Rep. Cedric Richmond, a black Democrat who represents New Orleans in the U.S. House of Representatives, says that his Republican colleague Rep. Steve Scalise doesn’t have “a racist bone in his body,” and that “Steve and I have worked on issues that benefit poor people, black people, white people, Jewish people. I know his character.”
I don’t dismiss or diminish the import of Rep. Richmond’s character testimony, but I have to say that it makes me even sadder to contemplate a situation where Steve Scalise was so blinded by ambition that he was willing to pander to a conference of Klansmen and neo-Nazis despite the fact that he doesn’t share their beliefs about racial and religious minorities.
I hear this same kind of thing quite frequently. I hear it most often about Ron and Rand Paul. “Sure,” people say, “the Pauls are notorious for encouraging the worst kind of racists, raising money from them, speaking their special language, and even employing them. But they aren’t actually racists.”
I just don’t think that would actually make things better.
How is it really better to know better and still act like a Nazi than to be a true believer?
Can someone explain to me why I should accept Cedric Richmond’s testimony as being truly meaningful? How is it any comfort?
I am inclined to be even more pissed off and unforgiving of someone who pretends to be a racist and an anti-Semite in order to gain power than I am of the nincompoops who regularly attend David Duke conferences.
Today, even the ADL conforms its view with Scalise in his new key position in Congress and is mum on his 2002 participation in EURO … on tax deals!?
You know, here is the problem with people who say that they aren’t racists but espouse racists ideals. (This also works really well for the general case as well)
What these (possibly self-serving non-racists) are basically saying is: “I didn’t MEAN it that way”. which is damning.
In the reality, if you give them ALL of the benefit of the doubt, it boils down to: “I did an underhanded dirty trick, and got caught out on it. How DARE you call me on it.”
The best response I have for that is: “you might not have meant it that way, but you did it that way, and you have done it that way before”. This flips the conflict on it’s head to where the aggressor (and he is an aggressor) now has to defend his competency.
This person is forced to say that they are either A) socially incompetent and not worth listening to (I.E. not serious) or B) The Racist/Sociopath, that he probably is, for espousing such poison in a public forum
To say that you know the character of someone you work with is to suffer from a naive delusion.
Maybe you know the character of your spouse, parents, siblings. Maybe you know the character of a friend you live with. Outside of that, you cannot possibly know the character of anyone.
We shouldn’t accept it. It is worse. Moreover, simply belonging to the Republican Party is de facto admission to belonging to a white nationalist party. Maybe not full out white supremacist, but white nationalists they are.
Further still, why are ANY democrats helping these assholes out? Throw them a fucking anchor.
When you are in the minority and you actually want to get legislation passed for your constituents then you’ll need someone in the majority to ride shotgun for you. A good way to motivate someone in the GOP majority to do that is to issue a statement that “helps” that colleague from your state (does anyone actually change their mind based on the endorsement of this Congressmen? It could mute the media frenzy, though) so that they are in your debt when you come to them and ask them to sponsor your legislation.
Agree in principle, I just don’t see them being, how shall I say, “charitable” in the coming Congress.
Yes, it remains the case that the GOP’s legislative platform is “Fuck Obama.” The thing now isn’t to work with them, it’s to destroy them in 2016. The fact is that Steve Scalise is either a white supremacist or a craven and abject fool. And this is the kind of person they put in leadership positions.
I’d tend to agree, but I do understand the strategy (or I should say “potential strategy” since I don’t know his actual motives). It’s possible to make it happen, though, because when I was with the Florida Young Dems in the 90s one of the Black Senators told us that his best working partner was “Chain Gang” Charlie Crist, someone who my neck of the words had absolutely no love for. It was a head-scratching moment back then, but here 20 years later we can see how it was possible back then.
Strange bedfellows indeed, Oscar.
That might have worked 40 or 50 years ago. Has that worked since the times Newton Leroy Gingrich was Speaker?
bull…if Cedric ever spoke or found to have spoken in front of a “Black Nationalist” or “Black Panther” party conference ….I’m betting Scalise et GOP leaves him out to dry.
Exactly.
No doubt. It’s by no means equitable, but I’m proposing that this may be his strategy. Ultimately, unless I talk to the man or he makes plain his intentions, I can only guess. All I’m saying is that there is a potential logic to the action, even if it’s actually nothing more than wishful thinking.
I really did laugh out loud when I read your comment. Not that you are being funny… no, my own cynicism makes this just too hard to fathom.
I’m sure that’s how it is supposed to work… but does it really work this way anymore? Did it ever? And these constituents are who? Developers, corporate lobbyists, contractors looking for government work?
Whether Scalise is or isn’t racist isn’t even of any interest, any more than it was with George Wallace or Lester Maddox. What the EURO story demonstrates is how he lives on racism, encourages it, and benefits from it. That’s the whole MO of the Republican Party since 1964. He’s a racism profiteer.
