No one can read minds. I know that I can't, anyway. We can only deduce another's motive, not know it for sure. What a person says and does is all we really have to go on, in defining their character. Despite the political media's tendency to impose psychological narrative over everything, and then let it morph into the dreaded "conventional wisdom," it really is all speculation WHY someone acts in the manner that they do.
But all progressives, all Democrats, know this: when someone uses an explicitly racist argument to get what they want, and does it repeatedly... then by God, that person is a racist.
It's worth remembering that we humans are not static creatures. Many of us change drastically over the course of a lifetime, and some even in the course of a few years.
Hillary Clinton was certainly not always a racist. I'm not arguing that. She used to work side by side with Marian Wright Edelman, after all. I don't believe that anyone is born destined to spread division, hatred, prejudice, etc. But racism is never without context, and connecting factors. This isn't to excuse it, AT ALL -- but just to acknowledge that racism comes from a complicated mix of things. It's not some inborn, genetic condition.
Racism was so present at the founding of our country that blacks were held in slavery, and not even considered to be people. Much of that was due to fear, xenophobia, and fear of The Other, yes. But it's worth remembering that there were great economic interests at stake there, too... especially in the economy of this country's Southern states. They literally depended on slave labor to keep their status quo alive. So fanning racism was vital to their economic interests. Did that make the power brokers any LESS racist? Hell no, I say.
Racism is not simply a psychological state we're handed at birth. It's also the USE of fear, hatred, and xenophobia to advance one's own interests.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what Hillary Clinton is doing right now. For a Democrat to say this, in 2008...
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
...is as explicitly racist as anything I can imagine in this day and age. The bolded phrase is the key. It's not simply a demographic observation. She makes a link between "hard-working" and "white people," and that is very, VERY damning. And the fact that she's made that the theme of her campaign at present -- witness the arguments made by Paul Begala, Geoff Garin, and her other spokespeople -- proves that she's happy to exploit fear, hatred, and prejudice to get what she wants most desparately: the White House.
As commentors have pointed out in teacherken's diary, those who are considered poster boys for segregationism in the South during the Civil Rights era, like George Wallace and Orval Faubus, did not start out as stone cold racists. Nor did they end their lives that way.
But for a time, each man deemed it in his own best political interests to give over to the worst side of America. During that time, as much as anyone can be, they were racists. And it was all the worse for the power that they wielded as elected officials.
That's the state of Hillary Clinton, right now, in 2008. I'm guessing that when it's no longer in her self-interest to exploit and fan racial fears, she'll calm down, and maybe find her better side again. That may be in a few weeks, or that may be years from now. Who knows, she may never find her way back.
But right now, she's a racist. Her words and actions prove it. If she's not, then the word really has no meaning.
I'll end with a particularly astute comment in teacherken's thread, by poster sesquioxide:
I wrote this elsewhere, but I think it's important to state clearly that Hillary Clinton is racist. Just as a person cannot be judged as a true fan of a team until when things are going badly for the team, a person's racism is best determined from his actions when it is politically convenient to be racist.
Now that Hillary Clinton has found herself back against the wall, she uses "white Americans" as an appositive for "working, hard-working Americans" and tries to drum up the racist votes. A person who is not racist would not turn to racism even when politically convenient to do so, and Clinton failed that simple test.
That she doesn't say racist things when it is politically inconvenient to do so simply means that she subordinates her attitudes towards race under her personal interest. So while she not be StormFront-style racist, she still is a racist.
This is right on the nose.
The test of someone's real principle's, someone's moral character, is not how they prove it when it's easy to do so. It's when their principles make life more difficult, or complicated.
Hillary Clinton has chosen to be a racist. It's sad, it's infuriating, yes... but it must be called what it is.
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