The New Black
Tokenism
And American Empire
By Dennis Childs
02 November, 2004
Black Commentator
When
asked about an incident in Baghdad in which a U.S. helicopter bombed
a position near an immobilized Bradley military vehicle, killing at
least 13 civilians including Mazen al-Tumeisi, a Palestinian journalist
working as a correspondent for the Al Arabiya news organization, an
American military spokesperson said that the attack was executed for
the safety of the people that were near the vehicle
i.e. the very people that were injured or killed by the strike. The
logic of the Pentagons statement runs along the same
mystifying lines as that of the overall Bush imperial agenda: We
free the Iraqi people by killing them and denying them basic
services; we support democracy by installing
puppet governments and censoring or killing the press.
Of course, Black
folks and people of color in general in America are all too familiar
with this sort of white washing of racist and murderous policies. In
Oakland, San Francisco, New York, Detroit, Cincinnati, New Orleans,
etc., we are facing an everyday war at home. Just listen to both Republicans
and Democrats (including Kerry and Edwards) continue to beat the homeland
war drum of being tough on crime, which is of course coded
language for racial profiling and the mass detention of people of color.
In speech after speech, Kerry continually attacks George Bush from the
right citing the fact that Bush has neglected to put more police on
our city streets. In the case of Americas prison industrial complex
the tough on crime war rhetoric of both major parties translates
as: We protect urban communities by destroying them; We
serve disadvantaged youth of color by allowing the public school system
to rot, and by implementing racial profiling and human warehousing.
While there are
many factors that underlay Americas global wars and its de facto
war on women, men, and youth of color at home, one of the more crucial
ones is that of Americas perennial problem of deep-seated racism.
Even if they will not say so publicly, many American politicians and
citizens believe that middle to upper class white American life is more
valuable than that of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Haiti,
other Third World countries, and immigrants and people of color in the
US. This devaluation of non-white life was a key factor in the tortures
of Abu Ghraib. But, as those of us familiar with the US criminal justice
system know all too well, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are merely
exports of what has gone on for years in American prisons such as Pelican
Bay and Attica, and Louisianas Angola prison/slave
plantation.
In the case of Iraq,
American white supremacy laid the groundwork for prison torture, and
in massacres such as the initial siege of Fallujah (where over 600 Iraqi
civilians were killed). Indeed this mass murder happened around the
same time of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but went virtually unquestioned
in the corporate media. The massacre of civilians was somehow portrayed
as clean and legal, while prison torture was
considered scandalous only because of the PR problem of the photos being
released. Those familiar with the Rodney King police brutality video
should be very familiar with this dynamic.
One of the more
vexing aspects of the current devaluation of the lives of people of
color around the globe and at home however is the fact that, in America,
a great many of the likely to vote public believes that
racism is a thing of the past. A key component of this belief has to
do with a phenomenon whereby the violent effects of American racist
politics on a global and domestic scale are submerged under the optical
illusion of conservative multi-culturalism. The days have
past when tokenism is the sole operation of liberal politics.
We are now confronting a moment in the American empire when right wing
ideology has successfully marketed itself as compassionate conservatism
and "multi-culturalism - a time when the Bush administration
can trot token Black people in front of the public as examples of conservative
inclusiveness. Examples of this modern spate of tokenism include reactionaries
such as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Lt. Governor Michael S.
Steele of Maryland. The abominable lengths to which the new Black
tokens will go in their support of right wing policies was evidenced
by Steele in his speech at the Republican National convention, when
he actually had the nerve to use the name of Ronald Reagan in the same
sentence with those of Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. ?
In spite of the
almost comic nature of modern conservative tokenism, it contributes
greatly to the contemporary myth that racism is a relic of days gone
by. However innervating this scenario may be to those aware of the veiled
omnipresence of structural racism, we shouldnt be surprised by
such smile in your face tactics. This is the same country
where the daily appearance of Black athletes, actors, and singers, in
the mainstream media is flaunted as proof that everything is now equal,
and that America has successfully wiped its hands clean of the
sins of the past. This is a country whose president dared to travel
to a slave fort on the Western Coast of Africa preaching reconciliation
while refusing to address African/Third World debt forgiveness or reparations
for slavery, and while over one million Africans in America sit in prison
cages in the most free nation on the planet. This is the
same administration that preaches global security while forwarding a
policy of cowboy diplomacy and imperialism redux. This is the same world
leader who continually speaks of compassion while virtually
ignoring the AIDS pandemic in Africa and elsewhere (despite promises
to the contrary). Finally, this is an incumbent presidential candidate
who attempts to court the Latino vote through brief outbursts of something
sounding vaguely akin to Spanish while pushing an anti-immigrant domestic
agenda. ?
One must point out
however that current American racism and jingoism have little to do
with what side of the aisle the American political representative happens
to sit. Although I do sincerely hope Bush loses the election (AGAIN)
and that grassroots mobilization to this end leads to an invigoration
of radical and progressive politics in the U.S. let me remind
the reader of a couple of key points. John Kerry is a man who, like
most other Democrats, voted for the illegal invasion and occupation
of Iraq based on the bogus excuse of faulty intelligence,
who supports the internationally condemned apartheid wall in Palestine,
and who just before the debates stated that even if he
would have known about the faultiness of the WMD claim, he still would
have voted to invade Iraq. ?
