Dr. Lester K. Spence

We already know that historically speaking whites in general and black elites want blacks to be damn near perfect in order to get the RIGHT of citizenship. We saw this here also with at least one black blogger (who shall remain linkless because I don’t want to embarass him) making some of the same claims about how perhaps the 6 should have just taken consistent beat downs, threats, and symbolic terrorist harassment, in order to make a much better claim.

We also know that significant components of the white progressive blogosphere has been focused on the bush administration in general and on Iraq.

But what I haven’t seen is a discussion about the political-economy of blogging. There are bureaucratic, economic, and ideological determinants of story choice in the media. The media focuses on urban poverty in large part because the victims are black and easily tagged as irresponsible (ideological), but also because they don’t have to spend much money to send reporters to cover urban poverty as opposed to rural poverty (economic).

Check out this quote written about MoveOn:

MoveOn’s management team — led by Eli Pariser, a 25-year-old Internet whiz — runs a sophisticated political operation, and its main preoccupation, beyond ending the Iraq war, is to keep growing. To do that, MoveOn is always looking for what Mr. Pariser and his team call “the message object” — the controversy of the month that will viscerally attract more liberals to sign up and write checks.

An attack on MoveOn from the Bush White House is, of course, the mother of all message objects. Six months after Mr. Bush’s re-election, when opposition to the Iraq war suddenly seemed to be breaking out like a rash around the country, Karl Rove publicly accused MoveOn and its liberal sympathizers of offering “therapy and understanding for our attackers,” and membership soared. That probably explains why MoveOn was eager to run the provocative Petraeus ad in the first place.

In a sense, MoveOn is shrewdly gaming liberal politics in the way the National Rifle Association has long gamed conservative politics; the more controversy, the more members it attracts, and the more power it has to leverage on their behalf.

How much money is MoveOn likely to garner by focusing on Jena 6? On Shaquanda Cotton? Moving from MoveOn which to be fair isn’t a blog, TO blogs….how many more trackbacks and visitors is blogger X likely to garner by focusing on an issue that makes their readers feel uncomfortable? The blindspot they’ve got then isn’t only the function of their own decisions about what is important and what isn’t, what they’d need to see to prove racism and what we’d need to see…it’s also about their assumptions about their readers and the community of bloggers they want to speak to.

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I’ve written here about brokerage politics before. The brokerage politics model is fairly simple. You’ve got a large body of “clients” that for whatever reason cannot attain some good using their own devices. So in steps a “broker” who negotiates on behalf of the “client.” The end result is that the client gets something that he/she couldn’t get without the broker. The problem with this model politically speaking is that the clients are usually disempowered (the broker has no interest in giving the clients the resources needed to cut deals on their own), the broker cuts deals on the client’s behalf in private (which makes it impossible to determine whether a better deal could have been garnered by the clients themselves), and there are no means of holding the broker accountable (the broker is not usually a political official hence can’t be voted out of office, and the broker usually operates on a scale that makes shame ineffective).

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are both brokers. Their livelihood has been garnered by a combination of powerful speaking skills, and brokering deals on behalf of black constituencies with private and public parties.

There was a time not long ago when events like Jena and Paris would have come to light THROUGH them (or someone like them). After ensuring that they had their facts straight, Jackson and Sharpton would then spread the word about the events nationally….and perhaps some type of redress would come from it.

The internet combined with black talk radio and other black information sources (remember, Shaquanda Cotton was picked up first by an African American Chicago Tribune columnist) in effect removes Sharpton and Jackson from the equation in their former capacity. Even if, because of the nature of rural political power, the people in Jena did not have the power to make change on their own…black people in Chicago, Detroit, and other urban areas DO have this power. They have the power of the podium, the power of numbers. Making these events transparent is usually enough to get some type of redress, because we have progressed enough that nationally shaming a municipality does work. Jackson and Sharpton are both sharp enough that they’ll hold on in some capacity…likely as media pundits.

