Of course we have a long history of institutional racism in this country that was supported by deep seated racial prejudice among whites. Did you think I didn’t know that?

But saying that is not the same as saying that white business elites look out for other whites—which is basically what the words I quoted say. That strikes me as something of an overgeneralization, one I didn’t think you meant to make, which was why, as the title of my post indicates, I wasn’t challenging what I took to be your argument but the careless way in which you expressed it. That is to say, I was trying to read what you wrote so as to make it as plausible as possible.

I think white business elites mostly look out for themselves. Most of the time, that means not challenging racist social structures and ideas. And some of the time, that means actively supporting them, for example when business elites use racial appeals to split the vote of working class whites or take advantage of the color line to keep wages of unskilled workers as low as possible. Occasionally, however, that means supporting the cause of blacks. For example, a not insignificant portion of Southern white businessmen supported the cause of integration. They knew that the future of the Southern economy depended on air conditioning, lax labor laws, interstate highways, and the end of segregation.

I also don’t think it is fair or accurate to say that some good whites stood with blacks during the civil rights movement while the vast majority of whites were on the other side. The white population was seriously split about civil rights. By the early sixties, a majority of Southern whites opposed de jure segregation and a huge majority of Northern whites did so as well—albeit many of them did not recognize the de facto segregation practiced in the North. And, afterwards, there was a wide range of opinion among whites about issues such as affirmative action.

Over-heated sixties rhetoric that doesn’t recognize the variety of white opinions on racial issues—and the complicated ways in which social structures were institutionally racist—is not only factually wrong but can lead to political action that is counter-productive—as it frequently did in the sixties and seventies. Nor does it really help to re-fight battles of the sixties about the relative importance of class and race—or to try to tar people with the communist label. It really is pretty obvious from the end of my post that I agree with you about race and class being independent sources of oppression. Why would you think I disagree?

While I thought that “How the Irish Became White” was a clever title for a book, I never thought the argument of that book or the five or six others that used variants of the title, was terribly plausible, for a number of reasons. The Irish and the Jews were persecuted because of their ethnic and religious differences from WASPS. That kind of prejudice is a lot like the racism suffered by blacks. But it is not exactly the same as racism and the Irish and Jews never suffered in this country the way blacks did. (To begin with, they put themselves on the boats.) Yes, scientific racism was used to dehumanize all of us and many others, too. But I don’t remember many Jews being forced, for example, to be unwitting subjects of medical experiments in America. I know that advanced opinion says that skin color is a social construction. But it seems to me that sometimes social constructions take physical differences into account and the physical fact of differences in skin color has contributed to making racism more virulent and harder to eradicate than bigotry against the Irish and the Jews (and the Poles and Slavs, etc..)
And, to the extent that “becoming white” means adopting WASP cultural ideals, I would challenge the notion that this describes either the reality or the ideal of assimilation. Irish and Jewish Americans still constitute distinctive sub-cultures. Most of us are proud of our distinctiveness and, at least my generation of Jewish Americans has tried to emphasize rather than deemphasize them. That distinctiveness will be gone the day when most of the descendants of my landsmen eat corned beef on white bread with mayonnaise, vote Republican, and teach their children not to be argumentative. It ain’t going to happen soon.

It is really important to recognize this kind of cultural distinctiveness, for two reasons. First, the kind of integration and tolerance I want is not the kind that says that Irish, Jews and African Americans can share in the elite jobs, but only if give up their distinctive identity. True tolerance allows us to retain our own cultural styles and ideals while rising economically. And, second, the other side of the same coin is that the members of our own group shouldn’t say that we are not true to our identity if we take those jobs and have been educated at, say, (formerly) wasp dominated Ivy League institutions. That kind of identity politics is one of the reasons that people ask whether Barack Obama is really black and why some people think that Seth Williams—who I consider a friend, who I supported the last time he ran, and who would make a great DA—is suspect because he has many white supporters.

That is not to say that I oppose identity politics and think that people shouldn’t organize on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. I have no idea why you would think that I oppose identity politics. Like most any other kind of politics, identity politics has strands that make sense and are helpful to attaining progressive goals and strands that do not.
If I have any complaint about identity politics in this city it is that I think it has been corrupted by our political factionalism. It is a serious problem when leaders of identity groups use their position and endorsements to gain points with one faction or another inside the party instead of fighting for the cause for which they claim to be speaking.

And if all this effort to distinguish between helpful and unhelpful identity politics or the ways in which class and race reinforce one another or cut against one another seems like splitting hair to you, Ray, all I can say is that it is making clear distinctions helps us think clearly. And I hope that is the aim of these interchanges, not using broad rhetorical strokes for their political effect.

