Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media (10 page)

There's something deranged about a corporate media that would engage in character assassination against Rev. Wright for his views, yet praise a man who tried to cover up the destruction of thousands of lives. But the people who own the media have found that character assassination and driving a wedge between different groups is a moneymaker. One is reminded that the introduction of the 1830s penny press featured sensational reporting of the autopsy of a black woman whom P.T. Barnum claimed was George Washington's nurse. This was the O.J. story of the time. The modern media continues features that were perfected by the circus. Jonathan Klein told his token Latino commentator, right-wing Cuban Rick Sanchez, who wants New Orleans to become a Mexican-American city, that the issue of race was something that could make big bucks, according to
The New York Observer
.

When the primaries began to move west, the lead became something about the long-standing enmity between blacks and Latinos. It's certainly there. Strife between blacks and Latinos on the school playgrounds and in prisons. (In California's Central Valley there is conflict between Latinos and immigrants from South East Asia.) There are also tensions between Mexican immigrants and blacks, which is understandable since the Mexican media runs the kind of images of blacks that in the United States have been consigned to the Jim Crow museum at Ferris State University, except for the kind of materials that the Republican Party uses from time to time. But could Latino-black relations be more complex than a sensational cable news lead?

It took Gregory Rodriguez in
Time
and syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr. to offer a perspective missing from cable. Navarrette pointed to the many instances where Latinos have supported a black candidate. Challenging some of the assumptions made by white commentators, who cited “a history of uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Latinos in…Chicago, Los Angeles and New York,” Rodriguez wrote that “each of those cities have, in the past, elected black mayors who captured the majority of the Latino vote.”

Missing in most of these discussions was any reference to the African heritage of millions of Latinos, sometimes known as Hispanics, or indigenous people. If, using the standard established by slave traders, “one drop” of black blood makes you black, why aren't they considered black?

Writing about the most recent mayoral race in Oakland, whose main competitors were a black and a Latino, I said that race wouldn't be an issue because the Mexican-American candidate was darker than the black candidate. A month ago, when I was having dinner on the Lower East Side with a famous Puerto Rican poet and two Puerto Rican scholars, I repeated a joke that comedian Paul Mooney tells: Puerto Ricans and Cubans are “[Negroes] who can swim.” He didn't say “Negroes.”

They said that whites in Pennsylvania wouldn't vote for Obama because of his remarks about the white working class being bitter and clinging to guns, a line that was worked by the corporate media almost as much as the Rev. Wright film, which became sort of the Zapruder moment during the primary. Obama won Pennsylvania. They said that white women wouldn't vote for Obama because of the way he treated Hillary Clinton (whom he praised during debates and on the stump) yet Obama won the white women's votes. Their breaking ranks with Gloria Steinem shows that the elite elements in the feminist movement are not only out of touch with their followers but follow a double standard when judging white and black men, a tendency noted by feminist critic bell hooks. The low point in the primary came when these women supported Sarah Palin, one of the worst demagogues in American history and probably the tackiest.

In a novel,
Reckless Eyeballing,
that left me for literary road kill and caused at least one boycott of my appearance at Baton Rouge led by feminist Emily Toth (it fizzled when a professor challenged them; they hadn't read my books), I had a feminist character in my book defend Eva Braun on the grounds that she was a woman. I was reminded of this on November 18 when Tina Brown, the publisher of a zine called
The Daily Beast
and MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski carried on about how unfair the media treated Sarah Palin. Not to compare Sarah Palin with Eva Braun. Ms. Palin is more dangerous. Yet Ms. Brown and Mika Brzezinski succumbed to the hockey mom presentation of this rabble rouser by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis showing her cooking dinner with Bush One caddy, Matt Lauer and such. Mika agreed with Tina Brown. She said “it was pretty ugly it got really vicious—while images of Obama were overwhelmingly positive.” Like when Sarah Palin told Gwen Ifill that she would select which questions she wanted to answer during her debate with Joe Biden? Was the media unfair to Mrs. Palin? While Rev. Jeremiah Wright was subjected to a massive form of character assassination the media made little notice of Mrs. Palin's ties to groups led by kooks. One of which was The Third Wave Movement. Here is how the publication
Enlightened Catholicism
described that movement.

