White Supremacy and the Obama Legacy

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

One World (2017)

Book Review

This remarkable book is a collection of essays about white privilege, Obama’s inability to live up to his campaign promises, and the role of his presidency in setting the stage for Donald Trump.

Coates’ approach to the topic of white privilege is largely historical. He traces the brutal reversal of Reconstruction reforms and re-institution of de facto slavery with Jim Crow laws; the Great Migration north of 6 million African Americans during the early 20th century; the deliberate exclusion of African Americans from New Deal programs such as Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and FHA (Federal Housing Administration) mortgage insurance; as well as the War on Drugs and mass incarceration of African Americans.

Coates has the best definition of white supremacy I have seen anywhere. In his words, white privilege is “banditry.”

“To be black in America is to be plundered. To be white is to execute and benefit from it.”

Coates gives numerous examples to justify this view: the exclusion of African Americans from wealth creation programs such as FHA and VA (Veterans Administration) mortgage loans, long time job discrimination and wage suppression, the recurrent decimation of prosperous Black communities via white race riots, predatory owner “contract” financing of home purchases, and predatory targeting of Blacks for subprime mortgagae they can’t repay.

My favorite essay is the one advocating for African American reparations, based on the argument that systematic exploitation of Blacks didn’t end with slavery but continues to the present day. As a precedent Coates cites the $7 billion (in today’s dollars) West Germany paid Israel in 1953 in compensation for Germany’s genocidal treatment of European Jews during World War II.

 

Untold History of the US – The Cold War

Parts 4 and 5 of Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States explore the exaggerated claims of Soviet expansionism that characterized the Truman/Eisenhower administration.

Part 4 begins by contrasting the economic standing of the US and the USSR when the war ended in 1945. The US economy was booming. America controlled 50% of the world’s economic production and most of its gold. The Soviet economy, in contrast, had been shattered. Truman reneged on Roosevelt’s promise to provide the Soviets post war aid to assist in their recovery. During the US occupation of West Germany, he also discontinued German war reparations to the USSR.

The late forties was a period of excruciating poverty for Eastern Europe, with major famine in the Ukraine. With the Soviet economy in a shambles, the claims made by Truman about their intention to conquer the world were ludicrous.

After Henry Wallace, the last holdover from the Roosevelt administration, made a major speech (echoing statements by Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt) opposing nuclear weapons, Truman fired him.

This episode also explores the first implementation of the Truman Doctrine, justifying US intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries. Truman first used it in 1947 to put down a popular uprising against a fascist coup in Greece. In a clear precursor to US intervention in Vietnam, Truman sent in US advisors to train the Greek military in “counterinsurgency tactics,” ie death squads to crush unions and human rights organizations and concentration camps to extinguish civilian support for pro-independence activists.

Part 4: Cold War: 1945-50

Part 5 explores the election of Eisenhower to power in 1952, coinciding with Khrushchev’s rise to power in 1953 and the re-election of Churchill in 1951 (Churchill was replaced by Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee from 1945-51).

Eisenhower, who had opposed using the A-bomb against Japan at Pottsdam, became a fervent nuclear weapons supporter as president. Under pressure from anti-communist hawk John Foster Dulles, he resisted Khrushchev’s and Churchill’s to organize a peace summit to limit the nuclear arms race.

Eisenhower would go on to engage in war crimes in Korean, causing massive civilian deaths by bombing North Korean dams.

In addition to authorizing the CIA overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, he paid 80% of French military costs as they endeavored to defeat Vietnam’s pro-independence movement.

In this episode, Stone also explores the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1955 in Java. Members consisted of world leaders determined to remain independent of either US or Soviet influence. In attendance at the first meeting were Ho Chi Minh  (Vietnam), Tito (Yugoslavia), Nehru (India), Nasser (Egypt), Zhou Enlai (China) and Sukarno (Indonesia). The CIA eventually removed each of these men from power, in some cases via assassination.

Part 5: the ’50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb and the Third World

Do Communists Have Better Sex?

Do Communists Have Better Sex?

Directed by Andre Meier (2006)

Film Review

Do Communists have Better Sex? is a comparison of sexual mores in East and West Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Studies suggest that East German women found sex more satisfying. A 1980 study found that 50% of West German women were unable to achieve orgasm, in contrast to 15% of East German women. The filmmakers attribute this difference to three general factors: the greater economic independence of East German women, a more relaxed attitude towards sexuality that allowed people, rather than the media, to control their sexuality, and the availability of well written sexual manuals about women’s sexual needs.

The Role of Economic Independence

At the end of World War II, East Germany experienced a severe shortage of men as most returning soldiers settled in West Germany. This made it necessary for women to assume men’s roles in East German industry. In contrast West German women were pressured to leave their war jobs to free them up for men. Government, churches and the media bombarded them with the message their chief role in life was to make men happy.

Owing to the large number of war widows raising children, the East German government provided generous social programs, including free child care and cooperative laundries to enable them to work full time. This made them economically independent from men and significantly reduced the pressure for them to marry.

Role of Religion

In West Germany, the church’s preeminent influence made sex a taboo topic until the late sixties. This included sex education in schools, and teachers could be prosecuted for explaining where babies came from.

In East Germany, the Communist Party took the view that healthy sexual relationships were essential for people to develop fully as human beings. The East German government introduced sex education in schools in the 1950s, though they put more emphasis on TV programming that educated parents on dealing with teen sexuality. Consensual sex was legal from age 16 up.

Access to Birth Control

In East Germany oral contraceptives were free for all women 14 and over from the early sixties when they first became available. Abortion (prior to 12 weeks pregnancy) were legal and free from 1972 on. In West Germany, feminists had to fight long and hard to gain access to birth control pills in the late sixties and abortion in 1976.

Pornography and Sexploitation

While the East German government had strict laws against pornography, sex shows and sexploitation,* they were extremely tolerant of nudism at public beaches and campsites. In addition, they directly subsidized the publication of popular sex manuals to keep men up to date on women’s sexual needs.

In West Germany, nudism was illegal, while male-oriented pornography, peep shows and strip clubs proliferated with the 1975 repeal of their pornography law.

*Sexploitation is the commercial exploitation of sex, sexual attractiveness, or sexually explicit material.