ZNet Articles
ZMag Articles
ZCommentaries
ZAudios
ZVideos
Blog Posts
Books
"I Know How Black Folks Think”: Reflections on a Widely Ignored Comment by Bill Clinton
By Paul Street at Mar 28, 2007 |
|
Imagine that George Bush Senior was heard to say this about why the Jewish-American vote went a certain way in a New York City mayoral election: “well, that doesn't surprise me because I know how Jews think.”
Imagine that Jimmy Carter was overheard offering the following about the Latino vote in Los Angeles : “that's what I would have expected, since I know how Mexicans think.”
Imagine that Reverend Jesse Jackson was heard saying the following about Caucasian voting patterns in Iowa : “makes sense to me; I know how whites think.”
Now imagine that Bill Clinton was overheard saying the following about why Ray Nagin was able to use the black vote to defeat Mitch Landrieu in the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election: “I understand it, because I know how black folks think.”
We have no indication that the first three comments ever occurred. But the fourth comment is a matter of record. It can be found on p. 53 of the September 18 2006 New Yorker, inside a 23-page portrait of Clinton called “The Wanderer.” The article was written by New Yorker writer David Remnick, who tagged along with the ex-president on a trip to South Africa in the summer of 2006. One evening at the Saxon Hotel in Johannesburg , the famously verbose Clinton dropped his “how black folks think” line while holding forth at a table with Remnick and others. Here is Remnick's account:
“Over dinner at the Saxon, though, Clinton hardly seemed a hunched solitary soul. He was a happy warrior, Hubert Horatio Humphrey in modern dress, performing. He needed little prodding to soliloquize on the killer instincts and hypocrisies of Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House; on the “crucial differences” on Iraq between Joe Lieberman and the rest of the Democrats in the Senate (read: Hillary); on the complications of building a Presidential library and its fantastic cost ($165 million); and on a crocodile he saw on his last trip to South Africa (‘That boy was as wide as my wingspan, I swear to God!').”
“At around eleven, Clinton suddenly wandered off to talk with Douw Steyn. Half an hour later, though, he returned, accepted a cup of black coffee, and said, 'I want to sit down and hear what you guys are talking about!' He picked up the thread of his monologue, describing in fantastic detail why Ray Nagin edged Mitch Landrieu in the New Orleans mayoral race ('I understand it, because I know how black folks think'), which led to a story about the uninhibited (and currently incarcerated) ex-governor of Louisiana Edwin Edwards, and then on to another retired pol, Boris Yeltsin.”
The obvious question to anyone who says they know how “people” in a given racial or ethnic group “think” is “well, gee, WHICH whites [or]Italians/Jews/Latinos/Hungarians/or blacks [etc.]?” Rich ones? Poor ones? Left ones? Right ones? Young ones? Old ones? College educated ones? High school dropout ones? Rural ones? Urban ones? Suburban ones? Gay ones? Straight ones? Gay suburban ones with community college degrees? Poor urban straight ones with felony records? Rich urban bisexual ones with Ivy League degrees?”
There is naturally no unitary pattern of thought and political opinion in black (or white or Latino or Asian) America. Thus Bill Cosby sparks ringing applause from some blacks and bitter criticism from others when he blames black poverty on the bad behavior and (he thinks) bad culture of the black poor, not societal forces and structures of racial and/or class oppression.
Which category of black Americans truly represents and reflects “how black folks think” about disproportionate black poverty – the generally more bourgeois ones who tend to blame the ghetto poor or the more left ones who point to harsh and generally racist societal circumstances? Neither, since there is no single pattern of black thought on the topic. There never has been and there never will be.
Or take the different responses I get from black readers when I write a critical left commentary about Barack Obama's centrist ideology and politics. I typically get a bunch of e-mails from self-identified black Americans saying (in essence) the following: “you are exactly right about Obama. He is far too conservative and beholden to dominant class and race hierarchies. This is what I was thinking; thank you very much providing some important details on this critical matter.” I also generally get a few messages from more conservative blacks who write to accuse me of launching unwarranted assaults on a righteous black man who is "risking his life" in a "heroic" effort to uplift his race and the American people. Which set of e-mailers represents “how black folks think?”
The same division emerged when I wrote two critical pieces about Wal-Mart's effort to use the economic desperation of Chicago 's black ghetto in the company's campaign to penetrate the Chicago retail market. Left and labor-connected blacks wrote to thank me for “telling the truth” about Wal-Mart's false promises to the inner city and its determination to exploit black misery. More pro-business and “pragmatic” blacks wrote to castigate me for undermining necessary and (they seemed to think) sincere efforts by the retail giant to spark desperately needed economic development in disadvantaged black neighborhoods. Which group of e-mailers reflected “how black folks think?”
Or look at the different ways that some black Americans reflect on the presidential record of Bill Clinton. In his conservative campaign book The Audacity of Hope (New York , 2006), Obama calls Clinton “recognizably progressive.” He applauds Clinton for showing that “markets and fiscal discipline” and “personal responsibility [are] needed to combat poverty” (p. 34). These are interesting reflections on the Clinton administration's significant efforts to deepen black poverty by eliminating poor peoples' entitlement to public family cash assistance and by privileging deficit reduction and military spending over social programs. Like many in the black bourgeoisie, Obama buys into the (I think) preposterous notion that black America had a friend in the White House when Clinton was president.