The Third Wave Movement is also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, Joel's Army, and The Manifest Sons Of God. Essentially this movement believes we have entered the end times. Joel's Army sees this as evidenced by the passing of Roe V Wade in 1973, and that those born after this year are part of that army. All these linked groups believe they have a Divine Mandate to clean up the world by taking over the “seven secular mountains,” as explained in this quote from Mary Glazier. Mary Glazier is the leader of Palin's ‘spiritual warfare group,' an admission Palin made when interviewed by
Focus On The Family
: “Glazier's sermon, which featured her comments on Palin, was given at a conference Opening the Gate of Heaven on Earth that also featured a number of speeches and sermons on the plans of leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation to take control of the seven ‘kingdoms' of society through their ‘Seven Mountains Strategy.'”

Mika said, “what I liked about her was that she wasn't guilty about being ambitious, being wired to work.” She cast the Palin family as “truly a modern American family.” Mika Brzezinski casted about for right-wing eyes when she concluded that the media were afraid to criticize Obama because he was black.

Her lowbrow appeal worked. She and “Morning Joe” have been hired to add a three-hour show on radio and she was the subject of a lengthy and flattering profile by Imus Howard Kurtz in
The Washington Post
.

But regardless of how Mrs. Palin became a pawn in the style of old South Carolina 2000 and Tennessee 2004 campaigns against black male candidates, which included race baiting, red baiting, and even reaching back to the nineteenth century by showing black men in the company of white women, it could have been worse. They could have nominated Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor. This is a man who has such little regard for black life that he has failed to call for the prosecution of white vigilantes who massacred black men and women during the flooding of New Orleans. So sure of themselves that they are above the law, these vigilantes boasted about their killing spree on Dutch television. Blackwater, the off-the-shelf mercenary group, was down there killing people too. The Republican Party won't abandon its Southern Strategy. It will most likely continue with a brown or yellow face fronting for it. An Indo-American like Jindal. Or a Vietnamese American, a member of a recently arrived immigrant group that might not be aware of the gains that the Civil Rights Movement has made for all colored groups. Vietnamese Americans voted for McCain even though he participated in bombing raids over their country, and called Asians “Gooks.”

CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Sarah Palin was there a need for affirmative action following Obama's successful ascendancy to the presidency. Blitzer is convinced that affirmative action is a black giveaway program yet the Department of Labor reports that the typical recipient of affirmative action is a white woman.

The most accurate account of affirmative action and those who benefit that I have read came in an exchange between Professor Sumi Cho, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and University of Iowa law schools, who currently serves on the Board of Directors for LatCrit. Professor Cho holds a JD and a PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and Rashida Tlaib, the Advocacy Coordinator for ACCESS, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. Ms. Tlaib earned her Jurist Doctorate degree from Thomas Cooley Law School and a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from Wayne State University. Both dismantled the myth of affirmative action as a black program and unveiled the media's circus-like propaganda effort to make money from white resentment, in their case,
Newsweek,
but they could have had in mind CNN, MSNBC, and talk shows that reach millions of people. Their conclusions:

Contrary to popular belief, African Americans are not the sole, or even the primary, beneficiaries of affirmative action. Rather, a wide range of groups have benefited from these policies which promote equality by directing resources, outreach and other opportunities to targeted underrepresented communities.

These groups include women, Native Americans, Arab Americans, Latino/as, Asian Americans, and African Americans. Of these groups, the United States Department of Labor found that
white women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action
.

