It must have seemed a bright idea at the time to get Noel Pearson to write an article for The Monthly on Obama. Trouble is - Pearson may or may not know anything about American politics, but almost his entire article is a discussion of Obama seen through the prism of a book written by Shelby Steele. Those who saw the recent (and totally disappointing) Four Corners show on Obama might recall that Steele was the dude from Stanford who kept banging on about how Obama was manipulating “white guilt”. You can watch (if you can be bothered) his entire schtick via this link.
Pearson has the answer for Obama - emphasise “Black responsibility” and end all that liberal rights claimin’… How boringly predictable. And talk about seeing Obama’s candidacy purely through a racial lens. It actually shows how self-centred and narrow Pearson’s point of view as a “public intellectual” is - in that he obviously knows very little about what he’s purporting to opine on, and he isn’t writing about it anyway - it’s just yet another way of pushing the well known Pearson third-way-isms. He’s actually writing about Australia while pretending to write about America. The game is given away by his recommendation that a Tony Blair type would be the best American prez - forget political and cultural differences - Third Way boosterism is the new globalisation without national borders! Or something… I’d really hoped for something better for the cover price - Robert Manne’s 2020 summit story was soooooooooo predictable, and the only article I enjoyed was Gideon Haigh on what the NLA have been up to on the digital archive frontier. Pearson’s article cried out for a spike fee.
Any passages available online, Kim? I don’t want to blast the article without reading it, but the title “What he must do to win” appears as a sign of fallow thought… like a sub-par op-ed from the Australian. At this stage, Obama needs to do three main things to win:
1. Wear out Clinton by attrition. (159 delegates to go to win the nomination).
2. Paint McCain as a warmonger and Bush toady. Not too hard. (Image Google “McCain Bush hug”, and start from there.)
3. Get himself a kick-ass VP. I’m partial to Jim Webb, but I have my reservations.
4. Avoid being assassinated in the interim. As the ghosts of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King would tell you. (Sorry, I had to say it.)
There are a lot of other little things, but talking about “white guilt” seems to be none of them, nor would it help him win the nomination.
As for Stelby Steele, I found this piece.
Your thoughts, Kim?
I’m surprised you could overlook Don Watson’s piece, “Digging”. It alone was worth the subscription this month. Pearson was pointless, but his agenda doesn’t grab me. Sherborne’s piece on NZ was also interesting. I reckon TM does need to be more adventurous with its pieces, but I’m not running a (presumably) successful publishing company, so what would I know? If I had to choose, I’d maintain my Quarterly Essay sub and dump TM, but for now I’ll keep both (disclaimer - my partner’s got a piece in Black Inc’s “Growing up Asian in Australia” - I like Black Inc for other reasons too).
Lol. In his piece on the 2020 Summit, did Manne deploy the by now well-worn cliches, ‘the summit was stacked… but the conversations started were valuable!’?
Not quite, TimT. More like “The summit was highjacked by bureaucratic minute takers, but…” - he’s also very glad to be back inside the tent, etc.
Thanks for writing about Pearson’s very curious article. I was confused by what seemed to be a review. The take-out message that I distilled was be a proper black and join the Republicans. But not very well justified.
I got that too, Angharad. A book review of Shelby Steele combined with Noel’s usual “responsibility” blah.
Alister, actually I’ve set aside Don Watson and the NZ article to read later.
Down and Out, I agree with that.
And no, I don’t think any of Pearson’s article is online except for subscribers.
i think i saw it a few weeks back published online someplace - i think it was an american site ???
Like Down and Out of Sài Gòn, I would normally hesitate to criticise Pearson’s article because I haven’t read it, but this post, especially Kim’s point that this was Pearson pushing his ‘black responsibility’ barrow, and opened some entry points.
