www.BoyceWatkins.com

I learned something about the power of money last night. I received an email from one of our readers on Your Black World, who simply said, “Bill O’Reilly is coming after you again.” I took it in and got back to what I was doing. I expected O’Reilly to make another smear attack this week, since a good terrorist always hits the target multiple times.

O’Reilly Bin Laden’s latest target was my poor chancellor, Nancy Cantor. Sending one of his goons (some call them correspondents) to the campus, Dr. Cantor was asked why she is allowing “the good name of Syracuse University to be ruined by a ‘racist’ like Boyce Watkins.” Translation: to some, a “racist” is any black person who speaks up for black people. I accept that.

O’Reilly never really came at me directly, as I and some other black scholars have refused to appear on his show. I don’t fault the ones who choose to appear, but I don’t consider a platform legitimate just because it has a few viewers. Instead, he felt that going after my chancellor and the alumni of Syracuse University would be a more reliable tactic.

I couldn’t agree with O’Reilly more, perhaps the chimp is smarter than I thought.

Our campus is in the middle of a billion dollar fund raising campaign, and I am sure there are those who are sickened by the fact that one of the most visible faculty members on campus is the subject of racial controversy. Financial theory teaches us that risk management and minimization are critical to maximizing popularity and profitability. Controversy is risk, and too much risk hurts your ability to raise money. Oprah knows this all too well, as her political moves have diminished her show’s brand and base during the past year.

As Barack Obama’s experience reminds us, race is not a comfortable conversation, even when presented in the most diplomatic fashion possible. The backlash is far greater when you are direct and honest. What’s interesting is that O’Reilly couldn’t exactly cite why he was so obsessed with me, nor could he point to any strong evidence to support his “race baiter” assertions. The mere fact that he labeled me a “race monger” was enough to get his disciples up in arms. Bill O’Reilly should change his name to Bill Oprah-Reilly, as he has an amazing ability to manipulate his minions and their small, impressionable minds.

According to Bill O’Reilly, I am using the Presidential campaign to engage in “villainous pursuits” to promote a radical agenda. Being the good and noble American that he is, his goal is to ensure that “race hustlers” like myself don’t use their “hate-filled speech” to manipulate the results of the 2008 Presidential Election. Bill O’Reilly has become Martin Luther King Jr in his fight for truth, justice and political purity. God bless him.

My finance lesson this week came from watching Bill O’Reilly squirm. He was boiling mad at me, and even his fellow conservatives couldn’t quite figure out why (note the confusion on the face of the silly conservative radio show host, Laura Ingraham). The reason O’Reilly had become obsessed with me and my words is because of the dirty secret exposed by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann: A group with which I am affiliated, The Your Black World Coalition, has mobilized an intense email, phone and letter writing campaign to O’Reilly’s corporate sponsors, the FCC and the producers of the show. The ultimate objective is to hold O’Reilly’s corporate sponsors accountable for supporting a man who has consistently engaged in dirty tactics to defame Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and other respected individuals in the black community. While O’Reilly is certainly entitled to Freedom of Speech, I won’t have him unfairly assaulting and defaming my respected colleagues, and using my money to do it. While I give O’Reilly credit for being a good financial student, he must remember that I am ultimately the professor.  

In reference to my many “lies” to smear O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann asked Bill one simple question: “If that’s what Watkins said, where are the lies?” In naming Bill O’Reilly “The Worst Person in the World” for his attacks on me and the chancellor, Olbermann quoted my reference to O’Reilly’s statement about wanting to have a “lynching party” on Michelle Obama. O’Reilly speaks of lynching the potential First Lady of the United States, and then has the nerve to call others racist and unpatriotic.

Given my training in finance, I learned one thing about living in a capitalist democracy: money makes people move. O’Reilly also understands this. Money makes good people do bad things and gives bad people an excuse to do good things. Money is the reason Fox News exists, and why this form of “capitalism gone wild” has destroyed the integrity of American journalism. Money is the reason that Barack Obama went from being a non-factor to becoming a target of The O’Reilly Factor and the reason that President Bush is sweating over the price of gas.

It is the ability to acquire resources, mobilize resources and take away resources that will change this election. This election will, in turn, change the world. Race matters, there’s no question about that. But money matters much more.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of “Financial Lovemaking 101: Merging Assets with Your Partner in Ways that Feel Good.” For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.

