An Overview of "Hating Whitey," Part 2

For my continued overview of David Horowitz's essay collection Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes I now turn to the book's second section, "Black Caucus." It features five essays: "Martin's Children," "Amen Corner," "Democrats and Blacks," "Dealing with Racism," and "The Politics of Race."

Martin's Children

The subject of the first essay in this section is affirmative action. Horowitz doesn't address the question of whether affirmative action is morally right or wrong. (He'll save that for later.) Instead he asks, "Has affirmative action actually helped African-Americans?" His answer is a statistically-backed "no."

Advocates of affirmative action argue that it's a policy that will lift African-Americans out of poverty. Horowitz, armed with the research of the book America in Black and White argues that it will not and that the cause of black poverty in the inner city has a different origin.

Key excerpts:

The cause of black poverty, as the Thernstrom’s show (and the dramatic expansion of the black middle class should make self-evident) has little to do with race. Consequently, its solution will not be affected by affirmative action set-asides. Currently, eighty-five percent of all poor black children live in fatherless families. In other words, the poverty rate for black children without fathers is nearly six times that for black children with two parents. A far more effective anti-poverty program would be to promote black marriages.

...

On the basis of the actual results, it is clear that affirmative action based on racial preference is unnecessary to racial progress, damaging to its supposed beneficiaries, and ineffective in terms of closing the income and education gaps between blacks and whites. While it may create additional privilege for some members of an already privileged black elite -- 86% of the affirmative action students at elite schools are from upper middle-class or wealthy backgrounds -- its more durable effect is to create failure that is unnecessary. In addition it adds grievance to those whose achievements are real, but who become suspect because of the circumvention of standards.

Take Home Point: Affirmative action is ineffective at accomplishing its objective of helping advance African-Americans. The true root cause of poverty in the black community is illegitimacy.

Political Opponents Mentioned: Jesse Jackson,

Political Influences Mentioned: Jim Sleeper, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom

Amen Corner

Horowitz questions why African-Americans identified so strongly with Bill Clinton and continued to identify with him even at the height of the impeachment scandal. Why was it that Clinton was dubbed and accepted as "the first black president" long before anyone had even heard of Barack Obama?

Key excerpt:

A revealing aspect of the White House crisis that engulfed President Clinton in 1998 was the racial gap in public opinion polls, which was almost as wide as after the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder case. When the world discovered in January that the president was having sex with a 22-year-old intern, a New York Times poll found that 81% of blacks (as compared to 58% of whites) nonetheless approved the way the president was conducting his job. When asked whether the president shared the moral values of most Americans, fully 77% of blacks (in contrast to less than half that fraction of whites) said yes. Nine months later, after the discovery of the stained dress and the release of the Starr Report, 63% of blacks still thought the president, now a proven liar and philanderer -- shared the nation’s morality. It was three times the number of whites (22%) who did.

Take Home Point: Horowitz argues that African-American loyalty to Bill Clinton derives from a paranoia that with the empowerment of Republicans and conservatives the gains of the Civil Rights Movements will be reversed. This is a false fear and Horowitz will elaborate on this point further in the next essay.

Political Opponents Mentioned:Toni Morrison, Julian Bond, Frank Rich, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Maxine Waters,

Political Influences Mentioned: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Political Allies Mentioned: Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas

Democrats And Blacks

Horowitz makes the argument that the Democratic Party does not serve the interests of the African-American community. He reprints black radio host Larry Elder's list of “15 Reasons Why Blacks Shouldn’t Support Clinton:”

Key excerpt:

Liberals and the Democratic Party need the economic dependence and monolithic political choices of the African American community in order to secure their own political power. That is why liberals and Democrats constantly inflame the racial fears of black Americans while maliciously demonizing conservatives and Republicans as their racial enemies. That is why they are either collusive in, or silent about, the character assassination of black conservatives like Clarence Thomas, Gary Franks, Ken Hamble, Thomas Sowell and Ward Connerly.

Where would liberalism and the Democratic Party be without the dependencies of black Americans on government programs and government offices, and the monolithic politics that follow naturally? (Government actually employs 24% of black Americans, in contrast to 14% of whites -- while blacks make up only 10% of the workforce).

Where would liberalism and the Democratic Party be if poor urban black youth were not trapped by their policies in dangerous and failing public schools? This situation, tragically destructive for African Americans -- ensures that billions of education dollars will continue to flow into the pockets of the administrative bureaucracies and public sector unions, particularly the teachers unions -- which form the heart of the Democratic Party’s political machine.

Take Home Point: Horowitz argues that African-Americans have been exploited by the Democratic Party and would be better served by the GOP.

