The Elite Man’s Burden and Community Organizing
Sep 5th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 2 Comments |
Has anyone worked out the differences between Obama’s coming into Chicago to organize, and missionary imperialism?
After Giuliani and Palin attacked Obama’s community organizing, “Obama campaign manager David Plouffe” said:
Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies…
But could one have said . . .
Community organizing is what outsiders like Obama do when they think the natives can’t civilize themselves.
. . . ?
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One difference between missionary imperialism and Obamian community organizing is that Obama didn’t walk into the community-to-be-civilized with coercive powers blazing.
But he got frustrated without said powers. So he ran for state government.
He came in unarmed, and then got coercive power.
So that’s one difference between his community organizing and missionary imperialism.
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But when the coercive power of the state legislature wasn’t enough, he ran for a chance at the coercive power of the national legislature.
And when that wasn’t enough, he ran for national Commander-in-Chief.
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It’s as if at each stage, he found he didn’t have enough power to do what he wanted, so his solution was to get more power (all the while getting further and further away from the people he started out wanting to help).
I wonder what will happen to him when he finds the presidency isn’t doing it for him either.
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So even though I love the idea of helping people get organized for a great cause (the idea has a kind of wondrous quality to it for me, especially since organizing is not something I have a knack for), I’m also wondering whether some kind of “Elite Man’s Burden” comes into play whenever the community organizer in question is not a member of the community he or she is trying to organize.
It seems just a little strange to me to view that kind of community service in this light. After all, a guy who headed up the Harvard Law Review had pretty much his choice of employment. It seems a little cynical.
And it’s even more strange when one considers all of the self-admitted imperialist goals of the current administration. I’m more concerned with the arrests of reporters. And the invasion of other nations for their natural resources, via war or capitalist takeover. And the attempted genocide of millions with abstinence-only education when HIV/AIDS is epidemic. That sort of thing. But maybe that’s just my eccentric perspective in this increasingly alien-nation.
Ah, perspective. How thou are nice.