www.blackcommentator.com: Howard Dean’s December 7 speech is the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years. Nothing remotely comparable has been said by anyone who might become or who has been President of the United States since Lyndon Johnson’s June 4, 1965 affirmative action address to the graduating class at Howard University.
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.blackcommentator.com/68/68_cover_dean_pf.html
Howard Dean’s December 7 speech is the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years. Nothing remotely comparable has been said by anyone who might become or
who has been President of the United States since
Lyndon Johnson’s June 4, 1965 affirmative action
address to the graduating class at Howard University.
For four decades, the primary political project of the
Republican Party has been to transform itself into the
White Man’s Party. Not only in the Deep South, but
also nationally, the GOP seeks to secure a majority
popular base for corporate governance through coded
appeals to white racism. The success of this GOP
project has been the central fact of American politics
for two generations – reaching its fullest expression
in the Bush presidency. Yet a corporate covenant with
both political parties has prohibited the mere mention
of America’s core contemporary political reality: the
constant, routine mobilization of white voters through
the imagery and language of race.
Last Sunday, Howard Dean broke that covenant:
In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it
in a shameful way – by dividing Americans against one
another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing
out the worst in people.
They called it the "Southern Strategy," and the
Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon
pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using
phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" to
convince white Americans that minorities were to blame
for all of America's problems.
The Republican Party would never win elections if they
came out and said their core agenda was about selling
America piece by piece to their campaign contributors
and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated
in the hands of a few.
To distract people from their real agenda, they run
elections based on race, dividing us, instead of
uniting us.
Dean’s Columbia, South Carolina, statement is equal in
political import to Lyndon Johnson’s framing of the
need for affirmative action, in 1965. Prior to
Johnson’s Howard University address, no sitting or
potential President since Reconstruction had drawn the
straight line that connects racism and poverty:
Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes
and many of its cures are the same. But there are
differences – deep, corrosive, obstinate differences –
radiating painful roots into the community, and into
the family, and the nature of the individual.
These differences are not racial differences. They are
solely and simply the consequence of ancient
brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They
are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a
constant reminder of oppression.
A defining moment
Not since Lyndon Johnson vowed to harness the power of
the federal government to redress the historical
grievances of Black America has a potential or sitting
President made such a clear case against racism as a
political and economic instrument – and even Johnson
failed to indict corporate interests, or anyone in
particular, for wielding race as a political weapon.
Howard Dean points the finger straight at executive
boardrooms, and directly implicates members of his own
party in the coded conspiracy.
Every time a politician uses the word "quota," it's
because he'd rather not talk about the real reasons
that we've lost almost 3 million jobs.
Every time a politician complains about affirmative
action in our universities, it's because he'd rather
not talk about the real problems with education in
America – like the fact that here in South Carolina,
only 15% of African Americans have a post-high school
degree.
At Howard University Lyndon Johnson established a
muscular, principled, historically-rooted rationale
for vigorous affirmative action as national public
policy. Johnson then announced “a White House
conference of scholars, and experts, and outstanding
Negro leaders – men [sic] of both races – and
officials of Government at every level. This White
House conference's theme and title will be ‘To Fulfill
These Rights.’”
Johnson spent the better part of the next three and a
half years forcing legislation through Congress to
“fulfill” those rights, as broadly demanded by the
Civil Rights Movement.
Bill Clinton – the ridiculously dubbed “Black”
President – began his 1992 campaign by staging an
ambush of Sister Souljah to impress white males,
dedicated his second term to elimination of “welfare
as we know it,” and ended his tenure with a
purposeless national “conversation on race” that went
nowhere by design.
Howard Dean has taken history in his hands by hitching
his ascendant campaign to a straightforward,
anti-corporate message that does not pander to white
racism. He presents whites in the South and elsewhere
with the only principled choice they should be
offered: to vote their interests, or vote for their
bosses’ interests (if they are lucky enough to have a
job). Although corporate media called Dean’s statement
his “southern strategy,” it is in fact the only
position that holds out any hope for a national
Democratic victory in 2004 – whether enough southern
whites emerge from their racist “false consciousness”
or not.
The December 7 speech is a clear and definitive break
from the lethal grip of the Democratic Leadership
Council, the southern-born, corporate-mouthpiece
faction of the party. The DLC’s favored presidential
candidate is Senator Joe Lieberman, it’s most
illustrious personality is Bill Clinton, and it’s most
prestigious founding member is none other than – Al
Gore.
Gore’s endorsement of Dean should be viewed as
head-swiveling proof of the bankruptcy of the DLC’s
white “swing voter” strategy. The DLC-Emeritus has
effectively jumped ship.
