The race card

When Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s controversial views on America hit prime time, Barack Obama took a plunge in the polls. Rather than denounce his longtime friend and pastor, Obama took the time to write and deliver one of the most honest speeches on race and racism I could ever imagine coming from a politician. I admit I was somewhat shocked. Up to this point in the campaign, Obama’s attitude toward race had been nothing less than transcendental, to the point that I wondered if he was actually in touch with the real state of racism in this country. His speech left no doubt in my mind that Obama has an incredibly clear understanding of race in America, and moreover his own biracial upbringing has given him valuable insight into both black and white racial identity.

As much as I was impressed with Obama’s openness about the racial issues that continue to plague our country, honesty is not always the best policy, especially when you are running for president of a country deeply embedded with racism. And Obama’s optimism about helping us heal and move on may prove to be too optimistic, if the backlash against Reverend Wright’s comments is an indicator.

Obama’s reprimand was gentle yet firm:

We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

True words? Absolutely. But watch out, because all your Fox News viewers just turned off the television. Because while a certain subset of white people have a thing for guilt, most white people are just plain sick of hearing about slavery, and they sure as hell don’t believe that they owe Black America a damn thing.

At the top of the list of white privileges, after all, is the privilege of not seeing racism as it operates in society. That includes, of course, our own role in upholding racist institutions and the benefits we accrue from them. In a column last week NYT columnist Maureen Dowd made a good point when she warned Obama to “stay away from the phrase “typical white person” because typically white people don’t like to be reminded of their prejudices”. Dowd points out that at a key tenet of Obama’s “feel-good appeal” was that it made white people feel like they were “allowed to transcend race because the candidate himself has transcended race.”

Indeed, the beauty of the Obama appeal was that supporting a black candidate allowed us to feel smugly superior to the Geraldine Ferraros of the world, but at the same time, we weren't threatened by a "racial agenda." For much of white America, Obama was boy wonder -- here was a (well-spoken and educated!) Black man who was not playing the race card. In fact, he wanted to overcome the divide and unite America! Up until last Tuesday, Barack Obama was not only a shining example of a “model minority,” he was proof in the pudding of a postracial nation. If Obama could transcend race and win the presidency, we would finally be able to pat ourselves on the back and say “racism is a thing of the past.” We could tell Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the NAACP exactly where to shove it.

After all, what could be better for the liberal vision of a colorblind America than a black president who doesn’t have any of those annoying habits that black people seem to have, like complaining about “racism” and sitting with all the other black people in the cafeteria?

But Obama did have a skeleton in the racial closet, in the form of his longtime friend and pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose views on race are a bit more materialist. And we discovered that while Obama believes strongly in the hope of uniting this nation, he refuses to disavow the history of suffering and struggle that has made this country what it is.

It is a testament to that suffering and that struggle that in the year 2008, one of the best leaders in our nation today may lose a presidential nomination because of the racism that he has no choice but to acknowledge. It is remarkable to me that someone who has experienced the brutal racialization this country bestows on black men is ready and willing to help lead our country to a better place. If I were religiously inclined, I would be tempted to call it something like salvation. But for white people, acknowledging the realities of racism has proved too threatening. Instead, like a child to its tattered security blanket, we doggedly cling to the scant comforts of whiteness, retreating into the rhetoric of victimization and “reverse racism”.

Bitch PhD has some interesting views on the phenomenon of white people getting extremely angry about black people being angry, namely that deep down, white people actually believe that black people do have a right to be angry. The spectre of his “anti-American” pastor plays on our own anxieties: “Obama (who is black) hates America (because really, if you were black, wouldn’t you?)”.

Like the white South Africans who fled the country when Nelson Mandela was elected, we have been so indoctrinated with the philosophy of racial superiority that we can’t imagine any other alternative. According to this logic, if blacks gained power they would turn the system on its head, and whites would be the new oppressed class. Ebonics would be taught at Harvard and Maya Angelou would replace John Steinbeck as The Great American Novelist.

Ridiculous, yes, but also quite indicative of the anxiety white people are experiencing over not only a potential loss of power, but also the loss of a worldview whose adoption has required significant sacrifice on our part. For those of us who have bought in to the system wholeheartedly, who truly believe that hard work and sacrifice are the key to the American dream, acknowledging an ongoing legacy of racism suggests that first of all we might not actually deserve what we have worked so hard for, and secondly that all we've given up may not in fact help us attain the unattainable.

The American dream may be a myth, but it is a hopeful myth, and one that has endured for centuries, despite remarkably thin evidence to back it up. Since our nation’s inception, wave after wave of immigrants have traded their languages, customs and cultures for a stake in the American dream. In the process, they have been both de- and re-racialized into the disciplinary norms of whiteness, less a racial category than a system of power that relies on constant surveillance and regulation in order to maintain its boundaries.

