Racism & Politics

Edited (though not much). Full article at link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/realclearpolitic..._not_about_race

NOTE TO LIBERAL ELITE: IT'S NOT ABOUT POLITICS
David Paul Kuhn – Tue Mar 30

Columnist Frank Rich argues that opponents of Obama's healthcare legislation are motivated by racism. Washington Post's Colbert King believes Tea Party activists "forerunners" are Southern segregationists. Atlanta-Journal Constitution's Cynthia Tucker views racist incidents as a "reflection on the Grand Old Party" overall.

We heard the same arguments last Sept. Libs were struggling to make sense of the angry town hall meetings. "An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward Pres. Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Jimmy Carter said. Maureen Dowd concluded that the "shrieking lunacy of the summer" had "much to do with race."

Gratuitous charges of racism are no sideshow. They capture an enduring mistake of modern liberalism. And that mistake dis-serves liberals most.

Rich's Sun. column was indicative of the problem. "When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan ‘Take our country back!,' these are the people they want to take the country back from," Rich wrote. It's demographics to Rich. Whites are not upset about healthcare or even policy. Their issue is the browning of America, Rich argued.

Disregard centuries of furious debate over the role of government. Disregard the Great Recession, historic economic anxiety, this hyper-partisan era, or the comparable vitriol Bill Clinton knew. Disregard white working class skepticism of liberalism since the Great Society, when liberal policy became less concerned with them. Disregard the average man today who sees rich guys and poor guys getting the big breaks from big government. No, Rich explains, it's all about whites who want to "take our country back" from a black president.

What then shall we make of Howard Dean? Over and over, fiery Dean railed during the 2004 campaign, "It's time to take our country back!"

This is the argument that suffices for logic. Rich tosses out the most loaded charge in American life, racism, without evidence. All he has are anecdotes of angry white activists. So he stereotypes....

Clearly, some Tea Party activists are driven by racial animus....

But it's the generalizations that are absurd and self-defeating. The largest Tea Party protest occurred in Sept '09 in Washington. About 70,000 attended. Now follow Rich's logic. Presume, however wrongly, that all of these activists are really upset by "the conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House" rather than politics, as Rich argued.

There are 187 million white adults in the U.S. Only 39% of whites approve of Obama, according to Gallup. That means about 114 million white adults do not approve of this president. The largest Tea Party rally represented .0006 percent of these whites.

Only 1/3 of white women and white men approve of the healthcare law....If Rich is correct, and opposition to the healthcare overhaul concerns race, then roughly 125 million white adults are racists.

For decades, leading liberals explained white concerns about urban upheaval, crime, welfare, school busing, affirmative action and more recently, illegal immigration, as rooted in racism. Not safer streets or safer schools. Not working class whites upset over taxes for other's comparable lifestyle, while they struggled to stay afloat. Not hard-working men who never knew "white male privilege" but found themselves on the losing end of affirmative action ... Not job competition or economic class. Instead, leading liberals constantly saw the color of the issue as the issue.

Ironically, this healthcare debate is far less racially loaded than welfare or affirmative action. Yet still it's explained in racial tones.

"People say that opposition to all Presidents, even the most unpopular white ones, sounds like this. No, it doesn't," wrote the Daily News' Mike Lupica on Monday...

....The same far-right fringe that dogged Clinton now dogs Obama. And on that fringe, George W. Bush faced a strong leftist radicalism of his own. It's not race. It's our politics. And it gets ugly sometimes.

But this racism charge ... creates a whirlwind that always hurts liberals in the end. Many libs still presume whites politics are racist rather than reasonable. Pretty soon, many whites stop listening to liberals. And in time, the overuse of the race card dulls the impact of the charge itself.

Obama won roughly the same share of, if not slightly more, whites as Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama polled like Gore and Kerry throughout the race. Yet many analysts, including those tossing the race card today, saw Obama's white troubles in racial terms – despite the facts.

Obama's approval rating has fallen 24 percentage points with whites, since his first week. How these whites see Obama has changed. Obama's race has not.

Fringe activists are often a story of fringe activists. Democrats have exponentially larger problems. They have not won a majority of white men or white women since 1964. Obama's gains with white men in 2008 are gone, and getting worse. The sooner many liberals seriously consider why Democrats are struggling with whites, all over again, the sooner they will win some back. Until then, calling them racist won't help.

Coincidentally (?) LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964.

Absolutely!!!!
My goodness. It is certainly possible to be a hard core conservative Republican WITHOUT being a racist or having any truck with racists.

But there is an (apocryphyal??) story that LBJ said that he knew he was losing the South for at least a generation when he signed the Civil Rights Bill.

There are racists in every conceivable organization, class, group, or political party in the US. But the Republican Party since the mid sixties has explicitly made a play for white resentments and racists. This is not an accident. They knew what they were doing. It's the same old divide and conquer strategy that has unfortunately worked so well in this country for years.

Rather than look around and wonder why the rich keep getting richer or why it takes two incomes to do what one income used to do or why unions have shrunk so drastically or why income growth has been stagnant for the working people in this nation since the early seventies, it's easier for some people just to blame the "other" by race or gender or what have you.

