Anne Wortham is
Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois
State University and continuing
Visiting Scholar at Stanford
University's Hoover
Institution. She is a member of the
American Sociological Association and the
American Philosophical Association. She
has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty
Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of
the Year by the National Association for Equal
Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall
1988 she was one of a select group of
intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's
television series, "A World of Ideas." The
transcript of her conversation with Moyers has
been published in his book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of
Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race
Consciousness which analyzes how race
consciousness is transformed into political
strategies and policy issues. She has
published numerous articles on the implications
of individual rights for civil rights policy,
and is currently writing a book on theories of
social and cultural marginality. Recently,
she has published articles on the significance
of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in
education, the politics of victimization and the
social and political impact of political
correctness. Shortly after an interview in
2004 she was awarded tenure.
This
article by her is something
else.
No He
Can't
by Anne
Wortham
Fellow
Americans,
Please
know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated
South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I
wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for
president. Most importantly, I am not race
conscious. I do not require a black
president to know that I am a person of worth,
and that life is worth living. I do not
require a black president to love the ideal
of America
.
I cannot join you in your
celebration. I feel no elation.
There is no smile on my face. I am
not jumping with joy. There are no tears
of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions
and behavior to come from me, I would have to
deny all that I know about the requirements of
human flourishing and survival - all that I know
about the history of the
United States of
America , all
that I know about American race relations, and
all that I know about Barack Obama as a
politician. I would have to deny the
nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has
come to America .
Most importantly, I would have to abnegate
my certain understanding that you have chosen to
sprint down the road to serfdom that we have
been on for over a century. I would have
to pretend that individual liberty has no value
for the success of a human life. I would
have to evade your rejection of the slender reed
of capitalism on which your success and mine
depend. I would have to think it somehow
rational that 94 percent of the 12 million
blacks in this country voted for a man because
he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to
play the race card), and that they were joined
by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted
for him because he doesn't look like them.
I would have to wipe my mind clean of all
that I know about the kind of people who have
advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill
posts in his administration - political
intellectuals like my former colleagues at
the Harvard University 's
Kennedy School of Government.
I would
have to believe that "fairness" is the
equivalent of justice. I would have to
believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a
new spirit of service, in a new service of
sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I
would have to accept the premise of a man that
economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up,"
and who arrogantly believes that he can will it
into existence by the use of government force.
I would have to admire a man who thinks
the standard of living of the masses can be
improved by destroying the most productive and
the generators of wealth.
Finally,
Americans, I would have to erase from my
consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming,
crying, cheering people in Grant
Park, Chicago irrationally
chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would
have to wipe all memory of all the times I have
heard politicians, pundits, journalists,
editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals
declare that capitalism is dead - and no one,
including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to
their assumption that the particular version of
the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want
to replace with their own version of
anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent
to capitalism.
So you have made
history, Americans. You and your children
have elected a black man to the office of the
president of the United
States , the
wounded giant of the world. The battle
between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and
that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George
McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie
Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last
gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The
self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs
can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having
elected a black person. So, toast
yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s
yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast
yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee
Harvard, Princeton , Yale,
Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have
elected not an individual who is qualified to be
president, but a black man who, like the
pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do
Something! You now have someone who has
picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great
Society. But you have also foolishly
traded your freedom and mine - what little there
is left - for the chance to feel
good.
There is nothing in me that
can share your happy
obliviousness. | | | | | | | |