A lot of politics these days relies on faux intellectualizing in which politicians make arguments or, more accurately, advance conclusions that are not mean to be taken seriously as the product of serious thought but, rather, are meant as gesture to certain interest groups. These little gestures or genuflections are how politicians stake out their positions vis a vis the various interest groups in order to show that they are sensitive to their concerns. So one politicians goes in front of the teachers union and denounces merit pay and vouchers, positioning himself as their friend while another—who undoubtedly wouldn’t get the teacher’s support anyway—goes in front of the teachers and supports merit pay, in order to show that he is independent and no pawn of labor. One politician comes out in favor of black history month and gives a moving speech about our history of oppression in order to show that he understands the concerns of blacks while another denounces Sister Souljah to show that he won’t be a patsy for black leaders like Jesse Jackson. One (Republican) denounces Democratic health care plans as socialism in order to show the conservative base that he is one of them while another, who already has support in that base, talks about the importance of extending health care to children in order to show that he is a compassionate conservative.

This ritual gesturing and genuflection is sometimes indicative of where a politician’s heart is. But often these little rituals are simply political moves of the moment. And they never really tell you what politicians really think about some issue if that is, they are thinking at all, which is pretty rare. If they do think, politicians mostly can’t tell you what they think, because to do so would be for them to acknowledge that issues are complicated, there are good and bad reasons on most sides of most policy issues and that, given these complexities and the necessity of finding political support for any particular proposal, where they come out on a specific piece of legislation will always be a matter of a delicate balance of moral, practical and political considerations.

You just asked me:

“In the face of rampantant individual and societal racism in the US, how well do people of color fare in Philadelphia and how well does our political system serve the interests of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other people of color here?”

Previously you ask me

“I do wonder Marc if you disagree with Black Philly Dem that there is a history of cultural oppression and colonization (and now globalization) that has pushed the economic self-interest of white people (and i mean not just white business owners, but all white people who benefit from white privilege) all across the world?”

And you wrote

“Are you seriously telling me you don't think white people have always looked out for white people? There are many individual white people who have stood shoulder to shoulder with people of color in a variety of struggles, but there is an overarching system of institutionalized and majoratarian racism over most of the history of this country--that continues to this day--that must be acknowledged”

And

“Anyone, in any under-represented group who gives up their right to organize their own identity community as a bloc is dumb. I've noticed you favor a more humanistic approach to discussions about race, but I do not.”

Ray, you are not looking for any serious analysis of the issues of race and class when you ask those questions or make those remarks some of which I can’t even understand (e.g. what is a humanistic approach to race and why does it lead anyone to oppose identity politics?). While there is a very important kernel of truth to much of what you say, your arguments are so over-generalized and oversimplified as to make it impossible for anyone with any intellectual integrity to simply say yes or no. Instead, I’ve been trying to show you how you can ask better, more revealing questions by making useful distinctions and qualifying the alternatives you present.

But you will have none of that and keep asking the same general questions again and again. It doesn’t seem to matter to you that your analysis of jazz is wrong, even if that shows that the whole notion of cultural oppression you keep using need some real reworking. Nor does it matter that racial attitudes among whites are a lot more complex than you acknowledge even if that shows that your analysis of the recent Mayoral election and Seth’s electoral prospects are likely to be misguided. And you really don’t seem concerned to tease out the circumstance where class is more important than race and vice versa even if that would help you understand why, for example, Michael Nutter did very well with middle class and some other whites and why Seth could do the same. You never responded to my analysis of the conditions under which white businessmen encourage or discourage racism. Or, to take another point which we have not discussed but should, if we really want to get at blackphillydemocrat’s frustration, it really is important to understand why the major black politicians in the city have not delivered for their constituents and yet are also unwilling to challenge the political system of which they are a part. That kind of analysis would be a lot more useful than simply bemoaning the white racism which everyone knows is still far from extinguished.

Those detailed questions are worth thinking about and I’m happy to do it. But you will have none of it and keep pushing me to agree with your vague and reductive statements about the racism in the history of our country and culture and in white people today in order to genuflect towards some “position” on racial questions.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to engage in that kind of song and dance at your request. I didn’t do it during my campaign, why the hell should I do that when you ask? To show you or anyone else that my heart is in the right place on racial and class issues? Anyone who has the least bit awareness of the issues I’ve worked so hard on in the last five years—raising the minimum wage, fighting for transit funding, bringing inclusionary zoning to Philadelphia, overcoming racial disputes in Mt. Airy and reorienting West Mt. Airy Neighbors to deal with some of the least well off, and mostly black sections of Mt. Airy, and many others-know where my heart is on racial and class issues. Anyone who knows who I’ve worked with, would know the same thing, And anyone who heard me talk in detail during the campaign about how our broken political system is systematically biased against blacks, or about the need for investment in commercial corridors in order to create locally, black owned businesses or about the transit improvements we need in the city or about equitable tax policies or about how crime strangles black communities—also knows the same thing.

I got an incredibly positive reception from every black audience to which I spoke during the campaign and standing ovations from a few of them. And I did it by talking seriously and passionately about the issues that concern the people I addressed. I didn’t genuflect and I didn’t gesture and I didn’t pander. But, partly because I didn’t do that but, instead talked about what I would try to do in Council, people knew where my heart was and on more than one occasion grabbed me and hugged me as I walked out of the room because they knew it.