Political Opponents Mentioned: Carol Moseley-Braun, Charles Rangel, Toni Morrison,

Political Allies Mentioned: Newt Gingrich, Larry Elder, Tom Wolfe, Clarence Thomas, Gary Franks, Ken Hamble, Thomas Sowell and Ward Connerly.

Dealing With Racism

Horowitz considers Clarence Page's book Showing My Color and demonstrates how the differences between a "moderate" civil rights thinker like Page and that of a "radical" like bell hooks are smaller than one might initially suspect. This is a theme throughout Horowitz's work. Yes, within "the Left" there's a wide range of ideas and degrees of rhetoric and intensity. But often the moderates don't think all that differently than the radicals. Or rather they just use gentler, more sophisticated language.

Key excerpts:

Page is not enthusiastic about racial “nationalism” or even black militancy and has forcefully dissociated himself from “separatists.” Unlike his more radical peers, he is not ashamed of expressing hope in the American dream. Yet, in a book-length manifesto called Showing My Color, Page has written an argument in defense of these disturbing radical trends. The very fact that someone like Clarence Page could write an apologia for race conscious government policies and even racial separation, shows how pervasive and significant these trends have become.

...

The corrosive effect of thirty years of affirmative action policies has been to convince black Americans that whites are indeed so racist that some external force must compel their respect and, secondarily, that blacks need affirmative action in order to gain equal access to the American dream. The further consequence of this misguided “remedy” has been to foster a racial paranoia in the black community that is so pervasive that even the thinking of blacks who have benefited from America’s racial generosity has been significantly affected.

Take Home Point: Horowitz expands upon his anti-affirmative action argument. Where in the first essay of the section he articulated why the program doesn’t work, here he explains why it’s morally wrong. On the subject of Page and other civil rights “moderates” Horowitz connects the dots, showing how Page’s more toned-down rhetoric connects with the ideas of more inflammatory racial thinkers.

Political Opponents Mentioned: Clarence Page, Louis Farrakhan, Julian Bond, Cornel West, Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Ronald Takaki, Michael Lerner

Political Allies Mentioned: Ronald Radosh, Clarence Thomas

The Politics of Race

In perhaps the section’s most important essay Horowitz shows how the modern civil rights movement has taken Marxist ideas and reinvented them to be applied toward race instead of economics.

Key excerpt:

Today the alien power thought by the left to control our destinies is only rarely described as a “ruling class,” although it is still perceived as that. Refuted by the history of Communist empires, the left has turned to new vocabularies and concepts to rescue it from its defeats. Today the ruling class is identified as the “patriarchy” or the “white male oligarchy,” or in disembodied form as the force of “institutional racism” or “white supremacy.” The result is a kitsch marxism that follows the basic Marxist scheme but results in true intellectual incoherence. Marx’s idea of a classless society may make a certain sense in theory even if it is unworkable in practice, whereas the idea of a race-less society or a gender-free society makes no sense at all.

…

For Martin Luther King and the traditional civil rights movement, leveling the playing field simply meant extending to black southerners, the constitutional protections accorded to all Americans. It meant making all citizens, regardless of color, equal before the law. Leveling the playing field meant creating neutral rules that did not encompass color or ethnicity but made both irrelevant to the contests of civic and economic life. This was the idea of a “color-neutral” society. It was not that color would be unseen or denied, but that color would not affect individual outcomes, certainly not through the agency of the state. By these standards, the playing field became level once government ceased to play racial favorites, a goal achieved through the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.

Political Opponents Mentioned: Robin West

Political Influences Mentioned: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Take Home Point: The most useful point to take from this essay is Horowitz’s description and denunciation of “kitsch Marxism.” The Marxist Idea is one of the most thoroughly discredited of the 20^th century. Yet to perpetuate its survival it has been dressed up in different clothes. Now instead of the bourgeoisie exploiting the proletariat you have Institutional Racism or the White Male Oligarchy oppressing the black underclass, responsible for keeping some members of the African-American community in poverty. It’s not difficult to find other kitsch Marxisms that have abandoned the language of the Old Left but have kept the basic concepts still in tact. I’ll provide another example.

Personal Example of Idea in Practice: I first read this essay several months ago during the 2008 election, a time when I regularly argued with friends both to my left and my right over who should be President. I think I stumbled across it here on Discover the Networks while conducting general Horowitz research. Horowitz’s conception of kitsch Marxism seemed to ring true to me as the arguments I’d been having during the election continued to circle in my head.

As a supporter of Barack Obama, from a position of centrism (my Obama endorsement can be read here,) most of the fights I seemed to have came from McCain supporters to my right. Many were from my Christian radical friends who talked about almost nothing but Obama’s abortion positions, trying to make the absurd case that my candidate was pro-infanticide. Others were traditional, limited government conservatives who were concerned Obama would be a socialist and terrorist appeaser.