A broad range of minority groups have also benefited from these policies. Programs that direct resources, outreach and opportunities to people of color have been extraordinarily important in opening up American institutions to a wide variety of communities. Yet even the beneficiaries of affirmative action, like most Americans, may not realize that these programs are under an intense nationwide assault. Many may mistakenly assume that the admission of blacks into colleges is the principal focus of efforts to eliminate these policies. In fact, however, attacks on Affirmative Action programs have included everything from English as a Second Language programs to breast cancer screenings, from mentoring and after school programs to magnet schools, from programs that require Asian-owned businesses to be advised of possible government contracts to battered women shelters that create a safe space for victims of domestic violence and their children. Simply put, there are countless initiatives across the country that affirmatively use race and gender to address the unwarranted obstacles confronted by the beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. Because these vital programs are neither colorblind or gender blind, they are put at risk by attacks on affirmative action.

What is the scope of these programs? And why do African Americans continue to be the subject of media focus when they are discussed?

Consider [a
Newsweek
] cover story. The story promises ten ways to think about whether affirmative action is still necessary. But how does the cover illustration lead us to think about these programs? For example, who does it suggest Affirmative Action is for? Who is left out of the picture? Is it about gender? Is it about all people of color? Is it about all classes of Americans, or just the privileged members of one marginalized group? What do you think about the person in the picture? Does he still ‘need' affirmative action?

There are so many things wrong with this picture that we will address only the single most problematic element: this is an artistic rendering of affirmative action, wholly created by the editors of the magazine.

The person in the picture was not chosen because he attended University of Michigan, the focal point of the controversy. Nor was he chosen because he was a beneficiary of some other affirmative action program. He was chosen because the cover artist wanted to tell a specific story, apparently that affirmative action is for the benefit of privileged blacks. This is a paid model playing a character. The preppy clothes he is wearing are not his. Not even the glasses are his own—there is a credit for them on the inside cover. He is a black body on which someone draped a collared shirt, chinos, and a tie. Using the model in this way serves a very deliberate function: it makes us think that Affirmative Action is not about women, or all people of color, or people of all classes. In so doing, it triggers stereotypes in the viewer, stereotypes that most likely will lead readers to answer the question, “Do we still need affirmative action?” with a resounding “NO!”

This is the kind of propaganda with which the media circuses attack blacks daily, and black public intellectuals, the ones who are accorded air and publishing space, haven't found an answer. In fact some of them make money by joining in on the attack and have fallen prey to the myth that affirmative action is a black giveaway program that offends white working class men many of whom are alcoholics, drug addicts, divorcees, and domestic violence abusers yet are set up by the media as the gold standard for how men should behave toward women.

In the course of a lengthy article he provides us with why neo-liberals love Obama's Joshua generation so much. It's because “Obama allowed that black anger about past and present wrongs was counterproductive.” I guess I'm part of the Moses generation because I get angry when I hear about the police emptying their weapons on an unarmed suspect and I'm glad that my fellow Moses, Al Sharpton, is around to protest these police actions.

I also get angry about suburban gun stores pouring weapons into inner city neighborhoods like mine and I am grateful to Jesse Jackson for his sit-in and arrest at a gun store located in the suburbs of Chicago, one that had been supplying guns to Chicago gangs, otherwise the problem would not have received notice from the local press. Some people smugly dismisses Jackson's career as one about “rhetoric of grievances and recompense.” It was Jackson who demonstrated that an African American who did not talk down to foreigners, the practice of white ambassadors and members of consulates in many parts of the world, could be successful at diplomacy. I'm sure that the relatives of the dozens of hostages who were freed by foreign governments as a result of Jackson's efforts view his career as having to do more than with rhetoric and recompense. Those who dismiss Jackson might view their pitting of Obama against Jackson as a clash of generations, but I view it as a continuation of the old plantation sport called the
Pat Juber
in which rival white plantation owners would contrive a contest between two bucks who would engage in murderous combat. Both Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright have written about modern versions of this custom.