Draft: The Nader Dilemma: Sam or Tom?
“To put it very simply, he is our first African American president, or he will be, and we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations,” professes Ralph Nader on KTRH Houston.
So let’s talk about “race matters” as if race matters. Likely I’ll clear something up about this presumed low point in American history — or you’ll rashly pluck out a term rather than acknowledge the whole in which it is but a part, become overheated, and wonder why post-racial America is getting strangled and hamstrung by such “racist resurgences,” as if we’ve “made it.”
Nader’s Dilemma invokes the background against which our president-elect will find himself: 40 percent of black American children age 5 and younger reside at or beneath the poverty line; school segregation of Hispanic and black youth is endemic; in the last 8 years disparity of wealth, income and education has increased; roughly 20 percent of black Americans are without health insurance coverage, 34 percent for Hispanics while 10 percent for whites; the unemployment rate is twice that for blacks in comparison to whites; on that very Nov. 4, Proposition 8, a measure that legally “protects” the sanctity of marriage from same-sex couples, was approved.
Judging from this background, Nader’s point is decisive and poignant: The lower classes and minorities are expecting something – a radiant liberator in the belly of this crushing institution. If you think we have achieved something alone in putting an African American in Office, then you must agree with Nader’s point, all the racial baggage therewith. You’re on the lookout for an Uncle Tom. We are indebted to Nader for this ammunition, for this historical underpinning perspective, the real hope that manifests in virtue of our awareness and scrutiny.
The popular doctrine demonstrates theatrically resentful behavior to any notion of race being relevant to our pageant politicks. Shepherd Smith of FOX News, in interview with Nader, captures this hypersensitivity with his primed pseudoretort, “(dramatic pause) Really?” When asked to recant his statement, Nader impressively poised responded, “(raises eyebrow) Not at all.” In that act we see a high point for democracy, a beacon of social dissent. And why would he retract? What “in hindsight,” so Smith supposes, is there to speak of? an inconsequential “tsk tsk”? If these are the only responses you can give, or something similarly unsubstantial, unargumentative and dimwitted, you probably should not have voted.
If you voted for Obama because of a warm feeling or because you believe you share an “identity,” you might as well have voted for him because he’s African American. Can you coherently and clearly divide Obama up into “ethnic” and “presidential” portions, to say you voted for a faceless hero?
Now, Nader did not in fact call our president-elect an Uncle Tom. The condition is that if our president-elect does not support the downtrodden and those with bleeding wallets, he will be an Uncle Tom.
If you believe Nader revived unduly any racial connotations, here’s my reply. Either we can look at our president-elect as having no “character,” no face (someone you cannot identify with), in which case he owes no allegiance to any class (which I think just primes him for assimilation into the only non-human “class” in this country corporate “persons”), or we can view him as an ethnically-featured president-cum-human who is rooted in human concerns first. With his ethnicity comes his tie to “the people.” If you take the former view, you get perhaps a corporate “toady”; if you take the latter, you get your warm feelings, your vote for “hope.” This dichotomy rests on the premise that you cannot coherently and clearly dissect Obama into “ethnic” and “presidential” portions, but you can certainly see a faceless and indifferent captain advance the agenda of a faceless and indifferent profit maximization engine.
Is our president beholden to one class over another (corporate over minority classes, say)? Some non-voters might see an undeniably moral conundrum here: voting just means eating your own (enthusiastically so). Nevertheless, if you did not ask yourself this question before voting, again, you probably should not have voted.
“… for the corporation” is most important: Despite the title character’s inspirational resoluteness, his submissiveness wrought his death – of course, he was not destroyed. But will the American people endure such a venture, cleaved to breast an ideology? This is what Nader captures; this is the embodiment of what the term, later interpreted, historically came to mean for black progressives of the 60s and 70s. Will we suffocate with our gods at electric sliding door of this horrible machine, from “profits” and of bailouts? Will our president-elect let us become martyrs? Do not expect the faceless to walk in our shoes, to understand our pain, to possess the compassion Uncle Tom maintained.