White America’s Existential Crisis
People have, apparently, lost their minds. There seems to be a panic that we have lost the fabric of our society and I’m having trouble getting a handle on what has happened that is so drastic that people would think its tyranny or fascism or hitleresque or stalinesque (Jon Stewart)
That quote is from Stewart’s interview with Lou Dobbs (video below). Dobbs never really answered Jon’s question, so I’m going to try.
There is a certain segment of the American population that really believes in the American foundational myths. They identify with them. They believe that America was built by a handful of white, Christian, men with exceptional morals. Their America is the country that showed the world democracy, saved the Jews in World War II, and tore down the Berlin wall.
These people have always fought changes to their mythology. They have always resented those of us who pushed to complicate those myths with the realities of slavery, Native American genocide, imperial war in the Philippines, invasions of Latin American countries, and secret arms deals.
And we have been so busy fighting them to have our stories and histories included in the American story that we sometimes forget why the myths were invented in the first place.
No myth illustrates the slight of hand behind our national mythology quite like the myth of the cowboy. In the mythology, the cowboy is a white man. He is a crusty frontiersman taming the west and paving the way for civilization. He is the good guy fighting the dangerous Indian. He is free and independent. He is in charge of his own destiny.
Read Richard Slatta’s Cowboys of the Americas
And cowboys were not so free.
Cowboys were itinerant workers who, while paid fairly well when they had work, spent much of the year begging for odd jobs. Many did not even own the horse they rode. Frequently, they worked for large cattle companies owned by stockholders from the Northeast and Europe, not for small family operations (a la Bonanza). The few times cowboys tried to organize, they were brutally oppressed by ranchers.
So what does all this have to do with Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, teabaggers and white panic?
Marginalization and myths have always been about economic exploitation. White supremacy is not simply personal bigotry. It is the systematic exclusion, dehumanization, and erasure of the majority in order to preserve economic dominance for the wealthy minority. And while white men may be in most positions of wealth and power to this day, only a very few of them really benefit from our current economic system. White supremacy helped distract poor and working class whites from targeting their economic exploiters. White supremacy helped mask the lie of equal opportunity.
When you know the real history of the cowboy, it makes the selling of Reagan and Bush as cowboys seem like an inside joke. The mythological cowboy is the heroic figure that many Americans wish they were. The fact that the cowboy was actually an exploited worker is virtually unknown.
When Americans vote for a president, they want to see that heroic version of themselves looking back at them. They want to see that free cowboy of the mythology. No matter how poor or exploited white people were, they could always take subconscious comfort in the fact that, when they looked at the highest power in the land, they saw an idealized version of themselves.
And then came Barack Obama.
Pop.
It’s a powerful thing to be able to identify with the people who are your leaders, to feel like they are one of you. It’s a feeling that many people in the United States felt for the first time when Barack Obama was elected. It’s equally powerful when your elected leaders are clearly not like you, when the fact that they do not represent you is glaringly obvious.
I had my whole life to get used to the idea that the government was never made to really represent my interests. Many of these angry people are the very white, Christian, men that this country was supposedly built by and for. And this is the first time the myth of America has been unmasked for them.
Undoubtedly, there are some bigots out there who are just angry that they have a black president. Clearly, even for those who don’t feel motivated by personal bigotry, there is a healthy dose of racism underlying the fact that it took a black president for them to realize that their government is as dysfunctional as it is. But I doubt the people we are talking about have an understanding of the difference between bigotry and racism.
And I don’t believe it is just blackness that makes Barack Obama different and symbolic. It is also his intellectual cosmopolitanism. He is a symbol of the privilege that is replacing whiteness – the educated professional/managerial class. And there is a significant amount of animosity directed towards those people who justify their privilege by virtue of their intellect.
And so these people who have lost their foundational myths are out in the streets. They are using all the synonyms for “bad” that our pathetic school system and media have taught them – communist, fascist, totalitarian, socialist, nazi. All the words are interchangeable. They all mean not American. They all mean not them.
Good points, your essay raises some interesting issues:
1) If most Americans want an Idealized cowboy (which btw I agree with) how did "maverick" lose the election?
2) The problem I have with Obama (and I think lots of people do) isn't that he is different from me, its that he's essentially the same as bush
3) Do non-white voters look for a heroic version of themselves too?
1I don't think most Americans want an idealized cowboy. I think a significant portion of white Americans do. I'm sure most of the panic stricken I am referring to didn't vote for Obama. They might have voted for McCain. They might not have voted at all.
I think everyone looks for a heroic version of themselves in who they vote for. I think many educated, liberals saw an idealized version of themselves in Obama.
I don't mean to imply that anyone who has problems with Obama has problems with him because they think he is different. I have lots of problems with Obama's policies, but I still can't help but to prefer his symbolic presence over that of Bush or McCain. I just don't let that stop me from being hugely critical.
McCain lost for a whole lot of reasons. There was the taint of Bush's presidency and the economic crisis. There was the incredible campaign that Obama's people ran. There were a ton of republican scandals. But even if you just look at the narrative, it's pretty clear why he lost.
McCain is old, white and male. He got the older white men.
Obama is young, "post racial", and intellectual. He got the young, people of color, and college grads.
Like attracted like.
Obama also got a majority of women. Women skew liberal in general, but I suspect he also attracted more women because his wife is a bad ass (who many women identify with) and because John McCain is known for being tempermental, abusive, and philandering. (Didn't he once refer to wife number two as a cunt in public?)
