Bush's Blacks: Race Traitors?

For over one hundred years, the African-American middle class has largely supported what I call "liberal integrationism," the organized attempt to assimilate into the U.S. mainstream to achieve a "color blind" society. Through groups such as the NAACP, liberal integrationists have allied themselves usually with the Democratic Party, and have pursued reform strategies such as affirmative action and minority economic set-asides, that promoted capital formation and the long-term expansion of the middle class within the black community. This liberal approach to racial policy, however, has never been universally accepted within the black bourgeoisie as a class.

A minority segment of the black bourgeoisie, especially those elements most extremely hostile to black nationalism, have argued that pluralist-style, interest-group politics have not and do not advance blacks' interests as individuals. The ultimate goal of "integration" should be, ideally, the complete elimination of separate black and white institutions, and the end of race-based criteria for directing public policy.

This wing of the black bourgeoisie has relied more heavily on white corporate and philanthropic support to advance its goals, and since the 1970s has developed a strategic dependency on Republican administrations in the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress to advance their careers. They shift back and forth between government positions within conservative administrations, then back to private sector managerial and executive positions for personal wealth accumulation. They usually argue against "racial quotas," and believe that private enterprise and the free market, if left alone without excessive governmental regulations, would ultimately solve the country's race problem.

During the long nightmare of Jim Crow segregation, it was difficult for any sane Negro to advocate such an individualistic conservative integrationist philosophy. The comprehensive nature of Jim Crow as a social system based on white supremacy, made absolutely necessary for blacks to build race-conscious organizations to defeat it. It was only after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which outlawed legal segregation-but significantly, did not destroy racial restrictions in private clubs and institutions-that this conservative element of the black bourgeoisie found its true voice.

In electoral politics, black Republican Edward Brooke emerged after winning the election as Massachusetts Attorney General in 1962, and four years later, becoming U.S. Senator. Brooke rarely, during his twelve-year career in the Senate, identified himself as a "black politician." After his 1966 election, he hired only two blacks out of a nineteen-member staff. He supported affirmative action, but took economic and social policy positions to the right of many mainstream white Democrats. Brooke had no problem campaigning twice for the election of Richard M. Nixon. Political scientist Chuck Stone once described Brooke as "Mr. Non-Negro Politics," and "the answer to the white man's prayers."

Brooke's success in the Republican Party created a model to which others within the most conservative wing of the black bourgeoisie would aspire. Floyd McKissick, the former head of the Congress of Racial Equality, endorsed Nixon's re-election in 1972 in return for federal support for "Soul City," a planned community located in North Carolina. With Reagan's election to the presidency in 1980, a new generation of black conservatives found their way into power: Melvin Bradley, minority business development and black colleges adviser to Reagan; Thaddeus Garret, domestic policy adviser to Vice President George Bush; Thelma Duggin, who was involved in the GOP's national black voter program in 1980, and subsequently a deputy to Reagan, cabinet member Elizabeth Dole; Clarence Thomas who in 1981 was appointed the Education Department's Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights; and Clarence Pendleton, former head of the San Diego branch of the Urban League who was selected as chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. This group of opportunists was provided ideological cover by a group of conservative intellectuals, prominently including economists Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Glenn Loury, and later in the 1980s, with the emergence of author Shelby Steele.

This conservative wing of the black middle class during the 1980s and 1990s, in effect, committed "racial suicide," in the sense that it disavowed any sense of obligation, or "linked fates," with what happens to the masses of disadvantaged African Americans. There is no sense of personal responsibility or accountability to a political project that is race-based.

They wish to be judged as "individuals," not as part of the larger "black community." They explicitly reject any notions of the concept that their career advancement was largely a product of a mass, democratic movement to challenge structural racism. So in this limited sense, the reactionary wing of the black political elite has stopped being "black" in terms of its historical function as an oppositional group against racism. They are essentially "race traitors": dedicated to the destruction of all racial categories, or even for some the collection of data indicating racial discrimination; critical of the liberal integrationist establishment; and enthusiastic boosters of capitalism as we know it.