So, again, I’m simply not going to take your bait and say things I know to be oversimplified, over-generalized and just a little untrue in order to satisfy your demands for genuflection to people you don’t represent. Instead, if you want to continue this, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing—pointing out how intellectually lazy and uniformed much of what you have been saying in this thread is.

Now, the thing I don’t understand is why you keep asking me the same thing over and over instead of engaging me in some of these details. My first thought was that you are simply trying to embarrass me since you have never been terribly supportive of my electoral aspirations. It never occurred to me that you might actually take the questions you are asking seriously. Or maybe its that you really haven’t worked closely with blacks in any issue work or seriously engaged them in discussions about public policy and you, like a lot of other white people in the same position, mistakenly believe that you need to engage in this kind of genuflection in order to show where you stand. Or maybe you have just been doing electoral politics too long and have begun to think that the kinds of questions and statements people make on say, Meet the Press, constitute serious intellectual interchange.

Well they don’t. And you are far too smart and, most of the time, far too knowledgeable and well informed, to really believe that and to keep going down this route. If only for your own sake, I’m certainly not going to enable you by playing along. .

YPP much of the time engages in serious, detailed discussions of important issues—and you are usually part of why that happens. But if we are going to start playing ideological pin the tail on the donkey, then this place will be useless. It really would be a shame if you reduced the level of discourse here to the kind of pabulum that so fills electoral politics. If that happens, it won’t be with my help.

My response was to Ray's initial claim which seemed to be that whites had somehow stolen, bowdlerized, and commercialized jazz and thus that blacks had suffered from some kind of cultural oppression. As I pointed out, this claim is, in multiple ways, nonsense.

In particular, despite all the oppression and inequality they faced, jazz musicians have developed an incredible body of music of the highest integrity. And the great jazz musicians have continued to be open to divergent musical traditions without bowing to commercial pressure or losing their identity. You can, for example, criticize Miles Davis’s music in the early seventies but anyone who thinks that he was selling out by making music that is hard for many people to appreciate or even listen to, doesn’t know what he is talking about.

And both blacks and whites have commercialized jazz. Ever hear Grover Washington on his bad days? Or George Benson on his? Do you realize that many of the musicians on smooth jazz radio stations are black (and much of the audience for these radio stations are black, I believe.) And that despite the fact that lots of us who really love jazz facetiously say those stations play "white jazz?"

The statement that you say "seems to completely ignore the incontrovertable fact that racism and exploitation of black musicians as well as a focus on specifically non-Western and specifically non-white racial heritage are inextricably fused into the history and development of Jazz" does in fact ingnore those facts because I'm not addressing them and they are not relevant to the one very specific question, whether blacks in jazz were oppressed because some of their music was commercialized by others. Have black jazz musicians suffered from exploitation? Of course. Have they suffered from exploitation in that Kenny G and Grover Washington sell lots of CDs? I just don't see that as exploitation. And even if it is, I don't see it as racially based exploitation.

That was my point, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t know why I can’t make it without engaging in some ritualistic denunciation of the racism black jazz musicians suffered or the critical importance of blacks and black concerns to the history of jazz.

Do you need me to say again that jazz was a music invented by blacks whose greatest practioners were black? Will you be enlightened if I point out, again, that jazz was influenced by both African and European musical practices and forms and that it has been reinvigorated by white and black popular music of various kinds. Will you become more knowledgable if I point out that the opportunities and income of jazz musicians was reduced because of racism? Were you not aware that racial issues and the specific concerns political, economic, and religious concerns of African Americans has influenced some—but not all—jazz. (That actually is the most interesting point precisely because no one has traced out the nature and variations in that influence.)

I haven't tried to deny the importance of racism in our culture and politics. That's a theme I have addressed on my blog many times by addressing specific issues in which racism becomes important, such as the gentrification issue or the multiple ways in which our politics is broken. (And by the way, I should have mentioned the gentrification issue in my reponse to Ray. I don't recall hearing any other candidate for any office talk about that issue during the campaign.) As I said in my most response to Ray, I've been pushing people to address the specific ways in which racism has and has not been important.

If you want to talk about the way racism influence poliics and culure either in Philadelphia or elsewhere in detail, I'm happy to take part. I'd hoped that some of remarks critical of Ray and BlackPhillyDemocrat might lead to this kind of discussion. And I'm very disappointed that anyone would think my questioning of their remarks is somehow a dismissal of the importance of racism. It is very sad that, at this point in our history, progressive people we need ritualistic denunciation of racism more than we need an analysis of it's role in our life and a program for overcoming it in its various forms.

PS Where have you been listening to jazz? The places I go in Philly and, a little less so in New York are almost always racially mixed. Its not like Chicago where there used to be, and for all I know, still are white blues clubs and black blues clubs.