The Black History of the White House

by Clarence Lusane

  This coalition, albeit unstable, and the rise of non-state actors—from human rights organizations to terrorist networks—have placed limits on the politics of force that characterized the Bush administration and the neoliberal wing of U.S. strategists. The adventurism of the latter, of course, generated conflicts that have become untenable and from which Obama desperately seeks extrication. The U.S. military is bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which will produce a decisive victory, nor can the U.S. agenda of political dominance impose the fiction of a stable democratization (or perhaps any democratization at all). More critically, although the U.S. military possesses a preponderance of hard power compared to other major states, it is shamelessly bloated, perpetually demoralized, politically curtailed, and financially unviable; no competitor nation incurs expenditures and debt even remotely approaching those of the United States.

  Regional mobilization by social democratic forces in Latin America and aspiring democratic movements in Africa and Asia have also reduced the U.S. footprint in those areas. Given BRIC efforts to increase its economic influence and positioning in Latin America and Africa, and the eager receptivity of a number of states, the United States must scramble to maintain, let alone expand, its current geostrategic posture. Some U.S. political and military leaders, including Obama, recognize that the future will witness a reconfigured global balance in those areas. Middle East politics are no less complicated, as allies in the region and contiguous South Asia, such as Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, exhibit little ability to act as legitimate surrogates for policies that are anathema to political leaders and popular opinion on nearly all of the key debates.

  Domestically, Obama confronts a unified opposition that is willing to harm the nation’s interests in order to bring down his presidency. During his first two years in office, Obama has received near zero support by the Republicans in Congress for any of his major initiatives. Opposition is based on the cynical and irresponsible notion that defeating Obama’s agenda, regardless of its merits, is the only path back to congressional and perhaps presidential power. Anger at the state of the nation, coupled with real and constructed fears, has given rise to a broad antigovernment social movement composed of a wide range of social and ideological forces, including the disjointed tea party network that in itself is politically diverse. Within this movement, forms of mild to virulent racism have emerged that some in the movement have denounced but most national tea party leaders have ignored, been defensive about, or winked at. A major dynamic targets Obama personally and (racialized) immigrants and black and Hispanic communities in general. It is difficult for the conservative movement to divorce itself from these elements, because it has cultivated racist stereotypes from the days of the “Southern strategy,” Willie Horton, and “white hands” advertisements up to the fictions about welfare queens and Obama’s birth certificate.

  Obama must also operate within the confines of a federal political system that places severe restraints on his ability to generate or implement progressive public policy, a circumstance that perhaps many of his supporters from 2008 do not necessarily understand. Congress, the U.S. Senate in particular, exercises a check on presidential power—normally—and can become an obstacle to White House ambitions even when it is the president’s party in charge. Republicans in Congress, though in the minority, have been able to employ legal, though undemocratic, tactics such as the filibuster and “secret holds” that frustrate Obama’s agenda. After the death of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and his seat being won by Republican Scott Brown, Senate Democrats lacked the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster. This is an arcane rule that allows any senator to give an endless speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate that can only be cut off by a vote of 60 members. Also, under Senate rules, any senator can anonymously hold up presidential nominations to federal jobs. Using this rule, Republicans held up hundreds of Obama’s nominations purely for partisan reasons.

  While the Obama administration struggles to find its footing, the black community is also addressing a new political landscape. Historically, both internally and internationally, black politics has been theorized as oppositional and liberation-oriented, an alternative ideological and mobilizing force to the historically white, racist, profit-obsessed, corporate constellation of elites that have dominated U.S. politics. Yet the increasing incorporation of black Americans into the centers of U.S. political power—most notably in the pre-Obama period with the conservative elevation of Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice—reached a new milestone with the election of Obama and fundamentally challenges that framework. A new paradigm of black politics is required to address the denser, more complicated matrix of intersecting, often contradictory and ideologically tangled issues confronting the U.S. state and its engagement with local and global communities, including African and African American ones.

  We need a progressive black social movement for the twenty-first century, one that theorizes beyond the demand for racial equality and reparations to a broader demand for society-wide social and economic justice, participatory democracy, and a decisive role in governance. Institutional injustice continues to perpetuate inequalities, particularly in low-income and impoverished communities that remain underserved or ignored. The positioning of African Americans (as well as other people of color and women) should neither be dismissed as irrelevant nor celebrated as the end of racism. We need a crisp political framework that strikes the precise balance between rigorous criticism and tactical and political support. Its manner of addressing the persistent and well-documented disparities between blacks and whites in economic, education, health care, and criminal justice matters will be a measure of the administration’s racial and national politics, but just as important to the nation’s direction will be the intensity, nature, strategies, and dimension of the response from black civil society.

