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Melissa Harris-Perry, under attack

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For those fans of the Rachel Maddow Show, and other MSNBC offerings who have become familiar with the commentary of Melissa Harris-Perry , just wanted to point out her recent piece in The Nation for those who have not read it.

Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama

and after the shitstorm that occurred, her response to her naysayers:

The Epistemology of Race Talk

If you can stand it – dive into the sewer of the comments section(s) of both pieces.

She is now officially a “racist”, “race-card player” and Obama pony dreaming hack.  

In her response to the storm she makes three main points.

Often, those of us who attempt to talk about historical and continuing racial bias in America encounter a few common discursive strategies that are meant to discredit our perspectives. Some of them are in play here.

1. Prove it!

The first is a common strategy of asking any person of color who identifies a racist practice or pattern to “prove” that racism is indeed the causal factor. This is typically demanded by those who are certain of their own purity of racial motivation. The implication is if one cannot produce irrefutable evidence of clear, blatant and intentional bias, then racism must be banned as a possibility. But this is both silly as an intellectual claim and dangerous as a policy standard. …


2. I have black friends

Which brings us to a second common strategy of argument about one’s racial innocence: the “I have black friends” claim. I was shocked and angered when Salon’s Joan Walsh used this strategy in her criticism of my piece. Although I disagree with her, I have no problem with Walsh’s decision to take on the claims in my piece. I consider it a sign of respect to publicly engage those with whom you disagree. I was taken aback that Walsh emphasized the extent of our friendship. Walsh and I have been professionally friendly. We’ve eaten a few meals. I invited her to speak at Princeton and I introduced her to my literary agent. We are not friends. Friendship is a deep and lasting relationship based on shared sacrifice and joys. We are not intimates in that way. Watching Walsh deploy our professional familiarity as a shield against claims of her own bias is very troubling. In fact, it is one of the very real barriers to true interracial friendship and intimacy. …



3. Who made you an expert?

This brings me to a final point about racial discourse. It is common for my interlocutors to question my professional, intellectual and personal credentials. It is as though my very identity as an African-American woman makes me unqualified to speak on issues of race and gender; as though I could only be arguing out of personal interest or opinion rather than from decades of research, publication and university teaching. …

Why am I not surprised?

Had she joined the Obama Critic of the Month Club she would be crowned Ms. Black Progressive of the Week, standing she had for a while, but which will surely be rescinded.  She’ll probably be impeached …oh wait…she’s not elected to anything.

My bad.

I guess the calls for her to have her own show, a la Rachel will subside, or be swallowed by those who issued them only a few months ago.

I’m solidly in the Sista’s corner, but we all know my POV has been suspect due to past critiques of a certain other Miz.

heh.  


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/ 72 Comments

72 comments

  2. jsfox

    You can’t compare how people feel about Obama to how they felt about Clinton 15 years ago. There’s been way too much water under the bridge since then.

    And had this reaction:

    face desk

    Why? One damn person after another keeps wondering why Obama isn’t FDR and making that comparison. Talk about water under the bridge.  

  3. spacemanspiff

    … have never read/liked The Nation very much. After reading these 2 pieces all I can say is… wow. She is on my must read list all day everyday. It’s funny (in a sad kind of way) how her point was proven in the comments of her posts. Soft racism is still racism and when peeps double down and get defensive you know a nerve has been hit. At the beginning of Obama’s term things were different/less obvious because most white liberals were still being cautious about how they came across. Most of the memes now being used were created by the right. But it seems that as time passes some can’t help themselves any longer and their racist bile comes spewing out. It says a lot about a movement so self centered and pretentious that it can’t fathom the thought of taking an objective look at their own hangups.

    On a more positive note it’s kind of cool that an openly gay woman and a black woman can talk about a black POTUS on primetime tv. 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Slowly and surely minds are being changed and progress is being made because some refuse to settle and continue to push the envelope. It’s kind of like having a blog owned by a latino who has made a black woman (I wonder who that can be) and a latino (Armando) his last 2 promotions to the frontpage. Baby steps. But we’re getting there. I had no idea where this post was going when I started writing it and I’m a bit surprised I started out so negative and ended up on a positive note. Thank you as always for making me think D.    

