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Today's
Stories
March 20, 2008
Millet / Toussaint
The
Triple Falling of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the 'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
|
March
20, 2008
New Challenges
for Obama, the Democrats and the Left
Obama's
Race Speech
By DAN La BOTZ
Barack Obama's speech on race, the greatest
speech by a major American political figure in decades, elevates
the discussion of race in America to a new level. What makes
this speech so powerful is not only what he said, but also what
it requires us to ask and what it demands that we reply. With
this speech Obama has challenged himself, the Democratic Party,
and the country to pursue a discussion of racial justice which
leads us inevitably into equally challenging issues of economic
and political power. The social and cultural questions of race
are entwined with economic issues and political problems in this
country in such a complicated way that one cannot be tackled
without also handling the other. And they can only all be solved
for all of us by taking on corporate power.
The problem of race in America
is also an economic issue that will require a change in the balance
of forces between capital and labor. Racial issues are not only
matters of communication, understanding and mutual respect-though
those are important-they are also questions of economic wealth
and political power whose resolution will require a reconstruction
of America. Obama said in his speech, this is not a zero sum
game. But it is a contest in which working people, black and
white, in order to win the game, will have to build a movement
that can take wealth and power away from corporate interests
at the top of this society.
The Speech
No mainstream American politician
in the last hundred years has had the courage to discuss so frankly
issues of race as Obama has, dealing with both the African American
experience of white racism and discrimination and white anxieties
and resentment toward blacks. Obama's speech, simultaneously
personal and down-to-earth, intellectually sophisticated and
politically challenging, represented a new high water mark for
American politics.
Obama, not shying away from
the issues but looking the American people directly in the eye,
discussed the experience of black discrimination in education,
in housing, in employment, by labor unions and in business, as
well as discussing sympathetically the white workers' anxieties
at being laid off from a job, the white woman's frustration with
hitting the glass ceiling, and the immigrants' concerns about
feeding their families. He explained to whites how African Americans
who have suffered such economic discrimination have never been
able to accrue the same assets and therefore never had the same
opportunities as whites. And he explained to blacks that working
class and middle class whites often don't feel very privileged
in this society themselves, facing as they do difficulties with
employment, with health care, and with the costs of education.
A Common
Fight for a Better Future
Obama encouraged black and
white Americans to turn away from the nation's troubled racial
past, and to work together fight for their common economic and
social interests such as health care. He even suggested that
this would be to some degree a fight against corporate power:
"corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable
accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated
by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor
the few over the many." Such an aside, however, hardly
begins to probe the issue of entrenched corporate power and altogether
avoids its direct relationship to institutional racism. Obama's
brilliant popular elucidation of our country's race issues was
not matched with an equally frank examination of the nature of
corporate economic power, and that is where he and we must go
next.
How Obama, with his liberal
political record and his moderate economic views, can dare to
confront these issues remains to be seen. Certainly the Democratic
Party with its embrace of neoliberal economics and globalization,
must be wary of any discussion which would lead Americans into
an examination of the role of corporate power. Yet, having gone
this far, Obama invites us to go a little farther, and leads
us to ask the question of how, while making racial peace one
also solves the problem of economic justice and political fairness,
issues we know to be so absolutely inextricable.
Capitalism
and Race in America
The reconsideration of black
and white relations in America, which Obama's speech suggests,
leads us to rethink the roles played by capitalism and the corporation
in constructing contemporary American society's race issues.
At every stage of American history, businessmen and the corporations
played powerful parts in the creation, maintenance and reinforcement
of racism. African Americans chains were literally and figuratively
manufactured in the capitalist iron foundries of North and South;
black labor on the slave plantation grew out of the textile industry
in England and New England; black relegation to the role of janitor
was the policy of U.S. corporations for a hundred years; black
ghettos were created by banks and real estate agents; and white
employers played off the racist white labor unions against black
workers in such as way that both groups lost out-but blacks lost
most in jobs and wages. Today in the corporate world and in society
African Americans confront a system of what some sociologists
have called "color blind racism," more subtle but tenacious
and persistent.
Obama reminded the American
people of the black experience of slavery and of the long history
of discrimination, yet he did not dwell on the crucial period
of the foundation of the modern African American experience,
namely Reconstruction and its aftermath. At the end of the Civil
War, Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania proposed
that the southern planters' land should be confiscated and distributed
to the former slave families in forty-acre plots together with
enough money to build a house. But Northern industrial interests
as well as southern planters opposed such confiscation since
it suggested that labor had some vested interest in property
and it raised the fear that a popular government that expropriated
land today might expropriate factories tomorrow.
The idea of agrarian reform on behalf of former black slaves
was rejected in part because it raised the specter of socialism
on behalf of white workers.
Instead Northern capital flowed
into the South, northern businessmen literally and figuratively
marrying into the planter ruling class, buying up coal and iron
mines, and supporting the great reaction of 1890 that resulted
in black crucifixion by debt peonage, disfranchisement and segregation.
Capitalism did not bring democracy to the South; rather it brought
instead a combination of Bourbon political domination at the
highest levels, the control of planters and southern textile
mill owners at the regional level, and populist white power at
the local level. All of this was enforced by the lynching of
thousands of blacks in the period from 1890 to 1940.
Capitalism,
the Corporation, and African Americans
Family capitalism in the North,
transformed by the Civil War, mutated into the great industrial
corporations of the coal, iron and railroad era, giving rise
to the finance capital of J.P. Morgan. The corporations treated
African Americans as a reserve army of labor, workers who could
be called forth during the industrial expansions of World War
I and World War II, and then laid off when the depression came.