The first Bush administration's most prominent "race traitor" a decade ago was unquestionably Clarence Thomas. Since his 1991 appointment as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, Thomas has consistently voted against affirmative action, civil rights, and social policies designed to advance the interests of the truly disadvantaged. Some of Thomas's closest personal friends are Attorney General John Ashcroft and Solicitor General Theodore Olson in the Bush administration-in fact, Thomas even officiated at Olson's wedding.

In a confused and angry tirade delivered at the conservative American Enterprise Institute's Francis Boyer Award dinner in Washington, D.C., on February 13, 2001, Thomas defended his dissenting opinion which argued that the beating of a handcuffed prisoner was not tantamount to "cruel and unusual punishment" as defined by the Eighth Amendment. He praised as his "friend and mentor" Jay Parker, formerly a registered agent for the white minority apartheid regime in South Africa. He then cited the work of conservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb to attack the ideal of maintaining "civility" as "the governing principle of citizenship or leadership."

For Thomas, conservatives have a moral obligation to vigorously oppose liberal politics. "The war in which we are engaged is cultural, not civil," Thomas declared, which "tests whether this 'nation conceived in liberty ... can long endure.'" The spirit of political intolerance, the refusal to compromise or to reach halfway toward a political opponent, was for Thomas essential for the defense of a free society. "An overemphasis on civility," Thomas warned, "allows our critics to intimidate us. As I have said, active citizens are often subjected to truly vile attacks; they are branded as mean-spirited, racist, Uncle Tom, homophobic, sexist, etc." The challenge to conservatives was not to "be tolerant and nonjudgmental," but to fight back hard.

Compromise, Thomas warned, "is cowardice, or well-intentioned self-deception." Thomas's ideological commitment to evangelical, free market racial assimilationism knows no boundaries. Even as reported in USA Today, Thomas once declared, "If I type one work in my word processor" in favor of affirmative action, "I break God's law."

One might condemn Clarence Thomas as an "Uncle Tom," but that would be an insult to "Uncle Toms." Thomas, the "race traitor," unfortunately represents a growing list of conservative blacks who actively oppose the black community's interests.

Dr. Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science, and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. "Along the Color Line" is distributed free of charge to over 350 publications throughout the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Marable's column is also available on the Internet at www.manningmarable.net

How very sad. I come from a rural southern background. My very best childhood friend now drives a bread truck (not that work of any kind is dishonorable, but he could have done so much more with his life).

So, while I'm not black, I do come from a background where academic achievement and a desire to succeed in worldly matters is not exactly driven into children's heads.

Still, my parents wanted more for me, they stressed schoolwork, and I knew growing up that I would attend college. It was just expected.

By the author's reasoning, I should be not be proud of the moderate success I've achieved. I should consider myself a traitor to other poor rural Southerners. Hogwash.

I do not feel any obligation to other whites to promote their interests, other than their right to be treated equally under the law with all races - does that make me a "traitor" to the white race? And if I were to promote a position to be part of the larger "white community", and promote white racial positions, I would IMMEDIATELY be branded by this writer as a bigot - and rightly so. But if Clarence Thomas in turn pursues a position of racial equality under the law, with no preference to his own race, he is branded as a traitor - which means that this writer is a rank hypocrite, and that his problem is not so much with Thomas as with the underlying concept of equal protection.

So in this limited sense, the reactionary wing of the black political elite has stopped being "black" in terms of its historical function as an oppositional group against racism.

Manning Marable should just change his name to Marxist Marable after penning this sentence, in the interests of truth in advertising.

Let's just translate:

So in this limited sense, the reactionary wing of the vanguard elite has stopped being "proletarian" in terms of its historical function as an oppositional group against capitalism.

Is this garbage even worth a comment?

... I guess so. For evil to flourish, good men must do nothing...