  The First Family visiting Ghana, Africa, July 11, 2009

  Like the tea party movement, black Americans today are angry at the misplaced priorities of the corporate-dominated, militarized, unaccountable administrations that have governed U.S. society for generations. Unlike the tea party movement—significantly mobilized by the politics of resentment, fear, and false nostalgia—a broad-based national movement for social justice does not call for less government but rather the construction of a government—and governing theory and practice—that is accountable, democratic, inclusive, and able to inspire hope.

  Meanwhile, Obama’s leadership from the White House is not a negation of black politics, but represents its extension into the realm of presidential governance. Whether Obama turns out to be one of America’s greatest presidents or something less, his tenure will nevertheless represent one nexus where black politics and American politics meet. At this writing, they both live and lead from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Given the confluence of circumstances he faced in winning the White House, along with unknown events to come, it certainly will not be an uneventful presidency.

  Inevitably, there will be some disappointments. In a nation as race conscious as the United States, not only will blacks view Obama’s policies, politics, and behavior through the prism of race, but other groups will do the same. For some observers, every utterance, every move will be interpreted in terms of race. It will be impossible to satisfy all the social justice interests that will look to the White House for transformation and resolution of issues that have been centuries in the making.

  But there will also be some breakthroughs. The Obama White House changes the game in many respects. Not only is Obama one of the smartest individuals to ever command the presidency, but he brings rich life experiences that few American political leaders can come close to matching. It is not a stretch to say that more than any other president, he is conscious of the historic and contemporary role that race and social standing play in shaping the destiny of millions of his fellow citizens. Removing “whites-only” signs did not in and of itself end racism in either the United States
or South Africa, but the action was the result of a sustained and determined strategy of mobilization and resistance. The sign has been removed from the White House. A black family running the White House tells the nation and the world that the struggle for equality, inclusion, and freedom has moved a bit further down the road.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1. Throughout this work, the terms “enslaved person” and “slave” are used interchangeably. They are not quite equivalent. The term “slave,” arguably, generates a more emotive response and connotes a personal status of being that resonates with popular understandings of the word. “Enslaved person” implies the process and context by which an individual ends up in a specific condition of oppression and maintains the humanity of that individual. In this work, however, both interpretations seem warranted and I make use of both terms, privileging breadth over consistency.

  2. By comparison, Ronald Reagan drew 500,000, Bill Clinton 800,000, and George W. Bush 300,000. See “Strollers, umbrellas forbidden at Obama inauguration,” AFP, December 21, 2008. www.google.com/hostednews/​afp/article/​ALeqM5jAxfsUb6KLjwIDSt0​zMbKoKfqncA.

  3. George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volumes 4 and 5 (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009), p. 208.

  4. Quoted in Andy Barr, “Arizona Bans ‘Ethnic Studies,’ ” Politico, May 12, 2010.

  5. Gerald F. Seib, “In Crisis, Opportunity for Obama,” Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008.

  6. It is important to note that “free” is not the same as “equal.” While a small percentage of African Americans were not held in chattel slavery and are commonly referred to as having been free, they did not enjoy the same rights and privileges whites had. Restrictions were placed on votings rights, business and property ownership, marriage, legal rights, education, and other areas of life and livelihood, such that the distinction between being enslaved and being free was not as broad as it may appear. And there was always the omnipresent threat of being kidnapped and openly sold into slavery, an atrocity no white American has ever suffered. This is not to diminish the qualitative difference between being held in slavery and not, but to demythologize exactly how “free” free blacks really were.

  7. U.S. Supreme Court, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), 60 U.S. 393 (How.) dred scott, plaintiff in error, v. john f. a. sandford. December Term, 1857. See http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/​scripts/getcase.pl?​court=US&vol=60&​invol=393.

  8. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1998).

  9. See James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln (Oxford[* Or New York? Some of the earlier Oxford Univ. Press references have given New York as the locale.]New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); and Lerone Bennett, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 2007).

