Cobb: This is the Answer, What Was the Question?

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November 16, 2005

This is the Answer, What Was the Question?

I found this as something I wrote last month, and I can't remember the context or whom I was writing to, but as you see the responses, you can guess the questions.
(from the recent archives)

I think the Christian Right will be a permanent feature in the Republican Party because they are so villified right now by the Hollywood Left. I don't believe, however that they are the heart and soul of the party - the very idea that Alabama is the intellectual capitol of the GOP is unthinkable, and if Jeb Bush were president instead of George, nobody would be saying it aloud. Karl Rove and Grover Norquist are much closer to the mark. But if you ask me, the person who best understands the existentials of the current GOP is David Brooks. And if you follow the exchanges between Brooks and Thomas Friedman, I think you'll see the intellectual divide clearly. Having said so, I wonder whose interest is serves to suggest otherwise, vis a vis black participation.

With respect to conserving x or y for the economic development of blackfolk, I am trying to conserve the common sense notion that a radical politics is not part of the equation of economic development. I am trying to point out the fact that there is a black man on the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve and he didn't get there suggesting that there is a separate economic destiny for African Americans. But I am also saying that by definition, there are going to be some class differences between blackfolks that we are going to have to accept and recognize that political priorities are going to differ. I am suggesting very strongly that the politics of social power are very different from the politics of human rights or of civil rights and that people who believe greater power will accrue to blackfolks using the politics of civil rights are gravely mistaken, and that many blackfolks recognize this and are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a new paradigm shift. Some people hope for a second coming of Tupac, I'm saying it's going to be a Tiger Woods of Wall Street, or Michael Steele.

The economic path followed by black Americans will be the American path or it will not be. The mass of blackfolks will do what masses of people do, assimilate or die. There is no separate destiny - what's separate now is as separate as it gets, because in the new information age everybody is communicating.

The utility of 'henchmen' like Armstrong Williams will diminish over time, primarily because it will not be considered unusual for a majority of African Americans to belong to the majority party. What the assimilated future will be is very much predictable, there will be hiphop soundtracks to BMW commercials, just like there are today, a mundane fact considered unthinkable in the 80s. The ghetto will be even more ghetto, because crossover will go beyond black and white to asian and latino and muslim and east european and west african etc. The black republican movement faces a crisis of unity now, but it is a non-crisis because the fight is not among black republicans (who are just happy to be on the right side) but between blacks and black republicans. Again, I emphasize that this is just like the integration of 'predominately white' colleges and universities. It's as if the president of Morehouse said to all non-HBCU grads that they suddenly have no business talking about the future of blackfolks. That's today. Tomorrow it will be a non-issue, another mundane fact of American life. And just like when Kool & the Gang's song 'Celebration' was first played at the Super Bowl halftime show, black naysayers will say that it can't be Real when the Other Man shakes his rump to the Funk. Go 'head and storm off, but the party's over here.

I believe that the relevance of party plank writing committees (and thus the power of ideologues like Schafly) is declining sharply. So the whole funding apparat is going to change radically. Internet tech is going to disintermediate a whole host of power groups in the next decade.

Posted by mbowen at November 16, 2005 03:16 PM

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I am suggesting very strongly that the politics of social power are very different from the politics of human rights or of civil rights and that people who believe greater power will accrue to blackfolks using the politics of civil rights are gravely mistaken, and that many blackfolks recognize this and are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a new paradigm shift. Some people hope for a second coming of Tupac, I'm saying it's going to be a Tiger Woods of Wall Street, or Michael Steele.

I fully agree with this. In fact, this is another reason why I don't like the "conservative" vs. "liberal" b.s. It's really about "Republican" vs. "Democrat" but neither gets down to solving the issues that are in the Black community. On that one, it comes down on us, and the "con" vs. "lib" stuff ain't cuttin' it. It's noise. We need more signal.

Posted by: DarkStar at November 17, 2005 04:36 PM

But that is precisely the point. Neither party is going to get enough power to establish conservative or liberal principles fully. All you get out of the system is compromise. So if you're asking for practical results from politics it's a mistake. This is not only reality-driven, it's part of the principles of laisez-faire on the conservative side.

Posted by: Cobb at November 17, 2005 05:31 PM

You hit the nail with: "The mass of blackfolks will do what masses of people do, assimilate or die. There is no separate destiny".

Assimilation is a loaded word in american politics, because it runs directly counter to the concepts which load the diversity word. Given that you subscribe to Affirmative Action (which advocates diversity), how can you reconcile the two positions?

Posted by: Uncle Smrgol at November 20, 2005 10:50 PM

Affirmative Action may have [d]evolved to advocate diversity, but it was designed to be all about integration. The direction of Affirmative Action is from ghetto to mainstream, so long as that's the case, it's a good thing. It needn't be strictly race based.

Posted by: Cobb at November 21, 2005 08:55 AM