On April 12th, 1964, Malcolm X made a speech before a large gathering on the merits of black nationalism. Below is a one-minute snippet from that speech, discussing the logic of African-Americans supporting the Democratic Party in such huge numbers.

Transcript:

In Washington, D.C., in the House of Representatives, there are 257 who are Democrats. Only 177 are Republican. In the Senate there are 67 Democrats; only 33 are Republicans. The party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and still they can’t keep their promise to you.

‘Cause you’re a chump.

Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government and that party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to your race.

—Malcolm X

Now, allow me to paraphrase Malcolm, to reflect the current state of affairs:

Right now (since January 2009), in the House, there are 256 who are Democrats.  Only 179 are Republican.  In the Senate there are 59 Democrats; only 41 are Republicans.  The party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and nearly 60% of the Senate, and put a black man in the White House, and still they didn’t keep their promise to you.

‘Cause you’re a chump.

Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government and that party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party…

Well…I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

But as you think about it, also consider this: Between 1964 and 2010, how much “Change” has there really been?

(Note: This is in no way meant as an endorsement for the Republican Party. Malcolm was no more forgiving of them. And certainly I’m not. The difference is that Republicans do not even pretend to represent African-Americans, and since at least the advent of the “Southern Strategy” – redoubled through the Tea Party – they have become openly hostile towards African-American interests.)

When Obama first came onto the scene, he seemed to advocate for all sorts of leftist policies, or at least was very good at pretending to advocate for them.  In truth, if we look back, he was always a centrist, and expertly danced around making any serious commitments to moving left.  He was always, since he first appeared on the scene, a product of the “Chicago Machine”, which is all about gaining or maintaining power vis-a-vis the status quo.

Now, 2 years later, the pendulum shifts the other way, with the Republicans gaining hugely in the House and significantly in the Senate.  The reason many Democratic activists and party leaders cite for this shift is not their failure, oh no, but a growing apathy amongst their constituency.

As if the two things are unrelated.

Barack Obama, much to the criticism of the left, ceded too much to Republicans and the right, who sought to shoot him down regardless of any concessions he made.  Because it was never and probably has never been about compromise, but about control.  Even if Obama forwarded a completely right-wing agenda (and one could argue he has with regards to foreign policy), the Republicans would stand against him, simply because he is not a member of their party.  They will never concede that any of the changes they want could be brought about by a Democrat.  No, they need to be the ones to control and be rewarded for any changes that occur.

So the question that so many people asked of the Democrats was: “If they’re going to shoot you down, anyway, why not just push the agenda that your constituency wants?”  After all, the Democrats had virtually unchallengeable power and did not much need the Republicans for anything.  Yet in spite of every concession made – and perhaps they weren’t concessions, but the Democrats showing their true colors – the right would paint them as “socialists”, paint this picture of “government as enemy”, which is ironic given that it was part of the government itself making the claims.

In truth, Barack Obama is no closer to being a socialist than John McCain would have been.  He is, on nearly every point, the enemy of socialism.  But American exceptionalism being what it is – by this I mean their exceptional gullibility and capacity for boundless ignorance – the people on the right ate it up.  The people on the left just sighed, because for all their enthusiasm in 2008, nothing much had “changed”.

In 2008, the Democrats had the advantage of being the minority party, of being the party standing in clear opposition to George W. Bush, who by this time had become near unanimously condemned by the American public and the international community.  They had the ability to say they would “change” what was currently happening.

Now in 2010, after 2 years of the Democrats holding all the cards and doing not much of anything to deliver on those promises of change, the advantage shifted to the Republicans as the party not in power, to be able to say that things would change simply by virtue of a shift in power.  What people fail to understand, it seems, is that a change in party does not necessarily mean a change in policy.

George W. Bush was much more of a radical than Barack Obama.  He brought about a ton of changes, more with respect to Clinton than Obama has with regards to him.  But it had nothing to do with disillusionment with Clinton.  It had to do with fear, starting with 9/11 and proceeding from there.  People will make all sorts of irrational decisions when they’re afraid.  So, barring catastrophe, it has never been the case that a change in party represents a change in politics as usual in Washington.

