Prometheus 6

The challenge

what would be on the list of a Prometheus 6 presidential ticket to offer to Black people?

If you start with the Presidential campaign it's too late to get it right. And remember, it's not going to be decided on issues.

I would like to say what the Democrats need is a story that recognizes Black people...this Borosage-designed narrative does not...and gives them a reason to say, "yeah, that's what I would do." The second would be a lot easier with the first in place.

Yes, I can be more specific about the problem in the narrative. It probably should be a post.

and

preferably contrasting with some other identity-group.

I'm going to explain what's wrong with the chosen Democratic narrative from my perspective. To set the stage:

There are three posts from my archives I'd like you to read, in order.

Come get yer identity politics right here

Atrios and Tapped never read my blog

I think I have too many RSS feeds

That's the starting lineup...if you only read one it should be the second one.

I think you overestimate the theoretical sophistication of TAPPED. What is driving TAPPED is--in my humble opinion--not the belief that Black identity is unimportant in a world in which a white felon gets called for many more job interviews than an otherwise similar Black male.What is driving TAPPED is the fact that Richard Nixon's decision in the 1960s to turn the Republican Party into the Party That Doesn't Like Black People has been a tremendous electoral success for Republicans, and that TAPPED is desperate to find a way to somehow minimize this factor in American elections.

 So to minimize that factor they would minimize Black people and our needs? Pretend we're not here, and after they regain the position of power, then what? What it took to get them is what it takes to keep them, you know?How is that any less "identity politics" than what they decry? If you're right I'm hard pressed to see the difference between them and anyone else who would position minorities for their own benefit.Maybe if we call it "reverse identity politics" they'll see the problem. If they care…which, if you're right, they dont.

They care... but wish to defer all discussion about what is to be done until after the election is won: the position is that the highest morality involves doing whatever it takes to get the power to do good. How much does bashing African-Americans for pursuing "identity politics" before the election then shape post-election Democratic policy in harmful directions? Certainly much more than I would wish, but I cannot tell how much.But reading things like some of the responses at http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,capital_exchange,00.html to David Wessel's stating-the-obvious column last week about employment discrimination makes me very, very afraid. There are a huge number of powerful white people whose attitude toward African-Americans reminds me of a saying of Machiavelli's: we never forgive those to whom we have done injury.

Those three posts explain the conditions in which Robert Brorsage launch the first "Greatest Generation" speech, which exhibited the same error TAPPED committed.

They came home and passed the GI bill opening up college and training to an entire generation. They subsidized housing to create the American dream. They organized unions to insure that profits and productivity were shared. For 25 years, they built the broad middle class that made America strong, and we all grew together.

This.

Did.

Not.

Happen.

You do NOT get to build that myth. You do not get to create a Golden Age that has no signs the nigras was ever here. You do not get to pretend everyone who made the sacrifice got the rewards or even the appreciation.

And yet that is exactly the myth on which the Democratic Party narrative is built. A single line has been added to Borosage's "Greatest Generation" speech, adding that, in addition to creating the great civilizing movements of the nation, the started the Civil Rights movement. At the same time as puttting out the welcome mat for Confederates.

What I would like is an acknowledgement of the truth. For example, the Jim Crow laws weren't just restrictions on voting and movement, but were a full fledged implementation of slavery except that the community took collective responsibility for discipline. I picked a drastic one; I could have gone into Sundown Towns or any number of issues.

And if you dropped all this on white folks months before election day it would snap the axle on their little wagon. I understand that. But work began on this message in 2003. It would take that long to reduce the specifics of Black folks' experience to "and they started the civil rights movement." But I can't help but feel they could have worked it in as easily as they blotted it out.