The Limits of Racial Optimism

It is no surprise that the nation's first president of color has been a lightning rod for discussion of race and racism in America. For those who struggle for racial justice, this inevitability has had positive and negative components. For a nation that often wishes to ignore the deep racial problems that permeate society, Barack Obama's election has forced us to confront, on a regular basis, the ugly truth that Martin Luther King's dream has not been realized. On the other hand, President Obama has had unrealistic expectations placed on him with respect to his ability to mend the country's racial wounds. We argued back in March that he would have a difficult time dealing with racism while in office, an analysis we felt compelled to offer as a result of what we saw as a dangerously and unrealistically optimistic frame employed in the mainstream media and, to a lesser extent, adopted by racially progressive thinkers, writers and activists. There was considerable evidence that the mass public also felt quite hopeful in this regard.

USA Today released results of a poll they conducted jointly with Gallup THIS WEEK that was similarly framed in terms of American optimism with respect to improvements in race relations. While President Obama's approval ratings hover at around 50%, the pol reveals that six in ten Americans say that race relations will improve under his presidency; just 13% think race relations will get worse. Further, 40% of Americans believe things are already better in this regard; 22% think things have gotten worse.

Of course, examining differences in these attitudes with respect to the race of the respondents is important. According to Susan Page's story reporting on the poll:

Blacks are much more likely than whites to say that racism against blacks persists -- 72% of blacks say it is widespread, compared with 49% of whites -- but they are also more optimistic that Obama's election will improve that.

A 53% majority of African Americans say race relations already have gotten better as a result.

In other words, while Whites are more likely than Blacks to think there is not persistent racism against African Americans, they are less likely than Blacks to think that Obama's election (and presidency) has improved race relations already or will improve it in the future.

Compared with attitudes nearly a year ago (right after the election), there has been an understandable (and perhaps predictable) tempering of optimism, though the percentage of Americans who believe that race relations would one day no longer be an issue in America is still slightly higher than before Obama secured the Democratic nomination.

In many ways, the framing of these data in terms of "optimism" is quite curious. For instance, consider this statement:

Over the past year, the percentage who say blacks have as good a chance as whites in their community to get a job for which they are qualified has risen by 8 percentage points. That's the biggest one-year jump since Gallup began regularly asking the question 20 years ago.

That's your cue to ask, "So what?" Without a breakdown by race for this question, and knowing that the poll is (appropriately, since it is a random national sample) dominated by Whites (there is no Black oversample or weighting of Black responses reported), this simply appears to reaffirm our understanding that Whites are more likely than ever to believe that we are in a post-racial society. If these attitudes are, indeed, an accurate reflection of reality (that is, if Blacks in their communities actually DO have as good a chance as Whites to get a job for which they are qualified), then that certainly is a reason for optimism. If it is just what folks think, then this is actually a reason to be quite pessimistic because such attitudes mask the true state of racial injustice and render more difficult the struggle to move toward equality.

An interesting finding that is not discussed in the story (but is presented in the graphs that accompany the story) involves respondents' degree of satisfaction with "the way things are going in the United States": 47% of Blacks and 22% of Whites report satisfaction. Even with the larger margin of error among African Americans in the sample (due to the smaller number of Blacks in the sample), this finding is remarkable and, perhaps, speaks to the important symbolic power -- at least, we suppose, if these numbers are correct, for African Americans -- of having a person of color in the White House.

Question and response option wording and the order in which questions are presented to respondents is important to know. We are not able to ascertain much of that information because the USA Today article does not provide it, and there is no link to the survey instrument. Specifically, we are concerned about the conflation of "race relations" and "racism against African Americans." These terms might prime very different underlying constructs among respondents, but they are somewhat carelessly used interchangeably (or at least alternately) in the article. One might imagine, for instance, someone believing that racism as a systemic force is still persistent against Blacks but that our collective ability to address it ("race relations") has improved. Or, one could imagine the exact opposite (e.g., someone who does not think racism is a problem anyway and sees more racial animosity reflected in the media since Obama's election). Further, we could learn much more if we could statistically control for other important factors that are known to be related to racial attitudes such as self-identified partisanship and ideology, geography, age, and gender. Perhaps most helpful would be measures designed to tap attitudes toward racism, such as Henry and Sears's "symbolic racism" scale for Whites and either the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity by Sellers or questions designed to tap Dawson's concept of "linked fate" for Blacks.

In other words, we can learn very little from this poll to help us meaningfully understand people's real attitudes about race relations and racism in America today. Add to that the fact the our conscious attitudes about race may not be as predictive of our behavior as our subconscious beliefs, and the poll (and corresponding story) is darn near useless in its current form. Certainly the headline -- "Poll: Hopes Buoyed on Race Relations" -- is not warranted and serves only to reinforce the wishful (and under-informed and misguided and blissful) notion that Obama's election either signaled or has ushered in a post-racial era in America.

No Peace for Obama: How the Prize Might Harm His Image

The collective groan you heard Friday morning came from the West Wing of the White House. As it was announced that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, his advisers scrambled to figure out, ironically, how they could possibly spin the news to minimize the negative effects. For his part, the president was appropriately reserved, noting essentially that he did not deserve the award. That may be an accurate assessment, but what is more important than the decision of the prize committee are the potential negative political effects. In our assessment, President Obama is in deep trouble on this one.

We are certainly not unique in this assessment, of course. Several thoughtful ideas have been put forth in the past two days about the negative side of this honor (see here and here for just two examples). From our perspective, though, the trouble is not about whether the award was "deserved" or "earned," and it does not really stem from the attacks of folks like Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin (both of whom thumped the president for his award on Friday). The trouble is not with the AM talk radio/Fox News crowd. There is no political ground to be lost to those folks because there is likely nothing that the president could do to win those folks over. David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel do not lose any sleep over the direct effect of what those folks think or say.

The trouble is with the indirect effects of such attacks, and the president's advisers know it. Specifically, there must be concern about the degree to which winning this award plays into the frame of Barack Obama as "other."

We have written about framing in this space before (see here and here and here, for example). Along with agenda setting and priming, it is is one of the most notable theoretical advancement in media effects research in the past two decades. At its most basic level, framing involves putting information into context (and recognizing that information is processed contextually). And while much time has been spent arguing over what frames have been employed in given political contexts, one need not get hung up on the intent of persons to construct frames to understand their effects.

Even though dozens (hundreds?) of framing studies have been published in the last 25 years, perhaps the most clear examples of framing effects comes from one of the earlier studies. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman reported results of some framing studies in a 1981 issue of the journal Science. They presented alternate versions of a problem to participants who were randomly assigned to one of two the groups. The exact factual elements of the choices presented to participants was the same, but the way that the choices were framed differed. The results were striking (well beyond conventional levels of statistical significance).

Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows:

If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.

If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved.

Which of the two programs would you favor?

Nearly three-quarters of the participants who were presented with this program (72%) chose Program A.

The other group got the problem with the same description, but the program response options were as follows:

If Program [A] is adopted 400 people will die.

If Program [B] is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will die.

Participants who got this formulation had a near reversal of the other group: 22% of them chose Program A, while 78% chose program B.

The only difference between the options, of course, is the way that they were presented. For both, Program B is the riskier choice, so when folks first read that they can "save" 200 people (a positively framed certainty), they are more likely to avoid the risk, but when the first option is worded as a certain negative ("400 people will die"), there is a greater likelihood to gamble and try to save everyone, even if the odds are poor.

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize?

Much (certainly not all) of the persistent criticism of President Obama over the last two years (beginning in the Democratic primaries, lest you think Republicans invented this) has centered on his "otherness." As we have noted a number of times in this space, this certainly cannot be considered to be race neutral. But even if the intent is rooted in bigotry or racial resentment, it is easier for Americans to accept a theme of "otherness" about a person of color or a White woman than a White man because of the way we were (and are) socialized.

So while Limbaugh, Beck and the rest of the president's most vocal opponents are largely irrelevant to the base of support that the president and his Democratic allies need to govern and win reelection, their language and imagery depicting Obama as "not one of us" has a great potential to take hold tacitly and shape the way that subsequent information about him is processed.

Because President George W. Bush was often depicted as not being very bright, every verbal gaffe, no matter how small, became exaggerated in the American imagination and served to reinforce that image of him in a way that such a mistake would not function with, for instance, this president, who is almost universally recognized as very bright, even by his opponents. Similar characteristics are true of other notable public figures: John Kerry as flip-flopper, Al Gore as boring, Bill Clinton as manipulative, John McCain as out-of-touch, etc. When Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, he was not widely criticized or suspected of pandering to the communists because there was no existing frame in place that would facilitate such a "reading" of the event. A president who was not such a staunch anti-communist would likely not have fared nearly as well.

So when Barack Obama is honored by "foreigners," particularly those rooted in democratic socialist nations like those in Scandinavia, it provides additional "evidence" of his otherness to those who are predisposed to believe that he "hates America" or, at least, is not proud to be American. While there are only a minority of Americans who consciously hold those attitudes, there is a real potential for the frame to take hold subconsciously because it is so often and persistently employed.

Worse for Obama and his supporters is the fact that the president is planning to go to the ceremony to accept the award in December. The video and still imagery that will emerge from that event also has the potential to contribute to the reinforcement of the "otherness" frame.

Supporters of the president will understandably argue that this is not "fair," or that it is a function of an overly simplistic binary model of "patriotism" that holds that anything Europeans like must be bad for America. But the power of framing lies in the fact that it is not at all reliant upon "logic" or meaningful empirical evidence to function. Quite to the contrary -- frames may be developed intentionally, but their effects wholly rely on subconscious processing of information within their parameters.

Think about it this way: If Tversky and Kahneman would have presented participants with both types of response options, there would have been no framing effects. It is likely that the results would have been closer to 50% because then participants would reason through the more objective options (i.e., Is it worth taking a risk to try to save everyone, or should we go with the definite plan that saves 200, even though 400 will still die?). Since each participant was only presented with one pairing, though, the framing mattered (a lot).

Much like racist messages, when frames are exposed and brought to consciousness they lose much of their potential for effectiveness. But so long as the connections between the attacks on President Obama as having a fake birth certificate, refusing to wear a lapel pin, being a socialist (or fascist or Muslim or Black liberation theology Christian), preferring "czars," paling around with terrorists, etc. are not connected as being part of an "otherness" frame, seemingly benign or even positive events like receiving an international award for peace can very much work to reinforce and perpetuate negative attitudes about the president.

In this context, it is likely that the president would have preferred to have gotten out of bed Friday morning to find that he had to make a choice about possible responses to combat an unusual Asian disease.

White Friends, Black Friends: The Personal Nature of Racial Politics

We have been working together for over eight years now. We come from different backgrounds (personally and professionally), but we share a common vision for advancing racial justice by learning (and sharing) through employing the most contemporary social science research theories and methods to the study of race, politics and communication. As regular TWIR readers know, we try to provide a unified perspective on current events in this space each week. That is, except in very rare circumstances, we put forth analysis here that is a representation of our collective thoughts and application of social science research. Occasionally, however, we write separately, either because we disagree with one another (see here and here, for instance) or because the topic is primarily relevant from one of our perspectives (see here or here).

THIS WEEK, Charlton provides his unique perspective on interracial friendships in this era of heightened awareness of race and racism. It's not that Stephen has nothing to offer to this discussion (after all, he has interracial friendships – Charlton being the most valued – as well), but as you will discover, what Charlton has to say represents a perspective that we decided is best presented from his voice alone. As always, we look forward to your thoughtful comments.

***

Race. Politics. Race politics. The politics of race. Identity politics.

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill is perhaps most famous for popularizing the phrase, “all politics is local.” Those of us who venture into that tangled web where race and politics intersect are especially reminded that all politics is also, personal. In fact, no politics are more personal than racial politics (and the politics of gender and sexual orientation are equally so).