Both political parties have less and less credibility with each passing year, but the republicans have the added burden of mirroring the demographic that is shrinking. They tried to go after the Latino vote, but they would have to sacrifice their rabidly anti-immigrant base. African Americans are a lost cause for them. They are trying for white women now. And they may have some luck if they can get a candidate that working class white women identify with. That's what I'm expecting next time around.
2Explosive. Stunning. Just resurrected a couple social news accounts to spread it.
3Good points, Melanie! You put it well.
4Thanks!
5That was an excellent post. I definitely have to check out this blog more often.
6Thanks
7Brilliant post! Posted it on my blog with credit; hope you dont mind.
8Of course I don't mind. Thank you. Interesting that it so easily applies to South Africa. I suspect ours are not the only countries.
9Excellant perspective yet written from the vantage point of a privledged white female so I have some reservations nevertheless good analysis
10It is definitely true that I have privileges of whiteness and (to a lesser extent) class. But I would say that my femaleness is one of the things that made it possible for me to question those privileges. Society expects women to provide much of the free and cheap labor that props up the economic system.
11This is one of the best essays I have read that explains all the vitriol that been oozing into our society since the Super Tuesday 08. Thanks… I hope you don't mind, but I will recommend you on my blog
12Of course I don't mind. Thank you.
13This is a fantastic article. I've reproduced a section of it on my blog, with credit of course.
This may sound patronising, but an outsider (Asian-Australian), I sometimes feel as if we understand Americans better than Americans do – we are so exposed to your cultural influences, yet distanced enough from it to evaluate it critically. So it's great to see such insight from the sort of person (white American) who theoretically should be brainwashed by the very mythology you are critiquing here.
I've often felt that the argument that racism is behind the anti-Obama hysteria to be an overly simplistic one; particularly as the people responsible do not identify it as such. But I think you nailed that it is more about a deep-seated subconscious subtle racism that is so much part of their collective mindset.
14Thank you.
It doesn't seem patronizing at all. Sometimes others see you more clearly than you see yourself. The Americans who have been best at seeing our culture (like James Baldwin) often had to leave the country and get a bit of distance to do it.
15Followed you over from No Nonsense' digs. Great piece! I'll be putting some linky-love to your site in my sidebar, if you don't mind.
16Thanks. Who wouldn't want link love?
17Well written. But we all knew that this past election was bound to raise the spectre of of rascism and bigotry with a Barak Obama victory.
18Thanks Rex. That's true, but my point is that it is much more complicated than that. I think it is a mistake to dismiss this as just bigotry without looking at the class issues involved and without examining how we are all being played.
19I have never been looking for a "cowboy" to lead our nation, though as kid in the 1950's I really liked cowboy movies & TV shows. John Wayne was never my type, neither was Ronald Reagan.
I really appreciate your cogent presentation of the facts.
20Thanks. I've never been looking for a cowboy to lead either. I never really liked cowboy movies, actually. But doing the research on the history of the cowboy was really fascinating.
21I don't see how any intelligent person could rationally use "cowboys" as representative of America's racial past…LOL. It is actually really not that complicated. White people were the overwhelming majority of the United States, qua United States, because they were the only ones permitted to be citizens. They built the country, framed the constitution, and were responsible for its thriving and intellectual/cultural development. The only significant minority group in the United states was black, the population of which boomed to perhaps 20 percent at its peak. It was much lower in the early colonial period, reached its height at about independence and declined thereafter. This was mostly due to immigration, which came from almost exclusively white European countries. So, America as a nation of immigrants from everywhere is just a dishonest myth. Who wants to rewrite history now? I'm not angry I have a black president by the way. I happen to like Obama, but I have no problem stating outrightly that I view it as better and in the interests of the United States that it stay predominantly white. If America does not mind destroying itself in the name of a false egalitarianism, then I am more than willing to find another locale to raise my children (Netherlands, Germany, Australia). So, regarding the glorious history of America's non-white past, I find it almost risible that you think you would even live in a first world country if America were planned, governed, and populated by nonwhites. I find it almost laughable that you think this country will be wealthy or a desirable destination for immigrants once it is (this leaves Ashkenazi jews and Indians as quasi-caucasoid). Anyway, be careful trying to represent our past as this multicultural extravaganza. It was nothing of the sort. Cowboys do not represent America, and the view that racism is all bad in all of its instantiations is almost offensive. America did just fine with the air of superiority and high standards of human conduct that came along with not believing all acts, cultures, and people were equal. In fact, we flourished. Are we flourishing now? Ask yourself why not. And don't blame it on people like myself, who regardless of race are fierce opponents of poverty and are willing to vote democratic. Don't say "racists are the problem" because that sh*t is really just old. A community can not survive without some sort of pride in its people. I'm not ashamed of my history. I think white Europeans could have done a better job and been more compassionate, but all in all, what came out of these events, even genocidal events, was a very good thing for the world. There is never an easy way to take people's land, and have them just hand it over willingly. There is no way to reconcile two completely different cultural/legal systems (that is to say Native Americans had a legal system, which they really did not). Hostility is an almost necessary consequence of this kind of contact when resources and survival are at stake. So, just face up to it: "The race egalitarian lie is a lie, and it is past due that we abandon it for a more enlightened philosophy". If what the nihilists and leftists want to bring to America is ""progress", nobody who lives under that system is going to call it or think it progress. They'll find greener pastures, instead of supporting a welfare state that is collapsing under its own weight, which is only supportable if there is no mass immigration from the third world. So, as stated, the game is over. Every side of history has its side. You are either on the side of gradual decline which is ensured if we continue down the path we are on, or you diagnose the problem for what it is, rectify it on a national level, an international level, or on a personal one. It is your choice, but if you ignore it, you shouldn't expect any "progress".
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