieberman argues for the long-term nationalization of the safety net. In the case of health-care reform this would have meant national single-payer. That was never on the table in 2008, and I have my doubts about the ability of a black president to pass such a program.   More vexing for me is how to think about this as a citizen. The conventional liberal approach says, "Obamacare didn't get all we wanted but it got a lot of it. We took what we could." But what if that logic really does exacerbate the wealth gap? Is it moral to support a program that fails to help those who need it the most? The response might be that — like Social Security — eventually all states will adopt the expansion. But this does not address the damage done in the meantime, nor does it address the possibility in increasing if not the wealth gap then the overall gap in life outcomes.   There is a more radical possibility — Obamacare is ultimately immoral, not because it didn't get "everything" but because it didn't get to those who needed it most. The stated impulse of class-first liberalism is that those who need it most — measured by wealth and income — will get the most help. In the case of Obamacare, this may eventually happen, but great damage will be done in the meantime.    I'm not sure where to go with this. What would Martin Luther King say, faced with the realities of Obamacare? Why is the radical approach — a health-care expansion for the most vulnerable, or no health-care expansion at all — ultimately wrong? It certainly isn't a plan for right now. But what do we lose when neglect to even attempt to make the long-term argument?   Lieberman is a supporter of universal programs (as am I) but he argues that we should not fool ourselves into thinking we are implementing those programs in a country where racism is a minor force, easily dismissed: 

The implication of this analysis for public policy is that broad, universal policies stand a better chance of succeeding if we we pay careful and forthright attention to both institutional structure and racial consequences....

Lieberman writes this in a critique of William Julius Wilson, who in the '80s argued for the kind of color-blind approach that Obama now touts. But it's worth pointing out that Wilson has changed his mind. He responds to Lieberman in the latest edition of his classic study The Truly Disadvantaged by adding:

I accept this criticism. Indeed since writing The Truly Disadvantaged my position on framing has changed. In addition to making sure that institutional mechanisms are in place to allow for an equitable distribution of resources, I also feel that in framing public policy we should not shy away from an explicit discussion of the specific issues of race and poverty; on the contrary, we should highlight them in our attempt to convince the nation that these problems should be seriously confronted and that there is an urgent need to address them.    The issues of race and poverty should be framed in such a way that not only a sense of fairness and justice to combat inequality is generated, but also people are made aware that our country would be better off if these problems were seriously addressed. In other words, I now feel that appeals to America's sense of fairness and justice will be more effective in the long run than attempting to neutralize the effects of racial biases by highlighting initiatives that seem to benefit all groups. 

That is basically my position. I am fan of universal programs. I am not a fan of lying or self-delusion. I am a fan of Obamacare. I don't know that the president could have gotten more. I am not a fan of defending Obama's record in black America by changing the subject.    One caveat: This analysis focuses on Obama because he is the titular head of the American state. To some extent, I regret that. What I want people to think about is beyond the president. Obama's "rising tide" thinking did not appear from thin air. It is the result of liberal thinking in sociology and history over the past few decades, as well as the impulses of coalition politics. I want people to expand their thoughts about politics beyond the immediate and the electoral. I am trying to think beyond Obama, as an individual actor, to the inherent biases and predilections of our system. I don't have many answers here.

UPDATE: I am aware of what happened with the Supreme Court and how the ACA was written. I addressed that critique here.

       

A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts

When President Obama leaves office there will almost certainly be efforts to ascertain the impact of our first black president on the black community. Defenders of the president's record will likely point to Obamacare as the kind of program that expanded the safety net for everyone but specifically for those in need -- a class in which African Americans are overly represented. 

I have, of late, been anxious to add an asterisk to this accolade. As I've noted before, black people are also disproportionately represented in many of the states which are refusing the Medicaid expansion. Thus the idea that Obama has aided poor black people through a broad race-blind expansion of the social safety net deserves some scrutiny.

This morning the New York Times offers us just that:

A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times...

The 26 states that have rejected the Medicaid expansion are home to about half of the country's population, but about 68 percent of poor, uninsured blacks and single mothers. About 60 percent of the country's uninsured working poor are in those states. Among those excluded are about 435,000 cashiers, 341,000 cooks and 253,000 nurses' aides.