A few weeks ago, when Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Philadelphia, she began to compare herself to Rocky, our city’s patron saint. At first, I dismissed it as yet another ridiculous attempt to paint herself as a working class underdog rather than the delusional underachiever that she’s been this election season. Upon closer examination, however, I remembered something often forgotten about Rocky. Although he fought to the bloody end, the stubborn pugilist lost by split decision the first time around. To whom did he lose? That’s right, a cocky black guy. That’s when I realized that there’s probably more truth to this Rocky thing than I first considered.

Given all that’s going on this election season, as well as the growing rumblings from the judges (i.e. the superdelegates), I am convinced that Hillary Clinton does not expect to win the Democratic nomination. Rather, she is trying to soften up Barack Obama up for a sure-fire knockout at the hands of John McCain. Then, a la Rocky II, Hillary comes back around in 2012 and wins the big one against the geriatric warmonger. Why else would Hillary stay in a race when all reasonable signs say she’s going to lose? How else can we justify her pile-on attacks and unrepentant silence regarding flag pins, Jeremiah Wright, “bitter gate,” and Bill Ayers? Based on her malevolent strategy, Hillary Clinton is not staying too late in 2008, she’s campaigning early for 2012.

The problem with Hillary’s Rocky strategy is that it hinges upon the internal destruction of the Democratic Party. The longer she hangs around to bloody Obama, the more work the DNC must ultimately do to repair an increasingly factionalized party. Unfortunately, such reconciliation work is inappropriate for this time of year, when each party’s nominee should be mounting an offensive strategy against their general election opponent. As we learned from the Kennedy/Carter debacle of 1980, where Ted Kennedy refused to concede obvious defeat and failed to fully embrace his Democratic opponent, these internal squabbles merely open the door for a Republican victory.

By not throwing in the towel, Hillary Clinton is greasing the path for a McCain presidency that would be scarcely different than the current Bush regime. While Hillary spends the next four years mapping strategy, millions of people will continue to die from war, poverty, and deficient health care. As Hillary lives out her Rocky fantasy, the nation’s most vulnerable people will continue to catch a beating.

P.S. I’ll reserve my theories regarding what happens to the cocky Black guy in Rocky IV until later.

www.BoyceWatkins.com

Yes, I was the “crazy black professor” featured as the lead story on The O’Reilly Factor last night.  My sister, who studies at The Mayo Clinic, called to tell me about it. Yes, O’Reilly did the whole “That black man is crazy” routine. Yes, my inbox was full of email from people who are dumb enough to pay attention to Bill O’Reilly.  Yes, Sean Hannity has been after me also.  In other words, life as usual. 

I felt the need to protect my poor chancellor, for I hated seeing her getting chased around by the cameramen who wanted to ask her about this guy named “Boyce Watkins”. She is a good woman, and she didn’t ask to have such a big mouth on her campus. Curing the disease of racism is a nasty, scary process, and not everyone is ready for the backlash from a country that remains ignorant and in denial.  I honestly don’t like causing trouble.  I just can’t live a lie.  Everyone knows clearly that America has a horrible race problem.  My friends in Europe are shocked that someone like Bill O’Reilly can have so many viewers in the first place.  The mere existence of O’Reilly is a testament to the racially sick state of our nation. 

So, I prepared a standard email response for the wealthy alums who don’t want to give money to a university with a “racist” on their campus.  I’ve been preparing for this since I was a child, since I have always known that focused, educated black men are quite threatening to many people.

I expect O’Reilly will keep pouting and striking at me for the rest of the week, since our boycott of Fox’s corporate sponsors is going quite well.  I found that the pain I felt watching the right wing orchestrated attacks on Senator Obama and Pastor Wright was actually shared by hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

OK, here’s the message for all to see.  I’m done with this issue for now.

O’reilly and others are nothing new to America. For the past 400 years, there have been those who fight against racism and those who work to oppress those individuals. Terms like “reverse racist” or “black racist” are designed to alleviate America of the guilt of what it has done to every black man woman and child for the past 400 years. Our country has not even apologized, nor taken personal responsibility for the damage done by slavery. 400 years of continued, terroristic destruction doesn’t go away with 20 years of Affirmative action.

