PEN-L message, Re: [Pen-l] Obama and the Cult of Personality (class alignment

2 Death of a Salesman

In the America I live in "class has never trumped race" other than as a concept in ones head. In fact class trumping race makes no sense, except to those who choose to imbue this concept with a meaning. Class does not have a higher value - the meaning of trump, except as a theoretical construct, especially when it comes to second class citizenship, which is a class relations.

Second class would seem to speak to class.

Voting for Obama was not a racial act. Voting for Obama was the acting out of classes voting in favor of their perceived economic interest. This acting out indicates that a black man could become President in America. This has never happened before. Those seeing no significance in this act, or unable to admit an important juncture has been crossed, are unfamiliar with American history.

Jim Crow and racism are not identical concepts and social forms, although institutional racism of the past has also been shattered forever.

Racism or white supremacy is an ideology at least two hundred years older than Jim Crow. Jim Crow has its roots in the 1790s American North, after more than 30,000 slaves were freed. These Northern blacks were segregated to the back streets and alley ways with a complex of customs developing to keep their labor off the market. (See "The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward, the definitive work on Mr. Crow as an institution.)

Jim Crow was an institutional relation - a material system of social segregation with "black" and "white" signs indicating the social boundary between whites and blacks. With the destruction of Jim Crow and the entry of blacks into all of societyâs institutions, it becomes more difficult to maintain racism as an institutional system. Racism is not dead, but Jim Crow is dead.

Obama is the crossing of a quantitative boundary.

"No white America and no black America or brown America or straight and Gay America" contains an air of unmistakable obviousness.

This means Jim Crow and other legal and social barriers have been sufficiently collapsed for one to contemplate proletarian revolution, rather than partial emancipation based on how social groups classify and identify themselves. Does this mean anti-gay hate and conflicts have disappeared? No. It does mean you are going to jail for attacking a gay person because they are gay. I remember when this was not the case in many states in America.

A class analysis of the "meaning of Obama" does not mean saying, "Obama is a representative of capital or the imperialist bourgeoisie." This is neither a class analysis or class approach because it is presupposed that whoever is president is the executive officer of the ruling class. Class analysis means the relations and intersection of various classes as a social process.

The intersection of class in America is voiced in moral terms, rooted in our history. The middle class, or rather a layer of the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie is generally first "out of the gate." They are the first foot soldiers inspired to fight for a higher cause. Why not just look at our own history, rather than trying to imposed Lenin or a personalized concept of the meaning of class and race on events. Black people are not a race, a rather crude and vulgar characterization.

After the historical class alignment appeared, and the working class masses were won over to the cause of preserving the Union, men marched to a certain death, singing "So he died to make men holy, let us die to make them free."

I suppose, there are those who would have preferred singing another song;

"we are the workers, about to set slaves free, so we can flood the market with cheap labor." Those who voted against Obama are on the wrong side of American history.

It is not social patriotism to grasp ones own history and use it as a weapon. Let us not forget that there is a clear and unmistakable "riot" in patriotism. One can choose which side of the riot in patriotism they are going to be on. It is a mistake to believe that blacks, the Negro people of our past, hated America. What was hated was the second class citizenship.

The Obama alignment - a historically observable alignment of social forces, has freed me and you, in the most personal sense of this moment in time. History is a series of individual and personal acts and actors.

Obama declares there is no black America and a white America, and a small black section of the intelligentsia screams "racism still exists, follow me." Another small groups says, "a black is now President, so what! How does this changes class relations in America."

âClass trumps race.â

Well, elections cannot change class relations in the first place. In fact class in/as real life never trumps second class citizenship status or the meaning of the word ârace,â because they are intertwined. The fact of the matter, to obvious to dispute, is that Jim Crow is dead and a Black man is President. This means something to all of America except those who choose to make it mean nothing. That is why my story is always personal.

As a person that has lived in America for a few generations, (yes, my folks were slaves on a plantation outside of Augusta Georgia), class have never trumped second class citizen ship status. I am not a second class citizen in America today. One can only be held as a second class citizen by an institutional system that regulates their social grouping to an inferior legal status. Without the legal institutions and the laws to back them up, second class citizenship cannot be maintained.