Blacks are disproportionately affected, largely because more of them are poor and living in Southern states. In all, 6 out of 10 blacks live in the states not expanding Medicaid. In Mississippi, 56 percent of all poor and uninsured adults are black, though they account for just 38 percent of the population.

Dr. Aaron Shirley, a physician who has worked for better health care for blacks in Mississippi, said that the history of segregation and violence against blacks still informs the way people see one another, particularly in the South, making some whites reluctant to support programs that they believe benefit blacks....

Dr. Shirley said: "If you look at the history of Mississippi, politicians have used race to oppose minimum wage, Head Start, all these social programs. It's a tactic that appeals to people who would rather suffer themselves than see a black person benefit."

Indeed. Liberals who believe they can fool racists by changing the subject from racism to class underestimate the intelligence of their audience. "All that it would take to sink a new WPA program would be some skillfully packaged footage of black men leaning on shovels smoking cigarettes," writes sociologist Douglass Massey. "Papering over the issue of race makes for bad social theory, bad research and bad public policy."    To say nothing of morality. Because we live in a segregated country, the people who must bear the burden of the uninsured black poor will ultimately be other black people. This is not just a matter of individual black people not having insurance. It is a shock to the entire system, the entire network of black people who -- because of white supremacy -- live segregated lives, and must bear this on their own.   More later. If you've been reading me the past few months, you know that I am wholly unsurprised.
       

The Shutdown Caucus Explains Itself

And the mind reels:"We're not going to be disrespected," conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."Derek Thompson has more. I do not. 

       

Tales From the Shutdown

As always, I learn more from the Horde then they learn from me. First from our own moderator Kathleen:

I'd like to advise everybody to keep a safe distance from each other until our national public health institute is back up to full strength. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are facing a reduced ability to detect and investigate disease outbreaks. The annual influenza program — the one that tracks the flu and helps people get flu shots — has been shut down. The CDC has also stopped offering its usual assistance to state and local authorities, who rely on the agency for help in tracking unusual outbreaks."    So, the flu program has been shut down right as flu season begins. And we just have to hope there are no unusual outbreaks of disease, since we won't be able to adequately track or respond to them. Gee, what a worthwhile risk to take, even if just for a few days!    I do appreciate James Fallows' point that:  As a matter of substance, constant-shutdown, permanent-emergency governance is so destructive that no other serious country engages in or could tolerate it. The United States can afford it only because we are -- still -- so rich, with so much margin for waste and error. However, some of the idiotic and noxious consequences of the shutdown, like our inability to adequately monitor infectious disease, have no respect for wealth. It's a roll of the dice that everything will be fine. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but Lord, what a pointless gamble.

Some science from the folks who keep us safe in the skies:

I work as an air traffic controller in a facility just outside of Washington, D.C. Our airspace extends from South Carolina to the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, and then along the southern half of Pennsylvania into New Jersey. By the time an airplane departing an airport in that area leaves 10,000 feet or is more than 30 miles from its departure airport, it enters our area of responsibility.    Last year, we handled just over 2.5 million flights, which makes us third behind similar facilities in New York and Atlanta for total flights handled. If you are an air traffic controller with a current flight physical and any current position certifications (i.e., the ability to work a given piece of airspace unsupervised), you are part of the exempted or essential employee base, and therefore are expected to come to work.    However, there is no plan for how we are to be paid during this time, since all of our payroll employees are furloughed (and the Department of the Interior's people who actually cut the checks/EFTs for most of the other federal agencies are too). Any leave for vacations, illness or personal emergencies is to be counted as a voluntary unpaid furlough until the government is funded again. If you had booked a wedding and a honeymoon a year in advance, you can still go, but you apparently won't be allowed to use accumulated leave to ensure that you are paid for that time.    If a family member is sick and requires your help for an extended period, the same conditions apply. I would imagine this is playing out the same at the FBI, Customs Service, TSA and several other agencies where people are too valuable to furlough but not valuable enough to pay on time and in full.    Contra Fox News, calling this a "slimdown" is bullshit, and it's dangerous bullshit. I am in a position to go a few pay periods without borrowing money to live, but I don't know that I am the rule rather than the exception among exempted federal employees. If you want to see how well government services function when the providers are worried about paying the mortgage, you need only wait through October 13 to find out.

More coming. As always if you've got particular experiences, like our commenter above, feel free to email me.