My first reaction when I read The Monthly’s email promo about the May edition that landed in my inbox was annoyance at why The Monthly, and Australian media generally, insists on treating Noel Pearson as the only Black public intellectual in Australia worth publishing (or publishing about), and why on earth they thought he’d be qualified to comment on American politics – whether electoral or race politics. Kim’s point that “He’s actually writing about Australia while pretending to write about America” is the clincher.
Reading the excerpts that I got in the email about black responsibility, white guilt etc and thinking about their implications for welfare policy in both America and Australia, I couldn’t help but remember the story in Mike Moore’s Bowling for Columbine of the African American woman who had to travel long distances by bus to and from her job as a domestic servant, which caused her to have little time to spend caring for her children. This was a direct result of America’s version of ‘Welfare to Work’ (think of the resonances with Pearson’s anti-handouts campaign). Moore drew the connection between this welfare policy’s impact on parenting capacity and time and the woman’s little child’s involvement in an accidental shooting that led to another child being killed.
What I find so frustrating is that Pearson’s opinions about welfare policy and the social issues in Aboriginal, or African American, communities are so influential amongst federal policy makers. There is a growing sense that Canberra, as is the media, is only bothering to pay attention to Pearson as the sole black voice on welfare reform, at the expense not only of other black public intellectuals’ voices, or wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, but also at the expense of rigorous analysis of and debate on welfare and social policy.
Just as the public debate rolled over on Mutual Obligation, welfare to work, and forcing parents on the parenting pension back to work, so is the debate rolling over on welfare quarantining in NT Aboriginal communities, and now partial welfare quarantining of targeted dole recipients.
I have to admit, Pearson’s cover story is the main thing that is making me hesitate to shell out the cover charge for the May edition. After David Marr’s excellent recollection of how Patrick White lived and died in the April edition, I’m worried I’d be terribly disappointed at the new edition and lose confidence in yet another Australian magazine.
The problems of disadvantaged groups like African-Americans and indigenous Australians will not be solved by exhortations to exercise personal responsibility, nor will they be resolved by cultivating a culture of victimhood and welfare dependence.
But that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be encouraged to take responsibility for their own actions or provided with a safety net that allows them to live a dignified life.
That one sticks in the mind to be sure, and it’s actually backed up with an awful lot of evidence unlike some of Moore’s anecdotes. Not that kids are getting killed en masse, but that the ‘welfare to work’ policy as implemented in the states seems to have bugger all to do with their welfare.
sc, I haven’t seen it anywhere else?
Yes, but that’s actually not how they’re framed in American terms - except by the odd bod like Shelby - which just goes to show how much Pearson doesn’t know about America and American politics. There is a debate over whether “affirmative action” is the best way to address continuing African-American disadvantage (acknowledging that it has been one of the factors which has created a large Black middle class) or whether, as Obama has intimated, redistributive policy being extended to those of any race who are falling behind economically might be a better way to go. But I suppose Pearson would see that as too “liberal” or “left wing” or something. Who knows? What I do know is that his framing of the issues and ideas on the topic have very little useful to offer in terms of thinking about race in America.
“Just as the public debate rolled over on Mutual Obligation, welfare to work, and forcing parents on the parenting pension back to work, so is the debate rolling over on welfare quarantining in NT Aboriginal communities, and now partial welfare quarantining of targeted dole recipients.”
Since the intervention in the NT indigenous school attendances have risen 10-15% and STD infections have fallen significantly. Remember indigenous children in the NT have rates of gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis, trichomoniasis etc that are without precedent even in the third world.
Do you have a source for that, mel?
Don’t forget STD infections were up across all groups in the community at the same time as they rose (from a much higher base) in remote Indigenous communities.
Kim,
I’m aware that the welfare system in America is mean and cruel. I’m all in favour of the welfare state provided there is a mutual obligation component. I don’t support mutual obligation to punish the “wicked poor” but because I think it can produce better outcomes.
Well, mel, I don’t know that “mutual obligation” has ever really been an issue in the US in those terms - as I said, Pearson is framing things in British/Australian terms.