  4. Adept2u

    I don’t think my stance was much different the MHP’s and we know what the reaction from “progressive space” was to that.  They threw my black ass out and decided to hold an all white coffee clatch, or if not all white, definitely white people get to decide what is racism and what is not.

    What we truly need is a goodwin law.

  5. bubbanomics

    The contrasts of Obama’s accomplishments vs. Clinton’s, together with the high level and absurd quality of the criticism aimed at Obama vs. Clinton, are impossible to ignore.  Obama is being held to an unbelievable standard.

  6. Noor B

    In my case, it’s not because I’m blatantly bigoted.  It’s because I’m not sure how to start the conversation, and I’m not sure how to avoid falling into the same old rhetorical traps that cause so much bad feeling.  I think MHP has a very real point about how whites argue against their own racism in terms of friendship.  I have acquaintances of many different races and ethnicities, but very few close friends — of any skin color!  This was not always the case — the AA girls I went to middle school with were so much nicer than the blonde girls club (you want mean?  Trust me, there is nothing meaner than a clique of cute little blonde things in 7th grade), and they were definitely my friends.  But peer pressure on both sides of the black/white divide drove us apart, we were after all only adolescent girls, and after enough years went by, the terms of engagement, the very language of race, of privilege, and even of class became so different, we might as well have been speaking in tongues to each other.  It was sad then, it’s sad now, and I haven’t got a single freaking clue how to bridge the chasm.

    Now, as for criticizing presidents, I think MHP is correct for at least my generation and older that there is a greater or lesser degree of latent racism involved in criticizing Pres. Obama vs. Pres. Clinton.  At the same time, I do have some very serious criticisms with both of these men on policy issues.  I do wish Pres. Obama had pushed harder for single-payer.  I do wish he had gotten us out of Iraq and Af/Pak faster, ended DADT sooner, shit-canned NCLB immediately, etc., etc., etc.  Now, having said that, I agree Pres. Obama has gotten a hell of a lot of important things done — and he is not in the branch of government that actually makes the damn laws.  He suggests things, and he signs or vetoes whatever lands on his desk.  

    What gives me the greatest pause in considering my electoral options is my own position as a pacifist.  Gitmo needs to be closed.  So do any other “black sites” still operational.  We need truth and reconciliation, including prosecuting the torturers and those who authorized its use.  After all, I felt in 2001/2003 that both wars were simultaneously racist and communalist.  To this day, I consider them crimes against humanity, and that these violations of the Geneva Convention were and are deeply racist.  These are things I profoundly needed the president to move on immediately once he got into office.  I feel deep and abiding shame that we as a country cannot hold ourselves to the very highest standards of international comportment, when we were the ones who pushed so hard for these standards after WW2.  

    But the truth is, I will in all likelihood bite my lip until the blood runs down my chin and vote for the man who did not make good on these campaign promises, because I know for a fact that every single last Republican candidate will not just continue these things, they will expand them.  And that is a shame and a horror I cannot, will not abide.

  7. Kysen

    since before I knew her name….only knew her as the occasional interviewee on MSNBC.

    I’ve enjoyed seeing her presence increase there and elsewhere…and hope to see it continue to do so.

    I was recently singin’ her praises (in fact, I think it was to sricki) and in the process ‘Googled’ her…the results only left me MORE impressed.

    As to those who bash her?

    Meh…screw ’em.

    All she needs to do is just keep on keepin’ on with her bad self and any unbiased eye will see them for the fools they are (same goes for YOUR detractors, Dee!).

  8. PatriotDaily

    i just had to sign up here because joan drives me crazy. i could not finish reading her article because she just goes in circles.

    intent is not often stated expressly. heck, for murder, we often rely on inferences as evidence for that reason.

    but joan wants clear, obvious evidence of intentional bias. but who determines whether there is bias? joan wants to decide, if she does not see it, then it does not exist even when it does exist.  