Today’s electoral politics are – in the words of Thomas Hobbes – nasty, brutish and short. But at the end of the day, there is a winner and a loser. Life goes on as the thrill of victory eventually ebbs for the former as the sting of defeat does for the latter. Members of Congress do legislative battle with competing bills, ingenious maneuvers, pointed hearings where they skewer opposing colleagues and roast them with fiery floor speeches meant to paint their adversaries as the worst among us – from heartless baby killers to Machiavellian demagogues and all else in between. Still, they emerge able to shake each other’s hands, extol the virtues of bipartisanship, and then share slippery oysters and a sip of whiskey at Old Ebbitt’s.

Those of us who willfully surround ourselves with the critical minutiae that race bring to everyday life sometimes like to think we are playing the same game.

From the verbal beat-downs we apply to modern racial rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin or Glenn Beck (I specify “verbal,” lest any of these folks mistake me for just some Black thug like Barack Obama who inspires Black violence against White people), to the daily debates we engage in over controversial race-based social policies like affirmative action, school desegregation or health care. From our heated discussions on national television designed to convince the public of the folly and fallacies of post-racialism, colorblind ideology and the like to our attempts to get youthful undergraduates to understand the subtleties of modern racism, persistent discrimination, and notions of White privilege, we (more a personal projection than a factual generalization) often like to think that we can immerse ourselves in these murky waters and emerge unsullied and unaffected. We sometimes fool ourselves into believing that our engagement with the stuff of racial politics is a wholly intellectual enterprise – participation in a kind of rational discourse from which we can simply redirect our attention when we wish not to talk about it anymore. We sometimes like to think that what we do and what we talk about exists primarily in that mystical abstract world of ideas.

Then sometimes, we are reminded that the political is the personal when it comes to talking about race. Sometimes we are reminded that despite the hordes of protesters hurling racial insults while the whole world watches, despite all of the “liberal media’s” talk of racism replete in today’s conservative rhetoric, despite our penchant to talk about the broad, statistical realities of racial inequality, skyrocketing incidences of racial violence, increased accusations of workplace discrimination and the like – our discussion about race often comes down to those most basic features of everyday conversation: two people, face-to-face (or what passes for it in our electronic age), talking about something that matters to them – personally.

* * *

Thanks to Facebook, I have recently been back in touch with people from what seems like a different life – particularly, folks from the conservative, Baptist, predominantly White college I attended and from which I graduated nearly twenty years ago. In that much time, some things – some people – change, and some things and people remain the same.

For me, college was a continuation of high school, where learning and learning to be liked alternated and competed for top billing on my life’s marquee of personal goals. (I completed college with a 2.7 GPA, so it is clear which one prevailed.) Where I grew up – on military bases in a city with a large minority population – racial diversity was as ubiquitous as MTV . My schools ranged from being 98% Mexican-origin to highly diverse, though slightly majority-White. So when I showed up for college in the middle of Oklahoma, on a campus where I could count the number of people who looked like me on two – okay, maybe three or four hands – I was a bit taken aback.

But I knew one thing: you do not make friends talking about race, racism, racial discrimination and the like. So I did not (talk about it, much), and I did (make friends). When a few of the women from the campus’s small Black Student Union asked me to join them at one of their meetings, I smiled, said okay, and quickly forgot about the fact that I never intended to go. Who wants to be part of the militant crowd when there are parties to go to, fun to be had, women to meet?

The reality, of course, was that I was not always able to avoid difficult discussion about race. But those are different stories for a different time. For the most part, I became a model for all our colorblind dreams. I even had one of those red, yellow, green “Love Sees No Color” t-shirts that were popular in the early nineties and wore it with pride, hoping forever to avoid those uncomfortable moments having to confront the issue of race.

Fast forward almost two decades. Facebook. Becoming new friends with old ones, eager to see how everyone turned out, these friends and acquaintances – many of whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since we walked across the graduation stage.

In the heat of the moment – post 2008 election, the beginning of the nastiness of the health care debate, amidst the discussion surrounding Henry Louis Gates’s run in with Cambridge cops, surrounded by birthers, hordes of “I want my country back,” protesters, yelling "communist, communist, communist" in the streets about everyone from Barack Obama on down to almost every Black person in or nominated for cabinet posts – I just could not help turning my personal Facebook page (not to be confused with the RaceProject Facebook page) into a site for political warfare. I posted articles of interest about race. I posted my own published or on-air commentary. I responded to comments made by my some of my new and old friends.

At some point, I looked over at my running count of friends. 666. Hmmmm. I could have sworn I was up close to the 850 mark. Seems that some of my friends were steadily peeling away, and I began to notice how I – like everyone else – had begun to take this race talk very personally.

"With the possibility of a recited "I pledge myself to President Obama" being in there, you're damn right I'm concerned. Bush never asked that. Clinton never asked that. Regan never asked that. There are three acceptable entities to which one may pledge oneself: God, Country, Family. To ease the confusion, Obama is NOT country."

An old friend – a college friend and post-college roommate actually – threw this my way when I explained my utter disbelief that anyone would question the President of the United States talking to children in a televised address. I brushed it off without delving further into the matter. The following came a few days later, when I questioned Conservative attacks against Van Jones and his eventual resignation, saying that I thought it was shame when good people are victims of such witch-hunt-style political rhetoric.

"It's a shame when good, intelligent people are willfully blind to or willfully ignorant of what's right in front of them."

I jumped further into the conversation on this one. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me: Willfully blind or ignorant. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt that you were talking about some other group of unknown and unspecified folks, not me.

Him: Sorry, my friend. I may not be able to debate the topics well, but I've never shied away from anything. I've watched Mr. Jones on CSPAN a few times (reruns, you know) and didn't have much issue with him other than all the green stuff. Nice as he seems to be, after his history coming to light, you have to be willfully *something* to think he's good for the country.

Me: Oh, well then. Please do let me know the next time this ignorant fool can be the beneficiary of your infallible wisdom! I'd hate to think I can actually think a reasonable thought and come up with a reasonable conclusion on my own!

Him: Don't play the passive aggressive game. It doesn't suit you. If you think a guy who signs things without reading them, who is an admitted communist and who really thinks green jobs are a viable way to save our nation... if you truely [sic] believe he's good for our nation, then do your best to educate me. Otherwise, the race card is an easy and obvious dismissal of the thoughts and opinions of people who disagree with you. I love reasonable thoughts and I love a good discussion. Bring it on. Make me do some work.

Me: I'm big, I'm Black and I'm overeducated. Many in your camp would say that aggression suits me just fine! Whether it does or doesn't won't get me to back down from the mote in the eye of folks like you who will cry that folks like me played the race card when you folks seem to always refuse to admit that race is ever a factor, that race may possibly . . . be a factor in any kind of political action, decision, personal preference or the like. That you can dismiss anything like me says anytime we venture to point out the possibility - however glaringly explicit or implicit it may be. So then, why don't you tell me which of the following you would consider to be an example of me NOT playing the race card?

What followed was a list of about 20 things that I challenged him to tell me whether I was – as I am and we are so often accused of – seeing race and racism in everything. He rose to the challenge. I have yet to respond. But the point of it all is simply that with all my talk of “conservatives this, and conservatives, that,” my friend was hearing all of my accusations and claims of conservative insolence as a personal affront. My talk of conservative racism was heard as, “you, my friend, are a racist, a bigot, etc.” and much of our conversation didn’t get beyond that. (Stephen and I wrote more about this a few weeks ago in this space when we talked of the idea of “racism fatigue.”)

I say all of this to remind us – myself really – that all conversation comes down to two people addressing each other. Good conversation is risky, sometimes difficult, sometimes painful, but often productive. On the one hand I WISH I could be like another old college friend of mine who regularly says things to me like, “I look at the values of the people and truly could care less about,” or, “I am sick of race being used...isn't this a Post Racial president...I talk about [race] more now than I ever have in my entire life!" or who sends me articles by Black people with titles such as “American Thinker: Why I am no longer an African American.”

While I am frustrated (both personally and professionally) by what I have been observing on the landscape of racial discourse in America today, I am also saddened because I cannot help but think that these White friends from years past were able to enjoy my company because we spent our time talking about football or music; I was not "acting so Black" back then. My ideas about race and racism have not changed, though, and my guess is that theirs have not either. The suggestion that I am somehow "different now" is predicated on a willingness on all of our parts to ignore the obvious, which was an arrangement that served all of our interests then. In that way, these friendships serve as a metaphor for America's collective relationship with racism. While I have no doubt that their friendship was genuine, I have to wonder whether, at least on a subconscious level, these folks were able to soothe themselves about their own deep-seated racial predispositions (which we all have) through my friendship. In other words, my presence in their lives enabled them to say, "I have a Black friend," which, for many, is as powerful evidence of not being racist as one needs (right alongside avoidance of the "n-word"). Did I (ironically) function as a racial quota, and am I less valuable now that I am active in pointing out that racism is more complicated that individual-level bigotry? Does their White privilege allow them to believe that since I think this way that they are correct and I am "wrong" (overly-sensitive, radical, out-of-touch with "real" America)?

I, too, sometimes wish that race was not such a necessary part of American social and political life. But people of color do not have the luxury of willing it to be so. On the other hand, I am reminded almost daily of the reality that when one talks about race with some folks, they will always hear – no matter how impersonal one tries to pitch the conversation – themselves being labeled and denigrated for being "a racist." Feelings are hurt, misunderstandings occur, time has to be spent easing bruised feelings. It is difficult, it is messy, it is – very personal.

Racism Fatigue

In 1998, Susan Moeller published Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, in which she explains that media coverage of these types of stories contributes to the tendency of Americans to divert our attention from worldwide human suffering. Moeller helps us to understand that the ways issues are presented determines the degree to which folks will continue to be responsive. As we work our way through the administration of the nation's first Black president, it is important to consider whether Americans are experiencing "racism fatigue."

THIS WEEK, we wrote an article for OpEdNews wherein we explained the racial context for Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst during the president's health care address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. If you are interested, we encourage you to jump over there and give it a read. Essentially, we explained that the persistent characterization of Barack Obama as "other" by his opponents has established a context within which behavioral norms can be dismissed. Just this week, it meant that Joe Wilson could hurl an insult during a formal address and that some parents could pull their kids out of school rather than have them listen to the president give a speech (the contents of which were released in advance) about working hard and getting an education.

The response to our article surprised us a bit. Some folks were frustrated that we stopped short of calling Wilson's actions racially motivated (TWIR readers know that we almost never speculate on intent) while others chastised us for invoking race at all. There was a lot of Internet chatter about Wilson's past behavior regarding race since his outburst, and that may be of interest to South Carolina voters or others who are determined to expose him as a bigot (we have chosen to not even link to that material here). We read that material and appreciate its value; it is just not central to what we think matters most.

In fact, we believe that the "gotcha" practice of trying to out bigots can be counterproductive because it tacitly reinforces the notion that "racism" is primarily about individual hatred of persons of color. While those who are bold enough to be open about their resentment of persons of color ought to be recognized as having conscious attitudes that set them apart from most of the American public, overt bigotry represents only a fraction of racial inequality in 21st century America. We ought not lose sight of bigoted occurrences, but we think it is most important to draw attention to the racial underpinnings in contemporary political discourse because that represents a more widespread and powerful current that is carrying along our centuries-old tradition of White supremacy.

But it can be quite tiring, indeed, for racially progressive folks, the millions who are genuinely trying to understand the roots of discrimination and White privilege. The more we folks who do this sort of work write, speak and advance sophisticated ideas about systemic racism, the more (and louder) defenders of the status quo put forth overly simplistic snippets that are easier to understand and, thus, believe.

