Obama and the Ramifications of Racism

In his speech of March 18th Barack Obama opened a gate through which Americans, if they are sufficiently mature, can enter the path to social cohesiveness. The significance of this opportunity can be understood by delineating the profound negative impacts of racism on our society.

When trying to identify and understand these ramifications a useful question is what would America look like if it were all white? Let us begin with social services. Using this test requires absolute honesty in assessing these consequences.

Health care: All modern affluent countries, except the United States, now have some form of national health care. Many have suggested that our lack is due to our rugged western idea of self sufficiency, Why then does Canada, with the same frontier experience, have national health care? I think a better case can be made that it is due to racism. There are too many racists that believe the primary beneficiaries of such a system would be not just the poor, which all countries have, but blacks and by implication any others of different skin hue. It was Ronald Reagan who made political hay by referring to “welfare queens” and thereby soliciting race to attack much needed social services. Would Bill Clinton have been able to convert welfare into workfare if the poor had been all white? Which is to say would compassion, not to mention the need for social stability, not have been extended further if welfare recipients were all white? We have 40 million uninsured children, would that be the case if they were all white? In brief we do not have national health insurance substantially because of racism.

Crime and imprisonment: The proportion of African Americans in our prisons far outnumbers their proportion of the population. Why? First I will suggest, is that it is easier to imprison a black person because of racism. Additionally the majority of those in prison these days are due to drug related incidents. Is it not clear that our drug laws have created a large, but illegal, economy by which the poor can get some of the benefits of a rich society? Is not a substantial portion of the poor black? One need only ask whether if these drug offenders were all white would we have such harsh sentences and such a minor emphasis on remedial treatment? Would we not be much more circumspect in defining drug crimes lest our children wind up in prison? Is there not a lesson to be learned from Great Britain, in which until the influx of dark skinned people from the erstwhile colonies after World War II, the police carried no guns? I think it is clear that crime has been defined and prosecuted by reference to race. We can attribute a substantial proportion of our crime as well as the enormous investment in our prison system to racism.

Education: If this society were all white would we, the wealthiest nation on earth, tolerate the run down schools still found in the separate-but-equal states in the South and dark skinned poor ghettoes of the North? Why the white flight that devastated so many urban schools? A society’s future hangs on the quality of its children’s education, yet we have left this increasingly to private wealth focused on the children of the affluent. What is the real reason for charter schools? Because of racism we are sacrificing the education of our young and the future of our society.

Foreign affairs: If this country can resolve, or at least substantially mitigate, its racism it will then be in a position to resume a leadership role in our planet’s development. We can once again make the Declaration of Independence available as a stimulus for human rights.

The military. After the Vietnam War the American military decided to never again deal with the popular uprising that put an end to their Vietnam enterprise. They persuaded the politicians to authorize an all volunteer military. Among the various nefarious outcomes of that decision, it placed the burden of staffing the military on the poor who, in search of sustenance and a future, saw the opportunity for improving their situation. That the military knew that the burden would fall disproportionately on people of color because of their high percentage of the poor, is evidenced by the vigorous effort they have made against discrimination. The military could not function with the level of divisiveness found in the population as a whole. However, the result is that the people we send to kill and be killed are disproportionately people of color.

Politics: As long as racism remains unaddressed the body politic will remain divided and the common people, lacking the power of cohesion, will remain the manipulated pawns of wealth and its multifarious minions.

This is, of course, just a sampling of the profound consequences of racism for Americans and their society. The price paid in alienation, personal ambivalences and distrust is even more extensively pervasive than the factors listed above. We in the United States constitute a critical experiment as a foretaste of what is going to be required to bring our planet’s population together to solve our mutual problems such as global warming and overpopulation. If mankind cannot make it in this wealthiest of countries, what hope is there for the rest of the world?

Sixty five years ago Gunnar Myral in his epic study for the Carnegie Foundation titled An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy pointed out that racism was central to America’s future. It found that the fundamental weakness in the American democracy was the deep conflict between the liberalism expressed in our founding documents and the pervasive role of slavery in the economic development of our society.

I think it is evident that Barack Obama is prepared to lead this nation toward a mitigation of this centuries-old, massively debilitating, affliction. It is possible, if those of good will and good sense are energetic enough, to turn the 2008 election into a process to begin healing this deep wound in our society, which in consequence, would do much to address these other issues that dominate this election.

Bob Newhard

A Nation of War Lovers

While we are kept focused on terrorism both abroad and at home, there is I believe, a deeper reason why our country continues to engage in war. It goes beyond imperialism, beyond fighting terrorism, beyond even an uncontrollable thirst for oil. I suggest the United States and its citizens have become addicted to war. We have become economically, culturally, and psychologically addicted.