Stay the course
Where does this leave Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich?
Exactly as they are, preaching the same social
democratic, anti-racist, pro-peace message as before,
for as long as their energies can sustain them.
Dean’s political leap would not have been possible in
the absence of Sharpton’s energetic Black candidacy
and Kucinich’s principled, progressive white voice
from the Left. At this historic juncture they dare not
go anywhere. Dean has picked up the torch that
Sharpton and Kucinich have been carrying and they must
stay in the race to make sure he doesn’t set it down.
By persevering in pressing the Left edges of the
Democratic envelope, the “Two Civilized Men” created
the political space for Dean to make his historic
break. Although we cannot expect either candidate to
rejoice in the frontrunner’s actions, Dean’s leftward
march is also their victory over the DLC, and they
must defend it – against Dean himself and his newfound
allies, if need be.
On the anti-war front, Dean continues to waffle on the
nature and length of the Iraq occupation, which makes
him an apologist for American Manifest Destiny.
Kucinich and Sharpton are the only candidates who call
for unequivocal withdrawal. Their job is by no means
over.
Sharpton’s singular mission remains the same as when
he first declared for the presidency: to present
himself as the Black candidate. African Americans are
sophisticated, and understand the value of a
demonstration; many will vote for Sharpton as a way to
make the weight of their electoral presence
unmistakably felt. A substantial proportion of Black
primary voters will choose Sharpton over any white
man, including one with a progressive racial platform
– a good result under present circumstances, and one
we expect in South Carolina, February 3. (South
Carolina Black Rep. James Clyburn has endorsed his
congressional colleague, Dick Gephardt.)
Only two people can shut the window that Howard Dean
threw open for the national Democratic Party, last
Sunday: Dean and Al Sharpton. Dean’s Black advisors,
especially Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., must
caution the former Vermont Governor that their
presence in his camp does not convey Blackness to the
candidate. He must respect and acclimate himself to
Sharpton’s mission.
Sharpton must remember that he is not running for King
of the Blacks, but is essentially acting as the lead
Black organizer in the progressive wing of the
Democratic Party. Dean’s December 7 statement would
certainly not have been written without Sharpton in
the race. That is a great victory of the Sharpton
campaign, one that may shape the future of the nation.
Indeed, Sharpton could have vetted Dean’s speech,
which reads very much like the distilled product of A
More Perfect Union, the book written by Rep. Jackson
and Frank Watkins, Sharpton’s former campaign manager.
The same river runs through it, the historical
currents that also informed Rev. Jesse Jackson’s
speech to South Carolina State University at
Orangeburg, last week.
"The big fight in this state should be trade policy
and the Wal-Martization of our economy," said Jackson,
the local Times and Democrat reported. "The challenge
is to get South Carolina to vote its economic hopes
and not its racial fears." Most low-income Americans
are white and "they work every day. They work at
Wal-Mart without insurance. They work at fast-food
places. They work at hospitals where no job is beneath
them, where they don't have insurance, so they can't
afford to lay in the beds they make…
"The challenge for South Carolina is to move from
racial battleground to economic common ground to moral
high ground."
Those sentiments spring from the Black Political
Consensus. Howard Dean is attempting to get the
Democratic Party – and himself – in step. That’s how
history is made.
With absolute certainty that the corporate media have
thoroughly misreported, mangled and incompetently
framed Howard Dean’s December 7 speech, we have
republished it in full, below.
From the Official Howard Dean Weblog, December 7, 2003
http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/002565.html
Restoring the American Community
The following remarks as prepared were delivered this
afternoon by Governor Howard Dean in Columbia, South
Carolina:
In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it
in a shameful way – by dividing Americans against one
another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing
out the worst in people.
They called it the "Southern Strategy," and the
Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon
pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using
phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" to
convince white Americans that minorities were to blame
for all of America's problems.
The Republican Party would never win elections if they
came out and said their core agenda was about selling
America piece by piece to their campaign contributors
and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated
in the hands of a few.
To distract people from their real agenda, they run
elections based on race, dividing us, instead of
uniting us.
But these politics do worse than that – they fracture
the very soul of who we are as a country.
It was a different Republican president, who 150 years
ago warned, "A house divided cannot stand," and it is
now a different Republican party that has won
elections for the past 30 years by turning us into a
divided nation.
In America, there is nothing black or white about
having to live from one paycheck to the next.
Hunger does not care what color we are.
In America, a conversation between parents about
taking on more debt might be in English or it might be
in Spanish, worrying about making ends meet knows no
racial identity.