Such reactions were on display this weekend as millions of (overwhelmingly) White folks gathered at rallies organized by political groups who oppose Barack Obama and/or his policy preferences. Joe Wilson was heralded as a hero at many of these gatherings as many noted that his outrage Wednesday night was justified because they, too, believe Obama is a liar. Further, the outburst was related to and consistent with their desire to keep "aliens" from having access to health care. They see no racism in labeling millions of Brown folks as "other" and subsequently (and angrily) preventing them from having access to what many believe to be a fundamental human right. Despite the fact that they have chosen to speak out so forcefully against government spending during the administration of the first Black president when two of their heroes -- Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush -- greatly contributed to the deficit during their presidencies, they see no racism in their position. Despite the fact that similar groups of Obama's opponents just a year ago brought stuffed monkeys, claimed that Obama was a Muslim and an Arab (which suggests that he is both a terrorist and a liar), yelled that he should go back to Africa, and engaged in myriad other bigoted behaviors, they see no racism in their position.

To the contrary, these folks, when asked about such underpinnings, become quite agitated, noting that the minuscule number of persons of color who agree with them is a coincidence, that they have a Black friend (seriously, this is often used as an alibi against any suggestion of internalized racism), and that it is Obama's supporters who are the real "racists." They are fatigued -- tired of always being called "racists."

This is also where the fatigue begins to surface on the part of advocates for racial justice. In the context of such anger and hostility, is it possible to explain to someone that "racism" is a systemic concept tied to White supremacy, not simply individual-level prejudice? Can one help a sign-waving, screaming, scared middle class White person to understand, in that moment, that 98% of their brain's activity takes place outside their consciousness, so ruling out racism as a factor is impossible? When fear and hostility are in full bloom, it is neither the time nor place to try to explain the complexities of human thought and behavior broadly, let alone neuroscience.

But where is the space for such discussion? All the world has become a tea party or town hall meeting for those who oppose President Obama.

That's why Joe Wilson screamed out. When Congressman Wilson apologized, he said, "I let my emotions get the best of me." At the end of this summer of anger, we are seeing the manifestation of a rhetorical climate that has painted Barack Obama as an "alien" himself. "I want my country back!" is heard at many of these gatherings. One wonders, from whom? From the "other" who has taken it, of course. From the man who does not look like other presidents looked. From the man who doesn't look like "us," like "America." From the man who is not really even American (so say "the birthers") and, therefore, is not even legitimately the president. From the man who will take care of people "like him" and seek retribution and/or reparations for slavery against Whites. From the Marxist/communist/socialist/fascist/terrorist man who used his Hitler-like oratory skills to fool Americans into electing him.

It is exhausting in its intensity and, quite frankly, its effectiveness.

White conservatives are genuinely tired, and while many of their criticisms of the president are not legitimate, we think that their fatigue is understandable. They are tired of being told that they are "racists" because they oppose a man who happens to be the nation's first Black president. They are tired of knowing, with all of their being, that they are not, in fact, "racist," even if they cannot always explain why they are so angry about this particular president. Most of them have worked for generations to use the appropriate term to describe Black Americans, moving from "colored" to "Black" to "African American" and now just resorting to just speaking the word more quietly than the rest of the sentence to avoid any perception of bigotry. They taught their children never to use the n-word, to give everyone an equal chance, irrespective of race or ethnicity, and they genuinely appreciate the diversity that has come to characterize their work spaces. For heaven's sake, some of these folks marched in the 1960s to end legalized segregation of schools and to bring about social justice in our laws! "What more," one can hear them shout, "are we supposed to do?! We have a Black president! That's not equal enough for you?! What more do 'you people' want!"

They're so damn tired.

But they are tired precisely because there is so much about racism that they do not understand. It is difficult for humans to understand that we cannot know what we do not know. It feels ("logically") that we are in control of our own brains. We are not. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that while we have made so much progress with respect to individual-level prejudice (even considering the backlash we are seeing now), we have much more work to do to help folks understand the complexity of systemic racism. It is very hard work -- not just to facilitate such discussion, but to engage in it. It is hurtful to realize that racism internalized from our culture is more powerful than explicit teachings to the contrary by our parents (or to our children). It is frustrating to think that we are on the right track, only to catch ourselves reaching for the door locks or feeling a tinge of fear or at least suspicion when a Black man approaches (this isn't just Whites, by the way). And it sure as hell is exhausting to worry about whether someone will call us "a racist" when we feel certain that our attitudes are not at all rooted in racism.

Racism fatigue is not new, but we are seeing a widespread outbreak in 2009.

Joe Wilson's emotions got the best of him. Indeed, much of the political psychology research has revealed the false dichotomy between emotion and reason that Enlightenment-era philosophers put forth (privileging the latter over the former, of course). It is unrealistic (and, we would argue, unwise) to ask folks to take emotion out of their political decision-making. After all, we tend to appreciate emotions that lead to outcomes that we embrace. (Progressives want folks to feel empathy, for instance, so that more socially just policies are adopted.) We find nothing wrong with the fact that Joe Wilson feels strong emotions about making preventative health care available to those who cannot afford it, even if our emotions on the subject are quite different from his.

Further, we find the tangential discussions surrounding his act to be distractions from the primary point (health care reform) and our point (the racial context for the outburst). That is, we do not particularly care whether the action was consistent with practices of the British House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions or whether the president was actually lying. Those are fair items to consider in a broad discussion of the incident, but shouting insults has not been and is not the custom in the U.S. Congress -- whether the president is there or not -- even if the he was not telling the truth.

The folks at the rallies this weekend hold anti-reform attitudes that are similar to those held by folks who opposed civil rights reform a half century ago. White Southerners were tired of being told that they were "bad people" for expecting Blacks to live their lives separately from Whites. They were tired of uppity Blacks telling them anything, in fact. And they were tired of White Northerners talking about them like they were unenlightened bumpkins. They knew the truth, and they were tired of being told otherwise. They wanted their country back. The parallels to the current fight for civil rights (of which the extension of health care to all is but one part) are striking.

So how do we overcome racism fatigue? The first step, we propose, is to do our best to continue to be persistent about the effects of systemic racism but also continue to be diligent about explaining that pointing it out is not an insult. "Racist" is an adjective; it ought not be used as a noun because doing so drains it of its power. Here's why: First, calling someone "a racist" (noun) suggests that he or she is aware of his or her racist attitudes; that may or may not be the case. We can almost never prove intent because those who are intentionally bigoted know how to maintain plausible deniability. It is a no-win situation. Second, using the word as a noun permits defenders of the status quo to turn it around and use it to describe anti-White attitudes (see the sign from this weekend's rally in Washington, DC, above, for example), which rhetorically forces the concept into the neutral position. Anti-White prejudice exists (and, we believe, should be vigorously opposed), but is not nearly as dangerous as racist attitudes because it carries with it no systemic power. When "racism" becomes understood simply as any resentment based on skin color, the true power and effect of racism is lost. It is possible to identify racism without tying that concept to the intent of one or more individuals. When people stop feeling as if they are being called "racists," they may be more open to understanding the way racism really works.

Even so, it may be too late, or the context might be wrong. White folks of all political persuasions, by and large, want to believe that Barack Obama's election signaled the end of American racism -- Dr. King's dream realized. If we are in a "post-racial" period, it is not appropriate to bring race into the discussion; those who do are "playing the race card." So, in effect, there has been a cruel shift in culture such that those fighting for racial justice are accused of actually perpetuating injustice. Who wins in such a circumstance? Defenders of the status quo, of course, because no further progress can be made.

The problem, though, with arguing that this may not the right time to be pushing harder is that White folks are not the only ones with racism fatigue -- those who have been on the receiving end of American racism for generations are quite tired, too, and have been for some time. We have to push, and we have to push wisely, not just strategically. We have to raise consciousness and understanding about the complexities and destruction of systemic racism. We understand that conservative Whites are tired and that progressives are feeling tired, too, but now is not the time to rest. The stakes remain high for those who are harmed by racism: all of us.

Don't Talk to Strangers: Obama as Other

It is wise advice for parents to tell their children not to talk to strangers. It was not until THIS WEEK, however, that such an admonishment was applied to listening to a speech by the president of the United States.

Barack Obama plans to give a "back to school" address on Tuesday "about the need to work hard and stay in school." In such a polarized political context, it is refreshing to have a visible leader speak about something on which folks from every political persuasion can agree. Except that with this president, in this context, conservatives are suspicious about the content, demanding to see the text of the address in advance.

One-time Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer called the speech an "unprecedented" use of power." He was not making a cheeky reference to President George W. Bush's surveillance of U.S. citizens, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus or any of the invasions of sovereign nations that the U.S. has undertaken over the years. He was being completely sincere, and so was the chairman of the Florida Republican Party in a memo that accused the president of using "taxpayer dollars . . . to spread President Obama's socialist ideology." A Republican state lawmaker from Oklahoma is quoted as saying, "As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

Of course, such an argument is wholly without merit. There is certainly a "cult of personality" around the U.S. president for school children, and there always has been. Fred Greenstein's groundbreaking work with children in the 1960s revealed that presidents are perceived as "benevolent leaders" to children, irrespective of their parents' political beliefs. There have always been portraits of the current president hanging in schools, courthouses, post offices and other public spaces. Portraits do not invite "a critical approach" to presidents, as the Arizona state schools superintendent said should happen; indeed, they invite "worship" of our nation's top leader in the name of patriotism.

Is this paranoia racially driven? A solid case could probably be made for that, but we are not going to make it. What we will do, however, is explain how these accusations work to erode Obama's image as part of a larger push to portray him as "other." As we always do, we will take the social science approach and focus on the effects of this communication rather than the intent of the folks who are crafting and delivering the message.

Social science research reveals that racist messages in political campaign communication almost never occur as a result of a candidate using direct ("explicit") racist language. Rather, there is a combination of images and code words that are effective because they activate deeply-held racist predispositions in the minds of voters (not just White voters). Again, this work speaks to the way that such messages have the potential to affect voters; it makes no claims as to whether such appeals were intended by the candidates or their campaign teams. In some case (like the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988), we can know intent because the architect (in that case, Lee Atwater), admitted as much (in that case, after he knew that he was dying -- far too young -- of cancer), but for the most part, we cannot, as President George W. Bush used to say, know what is in their hearts.

In our most recent work, we found that there is a tendency to use in-group/out-group language to indicate "otherness," a tactic which has the potential to be greatly exacerbated when the "other" is a member of a racial or ethnic minority group. Such language often comes by way of the choice of first person pronouns in combination with images that suggest the race of the in group. For instance, if a White candidate is running against a Black candidate in a district that is majority-White, he or she might run an ad that includes only White citizens, with language about "our values" or "our priorities," signaling that those priorities are different than those of a candidate of color. There is nothing inherently racist about candidates trying to convince voters that they are more "relatable" than their opponents; as a result of the way race has worked in America, however, the priming of group identity with images in combination with such language can work to the advantage of a candidate who employs such a strategy.

We can see this very clearly in Barack Obama's opponents over the past two and a half years. From the Democratic primaries through the election through the first six months of his presidency, detractors from all political persuasions have used language that pushes Obama into the category of "other." The specific elements on which Obama is accused of being different change (quite frequently, in fact): He has been labeled as un-American in at least these ways by political elites: communist/socialist/Marxist, elitist, corrupt, terrorist sympathizer, foreign-born, a thug, fascist and racist (ironically, this is considered to be un-American). None of these labels are racist in and of themselves (even "racist"), but when leveled against a person of color, the dynamic is inherently different.