O’Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh are in the same tradition as those who killed Dr. King and Malcolm X. Unfortunately, such individuals and those who support them are always on the wrong side of history. But it is safe to stand with them because they tend to have the most power. I don’t expect that any piece of my contribution to Syracuse University will be recognized today. Rather, it will be acknowledged 30 years from today, the same as that of Jim Brown and the 8 black students who protested racism on the football field. The pattern is: punish now, ostracize now, and apologize when the person is old and gray. I accept that.

Do not hold Chancellor Cantor responsible for my words. I speak on my own behalf. The Chancellor is an amazing and capable human being who has brought wonderful intellectual light to the university and to this country. I even feel sorry for the headaches I cause her from my viewpoints. I cannot apologize however, because there are tens of thousands of voiceless Americans who agree with me.

I refuse to stand silent as Jeremiah Wright, an ex-Marine, scholar and accomplished human being, is reduced to a worthless hack by those who don’t even have the guts to fight in the very same wars they promote.

Syracuse’s business school, to my knowledge, has not tenured a black man in over 100 years, and I do not expect to be the first. So don’t worry, I don’t anticipate you’re going to have to deal with me for much longer. But I am going to keep telling the truth, for I do believe the truth sets you free.

www.BoyceWatkins.com

Some people think I hate Oprah Winfrey. I don’t. Actually, I love Oprah. Not the way my grandmother loves her, for that would be technically defined as cult worship. I love her the way I love Black Enterprise Magazine or really good Chinese food. Oprah inspires me, intimidates me and makes me really curious about the benefits of good, strong Tupperware.

The reason some people think I dislike Oprah is because I felt the need to critique her. Being engaged in critical social commentary in a media of black and white is like being an abstract artist in a comic book club. If you criticize someone, you are officially defined as a critic. You don’t dare use terms like “but on the other hand….”, for that’s the part of the tape that gets played during the commercial break. I even critique my mother, and I really love my mama. There is a ying-yang in everything, and Oprah is no exception. Remember: Her name is Oprah Winfrey, not Jesus Winfrey, but my grandmother might not agree.

The source of my Oprah critique came during her “Town Hall Meeting” on Hip Hop. On this particular show, Winfrey decided to assault gangster rap for its sexist imagery and violent lyrical content. I know gangster rap well, as the rapper Ice Cube (Co-founder of the group NWA) was my own personal Oprah Winfrey during high school and college. Everybody needs an Oprah, especially angry black men. There was something about the energy of NWA’s music that made me feel strong and liberated. Ice Cube’s song “F*ck the Police” was the most notorious of his collection, describing anger in LA about police brutality. With Rodney King happening just 3 years later, the song turned out to be downright prophetic.

But Ice Cube has some other work that is not so cool. Yes, he was young, but there is no excuse for the sexist content of some of his music. Years later, after Cube’s family movies have made him into a Crip-walking Bill Cosby, Oprah still has a legitimate grudge against him for songs he made 15 years ago. Ice Cube’s nasty response to Oprah, as well as backing from his gangster rap grandchild 50 Cent, led to Oprah’s Town Hall Meeting on Hip Hop.

During her attack on gangster rap, The Almighty Oprah chose to structure the judge and jury in her own psychological image. Not one guest in this so-called dialogue on gangster rap was actually a gangster rapper. The rapper “Common” was invited, but that’s like inviting Winny the Pooh to represent the Legion of Grizzly Bears. The conversation was rigged and counter-productive from the start. As a fan and critic of Hip Hop, I was disappointed. As a finance professor, I was annoyed that everyone seemed to forget that Hip Hop, in the form seen by most of America, is a corporate phenomenon. In this game, the “playas” are actually the ones getting played. One can’t discuss the War on Terror without mentioning President Bush, and one can’t discuss the challenge to gangster rap without mentioning the labels that provide financing, marketing, packaging and distribution of the final product. Without corporate America “slanging” the product or suburban kids clamoring for it like dope addicts, commercialized gangster rap would be about as socially significant as MC Hammer’s little brother.

Here are some points on what Oprah “Jesus” Winfrey was missing in her Town Hall Meeting on Hip Hop. First, commercialized Hip Hop is not the same as Hip Hop itself. Connecting the two is like comparing Hollywood blockbusters with Broadway Theatre. Sylvester Stallone couldn’t find his way to Broadway with a GPS, but he did quite well in Hollywood. The same is true for some rappers who experience commercial success with music that is about as entertaining as an actual commercial. Many such artists do not, for one second, reflect the essence of Hip Hop music.

