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.)

I agree with Gladwell, based on my own personal experience with “activism”, or at least political dissent online. There are countless Facebook groups, blogs, and tweeters that I have followed who are in line with my personal politics, and yet none of them encourage me to really DO anything. At best I’ll sign a petition or write a Congressman.

Those passive forms of activism allow me to feel like I’m doing ~something~ without really committing, and not just because I’m lazy or disinterested, but because no physical initiatives ever seem to emerge from these groups. This is especially true of the Left – and by that I mean the real Left, not self-proclaimed “liberals”, who, incidentally, seem far more active.

It’s pretty clear that without any sort of formal leadership or organizational structure, that there will never be any sort of revolution, because that which keeps the status quo in place is a highly organized and well-oiled machine decades in the making.  A rowdy band of misfits, as well-intentioned or self-righteous and indignant as they can be from the comfort of their living rooms or offices, really aren’t doing much of anything to change anything.

Mind you, I count myself amongst those who are doing nothing, and I wish that wasn’t the case.

This is not to say that there are not people who are truly active, but that they go largely unnoticed by the general public, seen as a nuisance, or perhaps as asking for too much.  People said the same thing about the Civil Rights Movement, too.  And in the generations since, we’ve been increasingly conditioned to accept the status quo.

There has been a sense of powerlessness, mitigated to some extent by surges of political activity every two years, and even that is largely ineffective due to the tyranny of the two-party system.  Social media, though, is the new placebo, satisfying the desire to do at least something about all the things we know to be wrong in the world, without committing bodily or any real expectations of making a difference.

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.

I’m going to walk out of this sad-sack alley and find a bathroom. And I’m going to wash my face and clothes. No, I’ll steal some clothes. Good clothes. A white shirt and black pants. And I’ll steal good shoes, too. Black leather shoes, cap toes, with intricate designs cut into the leather. In good clothes, I can be a good man.

And so I shamble out of the alley. No, I suck in my stomach muscles, straighten my spine, and hold my head level and I strut out of the alley.

And I horrify my audience. People sprint around me. A few just turn around and walk in the opposite direction. One woman screams.

Jesus, I must look like a horror movie. But that doesn’t matter. I am covered with the same blood that is inside everybody else. They can’t judge me because of this blood.

“I want some respect,” I say.

Nobody hears me. Worse, nobody understands me.

“I want some respect”, I say again, louder this time.

A man walks around the corner, almost bumps into me, and then continues on. He didn’t notice me. He didn’t see my blood. I follow him. A gray man, he wears a cheap three-button suit with better shoes. He talks loudly into a Bluetooth earpiece.

“I want some respect,” I say to him.

“I’ll call you back, Jim, I got some drunk guy talking to me,” he says into his earpiece, and hits the hang-up button. And then he asks me, “What the fuck do you want, chief?”

He thinks the curse word will scare me. He thinks the curse word will let me know that he once shot a man just to watch him die.

“I knew Johnny Cash,” I say, “and you ain’t Johnny Cash.”

The man laughs. He thinks I’m crazy. I laugh. I am crazy. He offers me a handful of spare change.

“There you go, chief,” he says.

“I don’t want your money,” I say. “I want your respect.”

The man laughs again. Is laughter all I can expect?

“Don’t laugh at me,” I say.

“All right, all right, chief,” he says. “I won’t laugh at you. You have a good day.”

He turns to walk away, but I grab his shoulder. He grabs my wrist and judos me into the brick wall.

“All right, all right, chief,” he says. “I don’t want you touching me.”

He could snap my bones if he wanted to. He could drive his thumb into my temple and kill me. I can feel his strength, his skill, his muscle memory.

It’s my turn to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“I’m just wondering how many white guys are going to beat my ass today.”

“Chief, you keep acting this way, and we’re all going to beat your ass today.”

We both think that’s funny, so we laugh together. And we almost bond because of our shared amusement.

“I’m going to let you go,” he says. “And when I do, I want us both to act like gentlemen, okay?”

“I want some respect,” I say.

“Are you going to be a gentleman?”

“I want some respect.”

“How many times are you going to say that?”

“I’m going to say it until I get some respect.”

The man looks around. He realizes that he’s pinned a bloody homeless man against a brick wall. Not one of his prouder moments. But he’s scared to let me go.