Does that mean that any attack against a person of color is racist? Certainly not (though Obama's opponents have used that argument, as well). First, even if the messages are racist by these scholarly definitions, that does not mean that those who crafted the message did so intentionally (did we mention this already?). Second, there are all sorts of ways that a person of color can be criticized on political grounds without playing into preexisting negative stereotypes about that person's race or ethnicity. Suggesting that Barack Obama is trying to deceive people has a racist effect because African Americans are presumed to be shifty, dishonest and criminal. To argue that Barack Obama's health care proposal is bad for America because small businesses would have a difficult time with the provisions, for instance, is wholly non-racial. Some progressives have argued that all of Obama's opponents are playing on race because the overwhelming visible criticism of him has been based on fear appeals related to negative stereotypes about African Americans.

This latest criticism over the education speech is no different. The argument is that Obama is trying to play a shell game with the American people, to "get at" our children, and to be dishonest about his true intentions. Such a criticism aimed at a White president (or official or candidate) carries no racist associations, as Whites are not, as a group, commonly assumed to have such characteristics. Since such stereotypes do exist about Blacks, however, the effect of this charge is different.

Former Republican Speaker of the House (and likely 2012 presidential hopeful) Newt Gingrich came out in support of the president's speech on Sunday, but implied that his support was related to the fact that he believed that the text of the speech would be made available so that parents could choose whether to allow their children to be exposed to the message. This is consistent with the calls from many of those who have criticized the speech, suggesting that Obama is trying to hide the content from parents. We do not know how common it is for presidents to release the text of their speeches weeks or days ahead of time (though it is quite common for text to be released to the press hours ahead of time for publication assistance), but in the larger context of conservative attacks on Obama over the past year or so, the request is troubling, as it signals that Black folks -- even the president -- cannot be trusted to talk directly to our students without parents having the chance to censor.

Adults talk to our children everyday without our input: teachers, firefighters, police officers, other children's parents on "career days," etc. Presumably there is no opposition to such speakers because those folks are not "strangers" -- they are members of our community. In the past, presidents of the United States were very much considered to be members of our community -- even largely in communities of color.

But this president will never be accepted as "family" or even as legitimate to many Whites. Once that is understood, it is not surprising that parents would not want their children to hear what he has to say unless and until they approve the content ahead of time. If you are not "one of us," you do not get to talk to our children.

Update (9/7/09, 12:39pm CDT): The text of the president's speech to children can be found here.

Opening the Flood-"Gates" to Increased Animosity

As expected, we are weighing in with our analysis of the arrest of Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts THIS WEEK. If you have been monitoring the RaceProject Facebook page, you will be up to speed on all the happenings. If so, jump past the next paragraph; if not, read on.

In short, Professor Gates was having trouble getting into his home upon his return from an overseas trip. He and his driver managed to get into the home, but as they were doing so, a neighbor called the police. While Gates was on the phone making arrangements for the door to be fixed, the police arrived. At this point, there is some disagreement about what happened, but we do know that the police asked to see Gates's identification (Gates says he produced it, the police say he did not do so immediately), Gates verbally berated the police (including making comments regarding to the way Black men are treated by police in America) and demanded the officer's badge number and name, and ultimately, Gates was arrested. The charges have been dropped, but the incident sparked a debate within and between several communities (the press, academics, activists, etc.). Dr. Gates is really upset, and President Obama weighed in during the last question of his health care press conference by saying that he believed that the police "acted stupidly," even though he admitted to not knowing all the facts. He has since talked to both the arresting officer and Professor Gates and is planning to have them to the White House for beers.

There has been no shortage of thoughtful commentary throughout the week. And, perhaps as we might expect, there has been no shortage of thoughtless commentary, as well.

On the thoughtful side, we encourage folks to read the excellent posts by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Dawn Turner Trice (here and here), Katherine T. Wallace, Liza Sabater, George Mitrovich, Harry Allen, Stanley Fish, Charles Blow and Sam Somers.

On the less-than-thoughtful side, (surprise) Rush Limbaugh played explicitly on the "angry Black man" stereotype (video here; for more on this, check out this MSNBC panel where Limbaugh's comments are discussed), and the angry White guys at The Free Republic were typically repulsive.

As is the trend in contemporary racial politics, there are basically three populations about which we are concerned. The first is the group who has been honest about how this incident is illustrative of the relationship between police and Black men in America. The second group is comprised of those (like Limbaugh) who are explicitly opposed to any attempt to bring about racial equality, either because they are overt bigots who believe Whites are a superior people or because they believe that America is a meritocracy where those who have succeeded are those who have worked the hardest -- and who just so happen to be disproportionately White and male. The third group is comprised of (mostly White) folks who are not particularly sensitive to the ways that systemic racism function; these folks sincerely want to have racial equality, understand that by most indicators, it is not here yet, but have a difficult time viewing the world through the lens of "others."

The last group was out in full force THIS WEEK, trying to make sense of the situation by analyzing the events through what they believe to be a race-neutral lens. These are the folks who were moved by the notion that the arresting officer, Sgt. Crowley, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the late Celtics basketball player Reggie Lewis (our favorite tweet on this came from @mattbastard (Matthew Elliot): "There's a new one 'I'm not racist--I french-kissed a negro [not that there's anything wrong with that].'") and then found "confirmation" that the officer was not "to blame" because he cannot possibly be "racist" when they learned that he was hand-picked by a Black superior officer to teach diversity classes that include information about how to avoid racial profiling and that a Black officer on the scene the night of the Gates arrest publicly claimed that Crowley acted appropriately.

Here's why these interpretations fall short of the type of sophistication we encourage in this space.

Whether the arresting officer is a bigot or not is completely beside the point. He tried to save the life of a Black man and he has been recognized about being thoughtful about racial profiling. That is impressive and certainly suggests that he is not a bigot, but it does not get him off the hook of systemic racism. He is a White man in America -- and a police officer at that -- and thus has a distinct way to view the world that he (like all of us) is unable to escape. He can be thoughtful about that bias that he carries, but as was so nicely demonstrated in Paul Haggis's film Crash, under stressful conditions, it is harder to activate those filters. In short, this is a familiar refrain: "I can't be racist; I have Black friends"; it is a casualty of the continual conflation of racism with bigotry.

Further, under what circumstances would a fellow officer -- of any race or ethnicity -- publicly state that his colleague (particularly one who is facing public scrutiny) acted inappropriately? Seriously: how would that go? "Yeah, he was way out of line. That is not what he should have done at all. I'm embarrassed to be on the same force with this guy." Please. Who can blame a fellow officer for 1) seeing the situation more closely to the way his colleague saw it, and 2) supporting him publicly under these circumstances.

But this is shaping up to be similar to the OJ Simpson verdict with respect to the way Whites and Blacks see the situation. Most Whites see themselves (or wish to see themselves) in Sgt. Crowley (no visible prejudices, history of friendship with Blacks) and worry that they, too, might be accused of racism if they ever do something to a Black person that the person does not like. Since Whites as a group do not have a history of animosity with police, they view the situation outside of that larger context and simply focus on "the facts." But those events took place in a broader context, and that must be considered.

And it is within this context that President Obama spoke. While many (most?) Black folk cheered when he publicly called the officer's actions "stupid" (but see Bill Cosby's response), they recoiled a bit when he backpedaled on the language later in the week (see Melissa Harris-Lacewell's commentary on that issue on The Rachel Maddow Show).

To elaborate on that point, we reprint what Charlton wrote to a friend on his Facebook page about the issue:

My guess is that Obama's first comments were the most honest. I think that his reaction that the Cambridge cop acted stupidly probably came from the visceral feeling of knowing what it feels like not only to be profiled, but to be someone who has done everything society says you have to do to be great, and succeed, etc. and then still get treated like a common criminal -- in your own home no less. Malcolm X use to say: What do you call a Black man with a Ph.D? "N*****." I think that kind of feeling is what Gates had when the incident happened and what Obama was reacting to when he was first asked about his response. His latest response and apologies, etc. are of course politically motivated, though probably the right thing to do to try to help mend fences and use turn it into a "teachable moment."

Even without all the details, I do believe that Gates reacted exactly as the officer said. I believe he said the things he did and in the tone the officer said he did. But I think that to say that Gates "overreacted" is very subjective. As a person who has been harassed by cops for absolutely nothing other than the color of my skin (like the Shawnee [OK] cops who would routinely pull me over when driving in some of the nice neighborhoods, but never give me a reason why they stopped me, and including on two occasions having the cops called because I was "breaking in" to my own apartment, then doing searches of my apartment for no reason), I think Gates's reaction was somewhat mild -- hardly an overreaction. Was it a reasonable reaction? Probably not, but we're not talking about the realm of reason here. It's the emotional feeling one gets at this kind of personal injustice.

Here's the issue with the officer: it's all about the handcuffs. Gates is a short, scrawny, Ivy league nerd who raised his voice at a cop who had a gun, handcuffs and the power and authorization to use force if necessary to exercise his will. The officer had broad discretion. You don't immediately bust out the cuffs because someone gives you a little lip, especially when you know those words are not at all threatening. Putting Gates in cuffs for "disturbing the peace" is a symbolic act, one that says, "get and stay in your place, boy." But few people have been saying that the cop overreacted. And maybe he didn't. Like Gates acted out of his experience and the experience of other Blacks being profiled, the cop acted out of his experience and feeling of having an uppity Black professor talk to him the way he did: not just as a cop, but as a White person. To him, that was Gates's real offense.

Politically speaking, Obama shouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole. But I respect the fact that he he allowed himself to react as a human being who is Black, who has experienced the good and bad of living Black in America and was there to get someone's back who he saw as someone who was a slight victim of injustice (there are plenty of people of color who are profiled and victimized much more harshly).

This is a perspective that Stephen, for instance, would not have had. No matter how sensitive White folks are to systemic racism, no matter how long they study it and try to understand its implications, there is no substitute for experience, particularly with respect to the mixture of cognitive and emotional responses that come into play in a stressful situation such as this. Witness, for instance, MSNBC's Mika Brezezinsky's struggle to understand this element of the situation here (or below) in a discussion with Eugene Robinson and Carlos Watson.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Finally, here's a bit of bitter humor to bring this full circle: Dave Chappelle "predicted" these events a number of years ago in one of his routines.

Before we let you go, though, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the other big racial story THIS WEEK. The "birthers" (those who believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and, thus, is not legitimately the president) gained a strange sort of momentum as national conservative spokespersons such as Lou Dobbs and some Republican members of Congress continued to attempt to legitimize the claims. CNN's Rick Sanchez tore into these folks, and Jon Stewart made them look like complete nut jobs in his comic send up of their activities. Roland Martin did a nice job in a discussion with Dobbs (see here or below), and the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a formal letter to CNN asking for Dobbs to be removed due to his irresponsible journalistic activity with respect to this matter.



Make no mistake: this issue has everything to do with race. It is a perpetuation of the "otherness" frame that characterized Obama's opponents in the primaries and general election, and it is very much a function of White folks who remain horrified that the nation is being led by a Black man. At the town hall meeting that got so much attention THIS WEEK, a woman screamed "I want my country back!" This language is reflective of a group of people (it's impossible to tell how large of a group) who cannot stomach the fact that a Black man is in charge. Obama, they implicitly argue, is not really American. He's not "one of us." He's quintessentially "other," and he has stolen the country.

When he sided with the "lippy," "uppity" African American studies professor, it was simply additional evidence for the fact that "his kind" stick together; they will protect one another, but they hate Whites. He is a "reverse racist" (as Rush Limbaugh has called him), and he has disdain for (at least parts of) America.

We see some very scary trends emerging THIS WEEK. The White supremacists will always be stoking racial animosity and attacking Obama on racial grounds, but when otherwise thoughtful Whites (whom we put in "group three" above) start to be attentive to and perpetuate these notions, there is a real danger for the racial divide to widen. The backlash we (and many others) predicted at inauguration time is in full effect. What remains to be seen is how deep and how widespread it will become.