Secondly, Oprah is a capitalist. She knows full well that the most visible face is not the most powerful one. To think that the nature of commercialized Hip Hop is controlled by rappers is to assume that record label executives aren’t standing behind the rapper with a machete over his head. Any rapper who deviates from corporate expectations will be replaced by someone who follows the company line. There are a slew of positive artists trying to get record deals, and they aren’t getting signed. The rapper E-40 said it best with his song “They’ll Find a New N*gger Next Year”. In this song, he explained that when artists get out of line, they get replaced. Perhaps Oprah should “get crunk” and listen to more E-40, he’s really good.

Again, I am not here to beat down Oprah, as some thought I was doing on CNN. I must confess that Oprah has done a lot more for the world than Ice Cube or 50 Cent. At the same time, Oprah’s anger at the sexist lyrical content of rap artists should not lead to a blanket indictment of the genre, nor should it mute the rights to cultural expression of gangster rappers. The same way that Oprah’s story is one of abuse, challenges and triumphs, the same is true for the rapper 50 Cent. Both stories are products of the black experience, and both stories deserve to be told.

The attack on gangster rap reminds me a lot of the War on Drugs during the horrific years of the Reagan Administration. There is a difference between really wanting to solve a problem vs. venting your frustrations and pretending to solve the problem. Reagan’s decision to arrest tens of thousands of black men while allowing the CIA to let drugs into the country through the back door was a vent. Oprah’s decision to go after rappers without having the courage to go to the source of the problem is like beating up the smallest kid in the class because the biggest kid took your lunch money. Although record labels control the marketing, content, distribution and production of gangster rap, Oprah wouldn’t dare go after the labels themselves. The very same corporations that own the rappers also own a piece of Oprah and the kids who buy the music on i-tunes are the children of her soccer mom audience.

Don’t get it twisted, everybody’s a slave in the rap game. Oprah hasn’t yet begun to open this Pandora’s Box.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of “Financial Lovemaking 101: Merging Assets with Your Partner in ways that feel good.” For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.

Dear Guy:

I understand exactly what you are saying.  But, at this point, Senator Obama is just the presumptive (and eventual) nominee of the Democratic Party.  He is not THE President of the United States—yet.  Let’s make sure that Obama makes it into the White House first.

Like you, I would love to see Obama begin to directly speak to issues such as our having the highest rate of infant mortality in the country, our having the highest rate of poverty in the country, our having twice the unemployment rate as whites, and the dramatic disparity between black and white incarceration rates.  But, let’s be real.  Taking these actions now would only ensure that he never enters the White House as President.  So for now, I am content in my belief that Obama will do his best to directly address these issues once in office.  At the very least, I trust that he (more than Clinton) will not avoid these important issues in order to pander to white racism (Heck, Clinton is arguing now for the Democratic party to pander to white racism with her comments about how Obama’s “inability” to attract white, working class voters makes her the essential choice as the Democratic nominee.).

Second, we need to recognize that Senator Obama is a politician, not the Messiah. You  (and I) are certainly right to expect him to address issues that affect the black community while in office, but we as a people have to be careful not to expect that he can resolve all of our problems in 4 years or even 8 years.  The work of forty-three Presidents and their predecessors over a period of nearly 400 years resulted in our current circumstances.  As wonderful as Obama is, he is not a miracle worker.  Furthermore, President Obama (I love the ring of that.) will not be able to create any real change without assistance from Congress—which brings me to my next point. . . .  

Yes, Senator Obama owes his success to us, but he is not the first (nor will he be the last) Democrat in areas with significant black populations (and nationally) to owe his success to us. Blacks are loyal Democrats.  Our loyalty is the reason why Democratic incumbents fight to have us drawn into their voting districts.  Blacks may not have come out in the same numbers to vote for and support other Democratic candidates, but many Democratic politicians (of all races) would not have won their seats and cannot win future seats without us.  We should expect from these politicians what we expect from Senator Obama.  True, the expectation may be greater because Senator Obama is, after all, one of us, but that does not mean that we should sell ourselves short and let other politicians get a free ride while we pounce on one of our own.