“All right, all right,” he says. “How do I show you some respect?”

This excerpt pretty much exemplifies for me much of how racial dynamics play out in this country, between white people and people of color. Much of the dialogue – and by dialogue I mean not just conversation but all interaction – is and has been one-sided, with white people doing all of the talking, and enforcing their collective will – conscious or not – via institutionalized supremacy.

People of color demand acknowledgment, demand respect. These demands, at different times, and under different circumstances, go unheard, or are responded to with dismissal, condescension, minor consolations, contempt, and/or even violence.

At the very end of the excerpt, only after the Native American man’s demand has been repeated over and over again, and only when the white man realizes that his position of power is subject to scrutiny, does he finally ask the right question.

“How do I show you some respect?”

Only when the ongoing racial dialogue in the United States reaches this point, on individual, local, or national levels – when white people ask the right question, rather than insisting upon their own answers – can we truly say that we’ve made progress towards reconciliation.

Not-See

–noun.
a person able to ignore or deny certain realities, such as racism, sexism, classism, sexualism, ableism, or religious prejudice by virtue of the privilege associated with membership within a dominant group.

Origin: Unknown Date, Americanism

Word Origin & History
A play on words, the pronunciation of “Not-See” invokes the word “Nazi”. The crimes of the former are passive instead of active – those who would turn a blind eye to injustice rather than perpetrating it themselves. The ideologies of both, however, are predicated upon a certain egocentrism, social privilege, and stark self-versus-other mentality.

Not-Sees are people who witness racism or other prejudices and either are unaware of it, or even when made aware of it, deny it – even going to great lengths to explain it away or dismiss the grievances of those affected by that prejudice. Not-Sees love to use the term “race-card”.

Look into any discussion in an online forum about, say, whitewashing – or racebending – as it pertains to the upcoming Last Airbender film:

Here’s a clue – people invest millions of dollars into films because they want to make more millions of dollars, not because they want to help insecure people feel better about themselves. If some of the title roles are played by “white” actors, it’s not racism, it’s marketing.¹

Or blackface in The Secret of Kells:

You’re all babies, this is an animated movie, not KKK propaganda. Get over yourselves, either watch it or don’t, but don’t pollute a thread with this bullshit. Racism is bad ra ra we all get it move along please.²

And the PSP game Loco Roco:

…I’ve been playing the demo of this game for sometime now, and these thoughts never crossed my mind, and you know what, I’m sure the kids who will play this game will never see it as well. I’m 23 years old, and after you pointing out all this bollocks I still don’t see it, I see it as a fun, creative game…³

Not-Sees are those who accuse people of color of being “hyper-sensitive” for daring to notice what are for POCs obvious instances of racism. Not-Sees are people who would deny the legacy of slavery in the United States, and tell African-Americans – disproportionately poor and still denied access to quality education, housing, and employment – that they need to “get over it”. The Not-Sees themselves have, after all.

Not-Sees are people who see nothing wrong with Emily Blunt posing with crutches, or think that Abercrombie and Fitch are justified within their business ethos to reject a model with a prosthetic arm. They are people who think that gay marriage isn’t an important issue, because after all they are not gay, so why should they care? These are the same Not-Sees who would dismiss a transgendered person’s struggle with identity as mere “confusion”, or some sort of intended sexual deviancy.

Not-Sees are people who dismiss the outrage of feminists around the sustained gender inequalities such as wages, the sexual double standard, or the inordinate pressure placed on women to conform to the beauty standard, and to be judged by their physical appearances first, if not exclusively.

Ironically, Not-Sees can even be feminists themselves, Western or white who ignore the particular experiences of women of color, presupposing that the problems women face are universal or at least the same as their own; who would ignore Islamic women’s own voices while railing against the practice of covering.

It would be a wonderful world if there were no pressures on Muslim women at all to don the hijab. Frankly, if every Muslim woman in the world threw off her hijab, refused to be “modest”, and became a rad-fem activist, it’d suit me perfectly.⁴

Not-Sees are willing participants in a culture of willful, sustained, institutionalized obliviousness – people who out of laziness or for the sake of their own peace of mind ignore, shy away from, or attempt to delegitimize issues that do not affect them directly.