You know, of course I agree with Bob Herbert. The racism that simmered within the Hillary Clinton campaign burst into full bloom last fall at the Palin rallies. I wasn’t so much surprised to encounter this kind of vociferous racism as I was to see how much permission people were giving each other to voice it. Meanwhile, the press seems content to have agnostic debates about whether any of this is racism at all.
And people need to take personal responsibility to make sure that others know that they don’t have permission to voice racist sentiments around them. But, I also think it’s getting kind of tired to keep begging Republicans to do something about this. Maybe one or two Republicans (Olympia Snowe, come on down) will get fed up and flee the party, but the leadership and the rank-and-file know that their base hates black people. Their base hates black people and they hate the idea of any black person receiving one dime of government assistance for anything. That’s just a fundamental truth about the American political system.
Rather than focus on getting the Republicans to denounce their own base, a better use of energy is to lobby the media to label racism as racism. There is plenty to report. We see Republican activists and minor party leaders doing rancidly racist things almost everyday. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are putting Father Coughlin to shame lately. Getting the media to drop their faux impartiality would be a start.
But the media and most of the Democratic strategists think that all claims of racism backfire and help the racists. Ask the Clinton campaign if they think that is true. As bad as our racism problem is, the only place where it is accepted as normative is within the shrinking Republican Party. We have plenty of racists in the Democratic Party, but they certainly don’t think it is polite or wins more votes than it loses.
The other thing I’d like to see the media do is to stop asking Barack Obama what he thinks about the misbehavior of every black person in this country. They didn’t think it was appropriate to ask Clinton or Bush what they thought everytime a white person said something stupid or committed some crime. They shouldn’t treat the president as if he is the spokesperson and personal attorney for every black person. That’s a double standard that we could all do without.
If you can suggest ways to put pressure on the media to broaden the fact-finding and at least flirt with real analysis, I am 100% onboard.
The best thing about primary season was the frequent objective tests of conventional wisdom. The media mostly adopted Republican or Hillary campaign talking points–white people wouldn’t vote for Obama; Rev. Wright could not be overcome; guns-and-religion voters “weren’t ready”; the young wouldn’t really turn out. Then primaries, caucuses, or even debate instapolls would prove this wrong and force the echo-chamber to hit reset.
Now, with nothing objective to act as a bucket of ice water in the face, they quote and build on one another’s spin day in and day out, month after month. It’s Kafkaesque.
Last night on Bill Maher’s show, he asked why George Bush wasn’t responsible for answering to Phil Spector. Interesting.
Through the campaign and until now, Obama has had to answer for Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Harry Belafonte, Kanye West, etc. Every time some black person says something mildly offensive to white folks, Obama needs to answer to it. But President McCain wouldn’t be responsible for answering to the craziness of any white folk in the news.
Ain’t gonna happen as long as the Talking Heads are poo-pooing the accusations of racism. Two of the columns in the Sunday editorial page of the paper declared that the Left needs to stop making things up about racism. There is none! Why, at the Tea Party in DC, those signs that people claimed to be racist were few and far between! Miniscule, even!
I am already sick to death of the deniers, the term “race card” and all the other crap that the Republicans keep slinging around. They will never acknowledge that they are the Big White Party and they live to see the failure of the first black President. I don’t see that ever changing.
How do we fight back?
I think that we can flip that attitude. It isn’t racism. It’s a Republican political strategy to build their base among racists.
There’s a difference between a charge of being racists and one of trying to manipulate the anger of racists. The latter is a charge of what actually is more common in Washington (and American politics) than racism, and that is cynicism that would destroy government rather than lose.
It would be helpful if Democrats would treat the GOP like the enemies that they are instead of a supposed partner for progressive policy – they speak with forked tongues…
It would be helpful if some democrats weren’t just as bad (Blue Dogs).
Try this with a real modern-day racist Republican. The response is predictable:
“Are you trying to deny me my freedom of speech?”