Like gambling addicts who spend their life savings on the chance of winning the lottery, many of us who have bought into the system simply refuse to believe that our dream is a lie. We are the ones who have been consistently playing the race card, but in the end, the house always wins. The anger toward Reverend Wright is based in the profound resentment of what we have lost on the racial gambling tables, and moreover, the intolerable fear that the jackpot might not actually exist.

Pimps, slaves and whores

With this whole Spitzer scandal, sex work has been at the front of my brain, but before I get into that mess, I wanted to note that last weekend the NYT Magazine ran a surprisingly thoughtful article on transgender students at historically women’s colleges. Kudos to Alissa Quart for breaking down the fundamentals of gender theory (and citing the likes of Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin and Jack Halberstam!) and calling out Barnard president Judith Shapiro for being less than supportive of gender nonconforming students. And what’s more, I never would have found the article if it hadn’t popped up in the top ten most popular side-bar, which means, if nothing else, that a ton of people are reading it and emailing it to other people.

It’s a good thing I found something worthwhile on the NYT website, because after the garbage I’ve been reading by Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, I was about ready to puke. You can tell Kristof is giddy at the idea of getting to spear Spitzer on the blade of his own hypocrisy, and indeed last week's column "Do as he said" argues for stricter laws governing prostitution, specifically those “cracking down on pimps and customers.”

The real problem, Kristof suggests, is perverted and hypocritical men like Spitzer, who prey on young women like poor Ashley Alexandra Dupre, who he is quick to point out in a second column, had been “abused as a child, and tangled with drugs and homelessness.” Kristof doesn’t mention Dupre’s upper-class upbringing or the fact that she is currently making even more off publicity on the Spitzer scandal than she did working for Emperor’s Club, but even despite this, he has difficulty portraying her as a victim, and emphasizes that her situation is “dangerously unrepresentative” of prostitution.” He also cites a former sex worker who wrote on his blog that she “never felt exploited or trapped” and prostitution was “one of the best jobs” she ever had, only to dismiss her immediately. You see, women like these do not fit into his idea of a prostitute.

Instead Kristof cites statistics about abuse, drug use, mental illness and mortality rates, quoting experts from the field who confirm his idea that prostitution is equivalent to slavery.

I have no doubt that these statistics, gruesome as they are, are generally accurate. Like other workers involved in illicit industries (drug dealers, for instance), sex workers operate outside protections from the state, and are thus much more likely to be targets of violence. In addition, sex workers often face unique forms of gender-based violence (and in fact, transgender sex workers face the highest mortality rates by far). Yet rather than decry the abysmal working conditions for people engaged in the sex industry, and support their efforts for reform, Kristof wants to eradicate prostitution altogether.

Putting aside for the moment the obvious pragmatic difficulties in that endeavor, let’s say that a successful campaign managed to literally lock up every john in the nation (we won’t pause to imagine the number of empty chairs in the house and senate, let alone the leaderless cities and states across the land). What then, of our now unemployed sex workers? Just as shutting down sweatshops in and of itself does little to improve the lives of maquiladora workers, shutting down prostitution doesn’t actually give women any more autonomy and choice in their lives and occupations. Rather, it reduces women’s choice and autonomy by denying sex work as a viable occupation.

In refusing to acknowledge women’s agency in choosing to be sex workers (even in the face of a variety of factors that may restrict individual women’s choices), Kristof demonstrates a particularly insidious version of paternalism. Like many of us, Kristof has internalized the virgin/whore binary, in which women face the choice of submitting to patriarchal protection and control, or risking social condemnation and violence in return for sexual freedom.

Violence against sex workers is an abomination. It is also a way to keep the rest of us in line. It’s not a coincidence that uppity women get called “whores”. These serve as warnings – if we attempt to exercise autonomy (and control over our own bodies and sexuality is a particularly dangerous form of autonomy!) we run the risk of losing those protections that proper ladies receive. But just as Kristof’s idea of protecting women from the “nightmare” of prostitution involves denying their agency to choose their own occupation, we must keep in mind that the protections of patriarchy are inherently limited. And, unbelievable as it may seem to Kristof, some women do in fact choose to be whores. The fact that many choose this occupation despite the incredible risks associated with sex work, and the lack of formal protections indicates the possibility that in certain instances, freedom from the imperatives of patriarchal authority may be worth the risk. After all, violence isn’t endemic to prostitution, but gender-based violence is endemic to patriarchy. By refusing to accept the logic of the virgin/whore binary we can take an important step in dismantling the division that is central to the technology of patriarchal violence.