You may be familiar with the expression “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” It’s a more clever way of saying that talking about you is not the same thing as talking to you. Recently America has really, really been talking about us but, as has always been the case when the subject of race is involved, (white) America is not talking to us.
When America is involved in a conversation about race or ethnicity, it’s never an interracial or interethnic conversation. It’s really always been a conversation among white Americans about what’s the appropriate white position on these people. The 2016 presidential campaign is no exception.
Let’s begin with the fascist demagogue who’s the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. Over the last several weeks, he’s been involved in an aggressive “outreach” to African-American voters asserting he’s the best option for black Americans with the inspiring “what have you got to lose?” argument.
This should come as no surprise, but he’s really not talking to black voters. In fact, he cares nothing about black Americans, never has and never will. Trump’s clown act on this issue is directed at that segment of white Americans who have no real interest in racial justice, but don’t like to feel like bigots. You know, the “I never discriminated against black people” or “my ancestors never owned slaves and I’ve worked for everything I got” crowd. They prefer that their politicians use racial dog whistles and not racial bull horns when appealing to their latent biases.
So the Trump El Duce act of the last 14 months is a little off-putting for them. His language, however, paints the black community with one stereotypical bush that speaks to all of the implied biases of his white audience. Basically, his pitch is: “All these black people are all screwed up, but they can’t help it, and I’ll fix it.”
Now let’s talk about the career opportunist who’s the Democratic nominee, our friend, Hillary Clinton. Clinton speaks to a mythology about America: that the American people are “better than this” on questions of race. This is an important intellectual construct for people like Clinton, because it allows them to ignore the structural nature of American racism and reduce everything to individual acts of bigotry.
Let’s examine her language of late. She’s described Trump as some kind of individual anomaly who has magically hijacked the Republican Party and infected it with this racial animus virus from the radical fringe of white America. In order to make this argument, you have to ignore the entire history of race in America and, specifically, the Republican Party’s record on race and politics for the last 50 years. For Clinton to make this case, she would have to be actively ignorant of American history or totally disingenuous – and she is too smart to be actively ignorant.
The last group at the table never gets commented on: the African-American pundit class on cable TV. Every four years, about this time, these brothers and sisters are sitting in tall cotton. Now don’t get confused, they’re not representing your perspective; they’re the colorized version of the Democratic or Republican storyline on race. I’m not going to discuss the African-American Republican surrogates, except to remind you that Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner were betrayed by black folks.
This brings us to the black Democratic surrogates and the black mainstream media political analysts. Their role is much more insidious because of our strong affinity for images that look like us and sound like they’re advocating our perspective. But, almost to a person, they parrot what I’ve called this American myth on race.
I’m waiting for them to say that Donald Trump is not an anomaly but a reflection of the tens of millions of white Americans who genuinely feel that way, or that the undermining of black life is a structural phenomenon reinforced by historic cultural forces. It’s part of America’s DNA. This analysis brings you to a different political and policy reality.
As we approach November 8, the black community finds itself with its usual existential dilemma. Our choice is always between an implacable political adversary and an unreliable political ally. Here we go again.
Mike Jones, who has held senior policy positions in St. Louis city and county government, serves on the St. Louis American editorial board and the State Board of Education.