Blacks, perpetually at the bottom of the economic ladder became
the last hired and the first fired, the expendable, the disposable.
At the same time, the AFL craft unions, the junior partners of
capital, excluded African Americans from skilled jobs, so that
few blacks before 1916 ever had the opportunity to even work
at a machine, much less become a machinist. In the North, the
subordination of blacks was enforced by periodic white race riots,
violent attacks on the black ghettos in which dozens were murdered.
During the entire twentieth
century, as African American sociologists and historians have
pointed out, black capitalism amounted to little. The combination
of corporate power and white power meant that black businesses,
usually serving only the black community, remained small business,
marginal, fragile, and perishable. Only a few black banks and
insurance companies and a hand full of publishing companies and
other businesses ever reached any significant size. African American
business did not become large enough to be a significant factor
in black employment and could not command black consumers who
went for cheaper goods produced by the white-owned corporations.
Black Gains
with the CIO and with the Civil Rights Movement
Where blacks did make economic
gains was through the organization of the Congress of Industrial
Organizations. African American workers joined strikes that built
powerful unions in the mining, auto and steel industries; tens
of thousand of black workers won union contracts, higher wages,
and later pension and health benefits. The rise of the CIO during
the 1930s represented the most important factor in the improvement
of black life during the period before the coming of the Civil
Rights movement. African Americans not only became members, but
also leaders in the CIO, and consequently a factor in the Democratic
Party-but there they were blocked by the Solid South, white power
and black disfranchisement below the Mason-Dixon Line.
The Civil Rights movement of
the 1950s, culminating in the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights
of 1965, overturned de jure segregation in the South,
a tremendous victory, but left untouched de facto segregation
throughout the country, a system largely enforced by banks, insurance
companies and realtors in the neighborhoods and by the corporations
at work. Ironically, the political advance was accompanied by
an economic retreat. The long decline of industry which had already
begun in the 1920s and accelerated in the 1950s culminated in
the deindustrialization of the 1980s taking away from African
Americans the higher paying industrial jobs they had finally
broken into in the 1940s. Globalization has only accelerated
these tendencies as well as introducing new immigrant competitors.
The combination of the historic burden of racial oppression,
the persistence of segregation and discrimination, and the reconfiguration
of the economy through deindustrialization and globalization
have resulted in a society where African American workers have
been pushed once again to the bottom of the social ladder.
Obama, the
Democrats, the System and the Crisis
African Americans find themselves
both deeply integrated into and at the same time profoundly excluded
from the capitalist system. Today 35 percent of white families
but only 16 percent of black families make over $75,000 a year.
White unemployment is 5 percent, but for blacks it is 11 percent.
The poverty rate for whites is 8 percent, while for blacks it
is 23 percent. Given this situation, Obama's speech leads us
to ask: How can African Americans be raised out of poverty without
jeopardizing the economic position of the white middle class?
To do so one must pry money and power away from the corporations
and put it in the hands of working people. How can Obama and
the Democratic party, with their corporate obligations and their
capitalist commitments, possibly address the historic situation
in which African Americans find themselves in such a way that
both black and white workers benefit?
Today, as we enter a recession
that threatens to become a crisis, African Americans stand to
be the big losers. Black workers never fully enjoyed the periods
of prosperity in the 1920s, 1950s and 1960s, or the 1990s, and
they were the first and biggest losers in the depressions and
recessions of 1929-1939, 1974-75 and 1981-82. They will also
be the most affected by the current crisis into which we are
entering now. African American unemployment historically runs
at double that of whites, so if this recession give us 10 percent
white unemployment, blacks will be 20 percent; if it becomes
another Great Depression where white unemployment reaches 25
percent, then black joblessness will be 50 percent. What will
be the chances of overcoming racism then?
Given the situation of American
capitalism today, what will it take to improve the situation
of the African American, to provide economic security and racial
justice, while at the same time stabilizing the situation for
white working people. How can we secure a decent life for all
of these working people, who usually call themselves middle class,
and who make up the great majority of our population?
President John F. Kennedy's
New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society with its
War on Poverty, both failed to fundamentally change the situation
of blacks and did not end poverty among whites, largely because
they did not end corporate domination of American society. Under
President Bill Clinton, the Democrats turned away from even those
liberal programs and adopted the conservative (or neoliberal)
policies long identified with the Republicans. Democrats have
not proposed, beyond their health care plans, any fundamental
changes in the social programs of the country. Today, there is
a real question of whether or not the American capitalist system-faced
with problems of competitiveness, productivity, and profitability-has
the capacity to construct a liberal or social democratic system
which would ameliorate, without ending, the race and class systems
of the country.
Obama's speech leads us to
these reconsiderations of American history and of the contemporary
situation of black and white which suggest that he and his party
cannot solve the racial issues he has so brilliantly begun to
elucidate. We need a new social movement to create and drive
forward a new American politics. American working people black
and white need to join together to fight not only for health
care, but also to take on the corporations whose power and wealth
impede a solution of racial problems. The greatness of Obama's
speech may ultimately lie in the fact that it led Americans to
reconsider the problems he has addressed and led us, black and
white, native born and immigrant, to begin to solve them by ourselves
and from below.
Dan La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer
and activist. He can be reached at: DanLaBotz@gmail.com
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