Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 59

A Flawed America in Context

Last night I gave a talk at Boston University. Afterward I spent some time with a group that included two of my former history professors at Howard University, who are now working at BU. These were people who were instrumental in my development and left me with two lessons which inform much of my writing here at The Atlantic. 
Lesson One: the rejection of the idea that history exists solely to bolster our self-esteem. Coming up, as I did, in a time when history was seen as the great weapon against racism, and in the shadow of a total denigration of black history, it was natural to try to erect a super-noble past. But at Howard I learned that this pose was ultimately reactionary, that no nobility was necessarily conveyed by having a boot on your neck, and that true humanism allowed all of history's actors the full range of features, both laudable and regrettable.
Lesson Two: never confuse a belief system with biology. My post-Revolutionary Europe professor used to begin the class not with the Robespierre and the guillotine, but with images of Africans before the slave trade and after. It became quite clear from these images that something specific had actually happened to alter the way "black Africans" (this is the only term I have available) were seen by "white Europeans" (another unhelpful term). 
It was from there that I began to conceive of systemic racism as something different than mere prejudice, and as an actual process, perfected by actual choices, which were made in response to actual needs. Surely my moral hackles rise at times, but I have never conceived of, say, red-lining as a matter of "bad people" doing something to "good people." "
Toward the end of our meal we began discussing how one can look at racism in history and avoid falling into depression. My answer was two-fold. 1) I enjoy the history for its own sake. I love history whether it has a political lesson to teach, or not. And 2) the history of white racism and its attendent victims is horrifying, but it should be seen in scale. 
A taste of what I mean:

The fugitives who fled from the south after Nordlingen died of plague, hunger and exhaustion in the refugee camp at Frankfort or the overcrowded hospitals of Saxony; seven thousand were expelled from the cantons of Zurich because there was neither food no room for them, at Hanau the gates were closed against them, at Strasbourg they lay thick in the streets through the frosts of winter, so that by day the citizens stepped over their bodies, and by night lay awake listening to the groans of the sick and starving until the magistrates forcibly drove them out, thirty thousand of them.
The Jesuits here and there fought manfully against the overwhelming distress; after the burning and desertion of Eichstatt they sought out the children who were hiding in the cellars, killing and eating rats, and carried them off to care for and educate them; at Hagenau they managed feed the poor out of their stores until the French troops raided their granary and took charge of the grain for the Army.
By the irony of fate the wine harvest of 1634, which should have been excellent, was trampled down by fugitives, and invaders after Nordlingen; that of 635 suffered a like fate, and in the winter, from Wuttemberg to Lorraine, there raged the worst famine of many years. 
At Calw the pastor saw a woman gnawing on the raw flesh of a dead horse on which a hungry dog and some ravens were also feeding. In Alsace the bodies of criminals were torn from the gallows and devoured; in the whole Rhineland they watched the graveyards against marauders who sold the flesh of the newly buried for food; at Zweibrucken a woman confessed to having eater her child. Acorns, goats' skins, grass, were all cooked in Alsace; cats, dogs, and rats were sold in the market at Worms. 
In Fulda and Coburg and near Frankfort and the great refugee camp, men went in terror of being killed and eaten by those maddened by hunger...

That is the great C.V. Wedgwood describing the last years of the Thirty Years War, in which eight million people died, and the population of "Germany" (to the extent it existed) was reduced by a third. One of my professors followed this up by noting that ten million Russians died in the first World War, and then 15 million more died in the second.
When you study racism, with all its attendent woes, there is something comforting about those kind of numbers. It tells you that whatever you are struggling with here is not a deviation from the human experience, but an expression of it. There is very little that "white people" have done to "black people" that I can't imagine them doing to each other. America's particular failings are remarkable because America is remarkable, but they are not particularly deviant or outstanding on the misery index. This is just sort of what we do. The question hanging over us though is this: Is this what we what we will always do?

