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