It's Time

Stephen will be blogging for the next four weeks from Princeton University, where he is teaching Campaigns and Elections for the Junior State of America summer school program.

Six attempts. There were six previous attempts to post this blog. The number of relevant stories as the week continued to unfold made it impossible to feel satisfied that we’d addressed what we needed to. At the bottom of this entry are links to a number of other stories that deserve our time and attention. There’s simply too much to cover.

Sunday’s Washington Post, however, provided the material that forced us to stop and think about what a truly unique time in our nation’s history we find ourselves. The time to have the most meaningful discussion of race relations in America is not only opportune, but is, we argue below, imperative. At the risk of sounding alarmist, we are at a juncture at which continual navel-gazing, avoidance, and shifting the burden will result in dire consequences for our democratic system. Here’s why.

There were two prominent stories in yesterday’s Post. The first reported the results of a new poll that shows three in ten Americans admit feelings of racial prejudice. There are always many ways to look at numbers, but this finding is nothing short of shocking. It is not shocking that 30% of Americans have racial bias – far more than that do. The number is alarming for two reasons.

First, it surprising that three in ten Americans recognize that they have racial prejudice. We certainly do not see numbers anywhere close to that in informal polling of our own students. Do three of every ten folks you talk to admit to racial prejudice? Given the culture of acceptance and tolerance that has characterized American conscious political culture over the past four decades, it is quite surprising that this many respondents were aware of their own biases.

Secondly, it is surprising that even if folks realize their own biases that they are willing to admit it to survey administrators, even anonymously. It has been very difficult to gain an accurate measure of “racism” (defined numerous ways), and social scientists have consistently assumed that the numbers generated by surveys were low. It is similar to the difficulty of ascertaining the persistence of sexually transmitted diseases without access to medical records. Folks just are reluctant to admit to that which they understand to be socially unacceptable.

The situation becomes dire as we examine the gap in perceptions of race relations between whites and blacks:

Overall, 51 percent call the current state of race relations "excellent" or "good," about the same as said so five years ago. That is a relative thaw from more negative ratings in the 1990s, but the gap between whites and blacks on the issue is now the widest it has been in polls dating to early 1992.

More than six in 10 African Americans now rate race relations as "not so good" or "poor," while 53 percent of whites hold more positive views. Opinions are also divided along racial lines, though less so, on whether blacks face discrimination. There is more similarity on feelings of personal racial prejudice: Thirty percent of whites and 34 percent of blacks admit such sentiments.

John Edwards has been often criticized for being divisive by noting that there are “two Americas,” but the more we acknowledge that perceptions of common circumstances between men and women, middle-class and poor, black and white, etc., the more we must admit that we are not living in one common America, no matter how much we wish to be.

What is not surprising are the results of a Post poll last month that found that nine in ten whites would be comfortable with the idea of a black president. (We should be surprised that one in ten admitted discomfort.) Yesterday’s Post story goes on to report, however, that more than half of whites called Obama a “risky” choice for president, while 2/3 saw McCain as a safe pick. While it would be foolish to dismiss the public’s familiarity with McCain, particularly when compared to Obama, it is also hard to imagine that there is not some “substitution” going on. That is, folks tend to evaluate consciously on criteria that are ostensibly unrelated to race, even though historically such characteristics are very much connected to racial stereotypes. A similar scenario exists with gender bias: women are not promoted as often as men to top corporate jobs because they lack characteristics of strong leadership – characteristics that are often associated with males. In other words: Obama is risky because he’s shifty and hates America, not because he’s black, but we “know” that blacks are untrustworthy and are angry at America because they haven’t “made it” at the same rate as whites.

Adding yet another twist to our concern is a corollary article that appeared in Sunday’s Post. Eli Saslow reports on the increased interest and membership in white supremacist groups in recent weeks (since Obama secured the number of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination).

"I haven't seen this much anger in a long, long time," said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. "Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president."

Another supremacist activist said,

"I get nonstop e-mails and private message from new people who are mad as hell about the possibility of Obama being elected," said [Don] Black, a white power activist since the 1970s. "White people, for a long time, have thought of our government as being for us, and Obama is the best possible evidence that we've lost that. This is scaring a lot of people who maybe never considered themselves racists, and it's bringing them over to our side."

And yet another admitted the following:

"Our side does better when the public is being pressured, when gas prices are high, when housing is bad, when a black man might be president," said Ron Doggett, who runs a white power group called EURO in Richmond. "People start looking for solutions and changes, and we offer radical changes to what's going on."

