Color Blind: Chait’s look at race during Obama era is missing one thing: black Americans

Slate ^ | April 7, 2014 | Jamelle Bouie

[2ndDivisionVet]

If I were outlining a racial history of the Obama administration, it would begin with policy: A housing collapse that destroyed black Americans’ wealth; a health care law attacked as “reparations” and crippled by a neo-Calhounite doctrine of “state sovereignty”; a broad assault on voting rights and access to the polls, concentrated in the states of the former Confederacy. Indeed, it would focus on the deep irony of the Obama era: That the first black president has presided over a declining status quo for many black Americans.

In short, it would treat race as a real force in public life that has real consequences for real people.

You should contrast this with Jonathan Chait’s most recent feature for New York magazine, where the story of race in the Obama administration is a story of mutual grievance between Americans on the left and right, with little interest in the lived experiences of racism from black Americans and other people of color. It’s a story, in other words, that treats race as an intellectual exercise—a low-stakes cocktail party argument between white liberals and white conservatives over their respective racial innocence.

“If you…set out to write a social history of the Obama years, one that captured the day-to-day experience of political life,” Chait writes, “you would find that race has saturated everything as perhaps never before. Hardly a day goes by without a volley and counter-volley of accusations of racial insensitivity and racial hypersensitivity.”

That might fit the experiences of a mostly white pundit class, but it has nothing to do with race as experienced in the “day-to-day” lives of ordinary people. When a twentysomething black New Yorker talks about race, she isn’t as concerned with the rhetoric of Republicans as she is with the patrol car that trails her teenage brother....

[2ndDivisionVet]

The Author

What austerity?

[Steely Tom]

“If you…set out to write a social history of the Obama years, one that captured the day-to-day experience of political life,” Chait writes, “you would find that race has saturated everything as perhaps never before. Hardly a day goes by without a volley and counter-volley of accusations of racial insensitivity and racial hypersensitivity.”

I believe this was predicted by Rush Limbaugh (and others) during the election campaign back in 2008.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Assault on Voting Rights, lol. Got ID, show your ID, dunce

Sometimes you gotta prove who you really are, not rely on being affirmative action’d thru life.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Sorry, I just couldn’t get past the excerpt. What the heck is this goofball babbling about?

As far as I could see in what little I read, his complaint is that blacks in America aren’t the center of the universe. And that’s just wrong.

[BenLurkin]

I must have missed where and when the government takeover of the health care industry was called “reparations”

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Dear Jamelle - you are a dupe and a fool. Your precious “first black president” has screwed all of us equally, not just his own race. And because all you can see is the color of his skin, you completely ignore his incompetence and blame your problems on whitey. When black Americans address the issues within their own community (such as fatherless children and lack of education) their lot will improve. Lead that revolution, Jamelle, and someday you could be the first competent black president.

[Candor7]

Yes, well the summary of the article is:

*******************************************************
Obama polarized America so that we see his administration as a prleude to inevitable final solution violence.
*******************************************************

I love it when leftist coercive utopians go all whiney.It means that good times are coming soon.

Freedom needs to be brought back , as well as a new respect for the Constitution, and a vibrant economy.

Then the whining will stop until the next suffering , polarizing bastard who defies the Constitution comes along.

[Amberdawn]

Lol! Me too. This is just rhetoric designed to push a meme and has nothing to do with reality.

[bill1952]

polarized America so that we see his administration as a prleude to inevitable final solution violence.

? I see that as the trumpet and clarion call to go all Rwanda on the white race. In case you haven't seen it beginning already under the color of the authority of the department of justice...

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

“I must have missed where and when the government takeover of the health care industry was called “reparations”

It is not a bad comparison. Obembacare is making working people pay for the leeches’ health insurance.

[The_Reader_David]

I see Slate allows its writers to hide from criticism on the internet by not even providing a comments section.

While their position will still be wrong, I'll accept that accusations that voter ID laws are an attack on voting right are made in good faith when I see documented evidence that the same folks who make that accusation raised hue and cry against the requirements that government-issued photo ID be shown to purchase pseudoephedrin or to board an airplane on the grounds that it would deny the poor, minorities and the elderly access to effective decongestants and air travel. Unless they can publicly document that they regarded photo ID requirement as an impediment to access in those cases as well, I call foul and accuse people who make that accusation of defending voter fraud.

[okie01]

As far as I could see in what little I read, his complaint is that blacks in America aren’t the center of the universe. And that’s just wrong.

Bouie's complaint is that white liberals (like Jonathan Chait) -- despite their protestations and posturing -- don't take blacks seriously.

And, of course, he is absolutely right.

Actually, Bouie is to be commended for figuring out that blacks need to look out for themselves -- as opposed to counting on white liberals to look out for them.

It's a feeble one. But it's a start...

[dsrtsage]

There are supposedly 3 races. Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongaloid. Is it my imagination or in the daily whining and complaining I only hear about race 2 being oppressed by race 1. I never ever hear about race 3.

[2ndDivisionVet]

"Bouie's complaint is that white liberals (like Jonathan Chait) -- despite their protestations and posturing -- don't take blacks seriously."

I fear that he'll draw the wrong conclusions from that observation, though. "We need to get more violent so that they have to notice us" or some such. There is a huge, welling anger just under the surface in this country right now, from many different things. I don't think it would take much of a spark to set it off. I don't recall any occasion in history where a 12% minority took on a 74% majority and won, especially where that majority was better-off economically, much better armed, controlled the energy and food supply and were closely allied with the other larger minority groups.

[ChildOfThe60s]

I don't recall any occasion in history where a 12% minority took on a 74% majority and won, especially where that majority was better-off economically, much better armed, controlled the energy and food supply and were closely allied with the other larger minority groups.

Caveat: that majority doesn't really control the military, and probably not most of LEO either. The current power brokers in DC are the avowed enemies of that majority.

Still, I mostly agree, as long as that majority isn't sabotaged by those in DC. Not a given.

[2ndDivisionVet]

They may control the levers of power in the military and law enforcement, per se, but do they truly control the rank-and-file, the junior officers or even as many of the flag officers and sheriffs/chiefs as they assume they do? Yes, they've recruited leftists, aliens, thugs, militant homosexuals and others to do their bidding, but I have to believe that most of the force are still real Americans.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Yes, they've recruited leftists, aliens, thugs, militant homosexuals and others to do their bidding, but I have to believe that most of the force are still real Americans.

I so want to believe that also. But my doubt grows daily. I fear the "following orders" scenario is going to play out in America.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Just one or two of these in every household and 500 rounds and it'd never come to that. What would it cost? $100 or so? We don't all need AR-15s, $1,500 pistols, AKs, and all that...

[ChildOfThe60s]

Lovely. And you are correct. It frustrates me to know people that have arms and keep no more than a box or two of ammo around.

I have a Marlin 30-30 lever action. Of all the long guns I own, I just really enjoy shooting it. Simple, reliable and effective, sort of elemental. I just can’t afford to shoot it too much. If only ammo for it was 40¢ a round.....sigh.

Semi auto carbines are cool, but spray & pray isn’t the only way.

[Fred Nerks]

I sometimes wonder how you might think that kind of an idiotic article might sound to an Australian reader, like something out of a warped kindergarten in an alternate universe.