The RaceDoctor Speaks!

Seems like black folks have this one covered this year. Not surprisingly, we voted something like 94 percent for who Rush Limbaugh calls “Barack the magic Negro”. (It's kind of funny on its own, an actually makes more fun of Al Sharpton than That Black One, but coming from the conservative America, I still cringe and got to say, “it's too soon for y’all to joke like that). In any case, you can’t get much more on the same page than voting 94 percent in one direction. (And who are those brothas and sisters who voted otherwise? I would have loved to see the conversation with their extended family at Thanksgiving).

Sadly though, our unity in California played a key role a major political development of the year, the passing of Proposition 8 rescinding court decisions validating gay marriage. My understanding is that black folks voted something like 70 percent to not allow our hair dressers, church music directors, and auntie’s who been living with their “friend” for 30 years to legitimate what we all know is going on. In my mind, this is certainly something that black folks need to really have a dialogue about. And of course, by dialogue, I don’t mean a theatrical or media based chat fest where a few talk and everyone else says “Amen” when they hear something they like.

Going forward, I think the biggest challenge for black folks is not fall prey to feeling an excessive amount of loyalty to TBO. Certainly, given the importance of an almost unanimous black vote to his election, our position in the long line of constituencies wanting something from him should not be at the back. But if TBO does his job in being president of all the people, there should be some tension between the demands of black leadership and the president. To some extent, leaders of an historically oppressed group need to be aware of the need for society to take care of all, but also fight diligently against the possibility (historically grounded) that there group will get the short end. And TBO’s job is to push back, and not give black leaders everything they want. And let’s face it, the level of scrutiny TBO will be under on whether or not he is implementing a ‘black agenda” will likely be intense. I can see the news teasers about this on Hannity’s Show already.

So the bottom line is that too much unity here is a sign of dis-ease. Put differently, if black leaders are not showing frustration at Barack Obama two years from now, they are not doing their job.

American Unity
As far as the nation is concerned, this moment has in it so much promise for at least beginning to heal the divisions that have been such a horrible drag on our progress as a society.

The obvious barrier that has been crossed is the racial one, and I will say more on that in the coming days. But one could argue that the more important barrier that has been crossed is a generational one. My sincerest hope is that this election may have finally put the Baby Boomers fight between sex and drug Hippies and the straight laced types who were publicly against all that is finally over. Whew! That cultural war just SO, SO tired. Let’s remember by electing That Black One, we chose a black man who admitted to smoking marijuana and occasionally doing cocaine. (A lot of progress from the “I didn’t inhale” controversy from Clinton in 1992). We chose his ticket over the ticket that had its vice presidential candidate “raising the roof” to a rap song on Saturday Night Live.

The most significant policy issue that I am expecting more unity on now is around global warming. Even though this was not a function of the 60s cultural war on the surface, my sense is that the idea that human beings were having an impact on millennium long global warming/cooling cycles was rather difficult to accept by people with more of a traditionalist world view. Especially, if the implications were the US might have to create internationalist frameworks that might involve a cutting back of our unabashed emphasis on economic progress based on more and more material acquisitiveness.

So hooray for us! With the cultural was largely behind us, we can potentially move policy on global warming and other issues related to science to a more objective and rational engagement. Stem cell research, abstinence only education are just two of the issues where we might expect better policy debate.

The growth edge: class divisions. With the economic problems – I heard one expert said this is not an adjustment, it’s a “reset” – we conceivably could wrestle with fundamental questions like economic fairness between the top and bottoms of our society. (Wrest your minds from the gutter, that was, mostly, not a lascivious metaphor). Given that the government is going to bail out numerous industries, what we citizens need to start putting on the table are issues around the wage/salary gap that is acceptable. In the past 4 decades, wage gaps between the CEOs and line level workers have grown to levels unprecedented in modern industrial history, here or anyway. Since we seem to be about to start over, and since we just saw the collective results when the expansion of the wealth class combines with a decrease in regulatory structures, perhaps we can really examine what is the level of income disparity that is collectively functional and sustainable.