A Flawed America In Context

Last night I gave a talk at Boston University. Afterward I spent some time with a group which included two of my former history professors at Howard University, who are now working at BU. These were people who were instrumental in my development and left me with two lessons which inform much of my writing here at The Atlantic. 
Lesson One: The rejection of the idea that history exists solely to bolster our self-esteem. Coming up, as I did, in a time when history was seen as the great weapon against racism, and in the shadow of a total denigration of black history, it was natural to try to erect super-noble past. But at Howard I learned that this pose was ultimately reactionary, that no nobility was necessarily conveyed by having a boot on your neck, and that true humanism allowed all of history's actors the full range of features, both laudable and regrettable.
Lesson Two: Never confuse a belief system with biology. My post-Revolutionary Europe professor used to begin the class not with the Robespierre and the guillotine, but with images of Africans before the slave trade and after. It became quite clear from these images that something specific had actually happened to alter the way "black Africans" (this is the only term I have available) were seen by "white Europeans" (another unhelpful term.) 
It was from there that I began to conceive of systemic racism, as something different than mere prejudice, and as an actual process, perfected by actual choices, which were made in response to actual needs. Surely my moral hackles rise at times, but I have never conceived of, say, red-lining as a matter of "bad people" doing something to "good people." "
Toward the end of our meal we began discussing how one can look at racism in history and avoid falling into depression. My answer was two-fold. 1.) I enjoy the history for its own sake. I love history whether it has a political lesson to teach, or not. And 2.) The history of white racism and its attendent victims is horrifying, but it should be seen in scale. 
A taste of what I mean:

The fugitives who fled from the south after Nordlingen died of plague, hunger and exhaustion in the refugee camp at Frankfort or the overcrowded hospitals of Saxony; seven thousand were expelled from the cantons of Zurich because there was neither food no room for them, at Hanau the gates were closed against them, at Strasbourg they lay thick in the streets through the frosts of winter, so that by day the citizens stepped over their bodies, and by night lay awake listening to the groans of the sick and starving until the magistrates forcibly drove them out, thirty thousand of them.
The Jesuits here and there fought manfully against the overwhelming distress; after the burning and desertion of Eichstatt they sought out the children who were hiding in the cellars, killing and eating rats, and carried them off to care for and educate them; at Hagenau they managed feed the poor out of their stores until the French troops raided their granary and took charge of the grain for the Army.
By the irony of fate the wine harvest of 1634, which should have been excellent, was trampled down by fugitives, and invaders after Nordlingen; that of 635 suffered a like fate, and in the winter, from Wuttemberg to Lorraine, there raged the worst famine of many years. 
At Calw the pastor saw a woman gnawing on the raw flesh of a dead horse on which a hungry dog and some ravens were also feeding. In Alsace the bodies of criminals were torn from the gallows and devoured; in the whole Rhineland they watched the graveyards against marauders who sold the flesh of the newly buried for food; at Zweibrucken a woman confessed to having eater her child. Acorns, goats' skins, grass, were all cooked in Alsace; cats, dogs, and rats were sold in the market at Worms. 
In Fulda and Coburg and near Frankfort and the great refugee camp, men went in terror of being killed and eaten by those maddened by hunger...

That is the great C.V. Wedgwood describing the last years of the Thirty Years War, in which eight million people died, and the population of "Germany" (to the extent it existed) was reduced by a third. One of my professors followed this up by noting that ten million Russians died in the first World War, and then 15 million more died in the second.
When you study racism, with all its attendent woes, there is something comforting about those kind of numbers. It tells you that whatever you are struggling with here is not a deviation from the human experience, but an expression of it. There is very little that "white people" have done to "black people," that I can't imagine them doing to each other.  America's particular failings are remarkable because America is remarkable, but they are not particularly deviant or outstanding on the misery index. This is just sort of what we do. The question hanging over us though is this: Is this what we what we will always do?

The Ghetto Is Public Policy

Arnold Hirsch opens Making The Second Ghetto with this undated clipping from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Something is happening to lives and spirits that will never show up n the great housing shortage of the late 40s. Something is happening to the children which might not show up in our social record until the 1970s.

That quote has haunted me for the past couple of weeks and it came back again in reading this piece on America's yawning wealth gap:

The difference in wealth between typical households in each racial group ballooned to $236,500 in 2009, up from $85,000 in 1984, according to the study, released Wednesday. By 2009, the median net worth of white families was $265,000, while blacks had only $28,500...
Income gains are also a major differentiating factor, even when whites and blacks have similar wage increases. Whites are typically able to put more of their raises towards accumulating wealth because they've already built up a cash cushion. 
Blacks are more likely to use the money to cover emergencies. Inheritances also make it easier for some families to build wealth. Among the families studied, whites were five times more likely to inherit money than blacks, and their typical inheritances were 10 times as big.

White liberals generally prefer to talk about a colorless wealth inequality haunting the country. I'm not opposed to that conversation. But it also needs to be said (loudly) that black/whote inequality has, for most of American history, been our explicit public policy, and today, is our implicit public policy.

