As you no doubt know, President Carter spoke up on racism recently. Some folks seem to think it was a bold and brave move by him. I tend to think he played it somewhat safe by being ambiguous regarding who exactly he was speaking up against. My thoughts on this and a couple more race-related issues that have cropped up, after the fold...
Does President Carter truly "get it"? Partially, perhaps. But we know from Carter's own statements that he is getting his view of the anti-Obama protests filtered through his television. So when he sees images of signs expressing a desire to bury Obama next to Kennedy, or with a Hitler mustache painted on Obama's face (these are the examples he gave), he is seeing what the media chose to show him. And our sensationalist media will quite naturally tend to show the most extreme and provocative signs and air the most outrageous statements.
Is Carter's view "brave" or even controversial? Few people who would listen to Carter would defend the most extreme signs at these protests, nor would they try to make the case that racial animosity was not a primary driver of this kind of display of hatred. (I won't either.) Carter is quite right to condemn the signs he cited and it is reasonable for someone to suspect racism as the culprit when such extreme and personal animosity towards Obama is displayed.
But the vast majority of protesters are not carrying Obama = Hitler signs or Obama Must Die signs. So what does Carter think about protesters who are saying, for example, that Obama is a "socialist" or who say they "want their country back"? I have to assume he has seen or heard these statements also. But he did not say whether this sort of milder and less personal protest against Obama qualified as part of the "intense animosity demonstrated" towards Obama which he sees as prima facie evidence of racism. These folks are being called racists too. Would Carter agree? Unless someone asks him, we can only guess.
This is where things get tricky. This is where people have tended to start talking past each other, myself included. Therefore, this is the place where wise, reasoned voices are needed most. But Carter does not go there; he simply does not go into the gray areas where the real controversy lies. Perhaps it is too much to ask of an 85 year old man to do so.
If Jimmy Carter meant to make the case that the vast majority of all the right-wing protests over the past few months are driven by racism directed towards Obama himself, he certainly did not make his case. Bob Somerby at the excellent Daily Howler shows why this is a difficult case to make:
Uh-oh. Many people believe crazy things about President Obama. But the same thing was true about President Clinton! And many people believed lunatic things about Clinton’s health plan too. Indeed, some of the lunatic claims about Clinton’s plan were dreamed up by the very same people who are dreaming up lunatic claims about Obama’s proposal today. (If we’re so smart, how can this happen?) And yet, we liberals are thoroughly sure that this year’s crazy claims just have to be racist. We liberals can feel it deep in our bones. It sends a thrill up our legs.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/...
Just how far out were these crazy attacks made on Clinton? Somerby gives us the Cliff Notes:
• As governor, Bill Clinton murdered many rivals. Hillary Clinton was involved.
• As first lady, Hillary Clinton was involved in Vince Foster’s death.
• As governor, Bill Clinton trafficked drugs through Mena, Arkansas.
• Bill Clinton was himself a major coke user. This explains why his nose is so red.
• As a graduate student, Bill Clinton visited Moscow because he was a Soviet agent (or something).
• The Clintons decorated the White House Christmas tree with condoms and drug paraphernalia.
Obviously, these outrageous lies were not made out of personal racial animosity toward the very white Bill Clinton; they were invented to undermine his power so that he could not enact his [liberal] agenda. And so it is with Obama now. We saw the same lying attacks on Al Gore and John Kerry and we would have seen the same with Hillary Clinton. Some of the attacks on Clinton are strikingly similar to the smears on Obama (Bill Clinton was a Soviet agent; Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist. A favorite tactic of our political opponents is to invent a lie that ties our Democratic leaders to our primary enemies and rivals abroad.)
Is race a factor in the reasons why certain people will sell their souls spreading lies against Democratic leaders? Almost certainly it is. It's a ripe target for exploration. But you have to explore how the Clintons, Gore, and Kerry were smeared to get at it, rather than looking at Obama in isolation.
