United States: The financial calamity, African Americans and Obama

By Malik Miah
October 8, 2008 -- The deepening financial calamity exposes how the “fundamentals” of the economy impact on working people, particularly African Americans. The so-called unfettered free market system has been a failure.
The issue of the economy has given the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the first Black candidate for a major party, a big boost. After eight years of Bush-Cheney, Obama should be a shoo-in. Democrats are expected to garner big majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Yet,
as television pundits and print commentators have noted, Obama is in a close race
with the Republican John McCain because of one reason: the colour of his skin. While
there are some differences on domestic and foreign policy, both men would forcefully
defend the interests of the ruling class. Obama has repeatedly gone out of his way
to state his willingness to use pre-emptive military force in
The race factor
Because the impact
of the economic crisis and the presidential elections are so tied together, it
is difficult to separate the two for African Americans. The blows to the
economy are not new; the chance to have a Black person elected as president is. No African-American
leader thought this was possible or realistic even a year ago.
The
race factor, or racism to be more precise, shows the contradictions of
The economy
The
economy of course is a huge issue for African Americans. Not surprisingly there
is general anger about the US$700 billion Wall Street bailout. No such bailout occurred
for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in
Most
Black congressional representatives initially voted against the bailout. They
changed their minds only after Barack Obama said it was necessary to vote “yes”
for political reasons. He “promised” a future bailout of the “middle class” after
he wins the presidency.
In
September the official unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.4 per cent; for
the general population it was 6.1 per cent; and for whites it was 5.4 per cent.
In
addition, some 6.1 million part-time workers want to work full time. Blacks are
a big part of that group. The rising healthcare costs hit African Americans
hardest as many work in jobs with employers who don’t provide health insurance.
The need for universal health care is obvious. As bad as the financial calamity
is for average working Americans, it is qualitatively worse for Blacks.
African
Americans nevertheless see the economic crisis and the presidential election as
connected. The possibility of the first Black president is inspiring and hopeful.
Voting for Barack Obama is viewed as more than just voting for “Black pride”
but as a possible firewall to limit the worse blows of the financial crisis.
The
Republicans understand this too, which is why the first African-American
presidential candidate for a major party is attacked on “cultural values” and his
``character'' — which as McCain and Palin's handlers fully understand means his skin colour —to mobilise the votes of bigots and those not fully
conscious of their biased attitudes.
The
racist campaign against Obama is barely hidden.
The code words and phrases of “he’s doesn’t look like one of us”, the emphasising
of his middle name “Hussein” and accusations of “palling around with terrorists” are aimed at
getting white voters to vote on “fear of the Black man” over economic self-interest.
(Bush in 2004 linked Democrats to being soft on “terrorism”; Obama has a double
whammy—a friend of terrorists [maybe a sleeper] and being an “alien” to blue-collar Americans.)
`Racism without racists'
A
revealing survey was conducted by
The
steelworkers’ union in
Phillip
Goff, a social psychologist at UCLA who focuses his research on “racism without
racists”, notes, “When we fixate on the racist individuals, we’ve focused on
the least interesting way that race works. Most of the way race functions is
without the need for racial animus.”
In
other words, he explains, the problem is those whites and others who believe in
racial equality and have no objection to electing a Black person as president,
yet who discriminate unconsciously. This is particularly true for older Americans.
The younger generations who grew up after the victory of the civil rights
movements in the 1960s tend to be less concerned about race and voting for a
Black president.
The economy is causing a majority of whites and other ethnic groups to put
their own self-interests over their anti-Black biases. I believe
if that weren't true, the race factor of 6 per cent would be larger and polls
would not show that more and more white men are willing to say that they
will vote for Obama for his economic positions even if they don’t see him as
“Joe six-pack”. Can this new trend negate the Bradley/race
factor? The fact that Obama won the nomination when a similar smear campaign
was launched by the
Blatant bigotry
This
is not to minimise the virulence of the hardcore racist minority. The extreme
ultra-evangelist leaders of the Republican Party will play the race card as Alaska
Governor Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential nominee and the attack dog on the
issue, continues to do in public. She whips up the “base” that leads to shouts of
“kill him” and “he’s a terrorist”. The crowd at one
In
Right-wing talk show hosts regularly refer to Obama as “a communist, socialist and terrorist” and that “he’s not one of us” (meaning the infamous “blue-collar white worker” that Hillary Clinton more discreetly talked about during the Democratic primaries.)
Left analysis missing context
Many
independents, socialists and opponents of lesser evilism who back Ralph Nader
or Cynthia McKinney may say it doesn’t matter if Obama wins or loses because he
is the head of a major ruling party.
What’s
missing in this analysis is the context. The vast majority of African Americans
who know and experience racism do care about the outcome. They see the virulent
racism directed at Obama as being directed at them. In that sense a vote for
Obama is a vote against the pure, subtle and not-so-subtle racism of the right.
The principle here is to show unconditional opposition to race baiting and hate
mongering.
That’s
why in many ways the vote on November 4 is a referendum on race relations. Consider
one point: if Obama is leading every major poll by 6-10 points, as he was on
October 8, yet loses even as the Democratic Party makes big gains in congress, the
impact and angry reaction could be huge in the African-American community.
While
I believe that the changes since the victory of the civil rights revolution for
Blacks is shown by the facts, a racist defeat of Obama could set back those
gains — and open the door to encourage the bigots to push back on other
programs that benefit minorities and women. Progress on race relations could be
set back, especially for the Black middle class.
Obama
has gone out of his way to remain cool under these attacks and not appear as
the angry Black man that many whites fear.
Few illusions about future
African
Americans are quite aware of the racial contradictions of
But
from a nationalist (or racial pride and community solidarity) point of view, Obama’s victory would be seen as a confirmation
of the civil rights progress since adoption of the civil rights laws in the
1960s. No one from the civil rights era of Martin Luther King Jr. truly and genuinely
believed that a Black man could be elected president of the
The
deepening economic calamity is causing more Blacks to lose their homes, be
evicted from their apartments and lose their jobs. And while the Black
community leadership has no plan of action to help the population, the hope is
that the first Black president in 232 years of the
[Malik
Miah is an editor of the



