Subject: The Other Side of Racism
To:
This is really powerful..........truly the other side of the coin!
________________________________
Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State
University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological
Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been
a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a
Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal
Opportunity in Higher Education.
In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were
featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The
transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his
book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical
Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race
consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy
issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of
individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a
book on theories of social and cultural marginality.
Recently, she has published articles on the significance of
multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of
victimization and the social and political impact of political
correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004 she was awarded
tenure.
No He Can't Either
by Anne Wortham
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not
vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for
president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not
require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and
that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love
the ideal of America .
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is
no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears
of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from
me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of
human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of
the United States of America , all that I know about American race
relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I
would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has
come to America . Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my
certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to
serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to
pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a
human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed
of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to
think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in
this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks
are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by
self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he
doesn't look like them. I would have to wipe my mind clean of all
that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught
Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political
intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University
's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is the equivalent of justice.
I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new
spirit of service, in a new service of sa crifice" is speaking in my
interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic
prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes
that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I
would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the
masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the
generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the
scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park,
Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to
wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits,
journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that
capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan,
objected to their assumption that the particular version of the
anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own
version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to
capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have
elected a black man to the office of the president of th e United
States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John
Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy
and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And
the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The
self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments
of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast
yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s
bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your
glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You
have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a
black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to -
Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded
your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to
feel good.
There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.
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