Last night on NBC news, Al Roker debuted a show he is doing about black kids growing up without fathers. The big theme of the show that will air on MSNBC tomorrow night is bluntly racial: "this unsettling crisis." It looks like Roker will have a panel discussion with five other blacks about this, including Tiki Barber, for all of America to watch.
Let us be clear about what's happening. The election by white America of a black president has given black leaders a new ability to address a painful subject: the breakup of the black family in the ghettoes. Put another way, the historic and monumental acceptance of a strong black family in the White House has given black people a new security to be able to address these issues in front of a mixed audience. Because they need the larger community in order to effect change. Good for them. I believe Michelle will follow in Al Roker's footsteps here, in her own way.
I don't know about the black family; I know about the dysfunctional degree of self-concern in the highly-empowered Jewish community, the Is-it-good-for-the-Jews-ism that has helped to produce the Iraq War and the approved slaughter of 400 children in Gaza. The empowerment of a member of a victim group–President Obama–will have wide cultural resonance. It marks a breakdown of the old identity politics and victim-identification. We may not be post-racial, but we're getting there. Members of ethnic and religious minorities will be able to speak safely, in an American space, about the problematic aspects of parochial identity. This will include a new introspection about Jewish influence and persecution anxiety, and the Israel lobby.
(Phil Weiss)
