Yesterday I attended Day Two of the Time Warner Politics 2-day Summit. I eagerly looked forward to attending the “Race, Politics, and Media” panel, as I had been dissatisfied with the discourse on race that I heard on Day 1 of the summit. Panelists included New York Times Op-Ed columnist Charles Blow, CNN contributor Amy Holmes, Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, and Radio One Chief Content Officer Smokey Fontaine. Omar Wasow, who is currently working toward his doctorate in Government and African American Studies at Harvard, founded BlackPlanet.com, which Radio One recently acquired.
Wasow started by asking somewhat rhetorically if Bill Ayers is the new Willie Horton, the boogie man used to stoke racial fears without explicitly using race. Wasow cited “the norm of equality” and added that “you can’t be explicitly racist and expect to win.” He then asked why McCain isn’t using Rev. Wright the way Bush 41 used Horton.
Holmes said that type of negative campaigning won’t attract independent voters, while Dyson cited John Fiske and his term, “inferential racism,” to describe the use of Ayers and the type of racialist language that can’t be quantified or described in 1960s terms. Blow stated that the use of Ayers was not specifically anti-Black but a distinct type of Othering that exploits anxieties over terror. Wasow then joked by asking if the shift from anti-Black to anti-Other didn’t represent a kind of progress.
Blow then cited a 2004 statistic that Kerry received 88% of the Black vote , then added that Obama might get 95% – 98% and that, in a tight race, that difference might be “enough to push him over the edge” to victory. Wasow said that Obama over-performed poll numbers in the South during the primaries and asked Fontaine whether, given that more than the numbers anticipated in the South came out to support Obama, that fact pointed to political homogeneity or political diversity in the Black community.
Fontaine cited a Radio One study of the Black community, which found that African Americans are as diverse as any other cultural or ethnic group in the United States. He quickly returned to Wasow’s earlier joke to say that he believed anti-Other hostility is more dangerous than the traditional anti-Black sentiment with which Black people have struggled over the generations. As he began to speak about fear-mongering among Republicans, Holmes interjected to state that she “did have to object to the idea” that Republicans are fear-mongerers, citing Democratic use of American anxiety and fear over race in recent presidential elections.
Fontaine then told a vivid story: He said he had just returned from Wasilla, Alaska and visited one of the two bars in the town to watch the 2nd presidential debate. The owner of the bar made sure they all watched it on Fox, he continued, and said he sat next to an older man he did not know, one who looked to be in his 70s. As the candidates entered, and Obama walked across the screen, Fontaine said he heard the man say: “I don’t give a shi* if they knock him off.”
Though, Fontaine said, he observed the man throughout the debate and believes Obama’s policies appealed to him, there was an almost physical anger / fear that – emotionally – prevented him from supporting Obama.
This led to a spirited discussion on pride and prejudice, mostly between Dyson and Blow. Blow seemed to assert that Blacks would be voting for Obama out of a sense of prejudice; he even used the term “Black Racism,” which Dyson quickly dismissed as an impossible phenomenon, given that racism denotes power – the empowered expression of prejudice that determines, for example, where The Other may live, or which schools The Other may be permitted to attend, or what type of loan The Other receives. This institutionalized racism requires a level of power that does not exist among African Americans. Dyson then led a discourse on the 400 years of disenfranchisement and used that historical context to insist that African Americans would be voting on pride – not prejudice.
Wasow then led the discussion to the economic crisis, and he asked the panelists if the fact that the economy is trumping race in this election should be considered a sign of progress.
Fontaine answered no, adding that the extreme deterioration of world markets is so profound that the fact that the economy figures more prominently than any other issue on voters’ minds can not be considered an indication of racial progress. Fontaine did say, however, that Obama’s “ascendeny defines America in a way that it could not be defined a year ago.”
This led back to the issue of pride and prejudice in the discourse, and Dyson was greeted with applause when he bluntly testified to the suppression of Black excellence over the centuries solely because of racism. Dyson said that, after hundreds of years of “mediocre white men running things,” he refused to feel guilty for the overwhelming sense of pride he and other African Americans feel over Obama.
Wasow then asked the panelists to respond to Obama’s speech admonishing absent Black fathers, which he suggested might have been delivered in an attempt to position him as a “different” Black man.
Dyson said that there were “multiple functions to that rhetoric,” adding that Obama can never appear to be angry or arrogant either. Holmes said that Obama had been careful not to run as a Black candidate and referred to his 2004 convention speech, where Obama said there was no Black America or white America, no blue state America or red state America. Holmes called Obama the multicultural candidate, “a man of all seasons, a man of all backgrounds, the man for you.”
Blow joked about the economy and Obama’s surge, adding that white voters are essentially saying: “I prefer to eat than to be mad at the Black people.”
Dyson said that “The bailout was white people’s Katrina,” and that if they didn’t get it in Nola, they got it in New York City.
Wasow asked if Black issues have evolved, with a new focus on broad campaign themes that also just happen to benefit Black people specifically.
Fontaine responded that this intersection is not incidental, as race and class have always been intertwined in America. He used, as a recent example, John Edwards’ focus on issues of the poor that, to a significant degree, also focuses on Black people.
Dyson provided more history, saying that the universality in any narrative of dispossession is easier for Blacks to grasp than whites. As an example, he talked about the way Blacks easily respond with emotion to universality in movies exploring the lives of white characters, while whites still feel distant from movies with all-Black casts and are less likely to respond on a human, emotional level even when more universal themes emerge. Dyson also said that there is a precedent in the Civil Rights Movement for Obama’s language, since King, he said, did not frame The Movement in terms of Black and white but, instead, in terms of right and wrong. Dyson said there was danger in not knowing Civil Rights history.
Blow said, in his closing statement, that “Not only could [Obama] be president, he could be one of the most powerful presidents in history.” Blow said Obama’s candidacy indicates that America stands, now, just three weeks before the general election, at the crossroads.
Comment(s)
Kudos on the panel. I have a number of substantive comments, but what springs to mind for this post is the impression, from your narrative, that my Hoya colleague prof. Dyson sounded uncharacteristically restrained, focused and scholarly. Likewise, Amy Holmes apparently wasn’t doing right-wing talking points. Did Omar put happy pills in everyone’s water?
Comment(s)
Dyson was focused and scholarly… and no panelists were injured in the making of this discourse… but he did quote Hip Hop and reach ministerial heights – in a good way. He had much support and love love from the crowd.
And there was a crowd. Time Warner slipped on putting us in the smallest conference room. Standing room only.
Holmes was not as terrifically right wing as I expected her to be. I actually enjoyed some of her comments. On an earlier panel on Day 1, she was coming more from her CNN right-leaning perspective, and she certainly wasn’t incredibly progressive in her remarks at the Race panel, but she modulated more to the just-right-of-center, I’d say, on Day 2.