There are LOTS of people who have principled opposition to the President. I think most people here fall into that category. But there are also LOTS of people that are ignorant and hateful. Hardly a month goes by without a joke somewhere comparing the First Lady to an animal or revealing some other racial animus to the President. This is important stuff because it shows that for some people, the mere fact that Obama is President is something that they simply can't accept.
Some of the more honest ones will say this. I can respect that at least..

The Republicans lost the health care debate. Game over. It's really ridiculous because the bill that passed was really a moderate Republican bill. It's more or less the same thing that Nixon tried to get done and what the Republicans in the nineties offered as an alternative to Hillary's plan.

People will have their chance to express their opinion on the political trajectory of the nation this November and in 2012. But like the President said, they may not like the results then either...

And as far as demographics go no one can say what will happen in the future. It is important to note that Obama did not win the white vote in the 2008 election but he still won the election handily. Demographics are changing. Even absent illegal immigration, Hispanics may be the swing voters of the future and right now they are swinging Democratic.

But Obama may be losing the Mexican vote due to his hard line on immigration. I hope he'll address this soon, for this very reason.

I think its a shame that if you do not agree with Obama that some will call u a racist.

ds

....and another shame. Black comedians can make jokes about whites (racism?), but whites can't make jokes about blacks. Is that the priviledge of the minority?
....if you are 90% white and 10% black, why are you considered black? Is that racism?
....comedian/social commentor Dick Gregory can't speak two sentences without making a comment on black or white. Is that racism?
Whites perfected the art of racism and blacks have taken the ball and run with it. Racism continues.
We are the world, we are the children.
All we are saying, is give peace a chance.
Love one another as I have loved you.

There is nothing invalid about disagreeing with the President, criticizing him harshly or thinking he's doing a bad job.

But when some of his critics run around with signs like this
http://killinmesoftly.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/racist_tea_party.jpg

or this
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/17/obama.witchdoctor.teaparty/index.html

or shout racial slurs at Congressmen and invoke violent imagery/threats
http://darkush.blogspot.com/2010/03/tea-party-protests-shouted-at-members.html

or say any number of other ugly things that EXPLICITLY reference the President's race, then an objective person will conclude that race is part of the discussion.

It's no different than partisan behaviors around any other issue. It is certainly possible to be vociferously against immigration reform without being a racist. But some of the people who are against immigration reform are very racist. And so on...

I'm not sure that there still is as much of a double standard around racial jokes as there used to be. Comedians like Howard Stern, Lisa Lampanelli, Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, Artie Lange, and several others make do quite well making jokes about black people. BET always had black comedians who would riff on "white people do this, black people do that" but they usually would also feature a white comedian or two that would flip the script and get tons of laughter.

Gregory was born in 1932. If I had been through what he's been through race would also be on my mind a tad more.

One drop rule started in slavery but is kept alive today by both blacks and whites for slightly different reasons.

oh come on Lilo that is basing the tea party on a few numbskulls. I'm not saying the tea party has no racists cause I think every group of people has their share of racists. The tea party is imho made up of a group of people who are generally concerned about the direction this nation is heading under Obama he could be white and the same concern would be there.

Well Ice, that's why I qualified my statements with "some". I don't limit my analysis to the Tea Party.

Also:

"There is nothing invalid about disagreeing with the President, criticizing him harshly or thinking he's doing a bad job"

It's the over the top incoherent criticisms which shade into hatred which are concerning. Also Bush made huge and disturbing assertions of executive power, which have generally been defended by Obama. I think this is horribly wrong on Obama's part btw.

But when Bush did this, with the exception of a few consistent conservatives like Bruce Fein or Ron Paul, most conservatives kept quiet or were supportive. There certainly weren't any sort of conservative "mainstream" protests or rallies against "tyranny" or people talking about "we came unarmed, this time", or so on. Obama did not start warrantless wiretapping or seek the ability to hold US citizens outside of the court system or start programs to vacuum up information on the internet/email or seek ways around the 4th,5th and 6th amendments.

So when some people respond to him as if he initiated all these things and do so in profane, ugly ways it's fair to ask, what's the real issue.

It is foolish to say that every criticism of the president has racial overtones. There are plenty of policy issues on which honest people can disagree.

Still, there is a definite racial overtone to much of the scripted talking points used by the G.O.P. for instance,
they rarely miss a chance to refer to Obama as the most "arrogant" president we have ever had. This is code for "uppity."

Obama is anything but arrogant. He is taking all kinds of hell from the left on being to easy to cave to opposition and from the teabaggers for bowing his head when he meets foreign leaders.

The historic landmark of Obama's presidency has everything to do with his race, just like Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman PM of the UK had everything to do with her gender.

Criticism of Obama on racial grounds is no more irrational, unreasonable or ignorant as people criticising Bush's policies due to the odd (or common) verbal guff.

Well that maybe be Lilo but the 3 links you provided were all about the tea party. If you truly don't limit your analysis to the tea party then why were all of your links about that group? Hence why I made the post I did