And what good is an article on white supremacy and politics without a quote from David Duke?

"One person put it this way: Obama for president paves the way for David Duke as president," said Duke, who ran for president in 1988, received less than 1 percent of the vote and has since spent much of his time in Europe. "This is finally going to make whites begin to realize it's a necessity to stick up for their own heritage, and that's going to make them turn to people like me. We're the next logical step."

So here is how we see it:

• Americans who consciously subscribe to racial equality have long ignored their subconscious racial bias because they are overtly egalitarian (e.g., have black friends, don’t use the n-word, etc.).

• Barack Obama’s candidacy has capitalized on this “norm of racial equality” (see Tali Mendelberg’s work) to form a coalition of progressive whites and African Americans at a time when most Americans are ready for “change.”

• Obama’s nomination will signal to whites who have resisted arguments about continuing systemic oppression against blacks that they were right all along. If black folks just worked harder, such folks will reason, they could achieve anything whites could achieve; and Obama’s nomination is proof of it. (They tried to point this out in the 1980s when the Huxtables from Bill Cosby’s popular television show had “made it!” And Colin Powell? Condoleeza Rice? Clarence Thomas? Hello?! Pay attention, people!!).

• This realization of achieved racial equality will serve to attract more whites to the idea that racial minorities are unfairly advantaged in America by a government that ignores the needs of whites. Under such circumstances (i.e., perceived equal political footing amongst whites and blacks), more whites will feel justified in fighting for “their” rights like black leaders have been doing.

At the end of last week, Barack Obama predicted in a speech that Republicans would use his race against him in the campaign:

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me: 'He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"'

Several news organizations questioned whether he had “crossed the line” by mentioning this (CNN’s Anderson Cooper, for instance). In truth, it has already been shown that Obama’s opponents (of both parties) are willing to draw upon racial prejudices to try to defeat him. His attempt to inoculate against it was predicted by our research findings of congressional communication involving black candidates. (See Obama’s latest ad where he emphasizes being raised on values such as self-reliance and making no excuses, as well as other values that white Americans tend to not associate with African Americans.) He wants to head it off and call attention to it because doing so has been shown to minimize (or reverse) the effects of implicitly racist messages.

As scholars dedicated to educating about power inequalities and the way our use of language can contribute to or challenge those differences, we see a moment in time that we cannot let pass. We are at a very crucial crossroads – not the first and probably not the last, but crucial nonetheless.

In addition to our scholarly work together, we are each embarking on more accessible projects separately to seize this moment and engage as many people as possible in honest and meaningful dialogue about race. We will be available throughout the fall to speak at colleges and universities (as we have for several years), civic group meetings and wherever else we are invited. We will continue to contribute to the broader discussion in this space, and we will continue to make ourselves available to media to facilitate discussions as events unfold.

If you agree (and we recognize that all of our readers do not – we are grateful for your attention, as well), we encourage you to share this blog and others that address similar topics, read as much as you can by the folks who comprise our scholarly base (Dyson, West, hooks, Patricia Williams, etc.), and talk to as many folks as you can.

This is not about electing Barack Obama. That’s a political decision that revolves around more than race. Our immediate concern is to take advantage of this crucial time in our national discourse to be clear about what we are really dealing with in America. When we launched The Project on Race in Political Communication in the summer of 2001, we did not expect to be faced with such a scenario so quickly. Win or lose, Obama’s run has provided us with this opportunity. The time is right to do our part.



Here are the other stories that deserve our attention. We are sorry that we are unavailable to discuss them all, but we encourage you to post your comments about any of them below.

Obama volunteers ban Muslim women from behind-the-podium position

In a testament to the reality that Obama’s campaign has to deal with in terms of people either believing he is a Muslim publicly or secretly, staffers engaged in the inexcusable last week in Detroit, keeping two women wearing the traditional hijab head scarf from sitting behind the podium, since folks in those positions often appear in media clips of the candidate’s speech. This is certainly not behavior befitting of a campaign that expects to be representative of all Americans, including minority groups.

In a related story, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg told a Jewish group in Florida to disregard rumors that Obama is Muslim.

New York Mets baseball team manager Willie Randolph fired in the middle of the night

Besides the fact that Randolph is black, this firing wouldn’t warrant attention in our blog. However, last month, Randolph gave an interview where he wondered aloud whether he was being treated differently by the Mets organization because he is black. See interesting discussion on this issue by William Rhoden, JonGee and “The East Coast Bias.”

