Having just been hit by Psychology Today's decision to run a blog entry that slandered black people in ways unheard of since possibly the days of Hitler, I saw that the famous former Princeton professor Harris-Perry posted a lengthy piece not on the assault on Black people by this so called "professional" magazine, but to post a very vitriolic piece on Cornel West. On the one hand it doesn't surprise me since Harris-Perry has been ride or die for Obama for a long time and I suppose that kicking this black man in public who has a different political ideology takes a higher priority than an assault on black folks as a collective by so called "academics". Go figure. I would only hope Mrs. Harris-Perry has a piece soon forthcoming to address the Psychology Today nonsense in ways far more academic than what I have seen from others. But I digress. Let me get at my problems with the piece Harris-Perry posted to The Nation.
In a self-aggrandizing, victimology sermon deceptively wrapped in the discourse of prophetic witness, Professor West offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years.
Wow. dems big words there. "victimolgy"? You know, that sounds almost Republican. I've heard a lot of how black folk do the victimology thing, but that usually drops out the mouths of Republicans when black folks are "complaining". Is this a foreshadowing of the new direction the left is moving? I suppose it goes well with newly minted approval for wars of aggression. *shrug* I suppose Obama asking Belafonte why he doesn't "cut him some slack" doesn't count as "victimology" thinking either?
So when West says:
“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there.
“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,”
That is victimology? If West is saying that he has to take some responsibility how is he sermonizing on victimology? Sure he goes on to list how he was deceived but he admits that he bears some of the responsibility. And no, he does not bear the full responsibility because there are things that Obama said straight out that he later has retracted (tax hikes for one).
As for the "thin critique". Do we really expect for a full dossier of West's positions in a 3 page interview when many people, self included, have written small novel's worth of material? Really? Moving along.
Harris-Perry writes:
West begins with a bit of historical revision. West suggests that the President discarded him without provocation after he offered the Obama for America campaign his loyal service and prayers. But anyone with a casual knowledge of this rift knows it began during the Democratic primary not after the election. It began, not with a puffed up President, but when Cornel West’s “dear brother” Tavis Smiley threw a public tantrum because Senator Obama refused to attend Smiley's annual State of Black America. Smiley repeatedly suggested that his forum was the necessary black vetting space for the Democratic nominees. He needed to ask Obama and Clinton tough questions so that black America could get the answers it needed. But black America was doing a fine job making up its own mind in the primaries and didn’t need Smiley’s blessing to determine their own electoral preferences. Indeed, when Smiley got a chance to hold candidate Clinton “accountable” he spent more time fawning over her than probing about her symbolic or substantive policy stances that impacted black communities.
Whoah! There's a lot of material to cover here to hang with me. Firstly let's address what West said himself:
“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting.
You'll note that Harris-Perry, instead of dealing precisely with West's actual issue of non-acknowledgment, goes after her other favorite punching bag Tavis Smiley hence betraying her own bias. This isn't about Tavis. Tavis isn't West and West isn't Tavis. I know negroes look alike but the hair ought to be a good give away. Now I certainly can see how one could say West is being petty. Obama is busy, etc. Fair critique. However; West's position is that other [unnamed] persons were receiving a number of calls (for undisclosed reasons) in the same time frame that West felt he was being disrespected. West's point appears to be that Obama (or his staffers) were communicating with people who were supporting him and West ought to have been given the courtesy of the same communication. Now perhaps he thinks too much of himself. Fair critique but on the other hand anyone who does networking knows the importance of following up with supporters who have been putting in work on your behalf.
Now since Harris-Perry brought up Tavis, let's address that issue. I suppose that Harris-Perry is one of those negroes who thinks that Black folk ought to sit down, shut up and hope shit comes their way. If that's her position she is certainly entitled to see herself to her seat. How ridiculous does that sound in the face of other groups who regularly put their interests front and center to all candidates? I have not seen Harris-Perry move her mouth to suggest that AIPAC should shut up and not make demands of candidates (or presidents or anyone else in govt.) Where was Harris-Perry's critique of Obama and Clinton and McCain going to AIPAC to discuss all the promises they would make to Israel which is not even a fuckin' state? I don't suggest holding your breath for that write up or TV appearance.
While every other organized group has put forth a concrete set of things they want done and have demanded that candidates (and presidents) address them, Black folk are the only ones apparently willing to sit on international TV and say "we don't ask anything, we'll take what we can get." The fact is that Tavis was right on the money to ask that candidates address a large gathering of African-Americans of varied political and religious stripes which is usually not the case for the Urban League or NAACP, the latter of which failed miserably to defend one of it's own from racist attack. Even IF one were to be opposed to Tavis being the convener of such an event why pooh-pooh such a meeting?
In any case I could make a remark about "black america making up it's own mind" but that is outside the purvue of this piece.
The Ticket to Nowhere
Harris-Perry then goes on to discuss "ticket-gate":
Furthermore, West’s sense of betrayal is clearly more personal than ideological. In Hedges's article West claims that a true progressive would always put love of the people above concern with the elite and privileged. Then he complains, “I couldn’t get a ticket [to the inauguration] with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration... We had to watch the thing in the hotel.” Let me get this straight—the tenured, Princeton professor who collects five figures for public lectures was relegated to a hotel television while an anonymous hotel worker got tickets to the inauguration! What kind of crazy, mixed up class politics are these? Wait a minute…
Ahh..this would be the "Least of these Socialist" crying foul move. Again reading the original piece we find:
I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.
