The car with the star

Just an amazing song by a legend. No commentary required.

Moderate White Supremacy

Haley Barbour has come under some fire for some comments--old and new--about race, the Citizens Council, and the Civil Rights movement. The most problematic of his recent statements was a suggestion that the Citizens Council movement was primarily targeted against the KKK, and helped maintain racial peace in Yazoo, Mississippi.[1]

You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.

Now it's true that the Citizens Councils didn't like the KKK, and they did organize against them. But the bulk of their activities were organized against the NAACP and other organizations that they saw as interfering in the noble southern traditions of apartheid and anxious assertions of racial supremacy. And all of their activities were aimed at preserving white supremacy, both in law and in community belief. Whereas Barbour sees them only fighting the Klan, and ignores them trying to keep the white community's boot on the neck of blacks, Matthew Yglesias has a more revealing take:

In Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s most white people were white supremacists. And within the large and powerful white supremacist community, there was a split between more moderate and more radical factions. The moderates pursued a strategy of economic coercion and the radicals pursued a strategy of violence. There was also a small minority of white proponents of racial equality. In Barbour’s home town of Yazoo City, Mississippi the moderate faction of white supremacists had the upper hand. And Barbour thinks the strength of moderate white supremacists helped create a beneficial political atmosphere in his hometown.

Hell we could call this triangulation, but really it's the classic strategy for those who want to achieve/maintain desired policies in an inhospitable climate. It is the same strategy employed by racial egalitarians in the Civil War/Reconstruction period, who sought to separate out a sphere of social equality from the spheres of political and civic equality. They recognized that they could only make gains in the latter if they forswore equality in the former.

From a 1965 NY Times article, a nice taste of this divide between moderates and extremists.

Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson made his strongest public statement against racial extremism, during an introductory speech for Senator James O. Eastland, who recently has been accussed by ultra-conservatives of 'going soft' on segregation. Referring to racial extremists, Governor Johnson said 'We're not going to be the pushing boy for that element ever again. We were not only the architects but helped build the dog house we now find ourselves in.'... Johnson, who won election on an uncompromising racist platform, asserted he would continue to fight for segregation, but through legal channels. 'Rather than accept the interpretation of laws by some bureaucrats,' he said, 'we prefer to go to the courts for their interpretation.'

I especially love that Johnson both ran on an uncompromising racist platform and still is able to refer to extremists as "that element." While the center of gravity has moved rightward on a whole series of issues, it has definitely moved to the liberal position on matters of race. 



[1] His watermelon comment is probably the most offensive in one way, but it's also weirdly ambiguous. On the one hand it is a classic racist trope. It was said, however, as a somewhat jocular warning to an aide who persisted in using racist language during an 1982 election campaign. It's possible that what upset Barbour about his aide's comments were that they were overheard. Of course, his own comments were also reported. Racist language and sentiment are a deeply ingrained part of the social and political discourse in many areas and communities of the country, south and non-south. Much of this is tied to actual policy positions, in the sense of not just believing blacks inferior and undesirable but in the belief that government and private power should be employed to sustain and strengthen white supremacy. But not all of it, and possibly not even most of it. Barbour's comments have always struck me as the latter: racist language, possibly reflecting underlying racist beliefs, but constrained by a belief in a citizenship regime that does not actively discriminate or sustain racial hierarchies. I felt similarly when Harry Reid's 'negro' comment came out. Certainly doesn't excuse it, and one should hold public officials especially to a standard in which the power of language and the reality of racism in government and society are recognized. But different than Trent Lott's comments that the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond been elected President in 1948, which are really hard to understand except as an endorsement of public and private power being deployed to maintain white supremacy. Also, the fact that Barbour, in trying to upbraid an aide for racist language, couldn't help himself but to get in a racist joke, seems sufficiently sophomoric to raise broader questions about his judgment. But sophomoric has definitely been his M.O. throughout his career, and probably explains some of his electoral appeal.

Goddamn Christmas.

I've always felt that the true Christmas spirit was captured by the Pogues' Fairytale of New York, by the Ramones' Christmas song (see below) and by the story of the gift of the Magi. Christmas for me is a fighting time, a time to reflect on relationships with people whom you love only slightly more than you resent. The Gift of the Magi fits in because, well, what the hell is wrong with those people anyways. Yes coordination does remove some of the romantic surprise, but there are considerable gains in efficiency to be made. (Also, in the version I remember, dude sells his car so that he can buy his girlfriend a comb, while she sells her hair so she can buy him some shit for his car. There seems to be an asymmetry embedded in some sexism.) So merry fucking Christmas:




The Ramones: Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight.

Damned if things aren't always the same.

From the 1962 report Education and the Disadvantaged American, published by the National Education Association:

"The problem of the the disadvantaged arises because their cultures are not compatible with modern life."

This has been boilerplate for progressives since at least the 1890s, and the underlying premise-- that the "poor did not need money but changes in their values and lifestyle" (Jeffrey 1972, p.10)--is what you get when you combine the comforting rational that the poor are poor because that is their lot in life (see human history, from the beginnings of agriculture to sometime around 1800) with the discovery of culture in the early colonial period. That is to say, it is an argument with a long pedigree. It is embraced by progressives because it allows both an opportunity for improvement (as opposed to mudsill economics theories), and because it excuses all sorts of busy-bodying and dramatic moralizing on their part.

Julie Jeffrey nicely summarizes the mid-century progressive stance on the poor and education:

"Educators delighted in describing this environment of poor children. Brought up in broken families, deprived of normal family communication, attention and all the toys and physical objects found in any middle class household, the deprived child was damaged by the time he reached school." (Jeffrey 1972, p.10).

I particularly like the use of the word "delighted."

Anyway, I've always found efforts at flipping this script to be appealing, and when well done, highly satisfying. Hardcore and punk rock were very good at this, and I think this helps explain their enduring appeal, why, despite being a tired, tired man, I still love Suicidal Tendencies.

There were at least two ways to flip the script. The first, much more common in British punk, was to point out that forcing children to attend schools designed in accordance with the beliefs held by progressives[1] as to what made for a productive worker also imposed an obligation upon the state once the inevitable happened and yesterday's vision of a productive worker turned out to be a 'structurally' unemployed adult with non-transferable skills in a boss' labor market. Which is really the basis for the classic, "Do They Owe Us a Living? (Of Course They Fucking Do").

The other way, more common in American punk, was to point out that the ideals and values that were being taught in these institutions were deeply incapacitating. We were their John Stuarts to their James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, guinea pigs in the creation of their particular vision of the productive and upstanding citizen. And that brings us to today's classic, "Institutionalized."

In both versions, the message is pretty clear: Run Rabbit Run.




[1] Not just progressive, but really the UK conservatives have generally tended to believe that most social problems could be solved with more spanking. This could be done in school, at home, or by any decent person on the street who felt that an uppity child needed a good thrashing.

Jeffrey, Julie 1972. "Education for Children of the Poor: A Study of the Origins and Implementation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965." PhD Thesis, Rice University.