Tag Archives: racism

Who Are We?

With the exception of gay rights, America doesn’t seem to be moving in an inclusive direction.

Quite the contrary.

As I write this, I’ve just looked at a lengthy strand of twitter comments about the new Miss America. She’s of Indian ancestry, and that fact unleashed some truly despicable comments about what it means to be both beautiful and a “real” American.

In the wake of President Obama’s election, overt racism has mushroomed; the sort of sentiments that simply weren’t made in polite company have become commonplace. Blatantly racist emails circulate among the like-minded and (occasionally) other appalled recipients , and racist blogs and Facebook posts are daily occurrences.

It’s not just race. The past few years have seen us take giant steps backward with respect to women’s rights. Bigotry against people who appear to be from the Middle East has hardened, and “Muslim” has become an insult, rather than a description of someone’s religious identity. Immigration reform? Forget it. Anti-immigrant sentiment has stalled even modest Congressional action.

And of course, legal and social progress notwithstanding, gay slurs continue to be thrown around with abandon.

So what are we to make of this ugly time we are going through? Are we just going through a particularly pissy phase, made worse by economic insecurity and rapid social change? Or is the nastiness a permanent part of the American landscape—one that has always been here, but (thanks to the Internet) is suddenly “in our face” in a way it never was before?

Over fifty years ago, a social scientist named Gordon Allport wrote a seminal book, The Nature of Prejudice.  The book was written right after President Truman integrated the Armed Forces, while Americans were coming to terms with the presence of “colored” soldiers bunking down with the white ones. Then as now, other social shifts were intruding on “the way things have always been.”

Allport’s great contribution was to distinguish between prejudices that were simply an outgrowth of widely held social attitudes and those that were central to an individual’s identity. He found that most people who expressed bigotry against blacks or Jews (then the most frequent targets) were not invested in their negative opinions –they had simply accepted common stereotypes about “others,” and they could be educated to change what were essentially casual beliefs they had never really examined.

The other category was much smaller, but also much more troubling. These were the individuals that Allport—who founded the discipline of social psychology—described as invested in their bigotries. For whatever reason—bad toilet training, lack of parental affection, abuse—their belief in the inferiority of designated “others” had become absolutely central to their personalities. Education would have no effect at all on their attitudes.

The question we face today, of course, is: into which group do today’s haters fall? And which category will define America going forward?

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Politics and Paranoia

I have an old friend (old meaning duration, not age, although neither of us is getting any younger) who has remained resolutely Republican despite his own distress at the party’s current incarnation. Presumably because of that affiliation, he is evidently on some sort of list that allows him to get the sort of emails that I rarely see, and from time to time, he shares them. (I think he likes to imagine me with my hair on fire as I read them.)

The other day, he sent me one that began:

The American Dream ended (on November 6th) in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history of mankind.

A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government Workers, Union Members, Environmental Extremists, The Media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the “forever needy,” the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other “fellow travelers” have ended Norman Rockwell’s America.

Next time someone solemnly assures you that their problems with Obama have nothing to do with bigotry or mean-spiritedness–and that what is really racist is to suggest that they do–think about this diatribe.

From the far Right, we increasingly hear these laments–the whine of the poor white male Christian victims. What we get from the far Left is more likely to be naiveté and annoying immaturity, but it also can descend into paranoia.

I have a Facebook friend who is constantly sending email “alarms”–with lots of exclamation points and highlighted passages–bemoaning President Obama’s “sellout” and viewing every presidential or congressional action as a conspiracy against “the 99%.” No one gets the benefit of the doubt. All Republicans are evil, all Democrats are disappointing pussies and/or fellow-travelers.

Interestingly, at the very end of the “Patriot’s” screed, he warns darkly that the nation can only be “saved” by zealots with guns. A similar thread runs through my leftist friend’s hysterical “alerts”–only by taking to the streets can “real Americans” prevail.

Thanks to the Internet, it is sometimes hard to remember that the vast majority of Americans are pretty sensible people who would very much like to see the crazies from both ends of the spectrum return to their caves or wherever they came from.

Most of us think it would be nice if our elected officials spent less time placating hysterical extremists and more time attending to the nation’s problems.

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A Challenge to the False Equivalency Folks

As the Republican party has become more and more irresponsible, it has become fashionable for its defenders to argue from equivalency: sure, there are some loony-tune legislators who are Republican, but there are equally demented Democrats. Both sides do it, so it’s not fair to single out the GOP examples.

Now, there is an element of truth to this. Certainly, there are rabid ideologues on both the left and right. But no fair-minded observer can deny that for sheer lunacy, the Republicans win in a walk. They have depth and breadth. (Lest you think it’s confined to Michelle Bachman and Louie Gohmert, let me assure you they have an absolutely formidable bench.)

For example, I’d never previously heard of Florida Congressman Ted Yoho.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) recently told a group of constituents that he backing a birther bill because he hoped that it would “get rid of everything” that President Barack Obama had done, and then added that the president’s “racist” health care law forced white people to pay more to use tanning beds.

The Florida Republican continued: “I had an Indian doctor in our office the other day, very dark skin, with two non-dark skin people, and I asked this to him, I said, ‘Have you ever been to a tanning booth?’ and he goes, ‘No, no need.’ So therefore it’s a racist tax and I thought I might need to get to a sun tanning booth so I can come out and say I’ve been disenfranchised because I got taxed because of the color of my skin.”

I defy anyone to find a Democrat who can match that for idiocy or racism. And this guy isn’t even one of the GOP’s usual subjects!

As Juanita Jean, who blogs from the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Parlor, accurately notes, if there wasn’t a tax on tanning beds, that would mean that President Obama is encouraging everybody to become dark skinned like him or the Muslims. Because he’d be trying to turn us all black!

These folks are just obsessed with the President’s skin color. Too bad they aren’t equally invested in stuff like–oh, I don’t know… logic. Or coherent thought. Or public policy, although asking  that they actually do the jobs they were elected to do and stop their single-minded obsession with preventing Obama from doing anything may be too great a stretch.

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Litmus Test

It has been instructive watching the various reactions to the Paula Deen tragicomedy.

On one hand are the folks–including a number of “known liberals”– who see the Food Network’s decision not to renew her show as an excess of “political correctness.” Others, of course, have been far more judgmental.

Most people have reacted without bothering to go beyond the superficial. Had Deen only admitted to using the “N” word a couple of times in the past, it might be legitimate to find the response disproportionate. However, the admission came in the context of a number of other behaviors; the lawsuit in which she gave the deposition alleges long-standing workplace bigotry, including requiring black and white workers in one of her restaurants to use separate restrooms. A story in the New York Times quotes Deen herself about taping a TV show in which she was going to make a hamburger she called a “Sambo” sandwich, but was overruled by the producer. She was also quoted justifying other behaviors by “explaining” that “most jokes” are about Jews, black and gays. (If the lawsuit allegations are accurate, all of these groups were objects of her workplace behaviors.)

Some people who defend Deen are simply unaware of this backstory. But for others, that defense clearly has a personal element. Many of the comments on Facebook and emails sent to Food Network display the very ugly and persistent underside of our multi-cultural society.

We have a very long way to go when it comes to race. And the election of an African-American President has just exacerbated that very jagged social wound.

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The Quotes Tell the Story

Charles Blow has a must-read column in the New York Times, in which he foregoes characterizing for quoting. That is, rather than attributing attitudes to political figures like Romney, Gingrich, Ryan, et al, he simply quotes them.

It’s devastating.

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