What's Wrong with Obamamania? , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Ricky L. Jones

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113 pages

English

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Barack Obama's sudden arrival on the national scene has created a wave of excitement in American politics, a phenomenon that has been dubbed "Obamamania." In What's Wrong with Obamamania?, Ricky L. Jones places Obama's run for the presidency in the context of deep and often disturbing shifts in black leadership since the 1960s. From Charles Hamilton Houston to Thurgood Marshall to Jesse Jackson, from prosperity preachers to megachurches, from W. E. B. Du Bois's Talented Tenth and civil rights advocates to Black Entertainment Television and hip-hop culture, Jones paints a picture of lowered expectations, cynicism, and nihilism that should give us all pause.
Foreword
J. Blaine Hudson

Introduction: Jesse Jackson Didn’t Give a Damn!

1. A Series of Unfortunate (and Unsavory) Events: Paving the Way for “Obamamania”

2. Sorry, DuBois Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: The Soulessness of the New Talented Tenth

3. The Witch and the Devil: American Political Philosophy and Black Suffering

4. “Black Hawks” Down: America’s War on Terror and the Rise of Bushism

5. I Don’t Care What Jesus Would Do; I’ve Got to Get Paid: The New Black Preacher

6. Before and Beyond Don Imus: On BET, Hip-Hop Culture, and Their Consequences

7. What’s Wrong with Us?: The Necessary Death of American Romanticism

Appendix
Chronology: Development and Change in Black Leadership Communities from 1619 to the Present
Notes
Index

Sujets

USA

United States of America

Ethnic studies

History of the Americas

États-Unis

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	10 mars 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791477632
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1598€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

