Obama’s Ground Troops Tackle the Last Frontier

By Vusi Moloi © 2008

The United Steel Workers of Pennsylvania have declared concerns around race as the last frontier that needs to be conquered if the Honourable Illinois Senator Mr. Barack Obama is to win the White House. The steel workers have thrown their massive weight behind Mr. Obama because of his policies which they see as benefiting and potentially expanding the middle class.

Tackling Racism Head On

Mr. Obama of Illinois is America’s first person of African descent to ever lead a major political party for the Presidency of the United States of America. This was in line with the United Steel Workers President Mr. Leo W. Gerard who had earlier declared that United Steel Workers was tackling racism head on and that all Obama supporters should do the same. The fiery Mr. Gerard and a great Canadian from Lively, Ontario, told the delegates that no Presidential candidate had ever won the White House without winning both Ohio and Pennsylvania and the future of the country depended on them. He warned the members of the union against sacrificing their economic wellbeing on account of the color of the skin.

A powerful figure leading the charge in tackling racism is the indomitable Mr. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, a trade union umbrella organization to which the United Steel Workers is affiliated. Mr. Trumka is from a small town Nemacolin, Pennsylvania and he knows first hand how people use a variety of clever ways for their racist attitudes. His address to the delegates, now posted on Youtube under the title AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama pulls no punches on the subject.



The indomitable Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO Mr. Richard Trumka addressing the United Steel Workers Convention at Las Vegas, Texas, USA on July 1, 2008. Mr. Trumka is credited for his fearless anti-apartheid activities in support of the National Union of Mineworkers also known as NUM of South Africa under the formidable leadership of the legendary trade unionist and lawyer Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa and Elijah Barayi who was the Vice-President of NUM and founding President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions also known as COSATU.

1.4 Million Strong Organization

The United Steel Workers Union is a 1.4 million strong organization that endorsed Mr. Obama’s Presidential candidacy this year. Pennsylvania has been described by the international media as a racially intractable terrain. Even Pennsylvania’s home grown leaders like the celebrated 17 term US. Representative Mr. John Murtha of Johnstown spoke openly to the Post-Gazette newspaper about the racist attitudes that characterize the Western part of the state. He pointed out he expected Mr. Obama to carry the state even though it was taking too long for Pennsylvania to embrace the Black President. Pundits hypothesized that Mr. Obama would have a tough time winning Pennsylvania even though the opinion polls favour him over his Presidential contestant the Honourable Senator John McCain of the Southern State of Arizona. Moreover, the formidable and Honourable Senator Ms. Hilary Clinton carried the state during the primaries.

In view of this race factor, the steel workers have made it a priority to knock on doors from house to house to ensure Mr. Obama is elected the new President of the United States. For them, Mr. Obama is the best President for the workers and their struggling families. Their strategy is to explicitly tackle the issue of race and diffuse the voodoo myths that surround it. Their leaders seemingly believe that racism is a powerful divisive tool that thrives in silence like some spellbinding sorcery.


Steel Country

The beautiful state of Pennsylvania is pretty much a steel country and the United Steel Workers Union is a family name over there. Having personally volunteered in South Africa’s largest trade union movement the Congress of South African Trade Unions also known as COSATU during the apartheid years, I learnt then that the biggest concern of a trade unionist is the eerie feeling that a profit motivated boss almost always succeeds in pitting one worker against another as an instrument that enables him to extract and maximize wealth for personal gain at the expense of others. A worker is not regarded as a full human being but rather an instrument of wealth creation.

Separatist Tendencies

The exploitative strategy seeks to inculcate separatist tendencies in the hearts and minds of the workers so that they are unable to coalesce in a cohesive show of strength against unfair practices. The separatist tendencies such as ethnic pride i.e. giving special favours to some members of a group while excluding others are legendary to modern history and yet hurtful in that while some enjoy easy promotion others have to jump voodoo hoops before being considered for promotion. Other divisive techniques that perpetuate a status quo include the withholding of some strategic information or having workers sign some esoteric agreements which ordinarily are not understandable without an expensive lawyer to help them appreciate and avoid the pitfalls in safeguarding their interests and those of their family members.

For this reason, a revolutionary trade unionist is hyper sensitive to the nuances that divide worker against worker. That is because divide and rule enables the masterful capitalist to easily swing the fears and concerns of workers like a pendulum but in such a way that the pendulum appears to swing naturally by itself without some external force. The outcome of such a divide and conquer strategy promotes self-interest above the collective wellbeing of the oppressed group.

In the case of Mr. Obama’s campaign, the idea is to make the workers sacrifice their economic interests for ethnic pride so that they don’t cast their vote for him. That ethnic pride translates into unbridled wealth for the rich. Some of the White voters told the United Steel Workers that they couldn’t see themselves voting for Mr. Obama because he is a “Muslim”, a code word for he is “Black”. They say they don’t trust him and when pressed for real reasons some say they won’t vote for him because he is Black and is not “one of us” as reported by America’s CNN News. This sense of ethnic pride is a powerful concept because it means that even if Mr. Obama stands in defence of their economic wellbeing, some are prepared to turn the other way in order to nosh a deep seated fear of a Black President.