How We Managed to See Your Boobs

I don't really get Seth McFarlane's riff at the Oscars, or why it was funny. Female nudity in film is nearly as old as the industry itself. Moreover, in the era of the Internet and easy-access porn, the routine was dated.
And here is something darker. Katie McDonough points out that Seth McFarlane's shout-outs freely mixed rape scenes and sex scenes, and real-life violation:

[Scarlett] Johansson isn't even on MacFarlane's list for a film she made. Instead, she made her way into the song because of a real-life invasion of privacy, where her nude photos were stolen from her phone and leaked to the Internet. That is an actual, not fictional violation, and MacFarlane played it for laughs.

That aside, this is really just a continuation of the idea that everything from adultery to rape somehow belongs under the heading "sex scandal."

Evolution of Blog Dancing

With that said, everything I struggle with in writing about the Obama presidency and race is in this video. It's often said that the Obama family's occupation of the White House is only of "symbolic" importance. I don't believe that's true, but even if I did, I think symbols are really important. An unbroken 200-year plus run of white men in the White House must, necessarily, convey that only people meeting such a criteria need apply for the position. 
It's easy to wax cynical about black parents in 2008 saying, between tears, that "Now I can honestly tell my child that they can be anything." Except that it's sort of true. No progressive, pre-Barack Obama, would have said that only having white presidents was irrelevant to American history. I don't know how you can hold the inverse opinion now.
That kind of symbolism comes through in this video with Michelle Obama and Jimmy Fallon. All I can say is that these are sort of moments that, as a black kid in the 80s and 90s, I could not have fathomed. And as sure as the white near-monopoly on the television screen once mattered, this matters. You can't just say, "Yeah but what about...." It all matters.

Yes, but Michelle Malkin Can't Dance

As my label-mate David Graham explains, this Michelle Malkin attempt at skewering Michelle Obama is cringeworthy. Good parody requires a kind of impious respect for its subject. But Michelle Malkin can't dance. Unlike Jimmy Fallon, she only seems dimly aware of the problem this poses. What makes satire work is the "buy-in" taken to its absurd extreme. This is just absurdity with no regard for buy-in.
For the record, I can't dance either. Which is why I don't make videos mocking conservatives who can.

Terrorism and Politics, Clarified

Yesterday, I wrote:

This kind of terrorism was never as effective as the kind of racist power deployed by the upper classes -- at the University of Chicago, for instance. Indeed, Hirsch's study left me thinking of terrorism as a weapon of the weak -- the unsubdued weak, but the weak all the same. Still, terrorism was a kind of power in Chicago, and Hirsch shows how it made it significantly harder for the advocates of integration to create housing across the city. Think of it like this: Al Qaeda can't end air travel, but it can certainly alter it. Likewise, the White Circle League couldn't stop black succession. But they could seal blacks in and thwart integrations.

Framing terrorism as a weapon of "the unsubdued weak" was cause for protest in comments, in a few e-mails, and even one phone call. I think I should have made it clear that the direct victims of terrorism are even weaker, and that "weakness," itself, is not noble. In other words, it needs to be clear the victims of white terrorism were not rich white developers, but black people who -- at that time -- existed almost beyond the protections of the state. 
During Chicago's race riots, police often arrested victims instead of offenders, and at times would put up only faint resistance to terrorist action. I think bringing Al Qaeda into this muddies the waters. The white terrorists of Chicago were not stateless -- they were often operating on of the same motives and working toward the same ends as people further up the class ladder. Indeed, what is so striking in Hirsch's work is that he demonstrates that the anti-black violence of mid-20th century Chicago was near total. The rioters were not only neighborhood toughs, but old men, working men, women with children. And the riots are only the most obvious part of the story. When once considers the actions of developers and the actions of office-holders, what is revealed is every sector of the city -- its business interests, its government, its people, and sometimes even its churches -- employing its particular weaponry to effect a single goal: the subjugation of black people.
I wish I could say I was being hyperbolic. Except that I'm in the middle of Beryl Satter's Family Properties, and I am seeing the same thing all again. This is not the talk of Illuminati or the Tri-Lateral Commission. This is rigorous scholarly history. And yet here is Hirsch again:

