“Know yourself, know your enemy. A hundred battles, a hundred victories.”
Normally, when one quotes Asian military thinkers, it’s usually Sun Tzu, the legendary strategist studied for centuries. I have instead quoted Mao Tse Tung channeling Sun Tzu.
I enjoy the idea of the convulsive fits that right-wing crazies have when confronted with a brother quoting Mao. But the real reason I’m quoting Mao is it’s the perfect advice for the issue that Post-Dispatch columnist and editorial writer Kevin Horrigan raised in his Sunday, April 12 column “The Science of Ideology.”
He summarizes a range of scientific studies that speak to the hard-wired nature of right-wing bias. In fairness, the majority of the white population of America and the St. Louis region is not made up of right-wing reactionaries, though you could draw that conclusion if all you had to judge by was the Congress or the Missouri General Assembly.
But a fair reading of American history would have to conclude that every inch of racial progress has had to overcome a yard of virulent white opposition. Every period of expansion of black rights has been followed by a pernicious, often violent, period of reaction that has only one objective – turning back that progress.
The venomous response to the idea of the presidency of Barack Obama has nothing to do with policy differences, but represents a psychotic meltdown resulting from the cognitive dissonance caused by the reality of a black president.
Because there is a real limit on how far the majority of white America or St. Louis will go in confronting, in a sustained way, the white rage that will defend white privilege, it is mandatory that black leadership develop a strategy that recognizes and accounts for this reality.
For the last 25 years, black St. Louis leadership has been charter members of the Rodney King “Can’t we all just get along?” club. We have moved from a social-justice agenda to an inclusion agenda. I would remind us of a point that Malcolm made: If you’re invited to dinner but at your place setting there’s no knife, fork or plate, then you are not a diner.
In St. Louis, we’re invited to dinner every now and then, but we’re never served. I’ll offer current examples that drive this point home.
Let’s compare the official response to the aftermath of Ferguson to the official response to the threat of the Rams going to L.A. Fundamentally, the response to Ferguson has been the creation of an under-resourced commission with no real authority, whose major responsibility is to issue a report in September.
For the Rams, the governor tasked two individuals to develop a plan to finance a new stadium for the Rams or a team to be named later, and it needs to be done yesterday. Relative to public resources, the effort to keep the Rams in St. Louis is better-funded than the Ferguson Commission!
I would like anyone to name one problem the black community has that would be solved by building a new stadium for the Rams or any other NFL team. If the answer to that question is none, then why would anybody black support it?
A more immediate and important issue is HB42 which is the current legislative vehicle for fixing the Missouri transfer law for unaccredited school districts. The fix is simple: cap the amount of money sending districts have to send receiving districts for the students transferring. A cap would support the right of students to transfer without pushing the sending district into bankruptcy and would insure the receiving district of adequate funding for the transferring students.
Currently HB42 contains no cap, and it’s not likely to get one. There is a major incentive for the receiving district voluntarily accepting a reduced amount; they don’t have to be accountable for the educational performance of transferring students for five years.
Right now, the only district that is currently adversely affected by this is Normandy, which is virtually all-black. I pose this question to the black community: Do you believe an all-white district in the same situation would be facing the same fate?
My friend and colleague Charles Jaco wrote an excellent column for The American about what white people really mean when they use certain phrases. I would like to add one more such phrase: “we have to begin the healing.” What that means is we have to help black people accept that nothing substantive will be done, and they have be okay with that.
In his groundbreaking album “History,” Michael Jackson had a song that eloquently and lyrically summed up our situation: “They Don’t Care About Us.” What’s required of black leadership is to develop strategies that can be successful given that reality.
Mike Jones is a member of The St. Louis American’s editorial board.
