The Color of Politics: A Nation Gripped By the Same Old Mania

-by Rodney Foxworth

"We have not yet reached a situation in which white people and white cultural agendas are no longer in the ascendant. The media, politics, education are still in the hands of white people, still speak for whites while claiming-and sometimes sincerely aiming-to speak for humanity."
- Richard Dyer

"There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." - Abraham Lincoln

"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White Hose will be adorned by a downright moron." - H.L. Mencken

I recall speaking with an English friend of mine just days before the 2004 Presidential election. As an outsider to American politics and society, he faithfully believed the American people would right the wrongs of the previous four years, and I believe him to have been dejected by my ardent cynicism. In so many words I told him to "never underestimate the stupidity of the American people," which, truth be told, was a statement of anguish, one founded in my distrust in white America, or better stated, the white electorate's predictable political behavior. Understandably, my English friend had reason to think in the manner in which he did, as his image of America was greatly misrepresented; in his short stay in the states, he found himself inundated by white liberals and one black male.

In his essay "Reagan, Race, and Remembrance: Reflections on the American Divide," the always insightful Tim Wise illustrated succinctly the racial divide in America magnified by the former President's death and the hullabaloo that ensued. In the words of the author, "if one needs any more evidence that whites and people of color live in two totally different places, politically and psychically, one need only look at the visual evidence provided by the death of Ronald Reagan." Wise also asserts that "while persons of color make up approximately 30 percent of the population of the United States, the Reagan faithful look like another country altogether.far whiter.than the nation into whose soil he will be deposited within a matter of days."
Of course, the racial disconnect that is obvious to non-whites is unapparent in the eyes of the majority of white Americans. As Wise noted, whites and non-whites reside in completely different worlds, not only politically and psychically, as Wise mentions, but physically and geographically. It took, for example, the tragedy of 9-11 to occur before soccer moms the country over became overtly concerned for their children's safety, whereas non-white mothers, a disproportionate number of which are relegated to incubators of crime and violence, worry incessantly, daily, of their child's safety. It is fair to say that most non-white mothers are more concerned about whether or not their child can take the short walk home from school without duress than they are of any sort of terrorist act; they are far too concerned with the malevolence of their fellow American to be saddled with that worry.

Though the previous example spoke to the combined geographic and psychic differences found in the white and non-white "worlds," the next example, a personal one, attempts to acknowledge the role this psychic difference in the two "worlds" informs the inhabitants politically: there was an instance in which I sat amongst a group of white peers and commented on how President George W. Bush stumbled and misspoke in whatever speech he was giving at the time. Undoubtedly, these are the usual characteristics of all his speeches, but that aside, the torrent of comments that fell upon me in his defense was nearly unbearable. I was a fool to think I could challenge their presumption that one need not be articulate or overwhelmingly intelligent to hold the highest office in the land, because, well, he graduated from Yale and Harvard after all. But it was only moments later that this group of white males would denigrate and ridicule the Afro-American basketball player Allen Iverson (a college drop-out) for of all things, being inarticulate, and by extension, unintelligent. If only Iverson had completed Georgetown he might have found himself free of mockery from this band of hypocrites.

Alas, there is no greater indicator of the racial divide than that presented by the political process known as elections. As voiced by Robert Oscar Lopez in "How White Liberals Became a New Racial Minority," "race has everything to do with the November 2 election. It was a race conflict slowly boiling into a race war. It's not a huge surprise to people of color, because if you've been a racial minority all your life, you treat racial strife as a given, like rainy days or rust." It wasn't a huge surprise either that the media (which as indicted by Richard Dyer, himself a white male, is controlled by whites) failed to acknowledge this assessment, an assessment not difficult to make in light of the numbers; the numbers indicate that eighty-eight percent of blacks voted against the incumbent-cum-sitting president, along with some seventy percent of all non-whites. Rather, attention was diverted away from the racial divide, and brought to the tent of religious fervor: left out of the dialogue is that black evangelicals voted nearly in step with the rest of the black electorate.

Even so-called liberal media has been complicit with this sort of delusional behavior, though, again, this is of no surprise: in the January 31st issue of that venerable magazine of liberal ideology The Nation, the editors postulated in the editorial "None So Blind" that "the central question of his [Bush] second turn is how soon Americans, recognizing their error, will demand a change in direction." The fallacy in this statement is the juxtaposition of "Americans" with "white Americans." It is problematic, and this has been so since the construction of this nation, to assume the dominate culture, in this case, 'whites,' speaks for the whole of our diverse nation, especially one so very segregated, psychically and physically. As well, is it wrong to suggest that the 'American' people got what they wanted? Though in some ways it pains me to continually cite Mencken, it was he who said, "democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." In this case, "common people" can be said to be normative, which is a highbrow way of saying, "white," at least as it seems to be defined in everyday and political vernacular, as evidenced by The Nation's statement.

It is the inability (or unwillingness) to recognize that the "inner soul" of the people (which I propose to be dominant "white" culture) has allowed for the attainment of my fellow countrymen's desires, and thus, provides the means for "Americans" to be content with their supposed "error," while also serving as an impediment to a true progressive movement. It can be said, then, that the problem facing progressivism is that of the color line. If this fact is not recognized, then white liberals, like their non-white peers, will find themselves remaining in a subordinate status in relation to their conservative counterparts.

If this is to be the case, I pity not the "Americans" but the world.

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Rodney Foxworth, 20, is editorial intern at Baltimore's City Paper, and can be reached at theboyfox21215@aol.com