Race and standing in the Occupy movement

Many of these pundits really show their ignorance when it comes to black people.

For instance, they don't seem to understand the reason blacks vote less is because their votes typically will not lead to any real difference in their lives. White America, particularly the #OWS movement, Dylan Ratigan & co., are slowly starting to realize what black America has known for awhile. Likewise, they are also pulling out of electoral politics; the enthusiasm gap of last fall being the preeminent example.

Another thing these pundits don't realize is that the chief organizing institution in the black community are churches. Dr. King was a reverend, remember? As are Jesse Jackson, Sharpton, etc.

If you want to get a substantial number of black people to mobilize politically, you need to do this through the church; Obama and even Bush the younger understood this.

The elephant in the room regarding this dynamic is the fact that the black church also suffers from a 99% vs. 1% dynamic. The popular mega-churches are essentially run as businesses to extract as much wealth as possible. TD Jakes isn't all that different from Obama or Sharpton, in that they are ill-equipped to speak for the 99% despite the rhetoric.

I don't think it is a coincidence that West & Smiley have been at the black forefront of #OWS, while the church has not. The black church makes a lot of money off of people's poverty.

I don't know if these pundits are aware of these dynamics. They always show an inability to understand anything in the real world outside of the academic & abstract.

I think the Af-Am community is ready and willing to participate, but it will have to be done in an untraditional matter. Many people have criticized OWS for not having a leader, so it's a bit ironic that OWS supporters are lamenting a black leader dragging people into the flock.

Ive been to Zuccotti park. There are african Americans there in roughly the same proportion as the country at large. There are also no barriers for participating there. If you want to occupy Zuccotti, it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. The GA practices a progressive stack where underrepresented groups get to go first.
But I do worry that there is conflict being generated where none exists. Let's not forget that there are also women that get the short shrift. Why haven't we heard from them? How about Asians? Do you know how many Chinese researchers are out of work?
I would be very careful about twitter memes that spring up "spontaneously". I don't doubt that the right would like to divide us based on gender and racial issues and get us to fight each other when the real problem is economic and generated by wall street.
I hope that this faux issue goes away because it has the potential to be very destructive to the movement. We don't need and right wing operatives picking at a fault line.
As for why we didn't wake up sooner, I have been awake. I was awake enough to know that Obama was going to be a disaster to working class people of all stripes three years ago and was protesting back then. Speak for yourself.

I confess I don't like white liberals have failed to

White liberals have been up against it for as long as I can remember. And while we are not always as clueful as I would like, the cards have always been stacked against us and we are doing our best. Now we are reduced to a handful of tents out in the cold rain and people are still criticizing us for not doing more. And I can't help but notice that these criticisms come in inverse proportion to willingness to camp on a cold, wet sidewalk.

America is a segregated society, even amongst people of good will. We live in different neighborhoods, and even when the neighborhood is mixed, we still travel in different circles. It is no longer driven by hatred, but we travel in different circles.

As for the black community, black churches (I won't say The Black Church, because there is no such thing) as a whole are very conservative. The Equal Rights Amendment died in the Illinois legislature partly because of opposition from the black churches. Also the faith based federal programs have been very good to black churches, so they are very much on board with that. As a whole black churches are very anti-abortion and anti-gay, lesbian, and transgender rights.

Black churches no longer have a monopoly on the political dialog. There is now a large vibrant black middle class (although the assault on public employees puts that very much at risk). There are now lawyers, politicians, and other groups who are power bases within the community.

Hip-hop music is mixed, the stuff you hear on the radio is very authoritarian, but the street music, that never makes it to the radio, is much more lively and progressive. It is obvious to me that hip-hop music is a power to be reckoned with, although how it all plays out is unclear to me.

Black athletes are also clearly very influential. Again, how all this plays out I cannot say, save that it has gone a lot further a lot faster than I could have every hoped for.

Tapping in to all of this is hard.

I am sorry that the Occupy movement has not spoken out more about women's rights, especially as so many of the occupiers are women.

Poverty in America is very much driven by gender discrimination. And anyone who has read the GS Elevator Twittter feed gets a good view of how misogyny drives economic parasitism.

So clearly the Occupy movement has its work cut out for it, but it is the best thing we have on the horizon.

I'm not black, but I've been poor and female for a really long damn time. So yeah, there's a little bit of bitterness because attention is only being paid now that middle class white dudes are are in trouble.

Remember, most of the people who have been at the bottom (POCs, women etc - as if they are mutually exclusive-ha) have been Democratic voters for all their lives. So we're pretty familiar with the "Come jump on our bus, we got your back! Oops sorry, we meant under our bus" routine. With that history, of course the only logical thing to do is to give the Occupy movement a long, hard side-eye until we're sure it's not another round of the same.

It is not the job of the oppressed to put their blind trust into the people who have benefited from oppression. It is the job of those who have benefited from oppression to prove that this time they really do mean for change to happen.

but.............

I've been to Occupy Seattle. I also lived in the poor southern neighborhoods of Seattle for a long damn time where the only white people were either gentrifiers or the kids in the top of the "slave ship" that is Garfield high school (white AP kids on top, black and brown kids on bottom). I didn't see any of my old neighbors, or anyone that looks like my neighbors, at Occupy Seattle. I also didn't see any reason for them to be there. I didn't hear anything in GA that would make a damn bit of difference to them. I didn't see any cardboard signs that would make a damn bit of difference to them.

Occupy Seattle has now moved to Seattle Central Community College, in the white Capitol Hill neighborhood but just a mile from the place where Seattle gets decidedly browner. Maybe proximity will help, but the message of generic fairness is not enough to overcome systemic oppression. You (general you, not specific) gotta point out exactly how it's gonna change for the better. Specifics. Specifics. Specifics. We can't trust a message of inclusiveness that isn't specific.

when work and health let me. I plan on going to protest Jamie Dimon's existence next Wednesday when he's in town, though it will take a toll on me physically and the risk for me is high. My job is for a company contracted by a giant bank. Well contracted by a company contracted by a giant bank.

OWS does not represent the makeup of NYC, not only in terms of race, but gender.

People don't want to hear it. I'd like not to have my students repeat my mistakes: I think futile this wish. Denying the problem exists does not make it go away.