It could be argued that the 8 years of Bush was enough of a catastrophe to warrant another serious change, and indeed it was that sense which enabled Obama to gather so much momentum.  What he has done with that momentum, however, is to attempt to re-establish the Clintonian government, which was anything but radical.

It has been a running trend that the party of the President suffers serious losses in the following midterm elections.  Why?  Because every 2 years, at least, but more likely every day, people pine for “change”, in one thing or another.  And when, following pendulum shift and pendulum shift – Republicans ceding power to Democrats and Democrats ceding power back to Republicans – no such change occurs, it leads to a surge in enthusiasm from the President’s political opponents, and a surge in apathy from the party’s constituency.

Had Barack Obama actually been a socialist President, he would’ve brought about changes that this country has never seen, and the same sort of opposition would’ve gathered.  However, in how such changes increased job growth, mitigated the increase in poverty, stood up for the everyman, provided everyone with comprehensive healthcare not for profit but because it is a necessity, forwarded a real civil rights agenda, and improved our image around the world, perhaps the opposition would’ve come only from the contrarians and the irrational fringe, rather than average disaffected citizens who in large numbers just wanted to see something different.

It’s ironic, really, that people cry for change, yet they are so afraid of the kind of change that is actually needed.  Socialism, because they don’t understand it, because it is so different from what they know (and they know so very little) and because it still – somehow – is tied to anachronistic Cold War fears, became their Red Herring.  But had the Democrats actually advanced an agenda that even hinged on socialism, and people saw the kinds of positive changes that it could bring about, they might change their tune.

But the Democrats, whose agenda has never changed, and is virtually the same as that of the Republicans (i.e. to stay in office), dared not push that far left, because rocking the boat too much apparently leads to major losses.  It’s a strange conclusion to come to, though, given that all historical evidence points to the contrary, that the pendulum shift is the status quo, that each party will rise and fall with unflinching regularity.  All evidence was that the Democrats would lose big regardless of what they did or didn’t do.

One would think that the only way to change this dynamic, to halt the pendulum shift, would be to swing the damn thing so far left that the pendulum would snap off altogether – sending the country in an entirely new direction.  Of course I couldn’t say with any certainty whether or not it would go flying towards rejuvenation or disaster, but a look around the world at other countries that have successfully instituted leftist policies, and at those that have failed miserably by instituting far right policies would suggest a positive outcome.

I realize that this is a very simplistic analysis, and that surely Democrats, well-trained in public policy, law, and everything else it takes to hold their positions, know all of this.  If so, then one can only come to the conclusion that the pendulum shift, despite all their campaigning and rhetoric, is within acceptable parameters, and that they are content to let things play out as they will until it shifts back the other way.

Change, though?  Of the sort required to keep their constituency enthusiastic?  That would be too risky, might cost them too much, might eventually lead to some President instituting radical changes that throw the country into a downward spiral, make us hated around the world, trample all over civil liberties while providing for the triumph of big business.

Oh, wait.

So better to ride out this down tick in public opinion and wait for the inevitable backswing, right?  Sure, so long as they have no intention of changing anything.

I must also point out, if it is not abundantly clear to anyone reading this, or who has ever read anything I’ve written, that no part of my decision is about apathy. Quite the contrary, in fact.  And so, if apathy is anyone’s reason for not voting, I would encourage them either to vote, or to truly understand the many legitimate reasons not to do so.

In random order:

1. I don’t support any of the candidates running in my state – that is to say, I oppose all of them
2. I question the wisdom of voting for the lesser of two evils
3. The outcome of the Citizens United vs. FEC Supreme Court case ensured that the next election would be more about money than the last, and indeed, 2010 is breaking all sorts of spending records
4. Republicans, or at least the social conservatives amongst them, openly act against my interests and everything I stand for.
5. Democrats pretend to act for my interests and in favor of the things I stand for, or otherwise remain completely quiet on those issues, and only to shift their position or compromise once in office.
6. In some perverse way I want to sabotage Democrats – who by default are the ones I’d be voting for as the only viable candidates who are even remotely amenable to my interests – just to show people on the left how utterly ineffectual they are and make a case for putting our energy behind actual leftist candidates
7. Along the same lines, I want to see people get what they ask for, and laugh when it blows up in their faces.
8. I refuse to reward any who continue to place the interests of corporations above those of the people – and that would be both Democrats (see ridiculous Healthcare bill, silence on marijuana legalization) and Republicans (see: deregulation, tax breaks, mass privatization).
9. Because I follow the money and don’t like where it leads.
10. Real changes – for the better or for the worst – seem to only ever occur during or in the aftermath of a catastrophe (See: Roosevelt after the Great Depression or George W. Bush after 9/11/2001)
11. Because compromises just aren’t enough for me anymore, which in effect aren’t small victories, but a maintenance of the status quo.
12. Neither party dares to challenge the moral hypocrisy of the Israeli government
13. Not much will change regardless of which of the two parties controls Congress; if a Democratic president and a filibuster-proof majority didn’t change anything, then neither will a Republican majority, which is not at all likely to happen, anyway.
14. My “right to vote”, as determined by my status as a citizen, is undermined by corporate personhood.
15. Not one candidate has the balls to address the issues with any real critical depth, that is, beyond the talking points
16. I am exasperated by the cheeky self-satisfied and utterly disingenuous self-righteousness of liberals (here I mean voters, not candidates)
17. I am exasperated by the raging self-sabotaging ignorance of conservatives (again, I mean voters)
18. Voting continues to be an excuse for people to believe they’ve “done their part” to affect change, even after it’s been shown that nothing has actually changed
19. Not one candidate speaks out against American Imperialism
20. Many of these points presume that my one vote actually makes a difference.  Statistically, it doesn’t.

Jane McGonigal is not simply comparing games to real life, but is talking about tapping into those abstract qualities that gamers bring to bear against game challenges – applying that determination, hard work, and idealism to real world endeavors.

It can, has been, and will continue to be argued that games are simply games, that they are designed to be won, and that the real world has no such safeguards against failure.  But the game McGonigal most talks about – World of Warcraft – ultimately has no point.  It has no happy ending. It is game that never ends, which works well for the developers, who continue to make millions upon millions of dollars every year.

You can overcome the most epic of epic challenges, but soon thereafter the game resets to the way it was before that challenge was met, to enable others to do the same.  There are people who continue to play Warcraft even though they have achieved the maximum level, have defeated the ultimate boss, and have done almost everything there is to do in the game.

But they will go through it all again, with the same determination and idealism, to help another player have that experience.  In the real world that could translate into people helping those less fortunate – i.e. at a “lower level” – after they have solved their own challenges.  It is not about pity or guilt, but about mutual understanding of a problem, and collaboration to solve it.  It is this kind of idealistic, high-minded, cooperative determination that McGonigal is suggesting we need to employ to take on world challenges.

Hilarious, right?

When asked who her audience was for the poem, the student said “Minorities, because they’re the main ones on welfare…”

Now for some demographics. The vast majority of students in this classroom were Euro-American, the exception being two African-American girls. One of these two girls was the one reading the poem. In case the gravity of that escapes you, there were three things very wrong with this scenario. First was that the girl has been given a totally skewed view of the demographics of welfare. She has bought into the idea that African-Americans receive the lion’s share of welfare benefits, to the point of believing Reagan’s myth of the “welfare queen“.

Second, whatever little bit of privilege she’s experienced out here in the desert (more on that later), she apparently has no concept of the historical inequalities that created the need for socioeconomic support for minorities. Third, she felt comfortable enough in a room full of white peers to perpetuate this vicious stereotype. As if when lines of class and race are drawn, she would stand with them, and they’d all laugh together.

A little while ago I intuited that the African-Americans in this state had mostly “assimilated”, for their lesser numbers (measured versus the national proportion and especially the east coast), and for the fact that the much larger Mexican minority serves as a greater threat to the white majority.

So my speculation has been that African-Americans in the West, much like Latinos and Asians in the east, for their non-threatening numbers and significantly improved socioeconomic distribution, have been afforded a sort of “hostility waiver”. In other words, they are acceptable so long as they do not grow too large, act too radically, or cost the average taxpayer too much in social programs. A controlled minority is a tolerable minority. Those Hispanics on the other hand…

In plain speech, because there are so many Mexicans in the state, they are the group that white people fear, hate, and resent, rather than African-Americans.  So African-Americans out here decided to throw in their lot with the white people.  And why not?  Because as long as the Mexicans are the focus of white fear and rage, they can slip in under the radar and point the finger, too.  It’s just good politics, right?