We may deny it. But let’s look at the evidence.

Economic addiction

Our economy, to a huge extent, depends upon military expenditures. Straight up, as expressed in the United States budget for 2007, the Department of Defense (A euphemism for what used to be called the War Department.) appropriation is $439.3 billion. However, this does not include that portion of the Department of Energy budget devoted to developing and maintaining our nuclear capability nor does it include the cost of caring for the veterans of our wars in the Veteran’s Administration budget, nor does it include the direct appropriations for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars; this total is about 626.1 billion dollars. All this money, of course creates jobs as it did in Hitler’s Germany. All of these expenditures ripple through the economy providing jobs and income for all kinds of businesses from grocery stores to small tangential manufacturers. I have yet to find a study tracing all the economic implications of the military budget. I think it would show we are far more dependent upon the military than we think we are. To get a feel for the implications of this kind of influence it is useful to think of what our society would look and feel like if those expenditures were directed to the environmental, educational, and social necessities of the United States and the world. All people engaged in such efforts could believe they were contributing to a better world instead of hiding out from the terrorists we continue to produce. Considerations of this sort come closer to getting at the true cost of militarism.

Cultural addiction:

Sixty-six years (1941 to 2007) of a standing army have had deep cultural effects. One study has indicated that the military is the most trusted institution of our society. See a series of recent polls at http://www.pollingreport.com/institut.htm; this despite the distrust of many of the Founding Fathers. A fundamental concern of the Constitutional Convention was the existence of a standing army. The following is from the manual of the U. S. Army Officer Candidate School. “In the Constitutional Convention, there was still traditional fear of a standing army, which excited the opponents of a strong government. In truth, the military clauses of the Constitution follow a cautious compromise course between the hopes of those who favored greater military strength and the fears of those who anticipated a military despotism.”

Popular culture has, through advertising, become a significant influence on young people. In 2006 the military had an advertising and recruitment budget of 1.4 billion dollars. Thus you see frequent ads of tanks galloping over terrain and technological whiz-bang combat environments directed at young people. The Army even has an online videogame (http://www.americasarmy.com/) introducing young people to war and combat. The Marines have an auxiliary called the Young Marines who are clothed in combat fatigues and boots and carry simulated rifles all in the stated interest of developing their character. One can become a Young Marine at age eight. This, I suggest, is pernicious cultural penetration of the worst form, reminding one of the Hitler Youth.

Psychological addiction:

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a piece in 1983 titled The Worst Addiction of Them All. In it he compared the addiction of what he called “war preparers” to that of alcohol and gambling addicts. There is a psychological rush as a new war is prepared for. Barbara Tuchman, in her book on Europe preceding World War I noted that English and German university students in their get-togehers openly acknowledged that they would likely be going to war with each other and viewed it as a great adventure. This nation has been kept on the edge of war or at war for over sixty years. I suggest it has become addicted to the continuing excitement as demonstrated in the best selling videogames.

Some time ago I saw a documentary about a coffee farmer in Africa. He had hired a local tribe to harvest his coffee. However, the men of the tribe soon found cause to go to war with an adjacent tribe leaving the women to (disgustedly) pick the coffee. The documentary showed the men chasing each other with spears in the presence of the women picking coffee. There were deaths involved.

I mention these to illustrate the profound human compulsion for war. However, this inclination has been amplified by technology and in the United States, as earlier in various European countries, by a lust for empire. Initially it did not seem so. Our infant nation had suffered enough at the hands of the British Empire. Washington warned against foreign entanglements. But as population increased and greed found fertile ground in the wilderness to the west we manufactured the myth of Manifest Destiny and set about decimating the indigenous peoples. It did not look like imperialism because it was done within our own self-declared borders. However within thirty five years of the country’s founding we promulgated the Monroe Doctrine by which the countries of the world were notified that we would not tolerate their colonialism in the western hemisphere, in effect declaring the whole hemisphere our colony. We were off to the imperial races. In that short a time we had forgotten what the Founding Fathers understood so well.

What to do? Kurt Vonnegut states that we as a nation should do as alcoholics and gamblers do as the first stage of recovery. We need to admit that we have this addiction. As part of thi, I think the history books we require our children to read should demonstrate the honesty of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. We should insist on honesty in our media. We should begin to use our resources to improve the lot of mankind, which is the best defense any nation can deploy. Can this be done to any effective extent? After World War II the United States, understanding that World War II was a consequence of the deprivations that the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I imposed upon the German people, created the Marshall Plan. We saw the need for a world body representing all peoples of the world, hence the United Nations. In doing these things we were acknowledging the earlier mistakes. The time is long overdue when we should undertake the same reassessment regarding our propensity toward war.

Bob Newhard