The Canadian Experience

I personally experienced a situation where I met a White Canadian lady who was in a cast with crutches in downtown Ottawa. She was looking for a legal aid office, which at the time was located on Elgin Street before being moved to the current Albert Street. I volunteered my assistance and walked with her to catch the OC Transpo’s bus number 5. Something suddenly happened on the bus. She became uncomfortable once among the lily White passengers. It was customary at the time to be a focus of penetrating staring eyes when a Black guy was seen with a White lady especially on the bus. As the bus got closer to the destination, I signalled to her to disembark on the next stop. She acted as if she hadn’t seen me before and wouldn’t even thank me for my efforts. Despite being singed by this experience, I didn’t allow it to eclipse the natural beauty of the great City of Ottawa and many folks who had been very kind to me. It would seem that being seen with me on the lily white bus of the great City of Ottawa was a form of racial betrayal for her. She couldn’t reconcile her sense of ethnic pride with my altruistic overtures.

The Paradigm of Disharmony

I learnt from this harsh experience that some will put at risk their well-being in order to protect a notion of ethnic pride. In my scholarly paper The Paradigm of Disharmony I show how humans have been deeply uprooted from their natural habitat to turn their back on a sense of allegiance to the supreme law of self-preservation. This supreme law of self-preservation is impossible to be fully realized without being a member of a collective that watches over your back. This is the natural law of the African jungle and all the members of that terrain honour this survival code.

As a consequence of disharmony with Mother Nature, some human will sacrifice a survival advantage to perpetuate an abstract notion of ethnic or religious pride. This is the kind of attitude that Obama is facing in his audacious bid to be the country’s first Black President. He stands for the defence and advancement of the economic interests of ordinary Americans and while giving them a survival advantage under tough economic times, some will be oblivious to all that because they see political power as a White elephant for the White tribe. Like a great Samurai who is psycho-emotionally programmed by society to self-destruct via disembowelment because of no longer being able to serve his particular master, some will throw away the baby with the bath tub. The incredible thing, however, is that racial prejudice is not so much about hate as it’s about ethnic pride and yet this does not diminish the hurtful or sometimes tragic consequences in its defence as already demonstrated in the recent case of the arrests of Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tennessee and Paul Schlesselman of West Helena, Arkansas.

One interesting fact about ethnic pride is that co-workers, friends and members of the same fraternity often work together, joke together, and even help each other out but the thin layer of togetherness disintegrates very easily if an African descendent takes a commanding lead in the spheres of economic or higher echelons of political power as is the case with Senator Barack Obama most strongly favoured to become America's first Black President.

Why Is Race An Issue?

Why is race an issue on the minds of some of our White brothers and sisters? As previously mentioned, they consider political as well as economic power as a no go area except for the White tribe. In South Africa the White establishment is making a spirited attempt to break the ruling ANC so that they can lose a two thirds majority in order to permanently block the land redistribution laws in an African country where around fifty thousand White farmers own more than three quarters of the food producing land while more than forty million Africans only have to make do with less than five percent of the land. This would make South Africa remain stymied like Zimbabwe in failing to achieve economic emancipation for their African natives. While lots of people believe that racial oppression is about hate, in fact racial oppression exists for other reasons that have nothing to do with hate. Hate is just an affiliation that varies with the degree of contact with respect to others.

To say that the struggle between the White folks and the Black folks is about hate is like saying that the struggle between the Palestinians and the Jews or the English and Irish is about religion. Religious affiliation is only incidental to the actors of these theatres of events but the real issue is the land and that is what they are fighting over, the root cause of which is foreign occupation where others came from somewhere and took other’s land. Thus the real issue with respect to racial oppression is not about hate per se but economic and political control. Nonetheless, the capitalist bosses know that if they incite hateful jealousy of one group against another, it only serves to buttress the divide and conquer strategy and this is a cheap instrument that is freely available at their disposal. Racism exists as an ideology that justifies a variety of inhumanity against others.

Our capitalist structure of the economy requires some form of discrimination in order to thrive i.e. sexism, age, etc. In a mining company they assert that men carry and push heavy rocks and as a result they must be paid higher than their female counterparts and yet the irony is that no one pushes heavy rocks anymore because the rocks are now technologically pushed on a push of a button (no pun intended) yet the myth of pay disparity continues.

There are many such examples. Think about a farmer who owns a cow and produces milk. Let’s hypothesize that it costs him 5 cents to produce a cup of milk. He takes it to the dairy board that then gets it into the supermarkets where that cup of milk now costs $1.50. The retailer keeps 25 cents; the dairy board gives the farmer 25 cents. The farmer is happy that he just made 500% as a result of milking a cow. He seems to be doing well; right? Wrong! The dairy board kept $1 for themselves! You see, the members of the dairy board do not milk a cow or own any cow and yet they make more money than both the retailer and the guy that owns the cow and produces milk combined.

To maintain this kind of exploitative economy it’s important to practice voodoo economics so that the workers together with the farmers can believe the unbelievable and accept the unacceptable. In my book A Goodbye To My Little Troubles there is a poem To Convince Or Not To Convince which addresses this question of believing the unbelievable and accepting the unacceptable.

Conclusion

Failing to be open and explicit about issues of race perpetuates a sense of economic disenfranchisement of one group by a dominant group. We see this in a case like the great City of Ottawa where the African descendents are the most racially oppressed group albeit in a gentle way. Mr. Obama’s troops are taking no chances and will rather puncture the balloon rather than hope it will go away by itself.

About the Author

A former South African Television Journalist, Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book, A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, and maintains a blog, "Zulumathabo" on the Internet. In addition to writing, Mr. Moloi also works as a software engineer.