The Willie Horton Hustle 2009

When Bay Area activist Van Jones was first appointed by President Barack Obama as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality, I could hear the right-wing pundits sharpening their knives.

To me, it seemed a question of when, not if the knives would plunge in.  The chorus of pundits “revealing” to the world what was never hidden in the first place: Jones’ former membership in a Marxist organization, any number of speeches he’d given decrying police brutality, stated support for the human rights of Palestinians, and the list goes on.

I expected that Van’s face would be plastered all over the media sometime in 2010, as the Republicans geared up to take some Congressional seats back. Surprise, election season is here, although a bit early.

In the past, the Republican Party would have left Van Jones alone, and instead find the image of a Black inmate, who managed to rape, rob, steal and scare the suburbs while on furlough. The Willie Horton Hustle worked well in 1988, killing Michael Dukakis’ campaign for the White House and ushering in the reign of Bush I.

That playbook isn’t going to work in exactly the same way. Fanning racial resentment while a Black President is in office is a different beast. The assault on Jones is a new bag: “expose” how Obama is catering to “reverse racists” with “dangerous” socialist ideas.

The image of a Black man sneaking in a (white) grandmother’s house and raping her has been replaced by the image of an angry army of Black professionals (college educated thanks to affirmative action) plotting the economic subjugation of all white folks.  The beat remixed, yet the song remains the same.

Those who profit from this demonology are the same people who freaked out when they realized their own children bought Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet not to burn, but to dance  to. Twenty-years later, they are far more concerned with making sure that health reform saves private profits, and that the Obama administration stays the course in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stoking white people’s Fear of a Black President, and his dangerous advisors is a tune that has withstood the test of time. With Jones’ resignation, we’re likely to hear it again next year, and for years after.

The knife of white resentment is always one that cuts the hand that wields it. In the end, it isn’t Obama himself that the racist wing of the Republican Party is afraid of. His monumental caution and pandering to their needs should have allayed that fear. What they are afraid of is that the hundreds of thousands of people of all races who bought the  Hope and Change product are actually going to get up and demand some, beyond the confines of both major parties.