Where the Left Lives – Black America is the Core

”African Americans are and have always been, in fact, clumped together on the left side of the conventional American political spectrum. An objective reading of the JCPES survey confirms some of the underlying basis for Blacks’ liberal voting patterns – which is long term bad news for the Right and self-styled Black conservatives. Still, this is not good enough news for Black progressives, since the task of organizing people for political action requires an understanding of how they actually feel about issues as they relate to their own lives and in the context of their group’s particular world view, rather than within the framework presented by American corporate media.”

Black Leaders Must Make African American Issues American Issues

Organizing black communities around what African Americans already believe is however, not what a sizeable chunk of black leadership wants to do. At last month’s CBC week, Rep. Mel Watt treated CBC Monitor’s Leutisha Stills to an uncivil rant about how inappropriate it was to cast issues like war and peace or universal, single-payer health care as “black issues.” Rep. Watt’s prescription for black leadership would instead free our elite from its bothersome constituents and enable them to rent themselves to the highest bidder on just about any matters except funding HBCUs and maybe voting rights.

This kind of leadership dooms black America to non-representation and continued political isolation, as well as making invisible on the greater American political scene the fact that tens of millions of citizens already favor national health care as a human right, an education of equally high quality for all, have opposed the war in Iraq from the start, and hold an array of other political views that the corporate media might call “ultra-liberal” but are actually leftist. At this time, black political leaders are in the best position of any American leaders to publicly stand up for single-payer health care and other reforms, because there is no doubt that their constituencies would unequivocally support them.

If Barack Obama for instance, was to experience a flashback to his early unequivocal opposition to the war in Iraq, or his days in the Illinois State Senate, when he supported universal health care via the Bernardin Amendment, the rightward running room for white Democrats would suddenly and dramatically narrow.

To its credit, the BACVR report poses an important question for black and white American leftists, and maybe for “liberals” too. If African Americans are the core and base of the left in America, why are we so vastly under-represented in its leadership?:

This is probably a question that white leaders of the Democratic party would rather not see asked too loudly.

White Democratic party leaders and some of their black colleagues have always known that black America is where the left lives. They count on its votes, but need to muzzle its voice, and have honed to a fine art the practice of appearing just a wee bit less openly hostile to black aspirations than Republicans. A despicable strategy perhaps, but its continued success depends on black leadership being allowed, as Rep. Watt and others desire, to follow the money instead of being held accountable to the black consensus, to the actual will of their black constituents, who are firmly on the left.

The only folks who seem unaware that the left lives in black America are actual self-described white leftists, and the modest number of blacks who listen much too attentively to the corporate song that an imaginary “post-civil-rights” generation of conservative blacks is about to emerge. Fortunately no evidence exists which might substantiate this oft-repeated claim. BC advises brothers and sisters in the former group to turn off the TV and radio for a few weeks. Put down the Wall Street Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. Talk to your black neighbors and friends, if you have any. Talk to your parents and their friends. Talk to your pastor unless you’re in a mega-church, in which case (s)he won’t have time to talk to you anyway. Forget about “conservative” and “liberal.” Look instead for indications of whether the black people you talk to are on the right, or on the left and we suspect that you too will find where the left lives.

White Leftists Must Solicit Black Participation, or be Irrelevant

For the white left, the situation is more complex. African Americans have overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq from its outset, but the black presence at last month’s large antiwar demonstrations in Washington, in San Francisco and elsewhere lagged far behind the actual percentages of black vs. white opposition to the war. By failing to find ways to effectively unite with the broad leftward current that flows through the heart of black America white leftists also doom themselves to the margins of America’s political life.

Right now it is Ramadan, and devout Muslims turn to face Mecca several times a day. It is hard to imagine white Americans going out to convince their fellow whites of anything if they cannot make common cause with their black neighbors who are already of the same stripe.

BC Associate Editor Bruce Dixon can be contacted at [email protected].

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