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Speaking of outrageous lies against Democrats: A well pampered and well out of touch columnist, Maureen Dowd, whose petty, superficial, and outright false attacks against Al Gore in campaign 2000 helped elect George Bush, and who ought to be totally discredited for years of lies and smears against Democrats, made the rec list this past weekend. Maureen received approval because when Joe Wilson said "You lie" to President Obama, she heard "You lie, boy!" If you heard the same thing, fine by me-- I'm not in the business of defending the Joe Wilsons infecting our national politics. But know this about Maureen Dowd: if you are interested in honest politics, she is not your friend. The winds will change, and she will be once again hearing things that some good Democrat like Al Gore did not say. And if you are interested in issues like health care, Maureen Dowd is not your friend. She does not care about the issues you care about-- they bore her. She cares about being on the side of winners, making sport of our national discourse for her own amusement, and cashing her fat paycheck every week for doing so.
So, please: If Maureen Dowd ever "nails it" on anything, it is in the same fashion that a broken clock "nails" the time twice a day. And by the way, here's a quick quiz: Who has actually used the word "boy" to refer to Obama on several occasions-- Maureen Dowd or Joe Wilson?
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Another rec list race diary that caught my attention recently: I am scared for my black husband. The diarist claimed to be investigating a move to Canada because of a couple of passing racist incidents-- in short, someone yelled "black b*****s" at her and her daughter out of a passing car window; her daughter's school banned the Obama speech to kids; her husband overheard a coworker saying "the n****rs must go" on the phone. This combined with the attacks on Obama etc. had her scared for the physical safety of her husband. Personally, as I read it, it seemed to me to be a bit of an overreaction, but whatever, maybe you had to be there. I bit my tongue. It wasn't the diary itself that caught my attention, it was a comment that the diarist copied into the diary:
I'm scared for my black daughters!!! Here's why..
Recommended by: global citizen, revgerry, treesrock, babeuf, sherijr, HEAT, ribletsonthepan, Kristina40, smallgal, princessglitterboots
What I've noticed after the election living here in the ruby red slipper state of Kansas is that no, my two daughters don't face overt racism on a daily basis, but I find that some folks look for ways to bring them down...bit by small bit. My daughter's third grade teacher last year was a Palin freak, and she was only too happy NOT to applaud my child's successes. See, in this lunatic's mind, they lost the election, so she had to feel better about herself by making an EIGHT YEAR OLD BLACK GIRL lose her recess for nonsensical crap! Sick! My older daughter--a senior in high school at the time and taking 5 AP classes, had to constantly battle ANOTHER stupid Palin-loving teacher the entire year. And even her very best friend--who is white, upon hearing that my kid was going to get a ton of college credits for all of her hard work said, "Oh, that's right X University GIVES credit away...." Just couldn't TAKE IT that my daughter was going to get something SHE didn't get because SHE DIDN'T DO THE WORK!
My brother's 9 year old is a gymnastics phenom and in the gifted program at her school. You can't imagine the issues they've had when some people find out how good she is both academically and physically. Some parents have actually stopped speaking to them!
It's called MICRO-AGGRESSION, and it's happening all over the place since Obama won. Small, evil, little ways to try to score points against black folks in schools or in the workplace. No, there are no Confederate flags at the school or the gymnastics meets, and you don't get called the N-word, but some people just can't handle a black president and OTHER BLACK PEOPLE in their world achieving. It's just too much for them. So, their racism gets the better of them and things get ugly. So, I'm worried about my kids.
To summarize: this person claims to be scared for her kids because 1. her eight year old lost a recess, 2. her teenage daughter's white friend made a petty, teenagery comment demonstrating some teenagerish jealousy, and [apparently running out of scary racist things that have happened to her own daughters] 3. Some of her brother's kids' peers' parents have stopped speaking to her brother.
My reaction: this can't possibly be a serious post. People cannot possibly be taking this trivial stuff as a serious example of racism. Alas, you are mistaken again, skymutt! This "evil" form of racism is so important, it apparently even has an official name: micro-aggression! (Of course, by mocking this post, I have likely also committed an act of micro-aggression, and I fully expect to be taken to task for it.)
Perhaps someone can educate me what I am missing here.