However the problem here is that what we’re facing is much larger than rural racism writ large. There’s a reason why people went to Jena and stopped there, rather than say, continuing 4 hours and moving to New Orleans and camping out there until the city and the people in it are made whole. Transparency in the case of this form of subjugation is not enough. This requires a level of organizing and planning that cannot occur through this type of protest. And just as the media has a very short attention span….so do we. I have no idea for example whether Paris, Texas is dealing with its black children any better than it did before the Cotton case made headlines.

I mention the media.

The other thing to take from Jena and Paris is that we actually have developed what some call a “counter-public sphere.” A place where we can engage in debates and come to consensus on issues separate from those created by the mainstream media. However the types of events and discussions that are held in this virtual space is still constrained by a range of factors. We are more likely to talk about domestic subjugation than say the white progressive blogosphere (it’s important that this be acknowledged…it isn’t that the “progressive blogosphere” missed out on Jena while the “black blogosphere” picked it up. Rather the “black progressive blogosphere” picked it up and the “white progressive blogosphere” purposely missed it). But we are not any more likely to talk about say, the potential role of city-level socialism in ameliorating poverty.

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I’ve been wanting to write this for a while but this semester has been far busier than I thought it would be.

One of the first sets of readings I had my Urban Politics class wrestle with was a set of chapters from the book Small Town in Mass Society. A sociological study of Springdale, New York. A few of the things that distinguish rural spaces from urban ones:

• An exaggerated focus on tradition. Remember that the Jena incident was precipitated by a tree.
• The characterization of people within the area as “plain folk” often against what we’d humorously call “city-slickers.”
• The belief in independence even in the face of significant DEPENDENCE.
• The use of consensus and expertise in political decisions.

(Actually there are an interesting set of comparisons to make between rural spaces and black political ones.)

I’d also add that rural spaces are not as “rational” as urban ones are, not as focused on bureaucratic means of keeping and preserving order. Businesses operate when they operate. Judges see cases when they see cases rather than on a tight schedule. Rules can be interpreted or uninterpreted with no system of checks and balances. The combination of all these factors make the type of racism found in rural spaces very unique. People think about both the Shaquanda Cotton and Jena 6 cases as being throwbacks. I’d think of them more as incidents of “red county racism”. They are only throwbacks in as much as the types of racism that we associate most with the Deep South themselves were often a product of rural space.

Similarly just as many of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement were made possible by the increased urbanity of black people, the types of cell-based organizing that we witnessed in both cases represents an urban response, at least in part.

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Black dada nihilismus

Ego Trippin

Leda, After the Swan

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The first gap is the gap between black and white children in school achievement, covered here. (I’ll likely make a pdf of it and try to remember to include it later because the link will likely dissolve within a week or two.)

The second is the earning gap between men and women covered here.

Both gaps are serious. The first gap is persistent, going back as long as data has been collected. The second is relatively recent, and is the direct result of the removal of formal and informal structures of patriarchy.

There are a couple of things that bear understanding here. The first is that these dynamics are related, but one wouldn’t really know from reading these or most other articles. I am not sure because I haven’t seen the data, but I am no longer sure that what we are looking at is a black-white achievement gap as much as we are looking at a black male-every other demographic achievement gap. The gender components of this issue are absolutely absent in favor of discussing “the racial interest.”

Similarly the dynamic that the NYT is tracing has long been the case in black communities. And I’ve written about this before. Baltimore’s top four political positions are all held by black women. Part of this is the excellent job black women have done organizing and being in networks that are easily used for the purpose of organizing. Part of this is that black men aren’t in the same corridors of power. While this story is meant to be frivolous (note that it’s in the fashion section)m, the ramifications are serious. This society is structured in such a way that it shouldn’t necessarily matter whether men or women run the show as far as the function of duties are concerned. But neither our religious institutions, our homes, our military, our businesses (our childbearing policies assume a male breadwinner), nor (interestingly enough given the article above) our schools, have prepared us for the new reality.

