Almost twenty years ago, the philosopher Cornel West provocatively argued that the greatest threat to African-Americans was their own despair. “This threat is not simply a matter of relative economic deprivation and political powerless,” he wrote in his 1993 collection of essays entitled Race Matters, “though economic well-being and political clout are requisites for meaningful black progress.” Liberals might call for greater structural equality, but their policies didn’t touch the murkier business of nihilism. “The profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair,” wrote West, is “widespread in black America.” Destroying the black community from within, nihilism eradicated hope and made mockery of meaning. Without hope, wrote West, “there can be no future. Without meaning there can be no struggle.” It was up to black leaders to turn back the tide of nihilism through “some kind of politics of conversion.” Using the resources of their African-American heritage, these leaders would eradicate nihilistic despair.
West got into a lot of hot water when he published Race Matters. Activists on the left belittled the idea that psychology trumps economic reality. He was accused of being a mascot for the social conservatives, of betraying his people to the right’s self-serving moralism. There is no nihilistic threat, argued his opponents, but there is poverty and discrimination at every turn. African-Americans don’t need hope and meaning, they need jobs and decent housing.
Eleven years later, a young senator from the state of Illinois spoke at the Democratic National Convention about a Kenyan’s hope and the meaning of hard work. “My grandfather,” he told the spellbound crowd, “had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.” If we were wondering what a politics of conversion looked like, here was a credible example. West made more than sixty appearances with Obama during the presidential campaign, standing at his side as the crowd chanted, “Yes, we can.”
Lately, West has been singing a different tune. “Obama is the black mascot of the Wall Street,” he said back in April. In an interview in May, he told Chris Hedges that, “my dear brother has a certain fear of free black men… It’s understandable…. All he has known culturally is white.” One commentator described West as “nursing the anguish of the deceived,” as if Obama had tricked West with his rhetoric. West may be nursing the anguish of the deceived, but the deception was of his own making. Yet rather than question his theory of nihilism, he solved his dilemma by calling Obama white.
To listen to Michelle Bachmann’s supporters, Obama is … “well, it’s hard to find the words,” said one smitten supporter from Iowa, “he’s just… evil.” The irrational disgust expressed for “Obamacare” sounds a lot like the exaggerated stories about “welfare queens,” generated in the nineties. As Dorothy Roberts pointed out then, “welfare” has become a code word for “race.” “People can avoid the charge of racism by directing their vitriol at the welfare system instead of explicitly assailing Black people.” White Americans, who wouldn’t say, “I think black people are evil,” can say, “Obama is evil.” White Americans, who wouldn’t say, “Black people aren’t really Americans,” can say, “Obama’s health care policy is killing America.” Racism works best when spoken in code. Disguised as political speech, racism doesn’t have to reveal its animus. Bubbling just below the surface of any talk about public policy, racism assures whites that they are entitled to their wealth and warns blacks not to expect too much.
Which is why having a black leader is so good for America. All those disguises are concentrated and intensified until the innuendos and codes begin to take shape, and once again, we are forced to recognize that wealth in this country has generally followed color lines and many poor people have good reasons to despair.
Were West to retool his theory rather than whitewash the president, he might find it helpful to distinguish between two types of despair. There is despair that teaches and despair that destroys. Nihilism is the latter. It is what makes an intentionally disadvantaged population want to further its destruction through drug use, vicious gangs, and the rejection of traditional forms of moral authority. Obama’s presidency is an antidote to that form of despair. He is the father who didn’t leave his children, the son who respects his elders, the cool brother who smokes and goes to law school.
But while leaders can diminish the destructive urges of nihilism, the people can only learn the lessons of despair by facing it head on. No single human being, nor singular ideology, can make this explosive, complicated economic and political system manageable. But we can learn how to survive even as things fall apart and opportunities evaporate. And for that particular brand of wisdom, one need look no further than the survival strategies developed by black people in the United States.
I’d like to say that in Obama’s second term he will be more aggressive, more concerned with the excesses of the financial industry, more willing to speak out against the quick profits syphoned off the backs of the unemployed. The chances are good that he’ll come back fighting in the fall and it will turn out that all this conciliation was part of a larger strategy to expose the immature politicking of the Tea Party’s favorite candidate. The chances are also good there will be less talk about hope than in the last go around. Too many middle-class expectations were dashed in the financial crisis to give that word much political capital.
But let us not use the excuse of despair to revive the ugly form of white nihilism, where poor people are condemned for their state of poverty and black sons are sent down the pipeline to prison. Our black leader will not end despair but his presidency can help us face it more effectively.
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