For years, St. Louis American editorial board member Mike Jones and activist attorney Eric E. Vickers have engaged in lively email exchanges on the issues of the day, frequently copying colleagues in local black media and activist circles. Call it an ongoing black Socratic dialogue. This week the EYE lets everybody else in on the action. The starting point is Jones’ column in the April edition of The American, “Ferguson and the football stadium.”
Eric E. Vickers: Mike, I was just reading in The American your decoding of what white folks mean when they say, “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.”) So true. Now, decode for me what it means when black folks say that same thing.
Mike Jones: “I understand, Masta.”
Eric E. Vickers: LOL! Now, one other decoding: What do you mean in the article when you say that “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”? Is that like Malcolm saying that it don’t matter how many degrees a brother might have, to white folks he’s still a [N-word]? Make it plain, brother.
Mike Jones: While the Malcolm comment is applicable to the same portion of the white population I’m referring to, that’s not what I was talking about.
America was founded on one organizing principle, and it’s not capitalism or democracy. America is organized on white male privilege. Every public policy and the entire cultural infrastructure was designed to support and protect white male privilege.
It’s in this context you have to understand the two roles of the president of the United States. He’s obviously the head of the government and therefore the political leader of the country. And the fact that Barak Obama could be that leader says the country has travelled a distance on race that you or I would have considered impossible when we were in our twenties.
But it’s his personal success and the racial progress that has created this existential angst for a sizable portion of the white population. Here’s what I mean. America doesn’t have a king, so the president is not only the head of the government but also the iconic symbol of the country. Think about England. The prime minister is in charge of the government, but the queen is England. Remember at the founding of the country many wanted George Washington to be king.
The head of government is a temporal thing, but the symbol of a country is permanent and constant. His person may change, but never what he represents, hence the phrase, “The king is dead, long live the king!”
For a country founded on white male privilege, a black male president is an oxymoron. White Americans committed to white privilege have no emotional or psychological place for a black man as president of the United States. That’s why they’re always someplace between denial and rage. I used that language purposefully – this isn’t political, it’s clinical.
Black folks (listening to white folks) who think they can find a way for us “to find common ground” would probably try to pet a rabid dog.
Eric E. Vickers: I had never thought of it that way – with the president’s position to the white culture being that of both a king, symbolically and psychologically, and also the head of the government. Maybe this explains why, although Barack is perceived as having white support by both blacks and whites, in the last election 59 percent of whites voted against him. I figured your thinking was a little more in depth and complex than Malcolm’s statement.
P.S. With this latest police shooting in Jennings, I am still trying to sort through what this portends and how it all ends.
This was a County cop shooting, and I was thinking that, as I recall, there are a couple of blacks on the County police board. I was thinking that maybe I need to revise my thinking and general philosophy that we not attack each other because we are not the source of our problem, and that doing so only deflects us from attacking the real problem – i.e., the white power structure.
However, that structure seems so immovable and impenetrable when it comes to the law enforcement system that maybe we need to put the heat on our own. If we can’t change the system, then maybe we can at least get the satisfaction of changing the system having blacks comfortably supporting it. What you think?
Mike Jones: You are on target about who should be our focus. If Franz Fanon and Derrick Bell are correct about the intractable nature of racism, then it’s futile to think we can change that.
What we have to do is make the system intellectually illegitimate to the black community. It already is emotionally. You do that by forcing black interlocutors to choose between us and the system – eliminate any middle ground.
We don’t need inclusion, we need change. If they’re not for change, we don’t need them. If we don’t need them, they become useless to white folks and they’ll lose their neocolonial position. Think of this like the difference between the ANC and the Zulus in South Africa.
Eric E. Vickers: I understand the analogy. However, the ANC/Nelson Mandela attacked the apartheid regime, not the Zulus. Am I right on this? So does that argue against us attacking our own?
Mike Jones: The ANC maintained a posture that there was no moral or political equivalent between the ANC’s position and the Zulu position on how to oppose the South African regime. By drawing sharp distinctions, they empowered the South African people to draw their own conclusions about the proper strategy for opposing apartheid.
This is basically what I’m talking about. If you are black and holding a position of authority or influence, you should always be accountable for how you are performing relative to creating positive change or how you are educating the community about what structural barriers are prohibiting that progress.
Really, everything I’ve done with The American has been about how do get a real discussion of an informed black perspective looks like that can explain and evaluate all these public policy issues. Drawing distinctions, pointing out differences or contradictions is not attacking, it’s clarifying and educating.
Dyson vs. West
At this point, Chris King, managing editor of The American, joined the exchange, writing, “Mike on POTUS is so much more interesting than Dyson on West on Obama,” and shared the link to a mammoth takedown of Cornel West by Michael Eric Dyson in The New Republic.
Dyson argued that West has moved from profound philosopher to shallow celebrity who maintains a personal grudge against Obama and presents himself as a prophet without proof. In one laugh line, Dyson argued that West is the public intellectual equivalent of Mike Tyson.
American publisher and executive editor Donald M. Suggs then added, “Whether the public takedown of Cornel West was appropriate or not, his argument (even if personal and self-serving) made some valid points about West.”
“It’s thoughtful and accurate. Any critique of Obama has to start with his historic achievement and a political pushback not seen since Reconstruction,” Jones responded.
“Dyson’s motives really don’t matter as long as the assessments are accurate and have an empirical basis. No matter how great the player, his star will fade. When is last time you heard anybody really talk about Mike Jordan? All people want to know about Kobe Bryant is when is he leaving, and folks have to be reminded that LeBron James is still the greatest player in the game. Last question: Who the [expletive] is Oscar Robertson? This is the kind of intellectual challenging I meant when I was talking to Eric.”