Unable to do anything to alter the plans that shaped their lives, Chicago's blacks responded viscerally, charging the planners with conspiracy and reviving an old strain of nativism in response to their ethnic antagonists. The dimensions of the conspiracy varied. Some believed the "plan" was to drive all blacks out of the area between 12th and 63rd streets; others stretched the territory to be "reclaimed" by whites down to 67th. The same new governmental agencies and powers that frightened white ethnics similarly affected blacks - only the latter saw no communists or subversives. "Land-grabbing" realtors, bankers, businessmen. and institutions provided explanation enough. 
There were as many reasons for the perceived conspiracy as there were villains: Blacks were to be pushed out of their desirable inner-city locations and herded to the outskirts of the city or to undesirable suburbs such as Robbins to make way for Loop workers (there was at least some truth to this - not all conspiracies were fantasies); the dispersal of black population was designed to dilute that community's political strength; the use of eminent domain was intended to reduce black property owners to tenancy. 
Whatever the validity of these contending explanations, the blacks employing them - as the whites who discovered their own conspiracies - were responding to the fact that large forces beyond their influence were controlling their lives, a perception as accurate as it was distressing.

How is it, after all our study and exploration; after all our theories of differing conscience, of labor, of capitol, of class struggle, of agrarianism, and industrialism, of plutocrats and workers, we end up where we started? How are we, again, employed in this same small talk, on this same damn corner? How can it be that in any serious investigation of American domestic policy, knowing nothing of the specifics, you can walk into a room, yell "White Supremacy," and have a 50/50 shot at being right?
History is absurd.

Terrorism And Politics Clarified

Yesterday, I wrote:

This kind of terrorism was never as effective as the kind of racist power deployed by the upper classes -- at the University of Chicago, for instance. Indeed, Hirsch's study left me thinking of terrorism as a weapon of the weak -- the unsubdued weak, but the weak all the same. Still, terrorism was a kind of power in Chicago, and Hirsch shows how it made it significantly harder for the advocates of integration to create housing across the city. Think of it like this: Al Qaeda can't end air travel, but it can certainly alter it. Likewise, the White Circle League couldn't stop black succession. But they could seal blacks in and thwart integrations.

Framing terrorism as a weapon of "the unsubdued weak" was cause for protest in comments, in a few e-mails and even one phone call. I think I should have made it clear that the direct victims of terrorism are even weaker, and that "weakness," itself, is not noble. In other words, it needs to be clear the victims of white terrorism are not rich white developers but black people who--at that time--existed almost beyond the protections of the state. 
During Chicago's race riots, police often arrested victims instead of offenders, and at times would put up only faint resistance to terrorist action. I think bringing Al Qaeda into this, muddies the waters. The white terrorists of Chicago were not stateless--indeed they were often operating off of the same motives and working toward the same ends as people further up the class ladder. Indeed, what is so striking in Hirsch's work is that he demonstrates that the anti-black violence of mid-20th century Chicago was near total. The rioters were not merely drawn from neighborhood toughs, but from old men, working men, women with children. And the riots are only the most obvious part of the story. When once considers the actions of developers and the actions of office-holders, what is revealed is every sector of the city--its business interests, its government, its people, and sometimes even its churches-- employing its particular weaponry to effect a single goal: the subjugation of black people.
I wish I could say I was being hyperbolic. Except that I'm in the middle of Beryl Satter's Family Properties, and I am seeing the same thing all again. This is not the talk of Illuminati or the Tri-Lateral Commission. This is rigorous scholarly history. And yet here is Hirsch again:

Unable to do anything to alter the plans that shaped their lives, Chicago's blacks responded viscerally, charging the planners with conspiracy and reviving an old strain of nativism in response to their ethnic antagonists. The dimensions of the conspiracy varied. Some believed the "plan" was to drive all blacks out of the area between 12th and 63rd streets; others stretched the territory to be "reclaimed" by whites down to 67th. The same new governmental agencies and powers that frightened white ethnics similarly affected blacks - only the latter saw no communists or subversives. "Land-grabbing" realtors, bankers, businessmen. and institutions provided explanation enough. 
here were as many reasons for the perceived conspiracy as there were villains: Blacks were to be pushed out of their desirable inner-city locations and herded to the outskirts of the city or to undesirable suburbs such as Robbins to make way for Loop workers (there was at least some truth to this - not all conspiracies were fantasies); the dispersal of black population was designed to dilute that community's political strength; the use of eminent domain was intended to reduce black property owners to tenancy. 
Whatever the validity of these contending explanations, the blacks employing them - as the whites who discovered their own conspiracies - were responding to the fact that large forces beyond their influence were controlling their lives, a perception as accurate as it was distressing.

