My politics are more humanist now than nationalist, though they still start from a black place, if that makes sense. I think you and I are at the same place there.

But what your comments reflect is an understandable fear that Obama has not created but is supporting by his lack of will. By his lack of imagination. That our “intellectual class” has supported by their relative lack of imagination.

It is so very hard for me to engage in any sort of “race-based” critique of President Obama. One reason is that I don't have the same fortitude that I had when I was, for lack of a better term, a “black nationalist”. I found it much easier to engage in “race based” critiques. Now that I don't necessarily roll 'round those parts, I just don't know how to, or maybe, want to touch it. Although I agree 100% with you on how black and brown suffer more in the health care system, I am leery to even bring up race for “fear” that it will derail everything. Am I a coward for this? In some eyes I'm probably am. But I'm no “general coward” so don't get it twisted. But my longing for GETTING HEALTH CARE DONE is overruling my examination of the racial aspects in this.

But your probably right when you say this Professor Spence:

Using black and brown bodies to tilt the health care debate to costs rather than investments will tilt public opinion towards conservative and moderate solutions.

So either way, I'm screwed. LOL!

For the past 15 years or so, my invisible partner in crime has been Dr. Lester K. Spence. He is, professionally, what I have been on a part-time basis for the past oh say 20 years. Actually more like 25……

To repeat my angle, it is my contention that the path of integration requires a sort of social mobility that has been enabled by the acceptance of Civil Rights law. And to the extent that Americans are fluid in their identity, there should not be resistance to that social mobility. Or to put it more simply, if it's easy to sell out your race, and race is what's holding you back, then sell out. It seems to me that the integrity of the racial construct is critical for anyone, be they social science subject, majority or minority object, to satisfy the balancing of the racial formula. This integrity is at odds with the implications of racial integration. In otherwords, the actual solution which satisfies the demands of a discrete narrowing of racial gaps (ever the benchmark), requires a sort of nationalist fidelity across all parties. So long as non-white but good is not good enough, perfection by race is the enemy of good.

You see, if you teach to a standard, say high school algebra. There is no way you can suppress the benefit to people who had a headstart unless you make math teaching a zero sum game. So to constantly harp on the gap between those who *obviously* started with some combination of advantages and those who didn't is to beg the question of establishing a zero-sum game. That's the problem here and it appears to be deep and fundamental. You require a racial signifier that cannot be satisfied by achievement, only by parity. Such a standard of 'equality' is the moral equivalent of coveting they neighbor's house.

If you could do this exclusively in the context of wars on poverty.. it might not be such an odious problem. But it cannot be denied that American poverty lies fairly lightweight when contrasted with world poverty – which relegates all of the moral agitation rather empty. It all sounds like middle class politics to me. We want to live to 84 instead of 72. What a conceit!

I exaggerate, but the matter of poverty is key. What concerns me is whether or not the aegis of 'black' as in 'up you mighty race' establishes in any broadly accepted context, all matters of poverty. In the American reality of the majority of black Americans being middle class, how do you make 'black' issues, dysfunctional and poverty and indigence issues with moral suasion considering the existential ties to so many millions who don't suffer at the base levels of Maslow? Because if the politics of hiring legions of social scientists is not about all about alleviating objective human misery, it's nothing more or less than middle-class racial spoils politics. That's hardly fitting of anyone claiming moral authority for their project.

I've been asking the question, 'who owns black?' for six years or so, with the premise in mind that a post-black-nationalist adjudication of flaws could redirect black American energy onto a more righteous path. But I have found blackness itself too postmodern and without a useful orthodoxy. In the end, race being a social construct, it is too subject to both regressive obstinance and clever manipulation to be useful to a moral cause, precisely because it is so politically fungible. The only absolute with regard to race is its history. With every day that passes, that history becomes larger and more immovable. It cannot be reformed. It can only be abandoned.