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No He Can't
By Anne Wortham
This is Anne Wortham. She is Associate Professor of Sociology at
She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the
American Philosophical Association.
She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a
Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal
Opportunity in Higher Education.
In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were
featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The
transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his
book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical
Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness
is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.
She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual
rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on
theories of social and cultural marginality.
Recently,
she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and
Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the
social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an
interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.
This article by her is really, really something.
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not
vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for
president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a
Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is
worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no
elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There
are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to
come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the
requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about
the history of the
Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain
understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom
that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that
individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would
have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which
your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational
that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man
because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race
card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites
who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.
I
would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of
people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in
his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues
at the
I would have to believe
that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a
man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new
service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to
accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the
"bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into
existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man
who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by
destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the
scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park,
So you have made history,
Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office
of the president of the
So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s
bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee
Harvard,
There is nothing
in me that can share your happy obliviousness.