Independence Day for African Americans

There was a lot of chatter in the blogosphere over the past few days with respect to what July 4 does (and should) signify, particularly for people of color, as we celebrated the first Independence Day with a Black president.

Many folks tweeted or posted links to Frederick Douglass's famous speech titled "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro." In this address, Douglass tries to explain what it is like to see celebration of ideals that have not been realized. He says:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

He begins (and ends) the speech, however, with optimism:

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too Ñ great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

Francesca Biller-Safran situated the holiday in a contemporary context, noting that "for many Blacks who have felt ambivalence, separatism and exclusion; this will be a Fourth of July like no other."

Rikyrah, of Jack and Jill Politics, reminds us that to suggest that Black folk have not been patriotic prior to this momentous time in our history is offensive and misguided. For it is easy to love that which loves you back; loving a nation that has treated you and people like you with disdain, disrespect and deceit is a true sign of dedication.

Indeed, several articles and posts over the weekend attempted to call our attention the difference between nationalism ("my country, right or wrong") and patriotism. Byron Williams notes that patriotism is about celebrating the ideals of a country and Mike Lux argues that the folks whose ideas we celebrate on this day (Thomas Jefferson and his buddies) were radicals and leftists fighting against forces that wished to impede progress. They certainly had their own hangups and were bound by their cultural context, but the ideas for which they fought are the same ideas that many progressives are fighting for today.

This is particularly true with respect to racial progress. THIS WEEK, Barack Obama read for his (sorta creepy) animatronic likeness in Disney World's famous Hall of Presidents. (You can watch the behind-the-scenes video by clicking here or watching below.) It gives one a real sense of the history of his election to consider the power of his likeness on that grand stage alongside all the White men who led this nation through the first 220 years.



Thinking about this moment and reading Frederick Douglass's words prompts one to think about how much has truly changed in the past 150 years, as well as how much work we still have to do.

RaceProject on Facebook

For a number of reasons (most of them technical and boring), we have moved the official RaceProject.org Facebook content from a "group" to a "page." If you were a member of the RaceProject.org Facebook group, please "fan" the new page (which has an easy-to-remember URL: Facebook.com/RaceProject). Soon, we will discontinue the old "group," so please take a moment now to make the switch, or "fan" us even if you are new to Facebook or had not joined the old group.

Creating Space for Progress

The Race Project has a number of volunteer research assistant positions available for the summer. Scroll to the bottom of this blog entry for more information.

There are some Americans who honestly believe that racial minorities have an unfair advantage over Whites (see Pat Buchanan) and others who are simply uninterested in seeing any power whatsoever shifted out of the hands of White men (see the Ku Klux Klan). The vast majority of us, however, understand that the legacy of inequality, manifested in (mostly latent) psychological predispositions about members of different groups, has left us with a system that undermines our espoused shared core values of justice, equality of opportunity and even individualism. While it often feels good (and always gets ratings) to call names, point fingers, belittle, ridicule, mock and otherwise humiliate our political opponents, doing so leaves no space for progress.

THIS WEEK, we consider what it means to leave space for change. In this month's Esquire, political statistics whiz kid Nate Silver argues that there may be a trend toward increased geographical polarization in America, as the poor job market makes it more likely that folks will relocate on the basis of ideology. It's the physical manifestation of the "selective exposure" hypothesis in media effects research: people will seek out that which affirms their existing beliefs to avoid experiencing (and, thus, having to relieve) cognitive dissonance. Last year, we reviewed Cappella and Jamieson's book Echo Chamber, which traces the interconnectedness of the conservative media establishment (Fox News, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh's radio show). We may be seeing an emergence of a progressive echo chamber, as MSNBC has attempted to become the Fox of the Left, exchanging information over the airwaves and Internet with progressive websites such as Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Media Matters. The other networks -- which conservatives claim are liberal and progressives claim are conservative -- attempt some middle ground by having hosts or guests from the left and the right screaming at one another and hurling insults at or about anyone who has a different perspective.

This is horribly dangerous for our political discourse because it reinforces the notion that one must hold firm to one's ideas, even in the face of clear, contrasting evidence. Five years ago, Jon Stewart intellectually ambushed Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson on an episode of CNN's Crossfire (below), telling them that their sort of discourse was "hurting America."



This moment was situated in the context of a brilliant political strategy on the part of President Bush's campaign team to label Democratic nominee John Kerry as "a flip flopper," a moniker that will likely define Kerry's legacy. Whether Kerry would have made a good president or not is beside the point; whether his changing of positions (to the extent that the claim was even valid) would have been an indication of his abilities is another issue altogether. Our bias, as college professors, is to constantly push for a more complicated understanding of the world, which necessitates leaving space for intellectual growth. The chasm between what we encourage on college campuses and what we champion in our political discourse is wide and seems to be expanding.

In his "Cairo speech" (formally titled "A New Beginning") THIS WEEK, President Obama called for increased understanding between warring factions in global politics (read the transcript here):

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Obama was praised throughout the world for this fresh take, but the position is not without controversy. Conservative pundits accused Obama of pandering and being "soft" because he refused to use the word "terror," a word that Obama realizes is so laden with emotion and perspective that it is virtually meaningless. To accuse someone of being "a terrorist" is to engage in name calling that does not leave space to move us closer to peace.

Similarly, as we argue regularly in this space, calling people "racists" (as contrasted with pointing out racist assumptions) is counterproductive to clearing space for progress toward racial equality.

Perhaps a parallel example would be New Hampshire governor John Lynch's speedy signing of the gay marriage law passed by the NH legislature THIS WEEK. Lynch, who has stated repeatedly that he believes that marriage is "between one man and one woman" gave a speech last month wherein he acknowledged his own limitations:

My personal views on the subject of marriage have been shaped by my own experience, tradition and upbringing. But as Governor of New Hampshire, I recognize that I have a responsibility to consider this issue through a broader lens.

[. . .]

Throughout history, our society's views of civil rights have constantly evolved and expanded. New Hampshire's great tradition has always been to come down on the side of individual liberties and protections. That is what I believe we must do today.

This speech is important in at least two respects. First, of course, it paved the way for NH to be the sixth state to legalize gay marriage. Second -- more broadly -- it serves as an example of what can happen when we give public officials the space to grow without punishing them for that growth (though, of course, it remains to be seen how Lynch might be ultimately punished).

Another public shift in position THIS WEEK came when Newt Gingrich retracted his statement (which we discussed last week) that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "a racist." Said Gingrich:

My initial reaction [to Sotomayor's 2001 speech] was strong and direct -- perhaps too strong and too direct. The sentiment struck me as racist and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the nation’s highest court have been critical of my word choice.

With these critics who want to have an honest conversation, I agree. The word "racist" should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable. . .

Of course, Sotomayor's words are not unacceptable -- even if President Obama thinks they are -- to those who understand how important life experience is to one's outlook and how important that outlook is to providing meaningful (and yes, empathetic) representation and leadership. In terms of overall effect, Gingrich's "apology" is not particularly important. He still opposes her nomination, in part because he is offended by her unwillingness to pretend that she is without perspective, and the clarification may have more to do with trying to soften his image on the eve of a presidential run.

But, while we can only speak for ourselves, we absolutely do "want to have an honest conversation." Further, we wish to assert that it is important that progressives allow folks to revise their remarks to the extent that they are being intellectually honest about beliefs that initial reactions or prior positions were improper. We need to acknowledge and not punish public figures when they show signs of growth. Labeling Gingrich a "flip flopper" or otherwise trying to define him by his initial statement only serves to contribute to a culture of rigidity that rewards stubbornness and discourages change where change is appropriate.

It became more clear THIS WEEK that Congressman Artur Davis will seek the governorship of Alabama. If he is to become the first Black governor of a deep South state since Reconstruction (and only the third Black governor elected anywhere), he will have to count on the (private) votes of Whites who have historically not been supportive of civil rights. Those folks will be more inclined to vote for a Black candidate if they get cues from leaders that, to paraphrase John Lynch, our society's views of civil rights are evolving.

It is important to create and maintain space for that discourse to occur, not because Artur Davis should or should not be elected governor of Alabama, but because there should be a context within which his candidacy would not be defined by his race.

We will get there by way of honest, thoughtful, meaningful discourse, not by shouting, name calling and ridicule. Our success or failure will be largely the result of the space we create.

Update: In clarifying his statement about Sotomayor on today's Face the Nation, Newt Gingrich called Sotomayor "a racialist," which is a term that has no distinct meaning as of yet, but that we are starting to encounter more and more frequently. We will address this language in a later post.

Research Assistant Opportunities

The Project on Race in Political Communication (http://RaceProject.org) has a number of volunteer research opportunities for anyone who would like to be involved with the Race Project. While students are a natural constituency in this regard, anyone is welcome to help. We are entering the most labor-intensive phase of a very exciting element of the Project -- one that we have be planning for nearly eight years -- that will have implications far more widespread than the study of race and political communication.

We are compiling data and constructing a database that will be made available to researchers (in the form of a spreadsheet appropriate for quantitative analysis) and the public (in the form of a Web-interfaced search engine) that contains information about candidates for federal office (U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and U.S. president) since 1970, including the candidate's race, gender, party affiliation, number of votes received, amount of money raised and spent, and other variables of interest. Computer programmers are busy at work on the Web-interface, and two Race Project senior research assistants students, Sidra Hamidi and Priscilla Martinez, are prepared to oversee the collection and entering of data over the summer months. Research assistants will be responsible for collecting information from a variety of sources (most of which are online) to compete the dataset. This is an important contribution that has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of elections, as this information is not currently available in one place.

This work requires no prior research experience and can be done from any location and at any time of the day (we can work around work schedules). For students, working as a Race Project research assistant affords the opportunity to gain experience with social science research for the purposes of CV building, instigating an original research project, and/or working toward a better understanding of racial inequality and injustice. Research practicum credit through North Central College (which may transfer to other institutions) can be arranged.

If you are interested, please Facebook message Stephen or Charlton, or send an email to SMCaliendo@RaceProject.org. If you know someone who might be interested (or if you are a faculty member who has students who might be interested), please do not hesitate to pass this information along.

A Case for Empathy

"Crazy nonsense empathetic! I'll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind. Craziness!" (GOP chair Michael Steele, May 8, 2009)

Barack Obama took a lot of heat from conservatives and Republicans when he noted that one characteristic for a Supreme Court nominee would be empathy. Here is the full quote:

Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives -- whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded, and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.

In a matter of minutes, and in the days that have passed since, those who expect to be disappointed by Obama's eventual selection have argued that "empathy" is a code word for "judicial activism" or "legislating from the bench." Maybe so.

But before we get to that, we want to pose this question: What's wrong with empathy?

Some might argue that empathy is a fine quality for citizens, but it has no place in interpretation of the law. That seems to us to be a dubious distinction on its face, but nonetheless, it is worthy of being addressed.

Among the alarmists were the folks at Freedom Works, who had this to say: "What Obama is saying here is that the rule of law should be secondary in judicial reasoning to a judge’s own personal feelings. It is nothing short of a recipe for a breakdown of our legal system, and the death of an expectation by participants in court proceedings that they will be treated fairly, particularly if they are not highly sympathetic."

But it is important to examine this claim. There is an important shift in language at work: the blogger at Freedom Works substituted "sympathy" for Obama's word, which was "empathy." Same thing? Not at all.

Sympathy centers on internalizing another's situation, while empathy is concerned with being cognizant of another's situation and meaningfully attentive to it. Sympathy is closer to "pity" than is empathy, which involves being able to put oneself in another's shoes, so to speak. When Bill Clinton said that he felt our pain, he was expressing sympathy. That may or may not be important, but it's not the same as empathy. If he wanted to express empathy, he would have said that he understood our pain.

