The latest issue of
The London Review of Books has an excellent essay, "
What Matters," by
Walter Benn Michaels (author of
The Trouble with Diversity). In analyzing the recent arrest of Harvard professor
Henry Louis Gates, Michaels answers my fellow blogger Eric's question of "
who's black?" with another, more telling question: "who's poor?." To wit:
Gates, as one of his Harvard colleagues said, is ‘a famous, wealthy and important black man’, a point Gates himself tried to make to the arresting officer – the way he put it was: ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’ But, despite the helpful hint, the cop failed to recognise an essential truth about neoliberal America: it’s no longer enough to kowtow to rich white people; now you have to kowtow to rich black people too.
[...]
In the US, one of the great uses of racism was (and is) to induce poor white people to feel a crucial and entirely specious fellowship with rich white people; one of the great uses of anti-racism is to make poor black people feel a crucial and equally specious fellowship with rich black people. Furthermore, in the form of the celebration of ‘identity’ and ‘ethnic diversity’, it seeks to create a bond between poor black people and rich white ones. So the African-American woman who cleans my office is supposed to feel not so bad about the fact that I make almost ten times as much money as she does because she can be confident that I’m not racist or sexist and that I respect her culture. And she’s also supposed to feel pride because the dean of our college, who makes much more than ten times what she does, is African-American, like her. And since the chancellor of our university, who makes more than 15 times what she does, is not only African-American but a woman too (the fruits of both anti-racism and anti-sexism!), she can feel doubly good about her.
In the words of our first "post-racial" president's speechwriters, it's the economy, stupid (or, rather, the racially stupid economy -- even its staunchest proponents this side of
Ayn Rand will tell you that capitalism is amoral). As the harbinger of racial peace through commercial success, a prescient
Arsenio Hall managed to signify our current climate through one particular performance that bridged the old racial divide in popular culture, that of the poor black's blues and the poor white's country:
releases from Norah Jones' Little Broken Hearts or her 2002 album Come Away With Me, Adele's 21, Esperanza Spalding's Radio Music Society, The Civil Wars' eight track Live at Amoeba CD, Nanci Griffith's Intersection, Rumer's Season of My Soul, a new solo release by Sara Watkins (of Nickel Creek) called Sun Midnight Sun, Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball, and Janis Joplin (including reissues). There's oodles of older titles too for sale on Amoeba.com including, for the budget conscious shopper, the Clearance Section offerings.