The second is that neither article deals with either class or politics in any depth. The differences between professional parents and welfare parents is presented as being purely cultural in the education article–as if the only real difference between a single mother working two jobs and that of a lawyer/doctor combo is the amount of words they use around their children. Note also the standard paean to black self-help (“our parents don’t seem to value education as much as [insert ethnic group here]“) that likely goes back to romantic notions of the “benefits of segregation.” Women aren’t succeeding in the workplace because of genetics or their culture–arguments that were used years ago to explain male success in fields like engineering and math. They are succeeding because of openings made possible by political organizing.

The study of these gaps bears watching because they reveal a great deal about contemporary hegemony.

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While I’m trying to work out the kinks of this book chapter.

The New York Times will no longer charge for its premium content. Because of my university ties I didn’t have to pay for content, but I did have to go through a few extra steps that made it a pain in the ass.

The Washington Post on the other hand believes OJ is more important than the Jena 6. (Thanks to Jack and Jill Politics.)

Speaking of, thanks to Michael Fisher from which I got the following video on the Jena 6:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Finally, part I and part II of an interview with Stephen Graham about the present neoliberal reality of cities. For those interested in the recent (lengthy) discussions held here about black politics, and about crime fighting strategies in cities, these posts will be interesting.

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Here’s a model that won’t work, and a model that’s ass backwards from jump. (No I won’t argue about it…just like I wouldn’t argue with Submariner about the benefits of Omoxycillin vs. Penicillin.)

So let’s think about a model that does. If we aren’t willing to consider something really radical–like legalizing drugs–then I think we need to think about ways to generate peace amongst warring gangs. Errol Henderson out of Penn State has done some interesting practical and theoretical work on negotiating gang treaties that are similar to those negotiated between warring states.

We also need to think about alternatives to punishment. The Rockefeller Drug Laws have unfortunately provided the template for the draconian drug sentencing laws that have become the norm, but for those convicted of non-violent crimes we should have another option. Perhaps one working to rebuild communities, or repurposing abandoned warehouses, something that helps make our living spaces better places to live, rather than serving as phone operators for ATT for pennies.

I’m particularly interested in ideas that are practical and scalable. Remember we are talking about neighborhoods…but when we start thinking about 10,000 volunteers we are really talking about CITIES.

(Edited to add: I included a PDF of Dr. Errol Henderson’s work on intergang violence and interstate norms of reducing conflict because it bears reading.)

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I got this from Earl, who asked for comments.

In a nutshell?

There are only a couple of populations you can ask this of without getting laughed out of office. Black people, and Native Americans.

This is not a coincidence.

Some might think this a rational policy, and some might even prefer it…in fact from what I understand Philly cops have been on a tear lately. But policing is a service that is supported by citizen tax dollars. Many of us are already paying school taxes AND sending our children to private school. Now you want us to pay taxes for police AND do their jobs without deputization, without arms, and without pay?

You’ve got to be kidding me.

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Stop using your underwear as nunchucks.

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I cribbed this from Warren Ellis.

* Createspace.com: Amazon’s Print On Demand operation. Very interesting. For no money at all, you can create a book (or CD or DVD or whatever), get an Amazon Buy It Now badge for your website, and let them take care of everything else. I understand Lulu and other POD operations are very good, but this is the killer app: you get Amazon’s distribution system. This is massive.

* Why is it massive? It’s fucking AMAZON. Self-publishing turns into a one-click deal. In fact, POD on this order transcends self-pub and vanity pub to a large extent.
It re-enables the small press for the new generation. You youngsters won’t remember what it was like, looking through fringe bookstores for the odd things, the new things, the weird things — things that were small and important, which people had had to gamble real money on the production and printing of. I still have boxes and boxes of this sort of thing from the 80s….

* Also, just as an aside: given that sf magazines pay$50/1000 words and don’t publish much that’s over 15000 words, a determined sf
writer could release POD books in the novellette/novella length. Or even band together and create a POD imprint inside Createspace.

What possibilities emanate from this? I can think of quite a few….

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