That sort of rationality in thought is perfectly appropriate in judicial conduct. In fact, we would argue that it is a responsibility, particularly of federal judges, to be empathetic. The Framers set up a system where members of the judicial branch would be isolated from public pressures, in part because they understood, as James Madison articulated in Federalist #10, that democracy is more than honoring the will of the majority; protecting minority rights is also essential.

The executive and judicial branches, with their members selected (directly or indirectly) by the people at regularly scheduled intervals, will ostensibly work for the majority -- at least the majority of their own constituents. It is up to the judicial branch to be empathetic to those with less power. Racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBT folks and the poor are, currently and historically, groups whose identifiers have less access to power with respect to their flip-sides (men, Whites, etc.). When there has been meaningful change with respect to extending rights to members of disadvantaged groups, it has often been the courts leading the way (think Brown v. Board of Education, Lawrence v. Texas), and that has angered supporters of the status quo.

But that's precisely what is supposed to happen. If the status quo always held, there would never be progress, and only half of Madison's conceptualization of democracy would ever be fulfilled. The majority would always win, and minority rights could easily be ignored. Only an independent judiciary or a tremendously brave (stupid?) group of lawmakers would push against public opinion to stand up for the rights of minorities. When they have done so, they have often had judicial cover. Conservatives hated the Brown decision (though few of them are brave enough to say so now), and they hated the Lawrence decision (and most are very happy to tell you so). But Congress passed civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s, and state legislatures are now legalizing gay marriage.

Of Obama's statement, Sean Hannity said that Democrats “want the courts to take over and engage in social engineering," and Washington Times columnist Amanda Carpenter told CNN's Howard Kurtz that "[e]mpathy [is] an emotive term [and that] Barack Obama is calling for a judge who will take their [sic] emotions into account when making a judicial decision."

The notion that judges do not or should not take emotion or their own political preferences into account when making decisions is not credible. All humans have bias, and while we can strive for objectivity, that requires a recognition and conscious determination to be attentive to our biases in order to be sure that they are not the driving force in our behavior.

Maybe "empathy" is a code word. So what? Obama is progressive, and he is going to pick a progressive jurist. Of course conservatives won't like it -- they won't like it any more than progressives liked it when President Bush selected judges who would work to reinforce the status quo. That's the way it works. That's politics. And there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around as Republicans gear up to obstruct the nomination in the same way that they complained Democrats did during Bush's presidency, while Democrats are crying about the obstruction even though they used the same tactics for the past eight years.

But while the partisan hacks are staking out their territory on both sides, intellectuals are measuring and considering the President's words more carefully and thoughtfully -- and not just progressives. In the Catholic weekly publication America this morning, Douglas Kmiec writes the following: "No one should win or lose in Court because they are rich or poor or black or white. Yet to be evenhanded is not the same as being uncaringly formalistic or concerned only with systematic consequences. Real litigants stand before the Court. . . . Empathy has a wider, more open-minded nature, asking how law interrelates with the larger culture."

We may fantasize about how law is neutral, but of course it is not. It was created by humans (with biases) in the context of a system that was set up by humans (with biases), and it is interpreted by judges who are humans (with biases). Those biases should be acknowledged by jurists, critics, and citizens alike, but to argue that "judicial restraint" is value neutral while "judicial activism" is value laden is akin to arguing that standing by watching a child get hit by a moving car when one could have easily pulled him or her out of the way is a neutral act.

Because our judiciary is designed to protect minority interests, it requires members who possess empathy, which should not be confused with sympathy. Conflation of these concepts is either intellectually deficient or a blatant attempt to confuse the public as to the proper role of the judiciary in a democracy.

To be clear: the "proper role," as we see it, is not to frustrate popular will at every turn. Madison warned against such "minority factions" being tyrannical, as well. But one cannot be stationary on a moving train. Empathy is a powerful concept, and one that most organize religions preach, at least in theory. Jesus was certainly empathetic and asked his followers to be. In fact, some would argue that the very idea of God sending a son in human form was so that he could experience and teach empathy.

Whether one is a believer or not, it's not a bad model.

Update (5/12/09): Robert Burton, a former neurologist, has a wonderful piece about the scientific aspects of empathy (and the scientific-understood inability to remove personal feelings from judgment) at Salon.com.

Black Tea, White Tea: Making Sense of the Outrage

Across the country, angry Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom were White, gathered THIS WEEK to protest. What they were protesting is open to some discussion, but at the very least, there was concern about the latest round of deficit spending.

It has been argued that the "parties," instigated by conservative think tanks, supported and sponsored by conservative media and pundits, and with rhetoric aimed disproportionately at the Obama administration, were exercises in hypocrisy and "faux populism." For our part, we took notice of racial message that came forward, though they were relatively few, in part because organizers asked participants to avoid such messages in their signs.

Supporters of the tea parties, pejoratively referred to as "teabaggers" in the blogosphere, have been very defensive with respect to the racist charges, arguing (validly) that one ought to be able to criticize a Black president without being called "a racist." We use this space to attempt to explain how scholarly criticisms of racism differ from playground accusations, and why the former are appropriate to consider and apply to the parties.

First, we point out that folks who study racism and racial discourse by and large do not use the word "racist" as a noun (as in "He is a racist."). This is because the term is used to refer not to individual-level prejudice, but systemic oppression that is rooted in narratives and institutions that perpetuate and reinforce such individual attitudes. Since everyone who is socialized within a system characterized by historic inequality based on race is affected deeply (and subconsciously) by those messages, everyone is racist. (Note that we did not say that everyone is a racist). Colloquially, the term is used to identify persons who are unabashedly prejudiced on the basis of skin color. For that, we use the term "bigot."

The distinction is crucial because conflation of the terms leads to an assumption that there is virtually no racism left. Since there are only a handful of bigots among us, it is comforting to believe that we are not "racist" if we don't use the "n-word" or consciously base judgments on skin color. That's convenient, but it's dangerous because it has led to our collective inability to meaningfully confront the most pressing issues of racism in America.

Second, people who are supportive of the "tea party" messages broadly have tended to try to explain how some of the signs were not "racist" because there were plausible explanations for the designers' intentions that do not involve race. That is, there are cries that Obama supporters are "using race" to discredit otherwise valid opponents of the Administration. It is important to note that we divorce "racism" from intent because, as social scientists, we are primarily concerned with effect. That does not mean that it is not worth considering the intent of those propagating the messages; it just means that it is a task better left to journalist and scholars in the humanities. For us, it is enough to acknowledge that such messages are potentially not "bigoted" in the sense that someone consciously attempted to play on negative racial predispositions. We are all driven to some extent by our racism (as defined above), so arguments about whether there was consciousness involved in the design of the message is irrelevant to our point that such messages are rooted in and subsequently prime subconscious racist sentiments.

Actor and activist Janeane Garofolo drew a lot of criticism for saying that the "parties" were essentially exercises in racism by "rednecks." Her language is not helpful in the sense that while it drew attention, it undermined more thoughtful and clearly articulated points about the racial nature of the discourse at work at these events.



Huffington Post covered the events and posted pictures of some of the "most offensive" signs, some of which had racial undertones. We took the liberty to lift some of these and post them below with annotations that we hope will make it easier to understand why these messages can be considered to be racially insensitive.

This image depicts a Black man (ostensibly Obama) slitting the throat of Uncle Sam from behind. While the violence is offensive, it also works to prime racist fears of Black violence. If the president was White and a similar poster were made with the White president, there would be no issue. For some, that is the rationale for why there accusations of racism here are unfounded. That relies, of course, on what we (and others) have referred to (in this space and elsewhere) as the "false reciprocity" fallacy. In other words, just because a similar message could easily be made about a White person does not mitigate the racist nature of the message. If there were no history of racism and, thus, no negative stereotypes about people of color, then reciprocal arguments would be valid. But there are no myths about "White violent criminals," so messages like these are more effective as a result of racist predispositions.

This image is racist because it wouldn't make very much sense if the president were not African American. The phrase was made popular by the character Arnold Jackson, played by the actor Gary Coleman, in the 1970s/1980s sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes." If it were a contemporary common phrase, we might not be as concerned, but given the history, it is impossible for anyone to hear (or read) the phrase without an image of little (Black) Arnold Jackson's face, screwed up in a combination of confusion and contempt, rhetorically "asking" his brother, Willis, what he was "talkin' about." The degree of "offense" is lower in this image than in the above image because Arnold was a beloved figure, but the unnecessary connection to race is troublesome because it prompts us to think about Obama's race, thus activating our racial schemata and making accessible other information about African Americans -- most of which is negative -- as we evaluate Obama.

The level of ethnic insensitivity here does not need much explanation. Analogies to Nazis or Hitler are all too common in our contemporary discourse, and this is merely another example. It is clear that a number of people are upset about governmental spending, but suggestions that paying taxes -- even more than one believes is appropriate -- is on par with the attempted systematic extermination of an entire ethnic group are not only unfounded, but profoundly offensive.






Reminiscent of the "little girl monkey" imitation we saw at a McCain/Palin rally during the campaign, this youngster displays a sign that plays on stereotypes of Black folks as "not quite human." Such messages were important during the dehumanization of Africans during slave times and the continual denial of rights to African Americans during Jim Crow. As we have seen recently with the Washington Times editorial cartoon, such imagery still evokes powerful emotions and criticism.


This message references the 1990s-era In Living Color skit that featured African American comedian Damon Wayans as a parolee who does his community service by playing a clown named "Homey." According to a Wikipedia entry, "His goal in life is to get even with 'The Man,' a personification of the white males he thinks are "holding him down." There would be concern about the sign even if it were held by a person of color because it references a character that is criminal and suggests that Obama is motivated by a desire to harm Whites (as was suggested throughout the campaign in a variety of ways). As always, it is even more unnerving to see a White person use Black cultural images to criticize an African American.



ACORN has been criticized for the corrupt practices that have been uncovered in some of their work. The organization is designed to empower poor persons, particularly those in urban settings, by advocating for housing fairness, in part through registering people to vote. The corruption was a result of the organization paying persons for registering voters on a "price-per-registration" system, which led to some folks falsifying registration forms. Republicans and conservatives alleged that Obama's supporters were trying to "steal" the elections (imagery that plays on predispositions about African Americans and crime), even though votes could never be cast by folks who did not exist. While criticism of ACORN's practices are valid, the organization had nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of the "tea parties" last week, unless one buys into the conspiracy theories about Obama's election being a result of corrupt practices.

This sign addresses the non-issue about Obama's birth certificate, where opponents have tried to argue that he is not really a natural born citizen. While the question may have been valid when it was first raised, it has been addressed a number of times, culminating with the U.S. Supreme Court weighing in on the issue. See this video of a "tea party" in Cleveland in February where protesters claim with some confidence that Obama is lying about his citizenship status, some noting that he is Kenyan. This plays into racist notions of Black folks as untrustworthy and "other" that are pervasive subconscious beliefs among Americans.




This last image speaks for itself.

In short, what we hope readers will recognize is that while there are "wingnuts" from all parts of the political spectrum, thoughful analysts who are concerned about racism at these assemblies are neither claiming that all criticisms of Obama are racist in nature nor arguing that even the folks holding these signs are themselves bigots. If we are to make progress with respect to race relations, though, we must be diligent about pointing out where these messages appear, how they work, and why they are effective.

Can Obama Deal with Race While He's in Office?

THIS WEEK, Stephen was asked to comment on President Obama's demeanor in his recent media appearances and strategies to win support for the administration's economic plan. Ultimately, the question was: Is Barack Obama still in campaign mode?