Nope re STDs- not sure where I heard it. Sorry.
Take or leave it, but please believe that Mel & Kim form a very respectable pair with their interleaved comments #11-17 on this thread. Children of the 80s will know what I’m talking about.
I haven’t seen the Noel Pearson article, as The Monthly has a subscription-only policy for its online edition, but it would sound like he would be arguing that Barack Obama should be running as a Republican rather than as a Democrat. There is a well-established Black Republican Linked text and black conservative tradition in the U.S. that tends to define itself in opposition to the ‘right and racism’ agenda associated with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and (yes, him again!) Rev. Jeremiah Wright, emphasising instead individual responsibility, being tough on urban crime, and patriotism.
Writing from the U.S., this would seem to be the second attempt by Australian news media to understand the Barack Obama phenomenon here that has got it completely wrong. Chris Masters’ Four Corners story missed the whole issue because (1) he went to the wrong city (New York rather than Chicago); and (2) he insisted on seeing the whole thing through the prism of the 60s civil rights struggle. As a result the show had endless and irrelevant waffle about white girls in Harlem bars and black people profiting from the gentrification of Harlem. I’m surprised that he didn’t find out that rappers own big houses and that white Americans watch Oprah!
For The Monthly, the question is why - aside from skin colour - would you assume that Noel Pearson would be an authority on Barack Obama. A much better starting point would have been to find someone who was knowledgeable about Jesse Jackson’s campaign in the Democratic Party primaries of 1984 and 1988 (and Jackson got 29% of the popular vote and the Democrat delegates in 1988), and consider how Obama’s campaign has differed from that of Jackson, and indeed how he is different to the better known black Democrats in the U.S., such as Jackson. This article in The New York Times is one place to start Linked text.
“…annoyance at why The Monthly, and Australian media generally, insists on treating Noel Pearson as the only Black public intellectual in Australia worth publishing..”, and the reason why I will not be buying this month’s Monthly - I am sick of the sight of bloody Noel Pearson and his Road to Serfdom schtick.
“Don’t forget STD infections were up across all groups in the community at the same time as they rose (from a much higher base) in remote Indigenous communities.”
Do you have a reference for this claim?
This is a link to an abstract in the CSIRO journal on sexual health. I am not sure if you can get the full text for free but if you have University Library access it should be available.
The bottom line was they could not tell if rates for chlamydia changed through time. The problem is that the rate is highly dependent on how you measure it. Reporting rates, which have increased, do not accurately reflect infection, especially given the rather nasty process of diagnosis.
I would be highly skeptical of a claimed 15% reduction in STD rates. You probably could do the epidemiology over 6 months but it would be tricky and 10-20% would be the sorts of error margin you would expect.
I knew there was a reason why I don’t bother buying TM anymore. On what possible basis of ‘expertise/knowledge’ is Pearson selected for comments on US electoral issues rather than someone who might actually know something about US politics and the current popular zeitgeist in that place.
WTF! It was absolutely terrible. I read it standing at the Newsagent’s magazine shelves-(no, I won’t be apologising). The sheer idiocy and political absurdity of implicitly linking Australian indigenous policy debates with the candidacy of someone who is manifestly not ‘indigenous’ but rather, ‘half immigrant’, in the US context and who by any stretch is a member of the educated elite in the US, and a Senator to boot, is simply insulting to what I presume is TM’s readership base. So Noel is ‘not white’. Obama is ‘not white’ ergo, each have valuable insights about the politcs and policies that must inform both of them. What absolute claptrap, even for the tepid and boring TM..
On what basis is Pearson selected for expertise/knowledge on anything, except that he’s telling the conservatives what they want to hear, as he well knows. And I include Labor here. Careful, Kev. I reckon Pearson made a small contribution to Howard losing last year - small, but a contribution, nonetheless. Don’t let him do the same to you.