My old college buddy Pat, though, was a Nader supporter who attacked Obama from the left, claiming my candidate was a corporatist puppet of the ruling class. For months Pat and I had been engaging one another in dialogue over all kinds of political and cultural issues. And I’d grown accustomed to his worldview and style of argumentation. Eventually I wrote this post here explaining my opposition to the Nader candidacy on policy grounds alone. (He wouldn’t stop bugging me until I actually took his candidate’s issues seriously enough to write about them.)

One night, as we were debating, though, I decided to throw Pat a Right Hook when I had a realization. Horowitz’s explanation of kitsch Marxism in mind I noticed something about how Pat always seemed to talk. His political understanding seemed to break American society down into two warring classes. On the one hand you had the international corporations which were run by corrupt, “fat cat” CEOs. On the other you had the good, decent “Joe Six Pack” Americans. According to Pat these noble working class folks were continually getting screwed over by their malevolent corporate masters. The basis of his political understanding was an idea of class warfare that was all but Marxism by any other name.

So I called him on it. I pointed out to him that all he’d done is replace the “proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie” with “Joe Six Pack” and “fat cat CEOs.” It was kitsch Marxism, no different than how black radicals had plugged in “minorities” and “racist white male power structure.”

And oh did he get mad at me, as I knew he would. His response was one that Horowitz receives almost regularly from his leftist political opponents. For my comparison Pat accused me of “McCarthyism” – as though a few comments in an online discussion could in any way compare to people losing their jobs in the early ‘50s.

Pat and my conflicting political visions reflect our very different post-collegiate experiences in corporate America. Pat’s were negative. He’s told me many times about the horrible corporation he worked for, his experiences with union organizing and his wrongful termination. My experiences have been much more positive. The idea that my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss is out to screw me, the worker bee lower down the corporate ladder, is an alien concept. Instead I’ve seen how the interests of the “corporation” and its “proletariat” employees are intimately tied together. I’ve seen how my “Joe Six Pack” co-workers and I have been treated quite well by our corporation – earning strong wages and great benefits. Pat’s kitsch Marxism of “fat cat CEOs” screwing over their noble “Joe Six Pack” employees just doesn’t fit the world that I’ve experienced.

Connecting the dots:

In my previous essay explaining the themes of the first section of Hating Whitey I discussed how Horowitz divides the Civil Rights movement into two warring categories. The first, symbolized in Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to integrate the African-American community into the whole of American society. It sought equality and a color-blind society. The second, symbolized in Elijah Muhammad, was a vision of black supremacy that saw America as fundamentally racist and malevolent.

“A Rage to Kill,” the final essay of the “Get Whitey” first section, was the most consequential essay of the group. For “Black Caucus,” the second section, the last essay “The Politics of Race” is also the key to tying together the whole section. Horowitz proposes the Marxist model as a way of understanding the policies and attitudes of contemporary “civil rights” thinkers, politicians and activists. He articulates the idea of “kitsch Marxism,” which is to be understood basically as “Marxism with different symbols.” In the kitsch Marxist racial view all minorities are analogous to the “proletariat” of classical Marxism.

How does affirmative action fit into this understanding of the issue? Affirmative action is a redistribution of opportunity. Whereas in traditional Marxist thought we have a redistribution of wealth, here instead of cash payments (which some civil rights activists have advocated in the form of reparations for slavery) we have a redistribution of opportunity. The “oppressed group” are given preferences and advantage in attending college. Thus Horowitz has to demonstrate first that the practice is ineffective (which he does in “Martin’s Children”) and second that it’s immoral (which he does in “Dealing With Racism.”)

Horowitz also has to suggest an alternative. He has to explain why a certain segment of the African-American community has remained in poverty. His diagnosis as the principle cause of poverty for inner city blacks is not “institutional racism” but instead something less hidden:

Currently, eighty-five percent of all poor black children live in fatherless families. In other words, the poverty rate for black children without fathers is nearly six times that for black children with two parents. A far more effective anti-poverty program would be to promote black marriages.

Horowitz’s answer is one that he would later articulate more in his book Uncivil Wars. Poor blacks can lift themselves out of poverty through an embrace of American ideals and conservative values. This philosophical change has an obvious political expression for Horowitz: supporting the GOP instead of the Democrats. And he makes this case in “Amen Corner” and “Democrats and Blacks.”

The third section of Hating Whitey that I’ll be writing about includes two longer essays on one of the most important subjects of Horowitz’s earlier books: the Black Panther Party. So expect that in the coming weeks.