Contrary to book learning, the fact of the matter is that our working class has been liberating itself on the basis of a host of âquantitative differences,â in as much as we are all human beings. I am sorry if this stripping away of quantitative differences does not conform to anyoneâs expectations.

I feel like I just got out of solitary confinement and was allowed to venture amongst the general prison population. Obama feels like the supreme confirmation that Jim Crow is dead and so is institutional racism. What I face is legacy.

See, I served 4 1/2 life sentences - 90 years with 60 of them in the solitary confinement called Jim Crow. During my 60 years in the prison of Jim Crow, some Marx type guy told me "class trumps race" and we have to overthrow the whole prison system and free everyone. Now I agreed with this in one part of my head because of its obviousness. If everyone is free that automatically means me to. Class trumps race.

Then this Marx guy saw one of the guards coming and runs back out into the general prison population, leaving me a book called Capital to read. I read Capital until the lights are turned out . . . in my solitary cell in the solitary prison of Jim Crow.

Every time I see the Marx guy I scream "proletarians unite," because I really liked that Marx book, . . . . I read, in the Jim Crow solitary confinement.

Something happened about the economy and they need me to work in factories on the other side of the prison and this allows escape from the Jim Crow solitary confinement. In fact that part of the prison is destroyed and remodeled and the black people and white people are in prison together, with Mexicans and a couple of Indians, but with no Jim Crow. Some of the white guys are angry because they liked the old way, but I figure "you'll get over it because the Jim Crow part of the prison no longer exists."

Now, this black guy told me upon my release from solitary confinement, "racism still exists. We shall talk with the white man for you and on your behalf."

"Some of the white folks are still mean and will never change."

In the Jim Crow prison inside the big prison the powerful guys - the turnkeys, were the black leader. Y'all know what a turnkey is. The guy with all the keys that opens the door. When you want your door open you say, "Hey turnkey." The turnkeys got power and their black intellectual mouthpieces. They played go between (social prop) between the black proletarian masses and the imperialist bourgeoisie, or rather the prison administration and the segregated black population.

I am glad for the help of these black leaders because they know how to deal with "the man." But sometimes I be thinking that I can speak for myself.

20 years after the Jim Crow prison within the prison, the whole prison done changed; the administration changed and everything been little by little integrated, but there are still some mean white guards. Another ten years passed and then we get a Black Warden.

The salesman

One aspect of the meaning of Obama as history and for "me" is the old story of the death of a salesman.

The salesman in mind is the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. There will be no more Jesse Jackson Jr., Martin Luther Kings, Malcolm Xâs, Al Sharptons or Dr. Dubois. The peculiar phenomenon of the black leader is a product of Jim Crow rather than racism. There will always be leaders and leading individuals of all hue and genders, but the black leader phenomenon, rendered historically obsolete with the legal overthrow of Jim Crow, is now practically obsolete. Institutions are more easily shattered and sweep from history than the human behavior - force of habit, that formed and took shape within the institutional relations.

Interestingly, the black leader as a social thing had its corresponding counterpart, whose highest personification was the likes of Trent Lott. Senator Lott was forced out of office after he stated, "If yâall voted for Goldwater, none of the last 30 years would have happened." (Not a verbatim quote)

Pardon, while I escort the black leader to his place in the historical museum alongside a member of the old aristocratic slave oligarchy, industrial capitalists, banking capitalist, "national capitalist," Uncle Tom and Jim Crow.

It gets interesting and personal from here.

The first populist movement of the 1890s was steered into a fascist current and resulted in the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments. Non-class movements or social movements devoid of the individuals understanding class as intersection of interest and as a struggle for power to implement programs favoring ones class, results in fascism. Our working class is ultra literate compared to the peasants of Russia. We can halt the fascist drift, by speaking up and getting the working class to read our literature. Not my literature, our literature.

As to class trumping race, right on brother. Proletarians Unite!

Obama being elected is profound.

Really.

WL
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Re: [Pen-l] Obama and the Cult of Personality (class alignment) 2