"Whitey" on the Island: "Just" A Symbol of His Dedication

THIS WEEK, Stephen reports from The Republic of Palau, where he is working with students on behalf of the Junior State of America. The alleged Michelle Obama "whitey" comment got to him rather late, so it is briefly addressed below.

It is very common to hear the word “just” inserted before “symbolic.”

“The hubbub about Obama’s lapel pin is ridiculous; the flag is just symbolic.”

“That legislation is just symbolic. It doesn’t really have any power.”

“Mom, that joint you found in the pocket of my jean jacket with the Social Distortion pin was just symbolic of my rebellion. I wasn’t going to smoke it.”

The word “just” is most often designed to diminish the effect of the word or action to which it refers. In other words, it renders trivial that which it modifies.

“I’ll just have a little more coffee.”

“If you could wait just a minute, I’ll be right there.”

“It’s just herpes. You can’t die from it.”

But symbolism is a rich manifestation of attitudes, beliefs and values in a culture. That lapel pin may be symbolic, but that symbolism is powerful enough to get 70,000 people to simultaneously stand and sing a song they’re not nearly capable of singing with any degree of accuracy. A well-placed tattoo, for instance, can issue a powerful message about the person on whose body it appears. We use symbols in our home: the type of flooring, furniture, wall coverings – indeed, the type of home we choose – is symbolic of our social class, our preferences and our taste.

Indeed, language itself is “just” symbolic. The marks on a paper or sounds we make with our mouths only matter if someone else can make sense of them so that a message can be conveyed.

Here in Palau, most everyone speaks English, but not as a primary language. Palauans speak in their native language, and indentured workers (mostly from the Philippines), speak in their native language. Aside from the commonality of English, though, a lot of messages are passed through voice inflection, facial expressions, hand gestures, etc. For tourists from Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia, in particular, this helpful and anything but trivial.
This week, the Canadian government formally apologized to its Indian population for the 100-year-long practice of forcing indigenous children to leave their homes and attend boarding schools where many were subsequently mentally, physically and sexually abused during a process to “kill the Indian” in them, per official government policy. The apology was “just symbolic.” A more substantive reparation was agreed to in 2006 via a class action suit settled for some $2 billion. So what’s the point of such an act with ostensibly no substance behind the symbolism?

Many have asked the same questions about hate crime legislation, which is also symbolic. In many areas, crimes committed where the motive involves bigotry are subject to harsher penalties than similar crimes with different motives. Many have argued that it is offensive to, say, suggest that the murder of a white child at the hands of his or her parent is less heinous than the murder of a black child at the hands of a Nazi skinhead.

This is further complicated when hate crime statutes are applied “in reverse.” For instance, Cook County (Chicago) prosecutors have charged a man named Mahmoud Alkhazaleh, along with his three sons, with a hate crime after they beat a white motorist and allegedly threw rocks and spit on him, calling him a “blue-eyed devil” and an “American [expletive].”

From one perspective, turnabout is fair play. If it is wrong to attack someone when at least part of the motive for starting, continuing or intensifying the assault is related to race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, then it is wrong in any direction, not just for those who are in relative positions of privilege with respect to the category (i.e., whites, men, heterosexuals).

From another perspective, though, the intent of hate crime legislation may be to symbolize a community’s lack of tolerance of intolerance. That is, it may be reasonable to argue that while an ethnic minority attacking a white man while calling him race-related names is horrible, it does not represent what the statute was symbolically designed to address: oppression of members of “out” groups in society. In other words, while this family of Middle Eastern descent may hate whites and wish to do them harm, they are not systemically positioned to oppress whites as a group. The beating of this white man does not represent a history of discrimination (much of it official government policy, as was the case in Canada with indigenous children), and therefore is not eligible for consideration under a hate crime statute.

A determination of which perspective is most valid hinges, in part, on the intent of the legislation itself. If the law was written to symbolize intolerance of hatred based on demographic characteristics of any form, then the first perspective is appropriate. In that case, folks like Russ Kick and “Swazzie” have a very legitimate point of contention with how most hate crime legislation has been enforced. But if the law was written to symbolize the history of oppression that has so often resulted in this type of violence, then they do not. In that case, while violence against members of privileged groups is punishable, it is not subject to heightened penalties under hate crime legislation.

In other words, the symbolism is anything but trivial.

Earlier this year, Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas pushed through a resolution of apology to recognize the suffering of Indians in the United States that has taken place through abuses by the federal government. The language was connected to a bill designed to appropriate funds for health care concerns of Native Americans that was sponsored by Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. The resolution is symbolic, but unlike in the Canadian context, would not be coming directly from the head of government (the president). For Kevin Abourezk of Reznet, that is unacceptable:

Naïve at best, the resolution epitomizes the government's reliance on good words in dealing with Indian issues.

Only a formal Indian apology uttered by a sitting president, something this president never would do, and then followed by immediate action to improve Indian communities, could ever begin to repair the federal government's fractured relationship with tribes.

That's not something this resolution — slipped under the door like a "Dear John" note — could ever hope to do.

It is important to consider power when we think about what James Madison referred to as “faction” in Federalist 10. Madison recognized that democracy had to involve more than majority rule – protection of minority rights and consideration of minority interests was also important. Sometimes the symbolic is powerful enough to instigate meaningful change, at least over time. The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was not successful in integrating public schools, but the symbolism of the federal government recognizing that the practice of legal separation by race inherently treated black Americans unfairly went a long way toward instigating white allies to join in the struggle for black civil rights.

Other times, however, symbolism is not enough. Hate crime legislation is unlikely to serve as a deterrent to those who commit crimes at least in part out of hatred (irrespective of how statutes are enforced), and public apologies cannot substantively rectify centuries of suffering by African Americans or American Indians. How we deal with whether it is enough to be “just” symbolic depends very much on the context and on the outcome we hope to achieve.


We hate for this to be an afterthought, but news travels a bit more slowly 8,000 miles away. We are aware of the allegations that Michelle Obama used the word “whitey,” as well as the campaign’s claim that she never did. We don’t know if she actually used the word or not, but what if she did? First of all, she’s not running for president. Secondly, use of the n-word has usually not resulted in a derailing of the careers of white public officials and corporate leaders. There is a sizable part of the U.S. population that will not tolerate a black man in the White House. Some will rationalize that it is Obama’s policies that they abhor. Others will be more honest.

In any case, it is important to realize that such a claim has the potential to “stick” for white Americans because it fits an existing “frame” that black Americans are resentful of whites. The narrative about the Obamas continue: they are uppity black folks who want what they do not deserve, hate whites, and are all talk and no action. One thing we know for sure is that there is much more of this to come.