  10. Christian Saint-Etienne, The Great Depression, 1929–1938: Lessons for the 1980s (Stanford, CA: Hoover Press, 1984), p. 10; and “Farming in the 1930s.” See Living History Farm website: www.livinghistoryfarm.org/​farminginthe30s​/money_08.html.

  11. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005), p. 17.

  12. Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” speech, Philadelphia, March 18, 2008. See Barack Obama “Organizing for America” website: http://my.barackobama.com/​page/​community/post/​stateupdates/gGBbTW.

  Chapter 1

  1. George Washington’s Mount Vernon website: www.mountvernon.org/learn/meet_george/index.cfm/ss/101/. See also Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Univ. of Missouri Press, 1997); and Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Macmillan, 2004).

  2. Edward Lawler Jr., “Oney Judge.” www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves/oney.htm.

  3. T.H. Adams, “Washington’s Runaway Slave, and How Portsmouth Freed Her,” The Granite Freeman, Concord, New Hampshire, May 22, 1845.

  4. Helen Bryan, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2002), p. 341.

  5. Ibid., p. 242.

  6. See Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972).

  7. Slavery in the North, website: www.slavenorth.com/newhampshire.htm.

  8. See Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Buffalo, NY: Wm. S. Hein Publishing, 2000).

  9. Albert P. Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando, eds., Civil Rights and African Americans: A Documentary History (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1968), p. 52.

  10. “1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” afrolumens project website: www.afrolumens.org/slavery/gradual.html.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Edward Lawler Jr., “Washington, the Enslaved, and the 1780 Law,” www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves/washingtonand8.htm.

  13. Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery, p. 28.

  14. Ibid., pp. 186–187.

  15. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, Vol. 36 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933), p.2.

  16. Bryan, First Lady of Liberty, p. 342.

  17. Ibid., p. 344.

  18. George Washington letter to Oliver Wipple, September 1, 1796. www.weekslibrary.org/ona_maria_judge.htm.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Adams, “Washington’s Runaway Slave.”

  22. The legal issues were even more complicated. Under the law, the legal status of slaves was determined by the mother’s history. If the mother was a dower, then all of her children were dowers. In a marriage between a dower and a slave who was owned outright, the children of that marriage would or would not be dowers depending on the status of the mother.

  23. Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 35.

  24. Donald R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), p. 46.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid., p. 55; and Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), p. 240.

  27. Egerton, Death or Liberty, pp. 55–56. Also, see William Wemms and John Hodgson, The Trial of the British Soldiers, of the 29th Regiment of Foot, for the Murder of Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, and Patrick Carr, on Monday Evening, March 5, 1770 (Boston: Belcher and Armstrong, 1807).

  28. Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Inc., 2005), p. 25.

  29. See Charles Stuart, A Memoir of Granville Sharp (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2008); Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); and Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution (London: Oberon Books, 2007).

  30. Blumrosen and Blumrosen, p. 11. See James Oldham, “New Light on Mansfield and Slavery,” The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 1988.

  31. Egerton, Death of Liberty, pp. 51–52.

  32. Albert P. Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando, eds., Civil Rights and African Americans: A Documentary History (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1968), p. 36; and Blumrosen and Blumrosen, Slave Nation, p. 35.

  33. Blumrosen and Blumrosen, Slave Nation, pp. 24–25.

  34. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 346.

  35. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776. See www.constitution.org/bcp/virg_dor.htm.

  36. Blumrosen and Blumrosen, Slave Nation, p. 127.

  37. Egerton, Death of Liberty, pp. 41–43.

  38. See “Declaration of the Rights
of Man and the Citizen,” adopted by the French National Constituent Assembly August 1789; and Ho Chí Minh, “Proclamation of Independence,” September 2, 1945.

  39. In the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney referred to the Declaration of Independence to argue that “slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people.” See Dred Scott v. Sanford (60 U.S. 19 How. 393,1857).

  40. Paul Leicester Ford, ed., Works of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), p. 28.

  41. Blumrosen and Blumrosen, Slave Nation, p. 141.

  42. Gary Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), p. 121.

  43. Egerton, pp. 62–63.

  44. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, Chapter VIII: Early Plots and Rebellions (Columbia Univ. Press, 1943; International Publishers, 1993), pp. 162–208; Lerone Bennett Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (New York: Penguin, 1988), pp. 444–446, and C. L. R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt (Washington: Drum and Spear Press, 1969), pp. 21-22.