Obama eschews public financing

Most Americans probably didn’t even realize that general election campaigns for president have been fully funded by tax money since the 1970s post-Watergate campaign finance reform laws were enacted. Obama will be the first major party candidate to elect to raise his own money (and therefore not be subject to spending limits for the period between the Democratic National Convention and the general election in November). Those who have pushed for more equality in elections have long advocated public funding as a remedy to the interest-group-soaked fundraising that takes place in other campaigns and in presidential nominating contests. For them, Obama’s decision will be of great disappointment. For his part, Obama claimed that the public financing system put him at a disadvantage because Republicans were better poised to take advantage of loopholes in the existing law (that John McCain famously co-wrote and pushed through Congress).

Sock Obama monkey doll gets sacked

Stephen’s colleague, psychologist Heather Coon, alerted us to a short-lived controversy by a Utah-based company that planned to manufacture sock monkey dolls in support of Obama’s candidacy. After a day or so of vociferous complaints, the company scrapped the plans and offered a curious apology, claiming that they were too naïve to know that there was any history of linking Africans and African Americans to monkeys as a source of dehumanization. Though the original page is down, you can read Andrew Sullivan’s pre-apology blog on the subject (which includes a picture of the doll), as well as an interesting article by Kyle E. Moore on racial iconography generally.

"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.

We're Back, He's Black, and Her Anaology was Whack

Under the RaceProject division of labor, Stephen is responsible for the blog for the most part. In the past two weeks, he has moved, had child care responsibilities and been on TV more than that "can you hear me now" guy. He sincerely apologizes for the delay (but invites you to check out his new YouTube channel.

Since we've been away, of course, a lot has happened in the Democratic presidential nomination. Barack Obama now has a majority of delegates and is being dubbed the "presumptive" nominee. Hillary Clinton is set to endorse him tomorrow (though rumors of her conceding the election on Tuesday evening proved to be premature). Before this turn of events, though, the focus was on what the Democratic National Committee was going to do with the delegates from Michigan and Florida, both of whom broke Party rules by having their primaries too early in the season. It was decided last Saturday that all delegates from both states would be seated with 1/2 a vote each.

In making the argument for those states -- which Clinton won -- to be fully seated, Harold Ickes went off the deep end, and Hillary Clinton made an analogy that further demonstrated her racial insensitivity (and we're not even talking about the suggestion that she was staying in the race because Obama could get assassinated like Bobby Kennedy).

At the end of last month, Clinton said the following:

"This work to extend the franchise to all of our citizens is a core mission of the modern Democratic party," she said. "From signing the Voting Rights Act and fighting racial discrimination at the ballot box to lowering the voting age so those old enough to fight and die in war would have the right to choose their commander in chief, to fighting for multi-lingual ballots so you can make your voice heard no matter what language you speak."

This is not the sort of coded racism that we have seen (and wrote about) at other times during this campaign. Rather, this demonstrates an insensitivity to race that cuts to the heart of what many people of color (and white allies) have argued makes representation by even the most well-meaning white progressives less desirable than by persons of color.

To be sure, we are not convinced that Hillary or Bill Clinton are amongst the most well-meaning white progressives; many of their statements during this campaign suggest that they may be political opportunists who have been attentive to the black community in particular more for political gain than out of genuine concern. When it became political expedient (courting the vote of racially resentful whites), coded racist remarks became the rule, rather the exception, in her campaign. But even if we give her the benefit of the doubt in this regard, the analogy of Michigan and Florida voters to Jim Crow demonstrates insensitivity to the suffering of African Americans.

It reminds us of a long-standing debate on which both sides have merit. Does representation in a democracy necessarily require persons with similar characteristics and life experiences as those whom they represent? For instance, can men who are feminists adequately represent the interests of women (to the extent that those interests are unique to that group)? Last year, we discussed the desire of a white man aiming to represent a predominantly black district to join the Congressional Black Caucus. Can empathy, compassion and understanding compensate for a life of experiences?

We are not ready to come to a conclusion about this broad debate, but Hillary Clinton's analogy is evidence for those who say that ideology is not a sufficient substitute for lived experience. It would be very surprising for a black member of Congress to make such an analogy. So no matter how much Hillary Clinton might "care" about black people (as opposed to President Bush, according to Kanye West), neither she nor her husband (despite Toni Morrison's claim) is not black.

From all indications, the battle for the Democratic nomination is over. But there are significant wounds to heal on the part of both Clinton and Obama. Part of that healing has to be some recognition of the way race worked in her campaign. Of course, you can count on us to keep our eyes open for the way language is used in this regard -- we just can't promise we won't miss a week here and there over the course of the summer.