That is a question that has been surfacing almost since Obama took office. But to us, there is a related question involved: Can Barack Obama stop putting race on the back burner to maintain the support of moderate Whites?

During the campaign, it was a clear strategy to steer clear of any racial politics so as not to appear to be "the Black candidate." Obama's historic speech on race just over a year ago was a reluctant response to the Jeremiah Wright fervor -- a controversy that, in part, harmed Obama because it highlighted his race. The skill with which Obama dealt with that controversy allowed him to "move on," meaning stop talking about issues that are of disproportionate concern to communities of color or that have race as a fundamental component.

Now that he is president, not much has changed. After his first press conference, there were reports that the members of the Black press, while invited to attend, were upset, feeling that they were mostly ornamental. THIS WEEK, the tone shifted greatly, after Obama gave a question to a member of the Black press during his prime-time press conference. An early question went to Kevin Chappell of Ebony, who asked about homelessness, which is certainly not a situation unique to communities of color (especially in the current economic climate, which was the impetus for Chappell's question), though about half of America's homeless are African American, which is vastly disproportionate to the percentage of African Americans (less than 12%) in the country. Obama's answer did not include any discussion of race whatsoever.

Perhaps it shoudn't have. Perhaps that the presidents decision to avoid any mention of race is evidence that America is truly becoming "post-racial." After all, suffering knows no color. Why should race come into play at all?

The problem is that Obama is smarter than that. He understands that ignoring the racial element of America's problems does not mean that there is no racial element. He has been clear in his writing and speaking that racial issues must be addressed directly and courageously. It's clear that he does not believe this is the time or place for such conversations to occur.

The question that immediately followed Chappell's came from ABC News's Ann Compton, who quite directly asked the question that perhaps only could be asked by a White reporter (lest claims of "racism" be tossed about by White conservatives):

"Yours is a rather historic presidency, and I’m just wondering whether in any of the policy debates that you’ve had within the White House, the issue of race has come up, or whether it has in the way you feel you’ve been perceived by other leaders or by the American people. Or have the last 64 days been a relatively color-blind time?"

The president gave a very short answer that essentially dismissed the issue altogether. Noting that the inauguration was indeed an historic time, Obama said that the issues he faces affect people of all races.

Well, of course, that's very true. It was true of his predecessor, and of the forty-two presidents before him. But Compton's question is interesting nonetheless, yet went unanswered. And it's probably for the best. It very well might have been a "gotcha" question. There are millions of Whites for whom Obama's election is repulsive. There are millions beyond that who, consciously or subconsciously, believe the Black folks look out for their own (unlike Whites, who care about everyone), and who are waiting for evidence that he is giving preferential time, attention and consideration to "his people."

But there are a lot of us who hope that progress toward racial justice can be made with an administration headed up by a person who is not only Black, but is more thoughtful about the complexities of race than any of his predecessors have been. Right after the election, Cornel West told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman that he hoped Obama would be a "progressive Abraham Lincoln" and that West aspires "to be the Frederick Douglass" to put pressure on Obama. On the other side, however, that potential is constrained by external parameters that range from political opponents to the realities of maintaining widespread public support at a time of national crisis.



So what's a president to do? We have believed for some time that Obama's real work on racial justice is likely to come after his presidency has ended (whether that's after one term or two) because, as the first Black president, he will feel as if he needs to not appear to be "too Black."

In that way, Obama certainly is still in campaign mode.

The Future of the GOP: Are the Smart Guys Poised to Take Over?

Conservatives and Republicans have not demonstrated a genuine commitment to understanding (let alone bettering) the lives of racial minorities since the days of Jack Kemp's creative, if controversial, "enterprise zones" idea (though see our exchanges with Dr. William Voegeli). This doesn't mean that conservatives do not care about racial minorities; they very well might. It's just that it's difficult to tell because the underlying philosophy is that individuals are responsible for their own success (irrespective of where the individual begins or the systemic barriers that are in place). Just as meaningful racial progress requires the support of Whites and minorities, it requires the support, in America's two-party system, of Republicans and Democrats. Sure, Democrats can get laws passed and enact policies without the help of GOP lawmakers, but the sort of change we envision is bigger than individual policies and government programs. To really turn the corner, Republicans and conservatives need to be involved.

That's why we are cautiously optimistic about the future of the Republican Party. THIS WEEK presented conflicting evidence, however, as the GOP continued it's "look, ma, no White guys" show with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal reciting a curious response to Obama's "not-State-of-the-Union Address." To be fair, speaking after Barack Obama is like batting behind Barry Bonds. The speech was solid, but that's about the most kind analysis we can offer. He delivered very stale (and overwhelmingly rejected) distortions about tax-and-spend liberals and how much we all love America and need to work together behind a nervous grin that was curious given the dire state of an economy that is suffering from years of the very ideas he espoused. In short, while he is still a rising star in the Party, he didn't gain too many new supporters, and he certainly didn't help to cut into the Obama Administration's strong support amongst the public.

But something is bubbling in GOP circles. While the annual CPAC meeting featured such speakers as Rush Limbaugh (who Tom Schaller argued THIS WEEK in Slate.com is the current leader of the GOP) and Joe the Plumber (seriously), the New York Times ran a feature on the last intellectual to head up the party: Newt Gingrich.

It is important to differentiate between being "intelligent" and being "an intellectual." If we can remove the bias of perspective, most of our national leaders are and have been quite intelligent. Not all of them have been intellectuals, though. An intellectual is a person for whom the world is complicated and who has the curiousity to continually work to make sense of that complexity. There is no inherent claim to the value of such persons, but as professors ourselves, we see it this way: We want the person who is best able to work with car engines to fix our cars, we want the person who is most adept at legal proceedings to represent us in court, and we want the folks who are best equipped to deal with ideas to be running the country.

Newt Gingrich is an idea man. We disagree with him on almost everything, and we think that he would be well served to be more reflective of his ethnocentrism (as we all would), but he's bright, articulate, creative and is committed to ideas.

Karl Rove is a partisan hack. So was George W. Bush. So is Rahm Emanual, who, is tacticly trying to paint Limbaugh as the "intellectual" voice of the Party). So is John Kerry. The lists (in both parties) goes on. All these folks are smart -- some say that Rove is a genius. If so, he is a genius at strategy, not at ideas. That's not an insult; most of us are not geniuses in anything. But with an increasingly educated public and a dying off of the segregationist-era generations, the slash-and-burn politics of divisiveness is much harder to sell in America. Gingrich understands this. He believes that his ideas will win out. We hope he is wrong because we see no plans for addressing social injustice in them, but the message here is that at least we can get back to discussing ideas again.

As the GOP licks its wounds after two crushing defeats in national elections, they will have a choice to make. They can turn inward, toward the bigoted right, toward the sensationalist, flag-waving, "remember the old days" crowd of Sean Hannity, or they can look forward to a multicultural world in which their ideas have a fair chance of gaining hold. It is not clear yet whether their candidates will reflect such a clear choice. Those that are in the forefront are not easy to categorize.

Take Jindal, for instance. He appears to be reasonably bright. He has certainly built a nice coalition of supporters in Louisiana. But if he's hoping to win progressives and moderates with a continued revisionist history that does not acknowledge that record national deficits were tallied under Reagan and W. Bush and that ignores the systemic imbalance of our social, political and ecnomic systems, he will take his place alongside those with the dunce caps (see Sarah Palin). If he embraces ideas, rather than politics -- see George Will, for instance -- he has a legitimate chance of posing a real challenge to Barack Obama in 2012.

And why, we ask, are all the Republican "smart guys" just that: guys? Pragmatism and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, ideology is not always as complicated as it might appear. John Boehner is an ideologue, but has not demonstrated much intellectualism. Ideologues can use heuristics (intellectual shortcuts) to seem as if they are understanding the complexities of the world. Rachel Maddow may be a good example from the left. She's very smart, and clearly consistently progressive, but that does not mean that she is an intellectual. Senator Susan Collins very well may be an intellectual, but in a system that rewards loyalty (rather than smarts) with high-profile positions and opportunities, it's not likely that she'll get a chance to lead. Where is Susan Molinari?

And while we're on the topic of dunce caps, we offer a big one to Senator Roland Burris and the small group of supporters who are trying to tie race to the pressures that the senator is facing to resign. We called Congressman Bobby Rush and others out on this pitiful attempt at generating support back when Burris was first nominated to fill Obama's seat by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Spineless D.C. Democrats like Harry Reid, who intially said that any nominee by Blagojevich would not be seated, relented when the race card was inappropriately played.

THIS WEEK, the senior senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, acknowledged that race was a factor in seating Burris. It shouldn't have been -- at least not in this way. We believe that the appointment should have gone to an African American given the way that the seat was vacated and the tremendous number of qualified Black lawmakers available. But no one nominated by Blagojevich should have been seated, and arguing that Burris deserved it because he is Black feeds into the stereotypes that conservatives have about racial progressives. So not only was the tactic inappropriate, it has been counterproductive to genuine moves toward racial justice.

When Barack Obama moved into the White House, we breathed a collective sigh of relief because even when we disagree with him (like when he invited an openly homophobic preacher to pray at his inauguration), we know that ideas are at the center of his thought process. Obama will be pragmatic (which involves making progressives angry at times), which is consistent with intellectualism. He understands that the world is complex, and he has a vision for a better America. There are Republicans who feel the same way and who have their own visions. We look forward to future battles of ideas by the smart kids.

THIS WEEK'S Non-Racist: Economist Arnold Kling

Long-time readers of TWIR will recall that we occasionally point out protests from folks whose racism has surfaced. Because we do not subscribe to conceptualizations of racism that involve intent, it should not necessarily be seen as an insult when we point out racism. From the standpoint of critical race theorists and others who are thoughtful about the complexities of race, denying our racism is, in fact, part of the reason we continue to struggle with race in America. If we would all own up to what is really going on, we would be much further toward getting to the root of our racial problems.

What is frustrating to us is the degree to which people go out of their way to explain away their racism so that they do not have to deal with it. To be fair, it is part and parcel to the system we have allowed to perpetuate. Specifically, since we have reduced the term "racism" to individual-level acts of prejudice, folks are understandably not comfortable with the label. Accordingly, when racism is "charged," the offending person feels that he or she must deflect the label. It's unfortunate. We have often joked to audiences during our events that we are going to have "I am racist" t-shirts made up for folks to wear so that they can instigate discussions about the differences between racism and bigotry (or prejudice).

So while we are sensitive to the reality that racism is a pervasive part of our culture and, as such, will surface from time to time, we have been particularly hard on folks who go out of their way to explain how their racist behavior or language was actually anything but racist.

TWIR readers will recall our treatment of Joe Biden's reference to Barack Obama as "clean" and "articulate" and Dog the Bounty Hunter's comfortable use of the "n-word." They will remember our analysis of Don Imus's explanations about how he meant no disrespect by referring to members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hoes" or Fox News's John Gibson's reference to Iraqis as "knuckle-dragging savages." And they'll think about how we joined in the criticism of Michael Richards's bigoted insults against Black hecklers and Clint Eastwood's ignoring of Black Marines in his film about Iwo Jima.

We have a new one this week.

Vanity Fair's James Wolcott nicely covered everything we would have, so rather than plagiarize or re-hash, we reproduce the text from his blog:

A few days ago notice was taken (I'm practicing my passive voice) of economist Arnold Kling's contention that the Obama stimulus plan was actually "reparations" in disguise. Given the complexion of our new president, this was interpreted as injecting a needless bit of race-baiting into the economic debate, raising the specter of a million Jeremiah Wrights marching on the capital mall with outstretched hands, demanding their cut of the action. Oh dear me no, protested Kling. No coded race talk was intended. He was actually thinking of the Treaty of Versailles, as reflected in the sentence "To the Democrats, the Bush tax cuts were a heinous evil, comparable to Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality in World War I." Idiotically hyperbolic and baseless as Kling's caricaturing is (seriously, name me one frigging Democrat who invoked violations of Belgian neutrality in railing against the Bush tax cuts), it did open the door ajar to possible acquittal on the racebaiting charge. To cool things down, Kling (an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, which has been taking out all those big ads) closed off comments before the mosh pit got any gnarlier.

