South Carolina: The Black Primary
by Kevin Alexander Gray
"Although a majority of black Americans
live in the South, the January 2008 primary here could be the only occasion
that Democrats have to vie seriously for black votes."
The press
doesn't plainly say it, but South Carolina is the black primary. The more common expression is that the state
"offers a glimpse into what's important to African Americans...." It might, because a third of South
Carolina's population, 1.3 million residents, is black. The majority of
Democratic voters here are black, and in 2004 "non-whites" made up about 60
percent of those who cast a ballot in the Democratic primary. Yet at this point in the accelerated
Election 2008 story, after two debates in the state by candidates from both
parties, there's been a bit of race baiting, or "kick a nigger" politics as it
is called down South, and a whole lot of posing - talking or acting like a
friend while either spouting rhetoric or stabbing you in the back. Who's the bad guy (or gal) in the sad state
of affairs is measured only by degree.
What it amounts to is, as James Brown put it, "talking loud and saying
nothing."
From what's not being said it is simple to gauge whom the
candidates and their staffs aren't talking to.
Everyday conversation in the black community here reveals the toughest
issues facing blacks nationwide. The
education system is failing their kids.
Many can't afford to buy or keep their homes. Communities are coded out of existence to make way for white
urban pioneers. Minority business
ownership is down. Bankruptcy is up. In
overwhelming numbers their kids are locked up or otherwise under state
supervision. Many are brutalized by the
police or by each other. Somewhere
between 30 to 50% of South Carolina black youth are unemployed. Half of all black mortgagors in the state
are losing their homes to foreclosure: this is a social catastrophe. On the political stage, it's as if it didn't
exist.
"Half of all black mortgagors in the state are losing their homes
to foreclosure."
But if the
realities of black life are of small concern to the candidates, race is
not. For Democrats South Carolina
provides a place to do retail politics just enough to punch their card with the
party's most loyal base. For republicans, the state has typically helped
candidates assert their conservative credentials, measured by how extreme they
are on race.
As he did
back in 2000 Arizona Senator John McCain hired State Representative Rick Quinn,
once editor of Southern Partisan, a
white "heritage" magazine, as his spokesman in the state. At the height of that
primary Quinn's magazine ran a full-page photo of Abraham Lincoln with the
words of his assassin, "Sic Semper
Tyrannis," under the picture.
McCain was outplayed for the white supremacist vote by George W. Bush
that year, which may be why he has so far avoided the most race-baiting
politics this time. Others have filled the void. Almost as soon as he came
South, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani let it be known he
believes flying the Confederate flag on government property "is a matter of "states' rights." Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo
spoke at a barbecue sponsored by the South Carolina chapter of the League of
the South (LOS), a neo-Confederate group that had the event catered by Maurice
Bessinger, famous for flying the battle flag and selling books defending
slavery at his restaurants. At the
close of his speech he reportedly sang "Dixie" with men dressed in Confederate
soldiers' uniforms.
That blacks
view the Republican Party with antipathy is no surprise. The surprise is that, beyond symbolism, the
Republicans are not that much worse than the Democrats.
Illinois Senator Barack Obama, touted by Time magazine for having the courage to
tell "inconvenient truths," used one of the oldest racial stereotypes in a
recent speech to black
South Carolina state legislators. "In
Chicago, sometimes when I talk to the black chambers of commerce," he
said, "I say, 'You know what would be a
good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks
weren't throwing their garbage out of their cars.'" Translation; black people are dirty and lazy.
Obama's defenders claim he is saying aloud what blacks say
privately. But presidential candidates
aren't campaigning for a place in the conversation on the neighborhood corner
or in the cut. Those same black state legislators whom Obama addressed had
earlier released data showing that only 3 out of 10 black males and 4 out of 10
black females graduate from the public high schools in South Carolina; that 85
percent of youth prisoners and 70 percent of adult prisoners are black, and
many did not have a high school diploma and were unemployed before their arrest
and incarceration. Such problems aren't limited to South Carolina but are at
crisis level in Illinois, New York, Ohio and across the country. And Obama has
nothing to offer as a solution.