Yours in the struggle,

Angela

Dear Angela:

Now that black people have made Barack Obama the presumptive and (and soon to be eventual) nominee of the Democratic Party, what should we expect as our public policy benefits?  Though some might dare dispute this, the fact of the matter is that black voters are the primary voting bloc responsible for Senator Obama’s all-but-official nomination.

Blacks voted for him in 9-1 margins in most of the primaries with significant black populations.  While your present domicile, Iowa, gave him hope, black voters in South Carolina and North Carolina gave him life.So, now that we have delivered, what should we expect?  What does he have to say about the fact that Black people have the highest rate of infant mortality in the country?  What is he going to say about the fact that black people have the highest rate of poverty in the country?  What is he going say about the dramatic disparity between black and white incarceration rates, which some criminologists have calculated to be between 7 and 8 to 1?  When is he going to give a race speech to outline how he plans to tackle the fact that blacks have twice the unemployment rate as whites?  Now that we have delivered, when will he?

Guy

I spoke this weekend at an Entrepreneurship boot camp for The Urban Philly Professional Network. The head of the organization created something I consider to be profound and promising. He regularly gathers the black entrepreneurs of Philadelphia for networking events, training and motivation for their endeavors. I am proud of him because he has shown a consistent commitment to two issues of critical importance in the black community: black people working together and black people engaging in the ownership of capital.

Black entrepreneurship is not just about money. It’s about LIBERATION. The easiest way for me to control another man is for him to know that I am the reason his kids get to eat every day. That man will do exactly what I tell him to do, when I tell him to do it, and how I tell him to do it. Historically, African-Americans have been consumers of products and sources of labor. We have rarely been in a position to own or control capital. This country’s empire of wealth was built without black participation, as our ancestors were unable to transfer assets to their children. We all know that. Slaves were a form of human capital from which our country’s foundation was created. Theft from the black community is in the trillions.

As a result of this legacy, nearly every inch of the financial capital base of American institutions is controlled by someone else: The media, corporate America, academic institutions, you name it. Fox News freely spouts racism because Rupert Murdock and others like him control media infrastructure. Universities earn over 1 billion dollars per year from the families of black athletes because HBCUs don’t have the capital base to compete for these players. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama end up with distorted images because they’ve attempted to repair their reputations by appealing to the same institutions that destroyed their images in the first place. There are few black alternatives to media and corporate America, so our messages, leadership, outcomes and incentives are typically beyond our control. The controller of capital is the controller of destiny, so the social implications of capital ownership are vast.

The legacy of disproportionate capital acquisition also breeds a mentality in those who are controlled by capital. Some might call it the slave mentality. It affects all of us, from truck drivers to college professors. The slave mentality says your sole objective for obtaining education or skill is to work for someone else. We seek to find a job, rather than create one. Even most black doctors, lawyers and college professors fall victim to this mentality, as this is the tradition for many people of color. Risk aversion in the black community is strong enough to choke a horse, and any dreams of “going at it on your own” are squashed by relatives who encourage you to take the high paying, “prestigious” position at IBM or Stanford University.

The problem with the slave/laborer mentality is that there is a huge social price being paid when one spends his/her entire life drinking from someone else’s fountain: You are not free to pursue social justice and the platform on which you stand can be taken out from under you at a second’s notice. When injustice occurs around you, you are trained to sit silently and hope for the best. You don’t dare rely on ideas like “academic freedom”, because capitalism usually trumps idealistic concepts like democracy and freedom of speech. You can speak freely as long as it is financially convenient for the organization that controls you.

When I met with the black entrepreneurs and business owners of Philadelphia, I reminded them of the significance of their contribution to Black America. Owning a business is not about making a dollar, it’s about providing a critical supplement to the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Black Entrepreneurs aren’t just finding a source of income, they are building black institutions. I reminded them that General Motors wasn’t built in a year, and that they should be proud of the trees they’ve planted, even if they are smaller than the strong, sturdy oaks around them. There was a time when a high ranking position in the British Empire paid a lot better than joining the American Revolution. Black Entrepreneurs are the financial Harriet Tubmans of the black community: liberating people in mind, spirit and resources.

Many of us are so “blinded by the bling” that we take our eyes off the prize. Even those with high incomes remain as vulnerable as Katrina victims, as one unfortunate event can lead you to financial ruin. High income without an understanding of wealth building, diversity of resources and long-term financial stability is a recipe for financial disaster.