There are echoes of Bill Cosby’s current activities in what Pearson is writing, particularly the black responsibility bit. There was a piece on Cosby and his message in one of the last couple of issues of The Atlantic. Cosby and Pearson - or at least what I have divined without reading The Monthly article - seem to have similar views of Obama.
Mercurius - not only do they not form a respectable pair, but if the hype is to be believed, contra Flavour Flav’s sage advice, they’re never going to be either.
Re Paul Burns’ comment. I really don’t think Pearson had anything at all to do with Howard’s loss last year, and will have nothing to do with anything that happens to Rudd either. In reality, the policy debates and psotions represented by Pearson and his detractors, are confined to a tiny number of people, and aired in national media with a reach confined to around 100,000 top income earner nationally. In other words, no-one gives a flying. Pearson has tried to infuse his ‘third way’ gestures, with a tincture of methodist self help but with an increasingly individualist bent a la Adam Smith, as opposed to the Wesley brothers. I have no idea what his fellow indigenous activists think of his politics, but I understand how his position has been utilised by neoliberals. However I do not condemn him on the latter point. Heaven knows, gesturing towards neoliberal positions, in a desperate attempt to go forward on anythhing, or taken notice of at all, when you are not the CEO of some corporate, or a paid shill for a collection of corporates, is hard enough. This difficulty is not confined to Noel Perason. Look at the ACTU. So, all in all, I leave the assessment of his policy positions to those who are politically active and knowledgeable about indigenous issues when that is the topic du jour, and on anything else about which I feel I know something, I judge his positions against my own knolwledge/experience, and generally find him unhelpful.
I find the post and many of the comments here to be cheap shots at Pearson without any substantial understanding of what he is on about and without any substantial critique of what he says. The fact that I cannot (without paying) access Pearson’s own words somewhat diminishes the merit of the critique.
As for personal responsibility in the U.S. Louis Farakhan preaches personal responsibility and this is a central theme in black Islam from Malcolm X through to the million man march.
Noel Pearson (a christian), Malcolm X, Louois Farakhan and the nation of Islam do not fit neatly into a left/right dichotomy but are perpetually defined and interpreted by leftists and rightists within their own frames of reference that totally miss the point of the black perspective.
The connection between Pearson’s conservatism and X’s radicalism is the issue of personal and collective (black) responsibility. The common wisdom is that white people will give up nothing, it will be a futile wait for the oppressor to be converted to the point that justice will begin to flow. Whether from a basic class, race or gender analysis, the focus on the powerful giving up power voluntarily is absurd. Yet it is the only option for change inherent in the left wing paradigm of “protest”.
It is wrong to equate Pearson’s “quest for a radical centre” with “third way-ism”. For Pearson the radical centre is the synthesis of the dialectict of pragmatism and idealism, it has nothing to do with left/right/third way.
Pearson’s essay “White guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre” describes his notion of radical centre as well as an analysis of Obama and U,S, politics. [link]
Really, John? “The third way” was always sold in those “dialectical” terms - by its inventors in Britain, and by Mark Latham in his turgid tomes in Australia. It might be “wrong” according to Pearson’s latest attempt to claim some originality, but anyone who’s read (and it’s not an enviable task) the literature on this, knows that it’s anything but. The “radical centre” - as a political position - was the invention of Roy Jenkins in his celebrated address in 1978 which led to the formation a few years down the track of the SDP in Britain, and it was then taken up - to provide a point of contrast with Blair - by Schroder and his ideologues in Germany. And “the third way” like “the radical centre” was always supposed to “transcend” left and right.
It’s all bullshit, really.
Hi Mark,
You prove my point by defining Pearson in terms of the authors you have read rather than what he says himself and more importantly what the Cape York Institute have done.
If you are looking for an academic context to categorise Pearson you might try the likes of Fanon instead of the European ideologues.
I disagree that it is all bullshit. Such a blanket dismissal is not one that an open minded academic would make. Can you substantiate this critique with anything other than cross referencing vocabularies?