Who is a traitor to their race:

- Those who affirm the victimhood of an entire segment of society. Those who remove all semblance of personal responsibility and individuality and impose pluralism and a socialist model in spreading misery equally. Those who band together to support the vile, the immoral, the illegal, the subversive and the degenerate in society solely on the basis of their skin color. Those who vilify members of their own race for success and personal achievement and actively encourage successive generations to shun their example...?

- Or those who support equality for all regardless of skin color. Those who rise to the top of their profession through hard work, faith and adherence to standards. Those who give back to their communities through charity of time, talents and treasures. Those who give hope and heroes to children as examples of what can be?

There is a line drawn before us. Those who are attempting to frame the debate are calling patriots traitors and traitors patriots. As our Good Lord told us, woe be unto them who call good evil and evil good.

Sign me up as a "race-traitor".

I am happy to have been a traitor to my culture of failure, with no respect for education and success. A culture that has embraced victimization as it's stock and trade, which it uses to extort a higher and higher percentage of my taxs to fund feel-good gimme programs that do nothing but inforce that victim status.

If my personal success makes me a traitor, then I wear the badge proudly, because the black race doesnt own me, and will never tell me what to think, or how to vote, who I should date, or who my heros are.

This is about the most vile, digusting article I ever read. Disagree with NAACP or Democrats, you're not really black. If the media had any real worth, they would once and for all call out people like Manning Marable as the real racists.

Isn't it lovely that Manning Marable is a professor at Columbia University, and to think of all the parents spending $30,000+ so their kids can be indoctrinated with this crap.

They wish to be judged as "individuals," not as part of the larger "black community."

The author has correctly identified the "Antietam bridge" of this intellectual war: should people be judged as individuals, or by the color of their skin? It's interesting to see how prevailing opinions on this changed after 1964.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Race Traitor (as per Dr. Manning Marable)

The first Bush administration's most prominent "race traitor" a decade ago was unquestionably Clarence Thomas. Isn't this fun, attacking a MAN with racists remarks designed to maintain racial separation in the mind of the reader but touted as an effort to forward greater racial equality. Is it any wonder that blacks fall for the lies and spin of the despotic 'plantation' democrats who work tirelessly to keep blacks on the democrat plantation and out of non-racially defined zones succeed? This writer uses the very same sleazy methods! The same methodology appears to work well with soccer moms, NOW, abortion worshippers, unions, and a long list of other constituencies. If this racists crap didn't work so well with black voters, it would be a novelty but hardly worth debate. That it works so well to enslave a racial group of their own volition is telling of the extent to which democrats are willing to lie and dissemble (and thus disenfranchise those willing to question despotic democrat bilge) in order to gain and hold power. Clarence Thomas is attacked for being simply a successful man who doesn't feel the necessity to remind americans of the race he carries so well ... how ironic, since ignoring race as a causative or identity when considering employment, education, military service, political career, etc. is what these racists pretend to want, yet they attack Justice Tjomas for achieving such non-racial identity!

"Isn't it lovely that Manning Marable is a professor at Columbia University, and to think of all the parents spending $30,000+ so their kids can be indoctrinated with this crap."

In a perfect world, this article would find its way to the parental and alumni mailing list of Columbia University.

Is it any wonder that blacks fall for the lies and spin of the despotic 'plantation' democrats who work tirelessly to keep blacks on the democrat plantation and out of non-racially defined zones succeed? Well, let's try that sentence again: Is it any wonder that black people fall for the lies and spin of the despotic 'plantation' democrats, democrats who work tirelessly to keep blacks on the democrat plantation and out of non-racially defined zones?

There's some cause for pleasure in this piece, too. "Thomas, the 'race traitor,' unfortunately represents a growing list of conservative blacks who actively oppose the black community's interests," tells us that Marable is bothered by the fact that increasing numbers of blacks are throwing off the bonds of their collectivist masters and beginning to think for themselves.

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