Careful management of the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism is critical to any social movement in America. Socially responsible financial machinery can serve to empower and sustain movements toward justice and equality. Models of entrepreneurship should be taught to every black child in America. Children should understand the nature of revenue generation, cost minimization and how business models work. The path to liberation in a capitalist democracy goes straight through Financialville. Controlling capital means controlling lives, and it’s tough to be free without it.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and founder of YourBlackWorld.com. For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.

Dear Angela:

I understand your frustration with bittergate.  However, I don’t think the criticism of Senator Obama is an attempted high-tech lynching for being uppity.  The ultimate in being uppity is a black man thinking that he can be President of these United States.  Senator Obama, a first-term Senator barely into that term, has deigned to aspire to that most exclusive club in the land—a club that has only admitted 43 white men in over 200 years. When he announced for the presidency no one but his most ardent supporters would have predicted that he would end up as the Democratic Party’s frontrunner.  He has won big states and small states, causes and elections, predominantly white states and plurality black states.  Contrary to popular wisdom, his campaign in one contest or another has attracted every demographic including white working class voters. He has been a media darling and the candidate of the elites.  For a while, he even made conservative pundits swoon.  Until l’affaire Wright, he was considered by many to be the inevitable Democratic nominee and he may still be depending upon what happens tomorrow.  Yes, Senator Obama has been subject to some withering criticism and yes some of that criticism has been unfair.  But is this a high-tech lynching?  Not even close my friend.

More specifically on bittergate: I have to say that having re-read the transcript and listened to the audio, I am of multiple minds.  As a point of departure, it is not plausible to believe that Senator Obama is any less empathetic than any other candidate running for the presidency.  So, in some sense, the criticism that he received was unfair.  Voters should be looking at his policies and asking how those policies are going to impact their well-being. Nevertheless, the comments are hard to explain. 

It is true that among those of us who are religious, some of us may rely more on religion in times of difficulty.  But that is not what the Senator said.  What he said is that after years of economic depression some voters (irrationally?) turned to religion, guns, anti-immigrant sentiments as a way to explain their frustrations.  That statement was singularly callous and out of character for Senator Obama. It is not surprising that bittergate has received a lot of attention—some fair and some beyond the pale.

But what most troubled me about the comments is not what has received the most attention.  You are right that his comments were not placed into context.  But I’m not sure if viewing the context puts the comments in a more sympathetic light.  Senator Obama offered up religion, guns, etc., as a way of explaining why working class white voters were having time connecting with his message. Some pundits were attributing this inability to connect to racism.  Senator Obama disagreed.  Race, from the Senator’s perspective, was not the primary reason that some voters were having a hard time connecting to his message; they were having a hard time connecting because they’re bitter.  Now you tell me, shouldn’t that explanation make you bitter?

Guy

As May 6 approaches, I am becoming more and more bitter about all the bitterness over Senator Obama’s comments in San Francisco.  First, the Senator’s words were completely taken out of context.  Clearly, he did not say that people turned to religion ONLY because of bitterness. Second, there is truth to much of what he said.  Heck, I live in a small town in the Midwest (less than 10,000 people), and, to quote one of my friends (a person who admits that she is bitter), many of us are, in fact, bitter.  On top of that, isn’t it true that we rely MORE on God—for those of us who believe in a higher power—when we are in a crisis?  After all, what is the first thing that many of us do when we find ourselves in a bad situation?  We pray.  What is the first thing that many of us say to a friend when they have experienced hardship? “I’ll pray for you.”  But, none of these points are the main source of my bitterness.

I am mainly bitter because, in many ways, the constant critique of Senator Obama (over these comments) feels like “a high-tech lynching” of an “uppity” Black.  Yes, I am quoting Justice Clarence Thomas.  I simply cannot get the media clips of supposed “midwestern” responses out of my head. Two white men in particular remain in my mind.  When asked about their reaction to the Senator’s comments, these men said with disdain, “He thinks he’s better than us.”  Do not get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with these statements on their face.  In fact, I understand the feeling.  But, there was something about the way these two men said “He thinks he’s better than us” that did not sit right with me. The response of these two men made me think of Professor Cheryl Harris’s article “Whiteness as Property” and about the value that these two men’s whiteness must hold for them.  To me, it felt like they were more upset by the idea that a black man could even think that he was better than them (though it is clear, at least to me, that Senator Obama was not expressing his superiority over them or any other person). 