  9. Actbriniel

    That puts at least 4 targets on her 🙁

    I truly love listening to her ~ and watching the heads explode of those also being interviewed at the same time who are not even close to her intellectual heft.

  10. princss6

    standing she had for a while

    I want to read her book.  Me and Sis Melissa H-P have been on the same wave length these past couple of months.  

    I think her second piece was excellent.  One of the best reads in a long time.  

    I wonder how this is going to shake out for her.  She is definitely taking a huge risk by calling things by their proper name.  We see what happens to others who do that especially when they offer a critique of the white Left.

    Thank goodness we do have someone in the media who offers a counterpoint to West, Walsh, Tavis, Greenwald, et al.

  11. anna shane

    to get anyone to agree that they’re motivated by racism when they don’t see themselves as racist.  Of course there are many factors involved in Barack’s declining poll numbers, not the least of which is the economy sucking.

    But she makes a strong case with comparisons to reactions to the big dog, who whatever was said was not our first black president.  if these white liberals who no longer like him had a clue what he’s been up against and how he’s positioned himself to beat the Republican by being reasonable, by not playing to white fears of an angry black man, or any white fears for that matter, they’d be favorably impressed.  They all say ‘I would have done this or that, why didn’t he,’ and that’s not even thinking about what was possible or what would have been lost if he’d done things their way, without needing understanding about how he’s kept this thing from being about race.  

    But, when she writes that, she gets individual reactions, as if she’s accused any one person of being racist and they have to defend their own selves.    

    She can speak to this because she isn’t running for president and so she can talk about forbidden subjects with the hope that a few liberal white voters will think.  

  12. bubbanomics

    Salon

    But, then, at its core, we must remember that the particular form of denialism represented by Harris-Perry is not really about its stated goal of combating bigotry — it is about raw, no-holds-barred partisanship in our red-versus-blue politics.

    In this case, Harris-Perry, a longtime lockstep Obama defender, is making the argument in order to contribute to a broader campaign aimed at shutting down principled progressive dissent about this White House’s record. Whether her jeremiad and others like it are aimed at preemptively preventing a Democratic presidential primary, or simply aimed at strengthening overall liberal support for Obama in the general election, such denialism tries to fabricate an equivalency between ugly race-motivated opposition to President Obama from the white-supremacist far right, and principled — and perfectly rational — opposition to him from the left. It aims to discredit substantive progressive questions about the gap between Obama’s rhetoric and his actions in advance of the 2012 campaign.

    ugh.

  14. doroma

    Aravosis’s of the left dismisses any progress made by Obama as trivial.DADT etc. Racism on the left is very evident on the blogs. You have to be blind or deep in denial to miss it.I read his article and was amazed by the thank you letters he was getting from right wingers. I am a white liberal and Sirota does not speak for me. I am on MHS’S side

  15. DTOzone

    that a lot of white Democrats who voted for Obama felt like they were doing black people a favor and Obama a favor and they should be thankful and shut up.

    I feel like the primaries made that worse. A lot of white liberals had to “come around” to Obama and seemed to imply their coming around was a favor to African-Americans and young voters.

    Like Obama OWES them.

    I don’t see it as racism, but there is a sense of inferiority toward him, and a lot of black politicians generally.

    As far as if there’s racism among white liberals, some, yeah, they’ll march in support of education, welfare, etc. but wouldn’t be caught dead in a black neighborhood.  

  18. creamer

    when addressing social and racial issues. I suspect some of the critsism from the chattering class is due to a bit of an inferiority complex.

      Anyone who thinks that race is not playing a role in both ends of the political spectrum is either delusional or not being honest with themselves.

     I would also say that any President, black, white or otherwise, would be taking critisism with unemployement at 9.1%. If it were 5% the critisim would not resonate quite as much.

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