What this situation highlighted for me was the overall misconception about so-called “welfare” in the United States.  As this young lady and many others around the country seem to think, people of color gorge from the national bosom, having excessive amounts of children while refusing to work, so that they might benefit from so many “hand outs”.  The contention, especially for white Americans, is that their hard-earned tax money is being spent disproportionately on undeserving minorities.

This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of welfare, in terms of the allocations by ethnicity, and just how much welfare takes away from the overall federal budget.  From 1935 to 1996, that which we call welfare fell under the federal assistance program known as Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).  From 1996 onward, after welfare reform by President Clinton, the program was renamed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), reflecting a new policy of limiting assistance to a maximum of five years.  The statistics of AFDC recipients by race varied from year to year throughout the life of the program, but a brief from the census bureau provides a snapshot:

About 1 in 4 Black mothers of childbearing ages (1.5 million) were AFDC recipients, higher than the 7 percent of corresponding White mothers (2.1 million). Despite these differences in recipiency rates, Black AFDC mothers did not have significantly more children than their White counterparts.¹

I selected African-American families for my comparison for two reasons – first, because the “welfare queen” was portrayed as a black woman, and because the statistics for “Hispanics” are troublesome, in that linguistic classification may apply to families who are also categorized as white for the purposes of the census.  These numbers show that, contrary to popular misconceptions, there were a larger number of white welfare recipients than African-American families.  This goes against any idea that welfare is a particularly “black” problem, or even that African-Americans form the majority of people on welfare.  Now here someone might point out that a higher proportion of African-American families received welfare, which is true, but it is a fact taken without consideration for historical inequality – from hiring to housing, part of the greater socioeconomic legacy of racism throughout this country’s history.

The demographics of AFDC or TANF are hardly the main thrust of my argument, however.  That comes with how we even define “welfare”.  If the issue is the federal government providing funding to people who have not earned it, then our definition of welfare must be expanded to include all of the corporations who received subsidies through the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (otherwise known as the “bailout”).  These corporations together – and lest we forget, corporations are recognized as “people” – were allocated tens of billions of dollars.  So here I ask you, who is more “deserving” of assistance – a poor family, irrespective of ethnicity, or a corporation whose executives directly facilitated our current economic meltdown?

The primary opposition to welfare comes from conservatives.  And at least we can say that they are consistent in their stance, critical of both social welfare provided to families, and the bailout.  Until we consider another major recipient of welfare, who they almost unanimously support: the state of Israel.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, a site amicable to Israeli interests and continued U.S.-Israeli cooperation, “Israel has received more direct aid from the United States since World War II than any other country…”, nearly $100 billion since 1974.² The point of mentioning this is not to make a political statement against U.S. Aid to Israel, although in the interests of full disclosure I must admit that I am opposed to this financial assistance. The point is to put things in perspective, as it concerns just how much money the U.S. spends on “welfare” as a whole.

Projections for U.S. financial assistance to Israel were $2.55 billion for fiscal year 2009, and $2.7 billion for 2010, totaling $5.25 billion across the two years. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the payout for TANF is capped at $5 billion for the same two years.³ So, it is nothing short of hypocritical for politicians, pundits, and ignorant citizens to condemn poor families – particularly the disenfranchised poor – while directly or implicitly sanctioning U.S. aid to Israel, all of which is used by their military, not for any financial hardship.  Average citizens may be excused for not knowing about these allocations to Israel, but in these cases their hypocrisy revolves around the rigor with which they condemn poor minorities while not investigating the full scope of U.S. “welfare”.

This imbalance in focus undoubtedly stems from racism, with the idea of minorities disproportionately leeching from the national coffers just another affirmation of already negative preconceptions.  Such ignorance is common enough amongst white Americans, especially in a conservative state, and bears relatively little impact.  But where a young African-American student can buy into the stereotypes levied against girls much like her -  even the girl herself under slightly different circumstances – the situation becomes grave.  It provides a sobering insight into just how institutionalized and deeply entrenched racism has become.