Adam Serwer of the National Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has written an important piece of afrosphere history about Black bloggers demands to be included in the state blog corps that will cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He quoted or cited and linked a number of members of the afrosphere, including L.N. Rock (African American Political Pundit), Pam Spaulding (PamsHouseBlend), Gina McCauley (What About Our Daughters?), Oliver Willis, Liza Sabater (of Culture Kitchen) and the Francis L. Holland Blog.
One aspect of the article I found very interesting was the juxtaposition between the Black bloggers demanding inclusion and the opinion of Markos C.A. Moulitsas Zúñiga, asserting that we are not included because we don't deserve to be included:
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who founded the popular liberal blog DailyKos, rebuffs bloggers who allege the meeting deliberately excluded bloggers of color, describing the blogosphere as "about as close to a meritocracy as you can get," adding "while there are accomplished bloggers of color in the netroots ... too many bloggers are quick to use their sex or race to demand access that they may not necessarily merit based on what they've built." Moulitsas, who is Latino, declined an invitation to the Clinton meeting. PBS.ORGThis portends a struggle that will become increasingly obvious to Black bloggers and to the mainstream white media, between Black blogs and our readers demanding our inclusion, while white bloggers like big (white) dog of the whitosphere, Moulitsas Zúñiga, offer excuse after excuse why Blacks need not and should not be included at all.
This will play itself out at the Democratic National Convention as well as in the staffing of the Obama campaign and the Obama Administration that will be inaugurated next January. Are Blacks to be excluded because whites are better than us (according to white criteria as applied by white judges), or are Blacks to be included because we are 20% of the Democratic Party, we aare more loyal Democrats than are whites, and we refuse to allow ourselves to excluded?
Remember my definition of the "white male supremacy paradigm":
White male supremacy is the conviction that white males, no matter how much and how often they fail, are still inherently superior to women and Blacks, no matter how much and how often we succeed.
More than half of whites voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, while 90% of Blacks voted against him. So all of the whiteroots new-media "progressive" liberal efforts to convince the white public are trying desperately to achieve half the level of commitment to the Democratic Party that Blacks have maintained consistently at least since 1968. White progressives fail over and over again, and yet they think they have achieved more than Blacks have.
The belief that white progressives succeeded in getting their voters to the polls to vote Democratic in 2000 and 2004, is based on the white male supremacy paradigm: Their media gurus "succeeded" even when they failed, while Blacks get little or no credit for succeeding twice as much statistically as the the white media gurus did. Our voters supported the Democratic Party at twice the rate of white voters.
"Progressive" whites should be hiring Black consultants by the scores, trying to figure out what makes Blacks so loyal to the Democratic Party. Then, they can use what they've learned in their work with fickle whites. Instead, these "progressive white gurus" hire slews of other "progressive" whites to convince their white brethren, when we Blacks understand their white brethren far better than they do.
If the most competent media experts are those who get their voters to vote more often for Democrats, then Black media experts are twice as competent as the white ones, regardless of anything others say about meritocracy. The whitosphere still has not proved that it is half as effective as the Black church, for example, in terms of getting voters to support Democratic candidates.
Isn't it "divisive" to argue against the idea of exclusion of Blacks based on a purported "meritocracy." Well, it's surely no more divisive than arguing that segregation is the result of "meritocracy".
|
|
|
Permalink :: 5 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