Black children and white children all get the flu and
need the doctor. In both the inner city and in small
rural towns, our schools need good teachers.
When I was in medical school in the Bronx, one of my
first ER patients was a 13-year-old African American
girl who had an unwanted pregnancy. When I moved to
Vermont to practice medicine, one of my first ER
patients was a 13-year-old white girl who had an
unwanted pregnancy.
They were bound by their common human experience.
There are no black concerns or white concerns or
Hispanic concerns in America. There are only human
concerns.
Every time a politician uses the word "quota," it's
because he'd rather not talk about the real reasons
that we've lost almost 3 million jobs.
Every time a politician complains about affirmative
action in our universities, it's because he'd rather
not talk about the real problems with education in
America – like the fact that here in South Carolina,
only 15% of African Americans have a post-high school
degree.
When education is suffering in lower-income areas, it
means that we will all pay for more prisons and face
more crime in the future.
When families lack health insurance and are forced to
go to the emergency room when they need a doctor,
medical care becomes more expensive for each of us.
When wealth is concentrated at the very top, when the
middle class is shrinking and the gap between rich and
poor grows as wide as it has been since the Gilded Age
of the 19th Century, our economy cannot sustain
itself.
When wages become stagnant for the majority of
Americans, as they have been for the past two decades,
we will never feel as though we are getting ahead.
When we have the highest level of personal debt in
American history, we are selling off our future, in
order to barely keep our heads above water today.
Today, Americans are working harder, for less money,
with more debt, and less time to spend with our
families and communities.
In the year 2003, in the United States, over 12
million children live in poverty. Nearly 8 million of
them are white. And no matter what race they are, too
many of them will live in poverty all their lives.
And yesterday, there were 3,000 more children without
health care - children of all races. By the end of
today, there will 3,000 more. And by the end of
tomorrow, there will be 3,000 more on top of that.
America can do better than this.
It's time we had a new politics in America – a
politics that refuses to pander to our lowest
prejudices.
Because when white people and black people and brown
people vote together, that's when we make true
progress in this country.
Jobs, health care, education, democracy, and
opportunity. These are the issues that can unite
America.
The politics of the 21st century is going to begin
with our common interests.
If the President tries to divide us by race, we're
going to talk about health care for every American.
If Karl Rove tries to divide us by gender, we're going
to talk about better schools for all of our children.
If large corporate interests try to divide us by
income, we're going to talk about better jobs and
higher wages for every American.
If any politician tries to win an election by turning
America into a battle of us versus them, we're going
to respond with a politics that says that we're all in
this together - that we want to raise our children in
a world in which they are not taught to hate one
another, because our children are not born to hate one
another.
We're going to talk about justice again in this
country, and what an America based on justice should
look like – an America with justice in our tax code,
justice in our health care system, and justice in our
hearts as well as our laws.
We're going to talk about making higher education
available to every young person in every neighborhood
and community in America, because over 95% of people
with a 4-year degree in this country escape poverty.
We're going to talk about rebuilding rural communities
and making sure that rural America can share in the
promise and prosperity of the rest of America.
We're going to talk about investing in more small
businesses instead of subsidizing huge corporations,
because small businesses create 7 out of every 10 jobs
in this country and they don't move their jobs
overseas – and they can help revitalize troubled
communities. We're going to make it easier for
everyone to get a small business loan wherever they
live and whatever the color of their skin.
We're going to talk about rebuilding our schools and
our roads and our public spaces, empowering people to
take pride in their neighborhood and their community
again.
We're going to talk about building prosperity that's
based on more than spending beyond our means, a
prosperity that doesn't force us to choose between
working long hours and raising our children, a
prosperity that doesn't require a mountain of debt to
sustain it, a prosperity that lifts up every one of us
and not just those at the very top.
The politics of race and the politics of fear will be
answered with the promise of community and a message
of hope.
And that's how we're going to win in 2004.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1976,
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan asked, "Are we to be one
people bound together by common spirit sharing in a
common endeavor or will we become a divided nation?"
We are determined to find a way to reach out to
Americans of every background, every race, every
gender and sexual orientation, and bring them – as Dr.
King said – to the same table of brotherhood.
We have great work to do in America. It will take
years. But it will last for generations. And it begins
today, with every one of us here.
Abraham Lincoln said that government of the people, by
the people and for the people shall not perish from
this earth. But this President has forgotten ordinary
people.
That is why it is time for us to join together.
Because it is only a movement of citizens of every
color, every income level, and every background that
can change this country and once again make it live up
to the promise of America.
So, today I ask you to not just join this campaign but
make it your own. This new era of the United States
begins not with me but with you. United together, you
can take back your country.