Furthermore, the
problem of the Democratic support of a militarist/corporate agenda is
not just a matter of the shortfalls of their current presidential candidate.
All we have to do to understand this is flash back to when Bill Clinton
promoted the war at home through anti-welfare legislation, and by overseeing
the greatest rise in incarceration rates in US and world history. In
terms of the global war against Third World peoples, Clinton was an
avid supporter of the neoliberal/neocolonial corporate agenda, and also
oversaw the sanctions against Iraq a policy that led directly
to the deaths of over 500,000 children. This brings to mind the comments
of his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who on 60 Minutes stated
that these deaths were a hard choice but were worth
it. As radical thinkers and activists such as Arundhati Roy have
pointed out, the American corporate/military agenda operates according
to Orwellian political and rhetorical sorcery no matter whether the
imperial figurehead is called a republican or democrat.
We live in a system where up is down, where two plus two equals billions
of dollars to Dick Cheneys former company, and where leaders of
the free world actually have the gall to refer to a situation
in which tens of thousands of civilians have been murdered as democratic
progress.
Through this theater
of the absurd, many well-intentioned Americans buy into
the notion that structural racism has been replaced by reverse (anti-white)
racism as the countrys most prevalent race problem.
That is, of course, unless one pays heed to the chorus of reactionary
complaint in regard to the other major racial ill that is supposedly
befalling the country i.e. those dark-hued complainers who refuse
to just get over the past and be more like Clarence Thomas,
Ward Connerly, or Bill Cosby. Both of these stances actually relate
directly to the potent fantasy of American color-blindness,
a mythology whereby many white Americans take psychological comfort
from the Disney-Land-delusion that racism as a politically and economically
crucial issue has vanished from the American scene that it is
now only the stuff of race cards and pathological victimhood.
These modern social mythologies depend on the disavowal of the fact
that racism in general, and American white supremacy in particular,
have never been simply about the dislike of one person by another, nor
simply about southern men in white hoods burning crosses and people.
In the now and yesterday of the American empire, racism has functioned
as a social, economic, and political structure that negates the life-chances
of millions of children and adults a year in a variety of ways which
are invisible to some and painfully obvious to others.
To see racism as
a structural rather than merely individual phenomenon is to see through
the fog of historical amnesia to everyday realities rarely covered in
the corporate media such as de facto educational apartheid, criminalization
and incarceration of masses of people for mostly non-violent drug-related
offenses, and a system where the basics of life such as health care
and adequate shelter are made into privileges instead of rights. This
is a vantage point that unveils the mechanisms that feed homeless shelters,
unemployment lines, prisons, and the military infantry. But to talk
about such things is to deal with the causes of social problems, and
American profit-driven society never wants to deal with causes of problems
for then it might actually be placed into a position where it has to
contribute to sustainable global and domestic solutions instead of the
comic-book politics of us vs. them or the corporate chicanery
of profits over people. It might then be forced to consider the realities
of those beyond its borders and those within its own confines who are
not a part of the political or economic elite.
Despite these facts
on the ground, the color-blind myth and the political dumb show of multi-culturalism
allow much of America to see racism as something that died during the
time of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As revealed in his last speeches
in regards to the genocidal practice of the U.S. in Vietnam however,
Dr. King felt that American empire was just beginning to reach the full
reach of its destructive powers against non-European peoples around
the globe at the very time it was paying lip service to civil rights
at home. This oft-ignored internationalist aspect of Dr. Kings
vision led him to describe American imperialism as the greatest threat
to the health and security of the planet just before he was assassinated.
Even though world opinion (the thing that Bush the lesser now glibly
refers to as a focus group) was decidedly against the war
in Indochina, and even as America got submerged in a quagmire and eventually
lost for the first time in armed conflict, three to four
million Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians were killed under the narcotic-like
banners of democracy and saving the world from an ism that
was hiding around every corner.
Sounds familiar
doesnt it?
If America ever
will realize the full scope of Dr. Kings dream, and if we do not
want more re-runs of Vietnam, progressives and radicals will have to
work to dismantle structural white supremacy even while struggling against
corporate globalization, patriarchy, environmental destruction, and
homophobia. None of this will be accomplished by modern day Step-N-Fetchits
parading themselves as successful Black folks while comparing
Frederick Douglass and Dr. King to a right wing want-to-be cowboy president.
As Gill Scott Heron said in B-Movie, his classic song about
Ronald Reagan, the actor turned imperialist, it aint really
a life, it aint nothin but a movie.
Free Palestine!!!
Free Iraq!!! Free Haiti!!!
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!!!
http://www.freemumia.org/
Free Dr. Mutulu
Shakur!!! http://www.mutulushakur.com/
Free Leonard Peltier!!!
http://www.freepeltier.org/
And the remaining
2 of the Angola 3!!! http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
FREE ALL POLITICAL
PRISONERS and the millions who never would have been imprisoned if given
real life chances!!
http://www.criticalresitance.org
Dennis Childs
received his Master's Degree in African American Studies at UCLA in
1998. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in English at the University
of California at Berkeley. Childs most recent publication is an
essay, "Angola Prison, Convict Leasing, and the Annulment of Freedom,"
which appears in an anthology called Violence and the Body edited by
Arturo Aldama (Indiana University Press, 2003). He can be contacted
at [email protected]