WHAT S WRONG WITH OBAMAMANIA?
WHAT S WRONG WITH OBAMAMANIA?
Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination
RICKY L. JONES
With a foreword by J. Blaine Hudson
Published by S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
2008 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Susan M. Petrie
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Ricky L.
What s wrong with Obamamania? : Black America, Black leadership, and the death of political imagination / Ricky L. Jones.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7914-7579-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7914-7580-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Obama, Barack-Political and social views. 2. Obama, Barack-Public opinion. 3. Presidential candidates-United States. 4. African Americans-Politics and government. 5. African American leadership. 6. African Americans-Social conditions-1975- 7. Presidents-United States-Election-2008. 8. United States- Race relations-Political aspects. 9. Political culture-United States. 10. Public opinion-United States. I. Title.
E901.1.O23J66 2008 973 .0496073-dc22
2007049896
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Once again, for Linnie Mae Jones-my grandmother, warrior, and cancer survivor. Also, for her oncologist, Dr. Jonathan Kaufman of Emory University, who has worked diligently in helping her continue to live a bold and adventurous life. Fight on, Mama!
Also for James R. Terry, J. Blaine Hudson, Robert Douglas, and Chester Grundy-outstanding educators and men of depth and sacrifice. You are the finest examples of leadership I have known. You have all inspired me to be a better man.
Contents
Foreword J. Blaine Hudson
Introduction: Jesse Jackson Didn t Give a Damn!
1 A Series of Unfortunate (and Unsavory) Events: Paving the Way for Obamamania
2 Sorry, Du Bois Doesn t Live Here Anymore: The Soulessness of the New Talented Tenth
3 The Witch and the Devil: American Political Philosophy and Black Suffering
4 Black Hawks Down: America s War on Terror and the Rise of Bushism
5 I Don t Care What Jesus Would Do; I ve Got to Get Paid: The New Black Preacher
6 Before and Beyond Don Imus: On BET, Hip-Hop Culture, and Their Consequences
7 What s Wrong with Us?: The Necessary Death of American Romanticism
Appendix Chronology: Development and Change in Black Leadership Communities from 1619 to the Present
Notes
Index
Foreword
Readers attracted to catchy titles will probably be caught by this one, What s Wrong with Obamamania ? and may expect yet another version of Rush Limbaugh s Barack the Magic Negro , suitable for sale at local supermarkets or Wal-Mart. Fortunately, if they read beyond the title and their own assumptions, they will be pleasantly surprised and may find that the question has no simple answer and serves only as a point of departure for a far-ranging, insightful, and illuminating analysis of black political leadership over time. In Dr. Ricky Jones extremely capable hands, this rather facetious question becomes a window into the American racial past, present, and perhaps, future-a window through which we can see much that we need, but seldom wish, to see clearly.
Asking What s wrong with Obamamania? also poses the question, What s wrong with Barack Obama? -and for that matter, What s right with Barack Obama? They all prompt a few other queries far more fundamental to our understanding of race in this country. For example, Why is it so unusual to consider Barack Obama a serious contender for the office of president of the United States- rather than another African American making a largely symbolic run for the White House? Clearly, as the only sitting black United States senator, he is an intelligent, articulate, and capable politician. As a man of African ancestry, he is exotic but not ethnic in a pejorative sense. He neither rejects nor expresses ambivalence about his blackness as, for example, Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods have done. However, while he conforms neither to the popular stereotype of black males of the hip-hop generation nor to the older image of the black civil rights leader, he does conform to another stereotype embedded as deeply in American culture. In other words, if the image of the black male of gangsta rap is the modern incarnation of the black buck or the coon, Barack Obama, in the minds of many Americans, is the modern incarnation of the faithful black servant -the new corporate black man whose purpose in life and relatively privileged place in the world are determined solely by his usefulness to privileged whites. 1
Of course, there is a deep and fatal flaw in both the new and old versions of this stereotype. The faithful black servant is not and never can be his own master or her own mistress. White Americans have never been so trusting or so foolish as to give such servants the kind of real power and autonomy that would equip them to pursue a truly independent agenda, particularly as relates to race. However, as the past few generations have shown, white America has been willing to allow a few such useful black individuals to rise to unprecedented heights-as long as they were content to serve or preserve the interests of privileged white Americans. The list of examples is long indeed-stretching from Jackie Robinson and Ralph Bunche two generations ago to Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas today, and including a host of highly paid athletes, business executives, educational administrators, public intellectuals, and entrepreneurs who prosper in a political economy over which they have no real control but in which they all, whether they or others always know it or not, fill roles that make them valuable to privileged white Americans-and conversely, disposable when they are no longer valuable.
This is not an impossible dilemma, but it is, I believe, a difficult one that bears directly on where Barack Obama fits in contemporary America. The post-civil rights era ended with the disputed election of President George W. Bush in 2000 and the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Although this new era has not yet been named, it dawned with the fateful intersection of a reactionary presidential administration and a national tragedy that allowed that conservative faction to seize unprecedented power and then to act nationally and globally to advance its ideological and economic interests under the guise of preserving American security. While we can only speculate about the long-term consequences of offensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and U.S. global policies in general, the immediate consequences for black America and for persons of color throughout the world are becoming increasingly clear.
In this country, for example, between 2000 and 2004, the average American family lost 3.6 percent of its median income, with white Americans losing 2.1 percent, Asian and Hispanic Americans losing roughly 6.0 percent and African Americans losing 7.4 percent. 2 In other words, between Bush tax and economic policies and the economic downturn since 9/11, the gains of the Clinton era (which recouped the losses of the Reagan and Bush (I) eras) were wiped out, literally, over night. Put in perspective, even before the disastrous slippage of the past few years, African American family income was barely 60 percent of white American family income, and, thus, the glacial process of reducing structural inequality by race was halted and reversed again, as it was a generation ago after the election of Ronald Reagan.
These gross national trends mask an even more insidious and ominous shift-the growing distance between the haves and have-nots, that is, the hollowing-out of societies around the world as the middle-class shrinks, the haves become have-mores, and the have-nots grow more numerous and more marginal. For example, the Gini index (developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912), which measures income inequality by comparing the total income of the poorest 20 percent of a nation s population with the total income of the richest 20 percent (on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 representing perfect inequality) is growing in most nations. At one extreme, poor nations with small groups of wealthy people have always produced high Gini coefficients. For example, Sierra Leone has a Gini coefficient of 62.9. Wealthier nations with large poor (often distinguishable by racial and color differences) populations also have high coefficients. For example, Brazil has a Gini coefficient of 60.7, South Africa 59.3. At the other extreme, nations with large middle-class populations report much lower coefficients, such as Hungary at 24.4, Japan at 24.9. Since September 11, the United States has slipped quietly from the 30s into the 40s on the Gini index. 3 And, if the middle class is shrinking generally, the black middle class-already smaller numerically and proportionally, and already weaker in terms of actual wealth compared to the white middle class-is eroding even more rapidly despite the spectacular achievements of a few moguls, athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs.
Given the facts of the present and the facts of history, the place of African Americans in contemporary American society, once stripped of familiar and useful illusions, best fits the fourth world or internal colonial paradigm developed conceptually, if not by name, by a succession of black intellectuals in recent decades. 4 The explanatory power of this paradigm i