What the Obama victory shows

Barry Sheppard

Direct Action, Issue 7, December 2008

As has been widely noted, the election of an African-

American as president of the United States is an historic

event. This is true irrespective of the politics and

perspectives of Barack Obama. That a black family will

occupy the White House, which was built by black slaves,

is a powerful symbol.

The four-hundred-year history of African-Americans in the

United States spans the time of slavery, the Civil War and

Radical Reconstruction, the reaction beginning in the

1870s that instituted the Jim Crow segregation system 

through terror, and the civil rights struggles of the 1950s

and '60s that overthrew Jim Crow, up to the present.

There is no question that without the victory of the civil

rights movement, which liberated the South from legal

apartheid, and its effect throughout the North, no black

person could have been elected to the US presidency. It

was this victory that changed over time the way black

Americans are viewed by whites, to the extent that tens of

millions of whites felt able to vote a black person into the

ountry's highest public office.

On election night, when it was clear that Obama had won,

there were celebrations among African-Americans

everywhere. TV shots showed many in tears of joy. The

following day, my next-door neighbour, who is black and

somewhat conservative, greeted me with the Black Power

fist salute, and said: "I never thought I would see this in

my lifetime!"

It is always difficult to see underlying trends through the

distorting lens of capitalist elections, especially in the US

with its system of two openly capitalist parties holding

nearly identical views. But I think certain things are

discernable. The first is what I have already alluded to, 

the diminution of racist attitudes among many whites.

Polls showed this was more pronounced among young

whites. While Asians, Latinos and especially African-

Americans (by 95%) voted for Obama, without making

important inroads among whites he would have lost.

The second is renewed confidence among black

Americans that they can change things. Whether this

manifests itself in new struggles in the months and years

ahead remains to be seen.

It should be noted that while racism among whites has

diminished, racism remains powerful, and racial

oppression remains institutionalised throughout the

country. Obama won 53% of the vote, smaller than would

be expected given the low level of support to outgoing

President George Bush's discredited administration and

the extent of Democratic Party victories in the

congressional elections. Whites are increasingly

polarised on race.

By institutionalised racial oppression, I mean the facts of

housing and job discrimination, and the resulting

disparities between blacks and whites in education,

unemployment, life expectancy, average income and so

forth. It is these sorts of issues a new black liberation

movement would have to take up, issues which relate to

the whole working class.

The third thing I think we should note in the election is the

impact of the deepening economic downturn. It was this

that swung many white workers, who never thought they

would vote for a black person, to vote for Obama against

Republican candidate John McCain. They hope that a

Democrat will do better on the economy than Bush has.

This factor, which only began to be reflected in polls at the

end of the campaign, tipped the scales in states like

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and the Southern states of

Virginia and North Carolina, as well as others. High hopes

have been raised among black, Latino, Asian and white

workers that an Obama administration will do something 

to help them as the economy spirals downward.

The economic crisis and the Wall Street bank bailouts

have enraged working people. It is a kind of primitive

radicalisation, a new sense that something is very wrong

with the system. But this is causing a sharp polarisation

among whites, too. McCain tapped into this with his own

denunciations of "Wall Street" and "the government"

coupled with thinly disguised, but loud and shrill, appeals

to racism.

That racism remains deep among many millions of whites

has been reflected in expressions of deep anger that

Obama was elected, some documented on mainstream

TV. This is especially true in the South, but has

manifested across the country. There have been

"hundreds" of incidents of cross burnings, racial epithets

scrawled on cars and homes, Black figures hung from

nooses, and other incidents according the Southern

Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, since the

election.

Some of these included the admission by four North

Carolina State University students that they spray-painted

"let's shoot that nigger in the head." In a rural general

store in Maine, a sign read "Osama Obama Shotgun

Pool," where people could make bets as to the day

Obama would be killed ("Stabbing, shooting, roadside

bombs, they all count"). Second graders on a school bus

in Idaho chanted "assassinate Obama".

Most incidents have occurred in the South, including one

church marquee that denounced Obama as a "Muslim"

who will install a "wicked" government. The South was

governed by a wing of the Democratic Party, up until the

mid-1960s, known as the "Dixiecrats". They enforced the

Jim Crow system and were part of Franklin Roosevelt's

coalition in the 1930s and '40s, supporting his "social-

democratic" economic policies in return for his support of

Jim Crow.

But when the national Democratic Party came out for civil

rights legislation under the impact of the black movement

in the mid-1960s, the Dixiecrats became Republicans.

Many whites deeply resented that the federal government

had "imposed" on them the dissolution of apartheid.

Beginning with Richard Nixon in 1968, the Republicans

launched their "Southern strategy" to appeal to white

racists there, which helped them win national as well as

state and local elections. The "Southern strategy" took

some blows in this election, with Virginia and North

Carolina defecting to Obama.

With the new confidence among blacks and other non-

whites, in the context of the "primitive radicalisation" of

tens of millions of workers including whites, I believe we

are entering a new period. How long this gestation period

lasts before we see new explosive struggles remains to

be seen. It took from the stock market crash of 1929 until

the first battles in 1934 before there was an upsurge of

workers' struggles in the 1930s.

We have seen one positive step forward in the context of

a defeat registered in the election. Proposition 8, an

amendment to the state constitution in California that took

away the right to marry for gay men and lesbians that the

California State Supreme Court had affirmed earlier in the

year, passed by 52% in a referendum. But gays, lesbians

and their supporters didn't take this lying down. There

were immediate militant demonstrations across the state,

organised by amateurs through the internet. On November

15, there were some 300 demonstrations in cities in

every state, often targeting the Mormon church which

poured tens of millions into the effort to pass Proposition

8.

The effect of these mass actions was to cause a split in

the Prop 8 forces between the openly anti-gay groups and

the covert ones, who began to bleat that they were not

anti-gay rights in general but only on this issue. (The

"moderate" ads for Prop 8 appealed to fears that gays

and lesbians seek to "convert" children to homosexuality.)

Does this militant outpouring reflect a new mood of

onfidence that the powers that be can be opposed in a

meaningful way? I hope so.

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