Generally said with a sneer and a “whatcha gonna do about it” attitude.
Fortunately, despite the active efforts of the GOP leadership to whip this up, only about a quarter of self-professed Republicans are are lapping it up. And they have been known closet racists. The remainder of Republicans are just a little bit baffled with some members of their leadership, but comforted that it has spread throughout the GOP members of Congress.
Yes, they will continue to do it as long as they are leaderless and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck compete to be the big kahuna of the GOP. No doubt there’ll be some wannabes who will try to out-crazy Glenn Beck.
Until the 2010 election at least, it’s going to be a very bumpy ride. Progressives are going to have to learn not to freak out at each new outrage, but to breathe deeply and press on with getting as much through Congress as we can. It is a circus and a distraction meant to disrupt the legislative process and the creation of public opinion around healthcare reform, greenhouse gas reduction, financial energy regulation, and workers rights. We must calmly continue to work on that agenda.
What I wish…
is we would NOT allow the discussion to degenerate into visceral freeper-rhetoric, i.e. “their base hates black people”. this is more or less the same as freeper-whining during the bush years: “you hate bush!!!” as a feeble substitute for reasoned discussion.
further:
I agree with the first sentence, since ultimately everything in the U.S. is about money/power/status (class). the larger truth here which I have seen discussed NOWHERE in the blogosphere (forget about mainstream media) is the sad fact that many white Americans’ sense of self worth and self esteem is wrapped in up their belief that no matter how crappy and marginal their lives are (thanks to the magical, unfettered Free Market system), there’s a black or Hispanic family living across town that are worse off than them.
If you read Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”, you’ll learn the obvious current belief of wealthy white people, i.e. THEY are entitled to largess/favoritism from the federal government, NOT poor people (white, red, black, whatever) goes back to the very founding of the United States.
Keep in mind when our country was founded, there were few black people in the United States. There were white people and indigenous peoples (the Indians) but of course they didn’t count since they weren’t white and they had no concept of property ownership.
Zinn’s book points out that wealth/property were the deciding factor regarding status, one’s right to vote, and one’s right to be elected to any sort of political office. further, the white men of status, i.e. the wealthy/propertied class, created a federal government which protected THEIR wealth/property, at the expense of those who were not part of the wealthy class.
At that time (more or less the same applies now) poor people of all races were f—ed over/abused/exploited by the wealthy class. at that time, it wasn’t about racism, because black people were not here in numbers and Indians didn’t even enter the equation (except in the matter of stealing “their” lands from them).
Then as now, it was about CLASS (wealth) as well as race.
this is made obvious by the fact the teabaggers refuse to support health care reform, even though reform would be beneficial to them (poor, middle class whites)
as well as poor, middle class people of color.
clearly the poor/middle class teabaggers desperately need to see themselves as better than (even though obviously they are not economically better than) poor/middle class people of color, AND, similar to the wealthy white class, they believe they are exclusively entitled to largess from the government.
the blubbering woman on the tube a couple of months ago stating “I want my country back” is a perfect example of this mindset.
the HUGE disconnect here for the teabaggers (and I believe this is a huge part of the reason for their protest) is they are in DENIAL about the now obvious exploitation/abuse of themselves by the wealthy class (mostly white people).
one can hardly be “better off” than one’s black or Hispanic neighbors if one is in fact suffering the same abuses they are.
the teabagger protests are mostly projection/denial. they know something is very wrong with our system, but instead of facing the obvious causes, they project blame on “big government, high taxes, too much regulation of business”.
mainstream corporate media of course feeds/reinforces this absurd, simplistic mindset, because it conveniently deflects blame for the crisis from where it actually belongs: THE WEALTHY CLASS, who also happen to own mainstream media and use it as they see fit.
That depends on when you consider the country to be founded. There were plenty of black people in 1776.
And BTW, I HATE these reactionaries stealing Howard Dean’s signature line.
indeed, but key word in the phrase is “people”; numbers are reduced if one is only 3/5 of a person.