Giving aid an comfort to the perpetuation of racist institutions is what perpetuates the policies and the problems those policies create. Being polite, having “liberal” principles, and not using racial epithets are secondary to the actual changing of institutions. And one of the changes is institutions that do not tolerate racist acting out or pretensions of justice.
Scalise is an issue precisely because Congress (sadly in both caucuses) remains a racist institution that perpetuates racist policies.
Scalise just shows how bad Congress is. And so do all the evasions and personal testimonies.
I actually have more respect for the true believer. I know where they stand, we can have an honest conversation. To me, the true believer is simply wrong. The one who fakes the funk is truly evil.
You say that, but I think that you’re just frustrated by the passivity of the moderate. Trust me, actual true believers are way worse. Like, you know how pro-lifers are by and large known to be incredible hypocrites about how they’ll allow exceptions for abortions due to rape or incest? Occasionally, you will come across a couple who will stick to their guns and sneer that rape is no excuse for an abortion. These people aren’t any more sympathetic or noble or honorable just because they’re consistent.
Being principled is only a good thing if your principles aren’t fucked-up.
Respect is different from agreement or even liking. I can respect Hitler for applying to Europe the same standard that Europe applied to the rest of the world while simultaneously condemning him for it.
Not so much sympathetic or noble or honorable. Just not guilty by reason of insanity. Whereas the sane hypocrites are guilty as hell.
You’ve really got this backwards.
Scalise is a politician.
That doesn’t mean that he has no character or beliefs as an individual. What it does mean is that, whatever his individual character or beliefs may be, there is no way to determine what they are, and they don’t matter.
What you get with a politician is a brand, which identifies a propaganda.
What you further get, situationally, is pandering, to specific audiences, at specific times, in specific places, where the prepackaged propaganda is not quite enough and some exegesis (or even improvisation) is necessary; but this is always in the context of the brand and does not constitute an observation (in the quantum-mechanical sense) of the individual politician. Politicians are not observables.
If that saddens you, then politics saddens you — and that is quite as it should be, because politics is (are?) the problem. Never mind what kind of politics; the health of a polity is inversely and exponentially related to the amount of politics, and particularly to the other aspects of life that are allowed to become contaminated by politics.
We’ve spent years defining ‘racism’ more and more narrowly. So narrowly that white people can both be completely confident that we aren’t racist and can congratulate ourselves on zero tolerance for ‘racism’ when it occurs.
Part of this is because of the understandable drive to make racism completely toxic and beyond the (so to speak) pale. If racism is evil, then what I do can’t be racism, because I don’t do evil. That’s just logic.
That’s what this sounds like to me. Scalise didn’t post a picture of Obama as a witchdoctor, so he’s not racist. With the exception of hate crimes, racism is only what you say, not what you do. If you politely support a system that kills and imprisons black men, you’re not racist in the least. If you make a joke about Mario jumping like a black man and chasing gold like a Jew, you’re clearly a troubled individual.
I thought this was pretty amusing:
Quick to judge? We need more time to figure out what kind of person David Duke is? We’ve been dealing with these assholes throughout our history! We fought a war with them, and won, and they came back with Jim Crow and lynching and the KKK. I think it’s safe to judge them by now.
As a constituent of Cedric Richmond I can tell you Cedric Richmond where the money and power .
in NOLA circle, we remember that Richmond actually was involved with one of Bill Jeffersons daughter and actually knew the family instantly. The relationship ended and eventually Richmond ran for Jefferson’s seat (I’m sure with contacts he met via his involvement with the Jeffersons).
I can tell you anctedotally that the people like me who pay attention to this stuff are pissed at Richmond. He reputation among these dialed in here is that he ain’t no good…period.
He lucky because he young, photogenic and Black in a city that even after Katrina is still majority Black and even with low turnout an African American Dem pol in NOLA district will win. Notice Scalise is I the Jefferson parish district…majority white, so GOP White guy will always win.
ugh. now ask yourselves would Richmond get the same benefit of the doubt from Scalise et al if he had given a speech in front of a “Black Nationalist” org…HELL NO
I tell ya what, if someone good runs against Richmond, I’ll be doing my best to work for his opponent.
BTW…this is Cedric’s MO, I call it his “Corey Booker” wannabe moments :
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedric_Richmond
towards the OTHER kind of prostitute, though, don’t you think?
He can say this and potentially be believed by say, some of the White audience, with racism defined narrowly as personal emotions. It’s not just that the general discussion doesn’t recognize the social structures, the institutions, as Tarheel Dem writes upthread, it’s that most don’t know how to think in terms of institutions, to conceive of “structural racism” for example, as long as one is benefitting from it.