“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”
So West's mother's position was that he felt that after having campaigned for Obama (in Iowa and I suppose elsewhere) that he ought to have at least gotten a ticket to the inauguration. West apparently thought that as well. Again the issue for West is the cumulative "disrespects" he received rather than just the individual slight. I was not privy to who decided who gets to go and sit where. I don't know how it was determined who got in and who did not. But networking says that if someone's done work on your behalf they ought to get some recognition for their work. West's position is that he did work but did not get the recognition he deserved. That's fair. We can disagree on whether his work was "important" but that's a different debate. Certainly West did more "work" than the doorman.
Harris-Perry states that she received her ticket from a Canadian news source and that she didn't expect anything from the Obama camp. That's her business. If she doesn't feel she earned (or deserved) whatever from Obama does not mean that others share her position. Nor does it mean that they are out of order to think they are. As Carter G. said; Negroes will make their own back door...
Harris then skips over a very important piece of West's interview perhaps because...I don't know....space issues, which I'll bring up here:
Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama “cussed me out.” Obama, after his address, which promoted his administration’s championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row.
“He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’ You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head.
“It was so disrespectful,” he went on, “that’s what I didn’t like. I’d already been called, along with all [other] leftists, a “F’ing retard” by Rahm Emanuel because we had critiques of the president.”
Now let's be clear here Obama was disrespectful to West in a public forum. As far as I know Joe Wilson, who disrespected Obama on international TV shouting "you lie" has had a better reception than West. If Obama felt that West was a "traitor" of some sort then why didn't he just decide to continue to ignore him as he had been doing? But I suppose that negroes who weren't upset when Obama told NY black folk to "chill out" when justice was denied for Sean Bell or who told Black folk it Texas about not eating so much fried chicken (yeah it happened) or Obama's attack on black men on father's day don't mind Obama showing West his ass.
Who you live with?
Lastly Harris-Perry gets in West's ass in regards to the claim by West that Obama is not a "free man" and Obama's comfort with white folk. I'm going to state outright that this particular issue was perhaps the weakest argument made by West. It was the most subjective argument. Indeed are there liberals from wealthy white upbringings and surroundings that do good work and perhaps even agree with West's positions? I'm sure there are. Their existence would serve to weaken West's argument. Wouldn't the existence of a Herman Cain who arguably grew up amongst black people but who is quite conservative also negate West's argument here? I believe so. So I have to in this instance give Harris-Perry leeway.
That said though, There is a certain legitimacy to West's position. If we take what happened to both Shirley Sherrod and Van Jones and reports of Obama's dismissive attitude towards black Greek Letter organizations during his campaign that there is in fact a disconnect between Obama and black America. I cannot see a black president with a deep black circle of advisers allowing the Sherrod firing or the resignation of Van-Jones, or for that matter the horrible handling of Skip Gate's arrest.
Lastly Harris-Perry really shows that she really isn't interested in the critiques that West has of Obama's policies as she writes the following:
I have many criticisms of the Obama administration. I wrote angrily about his choice of Rick Warren to deliver a prayer at the inauguration. I have spoken on television about my disagreement with drone attacks in Pakistan and been critical of the administration’s initial choice to prosecute DADT cases. I worked for more progressive health care reform legislation and supported organizations that resisted the reproductive rights “compromises” in the bill. I’ve been scathing in public remarks and writings about the President’s education policy
You'll note that none of these items are on the regular "black agenda". DADT, for me, is a minor side show and is actually a clear example of a group being uncompromising in it's positions and advocacy on behalf of their specific interests. In reference to the issue of "healthcare" the problem isn't the "reproductive rights" compromises but rather that the govt hands a private industry millions of customers under the IRS gun rather than take the obvious position of national single payer healthcare. But she like many in the Democratic camp surrendered that option from the go. So personally I'm not impressed by her "disagreements" with the Obama admin (or Democrats in general). Which is why we have policy arguments.
But lets keep it real here. Harris-Perry has never been "scathing" in her disagreements with the Obama administration anywhere near to what has been put out by the likes of West or the publishers of Black Agenda Report and certainly nowhere near as scathing as she has been to West and Tavis. And I say that having read her material for about a year now.
Ultimately though whether you think West is off the mark saying Obama is a puppet is highly dependent upon where you sit politically. Mentioning that Tavis was in league with Wells Fargo as if Tavis was actually writing the loans is silliness to the nth degree. That's like that school teacher's are the blame for acts of brutality by the NYPD just because they all work for the state.
I'm going to end this piece by saying that I watched with a heavy heart as black folk lined up in front of various white folk to yell and scream at each other and otherwise make asses of themselves in Public. Yes West that includes you and Sharpton. it is sad state of affairs harking back to the arguments between Dubois and Garvey. We all lose. We are all going to be in the wrong in our analysis from time to time. Time we grew up and admitted it. Fact is that in 2-6 years there will be no Obama to speak about or to and it's likely black folk will still have double the unemployment rate of whites. Will be dispossessed of more land and have police shooting them down in the street. And some magazine somewhere will write some racist bullshit about Black people and pass it off as objective science. I'm far more interested in seeing all Y'all deal with that stuff directly.