One More TNC

Along the lines of the previous post, and just in case you haven't gotten the hint to go directly to the source, here's one more from which I cannot help but excerpt a lot. It's part of "Why Black Writers Tend Not to Shout."

(Aside: note diff betw URL and title.)

In 2007 Barack Obama began campaigning for the presidency. Since that time, his reception by the American Right has included claims that he is--among other things--a covert Muslim, a welfare thug, a "racist...with a deep-seated hatred of white people or the white culture," and as a president with a policy of landing on the side that "favors the black person."

During the 2008 campaign, one GOP congressman called Obama "uppity", while another referred to him as "that boy." At the Values Voters summit, vendors showed up hawking Obama Waffles, while a California Republican group sent out fake food stamps with Obama surrounded by ribs and chicken. By the end of the campaign, Palin-McCain supporters were repeatedly showing up at rallies publicly announcing that Obama was a Muslim, mocking him as a monkey and openly flaunting the fact that they opposed him because he was black. The monkey jokes continued into Obama's presidency--with South Carolina GOP activist Rusty DePass noting that an escaped gorilla was "probably just one of Michelle Obama's ancestors."

The racial nuttiness has not been limited to Obama. His first Supreme Court nominee, was dismissed as "Miss Affirmative Action 2009." His second nominee has been dismissed for having been influenced by one of the architects of desegregation. Lindsey Graham, a supposedly sensible Republican, attacked health care because it would hurt his state, which is "31 percent African-American population." (Presumably, all those people are poor, while all the white people in South Carolina are not.) When John Lewis walked to the House to vote for health care, he was called a nigger by the mob, and then called a liar for claiming as much. After Tom Tancredo opened the Tea Party convention by calling for literacy tests and asserted that, "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House," the conventions convener lauded Tancredo for giving "a fantastic speech."

Perhaps you could argue that some of these instances aren't about race. Certainly, you could note that many of them are about race plus several other factors. But even granting those points as caveats, what you have is disturbing pattern among the GOP that sometimes floats up to the top. Black writers working in the mainstream, and even at liberal publications, are in a constant dialouge with white audiences. It is utterly useless, and to some extend brand-damaging, to repeatedly call on conservatives to repudiate racism in their midst. What many of us chose to do instead is to try to extend some sympathy, and get into the head of the offending party, in hopes of building a bridge.

I think, for those who are skeptical of the NAACP, something of a turn-about is in order. If you were black what would you think, faced with this pattern? If you were the NAACP what would you to say to this? The downside of the Obama approach, one that I still embrace, is that it tacitly supports Chait's notion that conservative opposition to Obama has "generally lacked much in the way of racial animus." I just don't think the facts bear that conclusion out--at all.

Shouting and resolutions are not my way. I firmly believe that racists, and those who work with the machinery of racism, must ultimately answer for themselves. But without someone shouting, we tend to forget and to elide uncomfortable realities that we have deemed unspeakable. I'm haunted by the words of a black Republican, who was a member of the group that sent out the Obama foodstamps. "This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party," she said. "I'm really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes."

The leader of the group responded by asserting her support for Alan Keyes.

(x-posted)