Crossposted from Moral Questions Weblog.
Digby wrote this today:
Apropos of nothing in particular, take a look at the exit poll data from Mississippi, where George W. Bush picked up the votes of 85 percent of the white population and just 10 percent of the African-American vote. In a state whose electorate is 65-percent white, that led to a hefty 60-40 win for the incumbent. Mississippi’s an unusually stark case, but not all that much of an outlier. Georgia saw 75 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks pull the lever for Bush. It was 75-9 in Louisiana, 78-15 in South Carolina, and a comparatively minor 63-6 in Arkansas (generally speaking, whites are most monolithically Republican in the least-white states like Mississippi and more open to Democrats in whiter states like Arkansas).
All of which is just to say that an awful lot of the post-election talk about “culture” and its impact on voting serves to obscure the extent to which a lot of politics is about race. In Mississippi, Bush got a larger percentage of the vote from people who “somewhat dissaprove” of his administration than he did from black voters. He did better among self-identified Democrats than he did among blacks, and far better (23 percent against 10 percent) among self-identified liberals than with non-whites. I’m not sure exactly what follows from that, and I appreciate that commentators don’t like to raise the point in order to avoid just engaging in naive allegations of racism, but it’s really, really not possible to understand the politics of the South without delving into this stuff.
It’s also not possible to understand why the US is the only first world nation that has rejected national health care and a robust safety net without delving into it. And it’s not possible to explain these maps, in which we see the power of the southern based party having reasserted itself, without delving into it.
It’s fundamental to understanding our country, our politics and our culture. Unlike any other western country, we had to fight a bloody civil war to end slavery in the middle of the 19th century and we lived with segregation for another century after that. This is built into the fabric of our nation. It’s naive to ignore it.
It really is a truly sad thing that no one wants to talk about racism anymore. How often have prominent members of the black community’s point of view on the subject been marginalized and even rejected by a MSM petrified at the idea of offending its target white demographics? How many times did we hear this past couple weeks, Democratic politicians reject the idea that if it had been white people down there, the president would have been all over the situation? Race has been such a bitter question in the country somehow we’ve gotten to the point where its become a kind repressed ideology: denied and reject consciously, yet plainly obvious in our culture and media to anyone whose not white.
My bet: there’s a hell of a lot of issues that cut just a little to deep for baby-boomers. It may well be a generation before we ever revisit these questions again.
…about race. Discussions in which we don’t just talk about white and black, but white and black and red and yellow and brown and mixed. Discussions in which racism isn’t just a one-way street, in which obvious racist behavior by a few retrograde individuals isn’t given more attention than institutional racism that many people don’t acknowledge as racism.
I agree, but “institutional racism” is a dodge used by guilty whites who know damned well what is really behind the gov’t and business policies they help carry out: redlining; counter-suits against Indian Nations over landuse, gambling and other issues; poor funding in schools (vouchers).
Deep inside, we ALL know that these are beards for people’s deep-seated racism, yet we cast our eyes down from that deep, dark, truthful mirror and name it “institutional” …
…isn’t anymore a dodge by guilty whites in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but rather the reality of the Latino power structure which passes over experienced blacks and whites and Asians to hire less qualified members of their own ethnicity.
I think we’re going to embark on an interesting discussion about race and class way up here in MN in the next couple of months – totally unrelated to the evidence of Katrina. Thats because a group of businsses have commissioned a study on race and class disparities in our state. The results are that the disparities are larger up here in the “state that used to work” than most other places in the nation. I got a preview of this group’s report at a meeting of directors of United Way funded agencies last week. Its going to be rolled out to the media and the general public in October. Stick around…it could get interesting.
I think for white liberals the issue is uncomfortable because we’re scared to death we might find out we’re not as progressive as we thought. It’s easy to oppose Jim Crow institutional racism. What to do when confronted in your daily life with the more subtle racism (as compared to fountains labeled “white” and “colored,” anyway) of today is a different question. Am I doing enough? Am I missing something through my own insensitivity / unintended blindness? Is it more racist to ask some of these questions or not? How could I live in a country that lets things like the scene at the Superdome happen? Is that “them” alone? To what degree am I to blame?
Race is the issue that scares a white of good will to death. What the hell to do / say?
I originally wrote the paragraphs above with “they” and went back to change them to “we” and “I.” I’m now squirming in discomfort with my finger over the “post” button. What if something I said gravely offends someone here I care about?
It would be soooo easy not to touch this live wire with a ten-foot pole. Oh well, here goes nothin –
In order to “believe” in racism, white America has to question the Horatio Alger myth and the notion that we deserve everything we have because we’ve worked so hard. Nobody wants to be reminded that he benefits from racism.
I had more educational opportunity than most black children because I lived in a segregated, wealthier school district. I didn’t ask that those children be deprived so my white school could have more, but it happened none the less.
When I got my first job, I competed only against other white people. I hated racism, but that didn’t stop it from working in my favor. Every time a person of color pays a higher interest rate or insurance premium, it puts money in my pocket whether I want it or not.
Standing by, saying,”But, I’M not a racist”, isn’t enough. As long as we benefit from injustice, we are morally obligated to fight it.
We could start by bringing every school in America up to a single standard and funding them federally, dividing the money equally among all our students. You know…..a FUNDED mandate. Republicans will howl about states’ rights and local control, but that has always been a mask for continuing racism and greed.
Amen to everything you said – you’ve clarified what I was trying to get at – white folks have a hard time wrapping their minds around the many and subtle ways we are still benefitting from racism, especially since (unlike minorities) we can choose to forget that it’s still an issue even when we’re not thinking about it. As someone from a family of immigrants in the 20th century, I’ve had relatives tell me “America’s race problems aren’t our fault – we were peasants in Italy when slavery was going on.” Your first paragraph NAILS IT. Thanks for your reply.
Clarification: “Is that ‘them’ alone?” referred to the people that let the disaster happen, not the victims!
Since this is the first time in decades we’ve talked about race at all honestly on a national level, I’ve gotta have hope. The best comment I heard about racism recently was from Barack Obama on ABC’s This Week of Sep. 11. I can’t find the transcript but he was widely quoted as saying “Passive indifference is as bad as active malice.” There was more though. He pointed out that white people, perhaps genuinely without malice, often don’t understand when black people perceive the “passive indifference” as racist. There just is no meeting of the minds about that loaded word.
Maybe this is naive of me but I think there are seeds for genuine dialogue in this way of looking at race relations: neither “side” of the argument right or wrong, but trying to get beyond the label to address the problems of poverty and neglect that plague us.
oogh I just re-read that and found that in struggling to say what I mean I misrepresented myself. I do think that passive indifference is a form of racism. But I think that there is honest disagreement about the term “racism” that gets in the way of dialogue.