As time passes and the media continues to harp on the “bitter” comments, I begin to wonder:  “Did people really not understand what Senator Obama was saying in San Francisco, or is this just a high-tech lynching of a black man who, in the eyes of some folks, just got too “uppity”?  Your thoughts?

Angela                                                                                      

First they pander to working-class white voters by making them believe that their electoral judgments are beyond apprehension, particularly when a black candidate calls them into question. Now Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Senator Barack Obama’s rivals for the presidency, are proposing a gas tax holiday for the so-called summer driving season, which would temporarily relinquish the 18.4 cents a gallon federal tax on gasoline. Obama has come out against the suspension of the gas tax–a bold position, but not bold enough.

Of course Obama’s rivals will use his position on the gas tax suspension as further evidence that he’s an “elitist.” What’s risible about the charge of elitism is that it comes from two wealthy white candidates and is made on behalf of a group of voters–white working-class voters–who themselves historically have practiced the ultimate elitism, racism. One need only look at polling data from the 1980s which showed that a majority of white Americans believed that Ronald Reagan’s policies were hurting blacks but nevertheless supported President Reagan, to understand white voter elitism. What is also incomprehensible about the charges of elitism is that these same white voters have begun to question their own electoral judgments, as evidenced by their abandonment of their support of President George Bush. Bush has historically low approval ratings. If white voters can have buyer’s remorse, surely a candidate–even a black candidate–can suggest to these voters that in the future they vote based upon more relevant criteria than guns, religion and cultural prejudices.

The anti-abortion conservative is seldom the economic populist. The hunters’ rights candidate is seldom a big enough lover of nature to lead the fight on global-warming. The Christian fundamentalist candidate is far more likely to condemn gay marriage than he is to talk about the laissez faire regulatory environment that has created a mortgage crisis that threatens to upend the American economy. And so on. Some may argue that values and guns are legitimate issues to base voting on. Indeed they are, but if one votes based on these issue sets, he should take the bitter with the sweet. Celebrate having your gun, but don’t complain about the factory job that was just off-shored. White Americans, of course, are accustomed to the privilege of voting one way and then seeking to escape the consequences of their poor decisions. Like the learning disabled, they are threatening to repeat their mistakes, goaded by Clinton and McCain and a fantastically ignorant news media. Obama’s opposition to the gas tax suspension is one more enticement for white voters to abandon rational thought.

For his part, Obama’s time is better spent proposing bold solutions to the price hikes in gasoline rather than allowing the media to goad him into responding to everything the Reverend Jeremiah Wright says, as if all black people must give an accounting for the words and actions of all other black people. (But this is the problem with having too many smart-ass-white-boy type advisers.) Brace yourself voters–especially those voters who harbor a sense of entitlement–here’s a surefire solution to the gas price problem: Ban the use of credit cards to purchase gas. Since 2005, nearly 70% of daily gas purchases have been paid with credit cards. Indeed, oil companies themselves have begun to market “gas cards.” Allowing Americans to finance daily necessities like gas both keeps gas prices high and feeds a excess consumption mentality that has created a consumer credit bubble. On the latter score, personal consumption’s share of gross domestic product had traditionally been 66% to 67% . In 2007, however, it swung to 72%, not because Americans were making more money–wages are flat–but rather because of our ever-expanding appetite for credit. Credit-card purchases of gasoline is just one symptom of consumer credit freebasing, but when this practice is applied to gasoline purchases, it has a self-perpetuating effect: The more available gasoline becomes because of credit, the higher the price of gas goes–simple supply and demand–and then the more credit will used to purchase gas.

Banning credit cards in the purchase of gas is a far less punitive solution than taxing poor and middle-income drivers, which tax-and-spend-and-tax-again billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed to do with so-called congestion pricing, in which New Yorkers would pay hefty surcharges for driving their cars into Manhattan. The credit card ban simply requires that people pay as they go, without adding to the cost of going.

Which candidate will be courageous enough to propose the credit card ban? Probably none. But so far, Obama has been the better profile in courage, even under the threat of white flight.