RACE TRADERS: Derrick Bell’s “Space Traders” Part 1

Breitbart.com has made headlines once again by revealing a video of Barack Obama at Harvard speaking in favor of the views of Derrick Bell, whose scholarship was influential in creating and promoting the field of Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory, like any critical theory project, uses the tenets of Neo-Marxist thought to examine Race in a specific time and place, which for Bell’s purposes is contemporary American life.

Luckily for us, Professor Bell, took the time to pen a short story “Space Traders” which provides us with an allegorical version the his views of race relations, as seen through the lens of Critical Race Theory.  It is this view of society that the then editor of the Harvard Law Review was endorsing in the video.

The title “Space Traders” allows for an easy slippage into two other terms on which the allegory is based: “Race Traders” and “Race Traitors”. As this is a racial allegory the terms serve to define the two races as depicted within the movie.

“Race Traders” of course is a euphemism for “Slave Traders” and is the focus of the first part of the film. This segment of the movie focuses on the offer of the “aliens” who chose the face of Ronald Reagan to present the offer of an American utopia of no debt, unlimited clean free energy and a cleaned up environment to the America’s political representatives, in exchange for dark skinned blacks.  While the movie posits itself as happening post 1998, Bell uses contemporary Republican names from 1994 to smear the Republican party as racist slavers. It references both a “Vice President D’Amato” a reference to then siting New York Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato and a “Secretary of State Buchanan” an obvious reference to conservative commentator Pat Buchanan who had run for President in 1992 against George Bush, on a conservative platform that was often attacked as racist for his desire to secure the border and halt illegal immigration by the construction of a border fence.  It also mentions a “President Taylor” which is a probable reference to Congressional Representative Charles Taylor of North Carolina’s 11th district, who in his first term was a member of the “Gang of Seven” that exposed the House Banking Scandal as well as the House Post Office scandal, both of which showed the then Democratic leadership of the House as corrupt and helped to lead to the Republican Revolution of 1994.

The scene shifts from the initial beach scene where the offer is made, to the bunker where President Taylor and his racist administration sit around a large circular table and discuss the offer.  The offer while initially referenced as “crazy” is quickly justified based on the economic benefits of the reduction of government programs such as welfare and food stamps. While the military objects based on a loss of manpower, their objections are quickly overcome by the promise of bigger weapons possible with the prospect of unlimited energy. Indeed, the trade is seen as a form of a “draft” of black America to provide for the future of the country via patriotic service. The elimination of the black electorate is also seen as a “benefit” by the administration. All the faces are making these arguments are white, with the exception of one, a “Professor Golightly” who appears to be an lifelong Republican economist who has argued against affirmative action and racial preferences.  Based on the depiction of the individual and the time period it is most likely a reference to the great Thomas Sowell. The Professor argues against the trade based on a moral objection to either banishment or annihilation, but no one ever argues for the inherent worth of the individual. Rather the only problem seen is one of spin control, and a whether the aliens can deliver on their promise. With proof of the ability to deliver the administration decides to set up a phone poll, (via MCI) to decide the fate of Black America.

This first segment serves as the depiction of the institutional racism that Derrick Bell believes exists at the heart of our country.  My next post will examine Bell’s depiction of  the response of the “Race Traitors” in black community and civil rights movement to the offer.

Part 1

Vaclav Shall Lead Us: Towards a “Radical Conservatism”

Image via Wikipedia

Vaclav Havel was an incredible artist and advocate for the rights of the individual in the face of overwhelming political oppression.  Because of this when his country of Czechoslovakia attained freedom from Communist rule, he was named its President.  For him, there was no separation between his art and his politics, because to sign his name to his plays and writings was a political act.

“I think theater should always be somewhat suspect.”
Vaclav Havel

Havel’s quote is a reflection of the belief that theater is inherently subversive of the dominant order.  In our country this has led the left to use theater as a means of critiquing “conservative” or established thought and society.  But Havel used theater to critique a totalitarian Communist order, not a Capitalist society.  As conservatives we have left the arts to the Marxists for too long. Now they are the dominant order in out intellectual establishment and academia.  If we wish to change that we must produce art and theater which is “somewhat suspect” and subversive of dominant Marxist order. Perhaps we should look to Vaclav Havel for inspiration.

Below are some of his quotes which spoke to me as I was reading through them. They seemed eerily reflective of our own time and society, and decidedly “conservative” by American standards.  To have such views in any totalitarian state however, would surely make one a “radical.”

Towards a “radical conservatism” then. Let Vaclav lead the way….

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
Vaclav Havel

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
Vaclav Havel

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Vaclav Havel

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.
Vaclav Havel

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.
Vaclav Havel

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
Vaclav Havel

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning – in other words, of absurdity – the more energetically meaning is sought.
Vaclav Havel

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility
Vaclav Havel

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
Vaclav Havel

There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Vaclav Havel

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
Vaclav Havel

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
Vaclav Havel

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
Vaclav Havel

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vaclav_havel_2.html#ixzz1gy3ItDIP

Drunk Kermit the Frog Slams Muppet Movie Anti-Oil Bias: “Muppets Are MADE of Petroleum!”

A friend shared this with me last night, and I felt compelled to include it here.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I LOVE the Muppets.

I consider the “The Muppet Movie” one of the greatest movies of all time, and I do want to see the current iteration.  The Muppets are fully ensconced in our pop culture now,  and like any celebrity, their images are often used to further political or social ends.  Politics is downstream from pop culture, which is something Kermit is clearly aware of in this clip.

Enjoy.

Patent Leather Oppression

This work of art falls neatly into what I call the Politics of Performance.

All performance has some kind of political import.  Brecht, a Marxist playwright, was famous for saying that all Art is political.  It either is subversive of power or it supports the status quo.

I saw this image via Stumble Upon and for purposes of this post refer to it as Patent Leather Oppression.  The shiny black shoes are supported by the many individual generic plastic figures underneath. In between a piece of clear glass distributes the weight of the black shod individual across the assembled masses, and prevents any mixing between the two.

Marx would call the black shod individual the Capitalist Oppressor and the figures beneath the Proletariat.

I would call the black shod individual Government, and the figures beneath, We The People.

What would you title this image?  What do you see?

Please leave your comments below.

The original image can be found at this link:

artwork_images_651_65528_do-ho-suh.jpg JPEG Image, 599×480 pixels.