"Only 3 out of 10 black males and 4 out of 10 black
females graduate from the public high schools in South Carolina."
Neither does Hillary Clinton. This past March while in Selma, Alabama, the New York Senator
confused speaking in ebonics - "Aww don't feel noways tired" - with "walking
the walk and talking the talk." She did
something similar at a luncheon at Al Sharpton's National Action Network
conference in April. Her apparent aim
on both occasions was to "out-black" Obama.
In a speech at Rutgers shortly after the Don Imus gaffe, she summoned
the ghosts of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Her husband appropriated black icons like
Martin Luther King, Jr. right before he came down strong with his "pimp hand"
telling blacks if King were alive "he'd be ashamed" of them. Hillary "acting black" may have been
intended to remind some that her young rival Obama - often compared to the
Kennedys - "isn't black enough."
Hillary has
yet to show her hand in South
Carolina, but there is no question that she and the other Democrats have a
master teacher. Back in '92, Jesse Jackson's wife Jackie told me Yasser Arafat
remarked to her, "Where you sleep is where your politics lie." Literally or figuratively, most of the
Democratic candidates sleep with the playbook of Bill Clinton. I tend to see Hillary as the Susan Stanton
character in the movie Primary
Colors. The 1998 film adaptation of
former Clinton ally Joe Klein's book is about an "unknown Southern governor
running for the presidency with his strong, savvy and equally ambitious
wife...." At one point the Bill
Clinton-like character, Jack Stanton, tells his staff, "I don't want to give
the sonovabitch the chance to make me the sonovabitch." In street slang that's called "flipping the
script." It's what Don Imus did after
his "ho" comment, deflecting blame onto hip hop culture. Hillary may have flipped the script on
Obama leaving him to talk about what's wrong with black people.
Bill's classic examples of race-baiting include his
infamous 1992 public backhands of Sistah Souljah and Jesse Jackson - just to
let folks know he wasn't indebted to blacks - and his decision to make a
high-profile rush to Arkansas to preside over the execution of Rickey Ray
Rector, a brain-damaged black man who didn't even know he was being killed -
just to let folks know he wasn't soft on crime (aka blacks). Obama told
the Times, "I'm not interested in engaging in a bunch of Sister Souljah
moments jut for the sake of it. If I do
that, it's not for effect but because it's what I really believe." It's a
toss-up which is worse: that Obama raised the spectre of dirty blacks to score a
political point or that he really believes it.
Meanwhile, the Clinton legacy affects what's being said or
not said today in more subtle ways. The
joke that refuses to go away is that Bill Clinton was "America's first black
president," even as his policies on due process, equal protection and equal
treatment - in other words, civil rights - were horrible. No Democrat is challenging his initiative
requiring citizens, mostly black, in public housing to surrender their Fourth
Amendment or privacy rights; or his ‘one strike and you're out' policy under
which public housing residents convicted of a crime, along with anyone who
lives with them, are evicted without due process.
"Obama told the Times,
‘I'm not interested in engaging in a bunch of Sister Souljah moments.'"
So former
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina used Hurricane Katrina as his entrance
ticket to 2008 campaign, but at a substantive level he seems incapable of
addressing "the right of return" for the 250,000 displaced residents relocated after
the storm. A "right of return" would
require somewhere to live and work upon return. Many of the displaced were renters before the flood. Many have the kind of credit rating that
disqualifies them for most private housing and some types of government
assistance. New Orleans had the highest
poverty/crime rate in the region before the storm, and many of the now
displaced were unemployed. A
significant percentage of the 250,000 have criminal records, or someone in
their immediate family does, thus disqualifying them from public housing under
Clinton's one strike policy even if forces in New Orleans weren't intent on
eliminating public housing. Would
Edwards or any of the other candidates support the repeal of the one-strike
policy? Would they support waiving or
lowering credit requirements? Not one
has come out for homesteading or granting people a home and a clean start.
