[Marxism] What the Obama victory shows, by Barry Sheppard (from Direct Action, Australia)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.directaction.org.au/issue7/what_the_obama_victory_shows

What the Obama victory shows
By Barry Sheppard, San Francisco

As has been widely noted, the election of an African-American as president
of the United States is an historic event. This is true irrespective of the
politics and perspectives of Barack Obama. That a black family will occupy
the White House, which was built by black slaves, is a powerful symbol.

The four-hundred-year history of African-Americans in the United States
spans the time of slavery, the Civil War and Radical Reconstruction, the
reaction beginning in the 1870s that instituted the Jim Crow segregation
system through terror, and the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s
that overthrew Jim Crow, up to the present.

There is no question that without the victory of the civil rights movement,
which liberated the South from legal apartheid, and its effect throughout
the North, no black person could have been elected to the US presidency. It
was this victory that changed over time the way black Americans are viewed
by whites, to the extent that tens of millions of whites felt able to vote a
black person into the country's highest public office.

On election night, when it was clear that Obama had won, there were
celebrations among African-Americans everywhere. TV shots showed many in
tears of joy. The following day, my next-door neighbour, who is black and
somewhat conservative, greeted me with the Black Power fist salute, and
said: "I never thought I would see this in my lifetime!"

It is always difficult to see underlying trends through the distorting lens
of capitalist elections, especially in the US with its system of two openly
capitalist parties holding nearly identical views. But I think certain
things are discernable. The first is what I have already alluded to, the
diminution of racist attitudes among many whites. Polls showed this was more
pronounced among young whites. While Asians, Latinos and especially
African-Americans (by 95%) voted for Obama, without making important inroads
among whites he would have lost. The second is renewed confidence among
black Americans that they can change things. Whether this manifests itself
in new struggles in the months and years ahead remains to be seen.

It should be noted that while racism among whites has diminished, racism
remains powerful, and racial oppression remains institutionalised throughout
the country. Obama won 53% of the vote, smaller than would be expected given
the low level of support to outgoing President George Bush's discredited
administration and the extent of Democratic Party victories in the
congressional elections. Whites are increasingly polarised on race.

By institutionalised racial oppression, I mean the facts of housing and job
discrimination, and the resulting disparities between blacks and whites in
education, unemployment, life expectancy, average income and so forth. It is
these sorts of issues a new black liberation movement would have to take up,
issues which relate to the whole working class.

The third thing I think we should note in the election is the impact of the
deepening economic downturn. It was this that swung many white workers, who
never thought they would vote for a black person, to vote for Obama against
Republican candidate John McCain. They hope that a Democrat will do better
on the economy than Bush has. This factor, which only began to be reflected
in polls at the end of the campaign, tipped the scales in states like
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and the Southern states of Virginia and North
Carolina, as well as others. High hopes have been raised among black,
Latino, Asian and white workers that an Obama administration will do
something to help them as the economy spirals downward.

The economic crisis and the Wall Street bank bailouts have enraged working
people. It is a kind of primitive radicalisation, a new sense that something
is very wrong with the system. But this is causing a sharp polarisation
among whites, too. McCain tapped into this with his own denunciations of
"Wall Street" and "the government" coupled with thinly disguised, but loud
and shrill, appeals to racism.

That racism remains deep among many millions of whites has been reflected in
expressions of deep anger that Obama was elected, some documented on
mainstream TV. This is especially true in the South, but has manifested
across the country. There have been "hundreds" of incidents of cross
burnings, racial epithets scrawled on cars and homes, Black figures hung
from nooses, and other incidents according the Southern Poverty Law Center,
which tracks hate crimes, since the election.

Some of these included the admission by four North Carolina State University
students that they spray-painted "let's shoot that nigger in the head." In a
rural general store in Maine, a sign read "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," where
people could make bets as to the day Obama would be killed ("Stabbing,
shooting, roadside bombs, they all count"). Second graders on a school bus
in Idaho chanted "assassinate Obama".

Most incidents have occurred in the South, including one church marquee that
denounced Obama as a "Muslim" who will install a "wicked" government. The
South was governed by a wing of the Democratic Party, up until the
mid-1960s, known as the "Dixiecrats". They enforced the Jim Crow system and
were part of Franklin Roosevelt's coalition in the 1930s and '40s,
supporting his "social-democratic" economic policies in return for his
support of Jim Crow.

But when the national Democratic Party came out for civil rights legislation
under the impact of the black movement in the mid-1960s, the Dixiecrats
became Republicans. Many whites deeply resented that the federal government
had "imposed" on them the dissolution of apartheid. Beginning with Richard
Nixon in 1968, the Republicans launched their "Southern strategy" to appeal
to white racists there, which helped them win national as well as state and
local elections. The "Southern strategy" took some blows in this election,
with Virginia and North Carolina defecting to Obama.

With the new confidence among blacks and other non-whites, in the context of
the "primitive radicalisation" of tens of millions of workers including
whites, I believe we are entering a new period. How long this gestation
period lasts before we see new explosive struggles remains to be seen. It
took from the stock market crash of 1929 until the first battles in 1934
before there was an upsurge of workers' struggles in the 1930s.

We have seen one positive step forward in the context of a defeat registered
in the election. Proposition 8, an amendment to the state constitution in
California that took away the right to marry for gay men and lesbians that
the California State Supreme Court had affirmed earlier in the year, passed
by 52% in a referendum. But gays, lesbians and their supporters didn't take
this lying down. There were immediate militant demonstrations across the
state, organised by amateurs through the internet. On November 15, there
were some 300 demonstrations in cities in every state, often targeting the
Mormon church which poured tens of millions into the effort to pass
Proposition 8. 

The effect of these mass actions was to cause a split in the Prop 8 forces
between the openly anti-gay groups and the covert ones, who began to bleat
that they were not anti-gay rights in general but only on this issue. (The
"moderate" ads for Prop 8 appealed to fears that gays and lesbians seek to
"convert" children to homosexuality.) Does this militant outpouring reflect
a new mood of confidence that the powers that be can be opposed in a
meaningful way? I hope so.



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