I’m sorry, John, I don’t accept that. Pearson constantly uses the rhetoric and dichotomies of all those authors. That’s his choice, and not my problem. I’d be more interested in what he has to say if it wasn’t dressed up in so much pretentious gobbledygook, which is all about positioning himself within a particular political field rather than analysing the issues he’s concerned about. If you look at the actual policy work that’s come out of the Cape York Institute, as he himself subsequently admitted, any evidence that the solutions he recommends (or rather prescribes) will work is very very thin on the ground indeed.
But I’m not that interested in parsing Pearson this afternoon. I have a PhD to finish. But I think you’re taking him at his word far too blithely, so I wanted to answer that.
Yes Pearson does suffer from pretentious gobbldeygook syndrome, but he is not the only public intellectual to suffer this.
Pearson also uses the rhetoric and dichotomies of Cape York Elders, applying the European philosophies to his Aboriginal knowledge base which puts him, I suggest, in a different intellectual category altogether than the authors you or he mention.
Any new policy paradigm must begin without precedence of success or failure. While there may be no statistics yet on Pearson’s model there is ample evidence of the failures of status-quo policies. What is distinctive about the Cape York trial is it is an Aboriginal initiative, argued about for 10 years within Cape York Aboriginal politics as well as lobbying governments. The model has broad (but not unanimous) support in the Cape because the black business was done as part of the process instead of the usual mode of imposing pre-packaged policy onto unsuspecting communities.
The Cape York trial is a four year trial and I am sure there will be plenty of statistics for sociologists to analyse before too long.
If you want to get past Pearson’s gobbldeygook I suggest you look at the Cape York Institute’s website [link]
Also, the CYI’s agenda has to be understood in the context of the ongoing land rights struggle in Cape York of which Pearson has been a significant leader. He established the Cape York Land Council and focused his legal attention on land claims. This focus has not been abandoned as evidenced in a news story today “New law an attack on land rights: Pearson” [link]
The left seem to have reached a consensus that Pearson is a puppet of neo-liberalism, but I challenge anyone, not just Mark, to say what is wrong with Pearson’s perspective or the Cape York Institute’s agenda beyond a Hansonesque “I don’t like it”.
Both Pearson brothers, Noel and Christopher, have become crashing bores. Each is bad as the other. It must be genetic.
Spiros, are you seriously suggesting that there was a time when Christopher Pearson wasn’t a crashing bore? Thank the Goddess he no longer has the entire Adelaide Review to cram full of the utterly predictable splutterings of every reactionary in the country (relieved only by the thoughtful Michael Cooney).
“But I’m not that interested in parsing Pearson this afternoon. I have a PhD to finish.”
I’m not sure anybody is interested in your ‘non-posting’ activities Mark - you simply don’t post. Not too difficult, I would hope!!
“a time when Christopher Pearson wasn’t a crashing bore”
For three months in 1976, I believe. Not before or since.
Mercurius sez:
“Take or leave it, but please believe that Mel & Kim form a very respectable pair with their interleaved comments #11-17 on this thread. Children of the 80s will know what I’m talking about.”
Do you think we’re channeling Tim and Debbie?
Kim,
You asked for links regarding the success of the NT intervention. Here’s the one re the fall in STDs among indigenous kids [link]
Regarding school attendance: [link]
Here are the money shots: “Attendance rates at remote Indigenous schools have jumped 20 to 30 per cent since the Federal Government intervention in the northern territory.”
“The Northern Territory Government’s latest surveillance update on sexual health and blood-borne viruses revealed that 62 children aged under 14 were diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections in the Territory in the first six months of the intervention. Three of the children diagnosed with chlamydia between July and December last year were under the age of 10.
The figures also showed that total diagnoses of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and trichomoniasis declined in the second half of last year, compared with the first half, following the intervention. ”
I think both Noel Pearson and John Howard are owed one big apology.