Hurricane
Katrina isn't something that happened "down there" for most black people. It reinforced what they witness close-up
right now, in Columbia or in Cleveland.
They know how people have to give up the car because even though they
have a perfect driving record they're still charged a higher insurance rate
because of where they live or their credit history. How they have to choose
between paying for medicine and paying the bills. How if homeowners fall into bankruptcy the
insurance companies can either refuse to sell them homeowners' insurance or
raise the rate - which is what a homeowner needs the least. Many African Americans know too well that
the "po' pay mo'," burdened with extraordinarily high interest on just about
any purchase. Their kids are stuck in awful, segregated schools. If those kids don't graduate from high school, particularly
if they are male, chances are they are going to jail, most likely for selling
drugs. One felony drug charge is economic suicide, as many employers will not
hire ex-felons. If an ex-felon is lucky
enough to get a job, it often doesn't cover the basics. A student loan is out of the question. So the kid ends up back in jail. Many blacks also know that the problem isn't
solved with more police with drug dogs, social workers and piss tests. They know how tenuous existence is. Social
instability due to unemployment or gentrification is one thing. Massive foreclosures in the new sub-prime
housing developments - where 50% of new buyers are likely to lose their home
within seven years, making the populations of those developments more or less
transient - is the new other thing. An
"affordable" development might have hundreds of houses, yet with the constant
turnover, it's never a community in the truest sense.
"If those kids don't graduate from high school,
particularly if they are male, chances are they are going to jail."
So blacks have
the choice of believing that the majority of people losing their homes are
irresponsible deadbeats, or that sub-prime mortgages serve to enrich the
builders, banks and developers and exploit working class buyers. They can believe they are dirty, lazy and
just need to pick up the garbage or that there is redlining and a lack of
economic development and equitable lending practices where they live. They can believe that the majority of black
school-age kids are inherently, pathologically inferior, unable to learn (which
translates into stupid, unappreciative of education and deserving of jail), or
that the system stinks and needs restructuring.
The
presidential aspirants mostly leave them alone to assign social, rather than
merely personal, responsibility for those issues. At the Democrats' first debate in Orangeburg, South Carolina,
only retired Alaska Senator and ex-cab driver Mike Gravel dared to say the "war
on drugs" is a sham. Among the
Republicans, only libertarian Ron Paul has called the drug war foolish, failed
and an affront to liberty. In a
practical sense ending it means taking on the hot potato issue of
decriminalization. No top-tier,
mid-tier or even fellow fringe candidate is stepping out on that one. And what of ending mass incarceration,
sending inmates to prisons far away from their families, sometimes across state
lines? Most democratic candidates slam
the Patriot Act; a few even call for its repeal. Yet who would call for a roll back on enhanced police powers like
no-knock warrants and the erosion of probable cause which makes it easier to
detain and search people, homes and cars?
The deaths of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond in New
York, of 88 year old Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta and a host of others elsewhere
are a result of unchecked power derived from the "war on drugs."
In
6-year-old Desre'e Watson of Florida, taken to jail in oversized handcuffs,
charged with felonious battery on a school official, disruption of a school
function and resisting a police officer - all for throwing a temper tantrum -
we have the ultimate symbol of the criminalization of blacks. Over the years the age that kids are tried
as adults has kept dropping. Once
society adopts the mindset that childhood misbehavior is criminal behavior,
anything goes.
It's an outgrowth of Rudy Giuliani's "zero tolerance"
policing. There's not much chance that
he or any Republican will get many black votes in the primary or general
election. The question is whether any
Democrat will return to South Carolina or any Southern state besides Florida
after the primaries. Recent history
suggests they won't, which makes the black primary even weightier. Although a majority of black Americans live
in the South, the January 2008 primary here could be the only occasion that
Democrats have to vie seriously for black votes - which underscores that what
we've seen so far is a pantomime of politics.