The black writer Elaine Brown takes a different perspective on the Clinton presidency. By Brown's account in her remarkable book The Condemnation of Little B (Boston , 2002), Clinton launched a terrible assault on black America with his “Three Strikes” crime bill and his broad neoliberal agenda. Brown heaps special scorn on Clinton's enactment of a vicious welfare “reform” that “cut off [black and other poor children's] lifelines to food and medical care” even while Clinton kept “the era of government” subsidy alive for “rich corporations and their executives.” By Brown's account, “ Clinton did nothing to elevate the economic status of blacks and other poor people in America . In fact,” Brown says, “the Clinton era was in many ways more detrimental to blacks than the Reagan and Bush years had been” (Brown, The Condemnation, pp. 182-183). Brown is especially harsh towards wealthy and influential black Americans (Oprah Winfrey, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates and William Julius Wilson, among others) she accuses of abandoning the black lower class and of deeply enabling the Clinton era assault.
Which African-American accurately reflects “how black folks think” – Obama or Brown?
The answer, of course, is that there is NO one way that “black folks think,” just as there is NO one way that whites, Jews, Latinos or Iraqis think. It is racist or at least racialist to say that there is a unitary mode of cognition inside any racial group.
Clinton 's comment ought to be seen as fairly outrageous. If real and widely exposed, the three imaginary comments posited at the beginning of this essay would probably carry a significant public relations cost for those who uttered them. What are the chances that Clinton 's racialist generalization about “black folks'" cognitions could become something of a scandal? Given the passage of time and the balance of racial forces in post-Civil Rights and persistently white-supremacist America , those chances are not high. Still, Clinton's curious comment deserves critical consideration in a nation claiming to have transcended race and (above all) racism.
i agree. you cannot judge a
By Deals, Furniture at May 24, 2007 11:33 AM
Reply this comment
What "deal" is it, exactly,
By Kissenger, Clark at May 08, 2007 22:18 PM
What "deal" is it, exactly, that "the lower economic people" within the black community "are not holding up?" It's the one where masses of poor blacks don't protest or feel angry and ripped off while vast white-dominated structures of concentrated wealth and power reign supreme, tilting "equal" opportunity against those without inherited and interrelated economic, cultural, and white-skin privilege. It's the one that opens a few doors of advancement to a certain small share of fortunate African-Americans, who are encouraged to join in the general condemnation of those who struggle with poverty and its multiple consequences in the industrialized world's most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society.
thanks to weight loss i am not a fatty anymore. remember: weight loss
Reply this comment
Responses
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 29, 2007 07:54 AM
This is not a U.S.-liberal website...look at the articles posted on ZNet...take a look at Zinn's marvelous recent piece on the congressional Democrats' "liberal" timetable actions and this will help you sharpen your sense of the difference between a leftist and a liberal. Another good start for sensing that difference is to look at the piece I did on Obama's nauseating (for many radicals, anyway) 2004 Keynote Address.
There's no obsession here benny g....you want to see me "obsessed" about bigger issues go read one of my books, which tend to run more than 70,000 words. This mere blog commentary ran I think about 1200 words; I knocked it out in an hour and a half. For me that's not obsession.
You seem under-obsessed. I think a popular ex-president with (a) a big and false --- see Elaine Brown's book (the one I linked) which is very much about Clinton's actions and policies, not just words (for crying out loud) ---reputation for being a friend of black America and (b) a stated belief that he knows how all blacks think (a fairly racist and certainly racialist thing to say and its said at a table where a noted New Yorker writer [editor actually] is sitting) is an issue worth noting. As Brown and many others know, Clinton got way too much of a free pass on race (and on much more...deepening class inequality, commitment to empire and vicious sanctions campaign against Iraqis and so on) and by the way his record is relevant in light of the fact that his equally centrist and corporatist (and probably more hawkish) wife is now in the lead of the Democratic presidential pack and is running in part on the first Clinton's record.
People who want to get a sense of the moral character of the Clintons should have a look at one of the last decent books (maybe the last decent book...can't remember if it came before or after his Kissinger book) that Christopher Hitchens did prior to his suicide. Hitchens' book contained some interesting comments on Clinton's savage mistreatment of the black community.
Also benny g. I think you've set up a false dichotomy between actions and words. Our words reflect our world view which informs our actions. And in fact, Clinton's actions were not all that great vis a vis black America (or working-class America, or...fill in the blank).
"not a progressive" is not coherent and disentagling his or her nonsense (sorry, but that's what it is) would take too long. ZNet is not my website; I am one of literally hundreds of contributors.
The notion that ZNet posting things in accord with its own handlers' viewpoint violates free speech is just childish. ZNet would violate free speech if it somehow stopped others from stating their own liberal or centrist or right wing (or whatever) positions in other reaidly available liberal or centrist or right wing venues. And of course ZNet does not do that at all.
ZNet is a speech represser if it doesn't give equal time to dominant ideology and more "mainstream" perspectives? There's no legal or moral basis for that infantile charge.
Reply this comment
The answer, of course, is
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 29, 2007 04:57 AM
I'm not so sure about the way Iraqis think, but if you're into the workings of the Arab Mind, here's something that might be enlightening.
Reply this comment
criticism
By A, Not at Mar 29, 2007 03:59 AM
It's based, largely, on a "noble savage" idea that progressives seem to have-- that society is what makes people corrupt, ignoring that society is only there because the vast majority of individuals want to control the negative elements of human nature.
Why is your site called progressive? The books list only includes books which reinforce far-left views. This isn't progressive, it's counter to free speech and considering other points of view.
So, in summary, the "progressive" ideology espoused on this site, and specifically in your column, is based on several false assumptions about human nature, and is reinforced by rhetorical hetorical assaults on anyone who seems to deviate from it.
By the way, I am a liberal, but not a "progressive." Please stop calling yourselves that-- you're not progressive.
[Feel free to put this in your column, and please, do reply.]
Reply this comment