How is it, after all our study, and exploration, after all our theories, of differing conscience, of labor, of capitol, of class struggle, of agrarianism, and industrialism, of plutocrats and workers, we end up where we started? How are we, again, employed in this same small talk, on this same damn corner? How can it be that in any serious investigation of American domestic policy, knowing nothing of the specifics, you can walk into a room, yell "White Supremacy" and have a 50/50 shot at being right?
History is absurd.

Terrorism Is Politics by Other Means

One of the great contributions of Arnold Hirsch's Making The Second Ghetto is the conception of racism not as deviancy, moral degeneracy, or stupidity, but as a political ideology whose employers' tactics differ according to class, but whose goals remain the same. 
The goal of post-war white Chicago was to keep African Americans sealed in the ghetto. Working-class and ethnic whites worked toward this goal through what Hirsch calls "communal violence," which is to say entire communities angling toward terrrorism:

Rioting was undertaken for particular reasons and not as a generalized expression of racial hostility. Those reasons, and not the external forces of social control, were primarily responsible for the development, intensity, and duration of disorder.

This politicized violence erupted with some regularity between the 1940s and 1960s in Chicago. It was it's most spectacular in Cicero. But it occured throughout the city -- at the Airport Homes, in Fernwood Park, in Englewood, in Bridgeport, in Park Manor. Violence was not restricted to "working-class" areas. African-American chemist Percy Julian was named Chicagoan of the Year in 1949. In 1950, white terrorists firebombed Julian's new home in suburban Oak Park. Twice. 
This kind of terrorism was never as effective as the kind of racist power deployed by the upper classes -- at the University of Chicago, for instance. Indeed, Hirsch's study left me thinking of terrorism as a weapon of the weak -- the unsubdued weak, but the weak all the same. Still, terrorism was a kind of power in Chicago, and Hirsch shows how it made it significantly harder for the advocates of integration to create housing across the city. Think of it like this: Al Qaeda can't end air travel, but it can certainly alter it. Likewise, the White Circle League couldn't stop black succession. But they could seal blacks in and thwart integrations. 
The point here is two-fold: First, terrorism in the mid-20th century, in the cradle of the North, was common. Second, the terrorism at least partially worked, and when considered as a compliment to the structural violence of developers and the forces of urban renewal, it certainly worked.
The ghetto is not a mistake. The racism of white ethnics in Chicago was not due to brainwashing, false consciousness or otherwise being too stupid to recognize their interests. On the contrary, it was the political strategy of one community, attempting to subvert the ambitions of another. The strategy was successful. 

Politics In Chicago By Other Means

One of the great contributions of Arnold Hirsch's Making The Second Ghetto is the conception of racism, not as deviancy, moral degeneracy, nor stupidity, but as a political ideology whose employers tactics differ according to class, but whose goals remain the same. 
The goal of post-war white Chicago was to keep African-Americans sealed in the ghetto. Working class and ethnic whites worked toward this goal through what Hirsch calls "communal violence" which is to say entire communities angling toward terrrorism:

Rioting was undertaken for particular reasons and not as a generalized expression of racial hostility. Those reasons, and not the external forces of social control, were primarily responsible for the development, intensity, and duration of disorder.

This politicized violence erupted with some regularity between the 1940s and 1960s in Chicago. It was it's most spectacular in Cicero. But it occured throughout the city--at the Airport Homes, in Fernwood Park, in Englewood, in Bridgeport, in Park Manor. Violence was not restricted to "working class" areas. African-American chemist Percy Julian was named Chicagoan Of The Year in 1949. In 1950 white terrorists firebombed Julian's new home in suburban Oak Park. Twice. 
This kind of terrorism was never as effective as the kind of racist power deployed by those of the upper classes-- at the University of Chicago, for instance. Indeed, Hirsch's study left thinking of terrorism as a weapon of the weak--the unsubdued weak--but the weak all the same.  Still terrorism was a kind of power in Chicago and Hirsch shows how it made it significantly harder for the advocates of integration to create housing across the city.  Think of it like this: Al Qaeda can't end air travel, but it can certainly alter it. Likewise, The White Circle League couldn't stop black succession. But they could seal blacks in and thwart integrations. 
The point here is two-fold: First, terrorism in the mid-20th century, in the cradle of the North, was common. Second, this terrorism was at least partially successful, and when considered as a compliment to the structural violence of developers and the forces of urban renewal, it was wholly successful.
The ghetto is not a mistake. The racism of white ethnics in Chicago was not due to brainwashing, false consciousness  or otherwise being too stupid to recognize their interests.  On the contrary it was the political strategy of one community, attempting to subvert the ambitions of another. The strategy was successful.