"We're offered the
politics of symbolism: the black candidate, the woman, the Chicano, the ‘two
Americas' man trailed by a few other white guys hoping somebody makes a
mistake."
It is not that the issues being emphasized - war, global
warming, health care and immigration - are irrelevant here. Most blacks opposed the war before it started and register
protest via the plummeting number signing up for the military. They are
environmentalists when it comes to environmental racism, but they are more
concerned with home heating than global heating; if warmer winters mean lower
fuel bills it's clear what will be the rational priority for most people. They support universal health care although
being uninsured has never stopped them from going to an emergency room when
push came to shove. And
they are torn on immigration reform, especially as the mainstream has defined
that as a Latino issue. Blacks don't
live in the same neighborhoods with Latinos, don't speak the same language and
often compete for the same jobs. A
politics that linked the Global War on Terror with the war on drugs, that
perceived the environment as the places people live, and health as the
condition of their life - asking not so much "Are they insured?" as "Can they
survive?" "Will their kids have a
future?" - that made the connections between racism, economic oppression and
labor exploitation at home and abroad: such a politics might speak to
people. Instead, we're offered the
politics of symbolism: the black candidate, the woman, the Chicano, the "two
Americas" man trailed by a few other white guys hoping somebody makes a
mistake.
In a
real sense, Jesse
Jackson's 1984 and 1988 Rainbow campaigns were the last
time blacks and progressives had a significant policy and institutional effect
on American politics. The
Rainbow "movement" brought a diverse coalition together on an agenda predicated
on universal human rights and peace. That
coalition brought issues of race, gender and sexual orientation into an
analysis of class and American power. It opposed the proliferation of nuclear
weapons and demanded restrictions on nuclear energy. It supported the property rights of small family farmers and
black farmers as well as the rights of migrant workers and workers' rights in
general. It brought people into the political process and spurred
a nationwide increase in black elected officials. Many of those newly appointed or elected officials carried a
platform that opposed apartheid in South Africa, supported human rights for the
Palestinian people and sought peaceful relations with Cuba and Central
America.
The Rainbow
challenge had an effect on both political parties. On the Republican side it prompted a top down approach to
race politics with the ascensions of Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleezza
Rice and others. It's inspired Bush's
"faith-based" schemes. On the Democrat
side, it lodged people
at every level of the party and propelled the backlash Democratic Leadership
Conference (DLC), dedicated to reversing the political aspiration of Jackson's
coalition. Among today's front-runners,
Hillary Clinton is a DLC star, chair of its American Dream Initiative touting
free markets, balanced budgets and middle-class know-how. Obama's political action committee, the Hope Fund,
has raised money for ten DLC Senators, or half of the groups' presence in the
Senate.
"There is Obama, providing
cover for those who blame the victims or prodding the victims to blame
themselves."
At a recent
speech in Hampton, Virginia, Obama mentioned the "simmering discontent" in the
black community. He got that one
right. Even with more
black officials than at any time in history - most of them Democrats - many
African Americans feel that things have been moving in the wrong direction for
a while now. From high infant mortality rates to low life spans, the black
misery index is acute. The effect of
the huge number of black citizens under the direct control of the state through
the criminal justice system, so much so it has led to diminished voting rights
and participation, cannot be overstated. African Americans have gone from a
"freedom movement" to the edge of no longer being free. And there is Obama, providing cover for
those who blame the victims or prodding the victims to blame themselves. There is Hillary, promising a restoration,
the flimflam of Clintonism as the blacks' best friend.
I've always believed liberation must be won outside the
confines of party politics. But it
would be unwise to ignore what candidates are saying or not saying, since they
can affect how and if you live. It is
elementary in politics to demand that those vying for black votes address
"what's important to African Americans" in a meaningful way. So far, the most blacks have gotten are race
gestures and a blind eye.
Kevin Alexander Gray
is contributing editor to Black News in Columbia. He coordinated the 1988
presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson and served as the southern political
director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. He can
be contacted at [email protected]