Wolcott is referring to Kling's turning off the comments feature of the blog in question because, as he put it, "some other blogger decided that my reference to 'reparations' was a reference to reparations from slavery and hence a reference to the color of President Obama's skin."

While it is true that Wolcott was a bit more accusatory in terms of intent than we generally are ("coded race talk at least implies that the speaker was pro-actively coding and therefore did so with intent), the fact of the matter is that he pointed out that Kling's racism was driving his analysis of Obama's stimulus bill, which is right on point. Even if Kling did have the Treaty of Versailles in mind, as he claims, the word "reparations" clearly connotes reparations for slavery in our current political context. As a writer, he is responsible for being aware of that -- being insensitive to that reality is an example of racism.

But wait: there's more. From Wolcott's same blog:

And there the matter might have rested had not Kling surrendered to heat of candor today at a Heritage Foundation/Club for Growth confab and decried, "Barack Obama is destroying my daughter's future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs."

Now if Kling can't comprehend the implication of racial menace encoded in daughter-gang-thugs/home invasion, he's either fatuously clueless--too innocent for this wicked world--or weaselly disingenuous, and a drama queen either way. Did he feel the sanctity of his home was being violated when the costs of the Iraq war shot into outer space? Did he picture marauders smashing cherished mementoes when Hank Paulson introduced TARP? Anytime Obama's name and "thug" are thrown in close proximity, it's a pretty sure bet that the speaker or author intends to fan the anxiety and animosity of those who think Obama's presidency represents black grievance gloved with the iron fist of the state--and out to punish whitey. No wonder so many would-be Wolverines in the right blogs are talking about stocking up on assault rifles and ammo--they've got ransackers running wild in their imaginations too. I urge these people to confront their racial fears, think of Scarlet Johansson and strawberry snowflakes and the musical numbers in Rent, and join the rest of us in Matisse's dancing daisy-chain of eternal spring.

Wolcott's observation is confirmed, as he nicely notes, by Kling's invocation of the word "thug" to refer to Obama's plan in a way that he would not have (and has not) referred to the "destroying" of his daughter's future by the White men who are largely responsible for the economic recession in the first place and who ran up a the national debt by spending hundreds of billions on the war in Iraq. It is true that a thug can be White and that in other points in our history, the word would not have had a clear connotation of members of Black street gangs. Today, however, it absolutely does. It is considered to be "thuggery" when tax money is spent to build and stimulate job creation; when it is used to destroy or to provide tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans (most of whom are White), there is no street-level-crime metaphor used.

It is a classic example of implicitly racist thinking. It is possible that Kling was, as Wolcott alleges, "race baiting," but even if he was not, his subconscious use of racist imagery -- remember that Rush Limbaugh repeatedly referred to Obama as a "street agitator" and a "thug" during the presidential campaign -- is revealing of his racism. If he meant to do it, he's a bigot; either way, he is racist. We do not fault him for the latter, as it is a characteristic of everyone who has been socialized in America. The fault lies in his inability to reflect on it and accept it, which would then put him in a position to serve as a leader to those millions of us who are similarly dismissive of how much race matters in our culture.

In short, another teaching moment has been missed. One of these days a closeted gay fundamentalist Christian minister or a racist political conservative will be caught in one of these situations and, rather than try to wriggle out of it, embrace the reality and serve as a catalyst for honest discussion about the realities and complexities of oppression in America. When that happens, we will title that week's blog: "THIS WEEK'S Racist . . .," and we will mean it in the most complimentary way.

Obama Needs to Watch His "Self": Reflections of Class in the President's Language

Two years ago, Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate, stirred up controversy when he referred to Barack Obama as "articulate," among other ostensibly complimentary comments like "clean." As we argued at the time, the comment was reflective of racist beliefs because

[b]lack dialect is considered to be non-standard English – not merely “different” such as a Boston accent or a Minnesota accent, but normatively less desirable.

Even though compared to his immediate predecessor Obama's rhetoric features stellar grammar and mechanics, like most of us, he does not speak perfect English. His errors are reflective of the social class of his upbringing, if not his race.

The non-standard grammar that stands out most prominently is his improper use of pronouns in certain situations. Specifically, he is prone to using "I" when he ought to use "me," as well as placing the reflexive pronoun "myself" in places in a sentence where it is not warranted. These mistakes tend to surface during his extemporaneous remarks rather than in scripted addresses.

Here is an example where he actually makes both mistakes in the span of a few seconds:

Well, President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to -- to meet with him and First Lady Laura Bush. We are gratified by the invitation. I'm sure that, in addition to taking a tour of the White House, there's going to be a substantive conversation between myself and the president.(Press conference, November 7, 2008, Chicago)

These are very common errors amongst American English speakers, particularly working class Americans. Using "I" in place of "me" is likely a result of the widespread backlash against using "me" in the subject of a sentence (e.g., "Me and my brother are going to the game" or "My brother and me are going to the game."). If one does not understand why it is improper to use "me" in that situation, however, the word "me" in and of itself might be seen as a problem word (alongside "ain't," for instance). But when used in the predicate, the correct first person singular pronoun is, of course, "me."

Similarly, the use of the reflexive first person pronoun "myself" is likely a remnant of the same heuristic; if "me" is bad, it's bad, so it should be avoided. Accordingly, rather than saying "She gave advice to Sally and me," a substitute occurs that, in theory, makes the speaker sound as if he or she is more intelligent: "She gave advice to Sally and myself." But reflexive pronouns are only appropriate when the subject and the object are the same person: "I gave a present to myself"; "They had to second guess themselves."

This does not necessarily fit with characteristics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), sometimes called "Ebonics," though the close interrelationship between race and class in America is important to keep in mind as we analyze this issue. Working class parents often try to instill in their children characteristics (such as grammatical speech) that will make advancement and acceptance into the middle class more likely. As children, we develop our speech patterns in accordance with our environment, in addition to the formal instruction we get in school. When we carry errors into adulthood, it is the result of not learning to correct the mistakes we are socialized into from childhood.

A common characteristic of folks who have moved up to a higher social class is the fear (conscious or otherwise) of being "found out," of not really belonging. Obama's mistakes are likely remnant subconscious efforts from childhood to sound more intelligent. For folks who aspire to a higher social status (or wish to "pass" as being middle class), the language patterns often take the shape of longer-than-necessary sentences and inappropriately complex verb tenses.

For example, a click through daytime television programs that feature (exploit) the troubles and conflicts of working class Americans will quickly reveal evidence to support this claim. A common error, for instance, is the inappropriate use of the pluperfect tense. In response to a question about why he was carrying on an affair, a guy on the hot seat on one of these programs might start by explaining, "What had happened was, I met her at work. . ." when the simpler "I met her at work" would suffice. "I went to the store" becomes "I had gone to the store." Because we equate short sentences with younger, less proficient speakers, it is sometimes assumed that longer, more complex sentences are signifiers of intelligence.

Since "myself" is both longer than "me" and, well, not "me," it is often used as a substitute anytime "me" would otherwise be used. On the other hand, like most speakers who make this mistake, Obama does not always uses these pronouns incorrectly. Here is an example of his appropriate use of the reflexive:

Right now I want to say hello and introduce myself. (Visit with White House press corps, January 22, 2009, Washington, DC)

That is, the words "me" and "myself" are not interchangeable for speakers who use them improperly; "myself" is substituted for "me," but not the other way around. Further, it is likely that Obama knows when it is appropriate to use which pronoun. In times when he does not have a lot of time to think about his phrasing, though, he is more likely to make the mistake. Similar to the way we can learn about ourselves in those times when we do not have a chance to let our conscious catch up to our subconscious (see the Implicit Associations work for ways in which this is manifested in stereotypes), these slips allow us to have a glimpse into the authentic Obama -- not who he necessarily wants to project to us, but who he really is.

How, though, can we explain away Obama's errors as merely endearing reflections of his connection to the working class when we refuse to do so for his predecessor? Isn't this simply a case of "Black privilege" or "Bush bashing" by liberals?

Regular TWIR readers understand that blanket claims of reciprocity are fallacies in logic. Context matters. It is acceptable, for instance, for African Americans to use the n-word even though Whites cannot because African Americans do not have a history of using it to oppress, and Whites do. Gay men can refer to each other with a derogatory word, but straight men should not call each other such a name (as an insult) or refer to gay men that way because of the heterosexist power dynamic that is inherent in our culture. On and on. It is not hypocritical to criticize one group for doing something while allowing another to do it if context is taken into consideration. Fairness (justice) is not predicated on equality when there is not equality of power (or opportunity) at work.

President Bush's speaking mistakes are not a reflection of his environment during socialization. He grew up with tremendous privilege in an environment of wealth. There is no question that some of his language choices are a function of the Southern influence (which is unfairly evaluated as unintelligent), but his mispronunciations and confused syntax are not characteristics of the language of his youth. Further, President Bush exhibited no other characteristics that would alert us that he was a working class guy at heart. His public policies and behavior aided the wealthiest Americans (tax cuts) and ignored the suffering of the most vulnerable (Katrina). In short, the only characteristic he exhibits of a working class person is fractured speech.

Obama, on the other hand, is the inverse of Bush: he is working class at his core, but has had to learn to assimilate into the upper class. Ivy League education certainly helps, but old habits are hard to break, particularly at times when there is no opportunity to think through the rules.

As far as we are aware, there is no widespread criticism of Obama on these characteristics -- no attempts to make the errors about his race. Obama's few critics in the first week are more focused on their concern that his policies will be successful and the status quo will be unsettled (which is precisely what Obama has promised). For instance, Rush Limbaugh made news THIS WEEK when he openly wished for Obama to "fail." Lost in some of that discussion with Sean Hannity is a continuation of the "racism is a myth" language from the campaign.

I'll tell you, you know, a lot of people right now just — they're absorbed in the historical nature of this, first black president and so forth. Well, that is wonderful. That's great. But I got over that months ago after he won the election.

I mean, Sean, he is our president now. And he's not black, he's not from Mars, he's not — he's our president, he's a human being. We're a country comprised of human beings that the Democrat Party and the left have attempted to arrange into groups of victims, and that's who he appeals to, and the victims are the people waiting around for some grievance to be resolved.

They're waiting around for something to happen for them, and he is parlaying that. I think the fact that he's African-American, his father was black, to me it's irrelevant. This is the greatest country on earth. We want to keep it that way. It is that way for specific reasons.

We want to make three quick points about this before we wrap up.

1. How did Limbaugh "get over" the fact that Obama is the first Black president? That suggests that he was happy about it for some period of time. It is certainly the case that many Republicans and McCain supporters were happy that the color line of the White House was broken, but those folks are all sophisticated enough to understand that it was a significant accomplishment. For Limbaugh and Hannity (who have not displayed such sophistication), race never matters at all. Racism is a myth, slavery ended generations ago, and everyone has an equal chance at success in America. If Limbaugh spent any time at all appreciating the achievement, it would indicate that he recognizes that race is still a barrier to success in America.

2. The equation of being Black with being from Mars typically undervalues the importance of racial barriers to equal participation in American politics. It is a version of "I don't care if they are black, purple or green, I don't see color." There are not purple or green people, and to make such a statement reflects a fundamental insensitivity to the struggle of people of color.

3. Limbaugh blames progressives for attempting to categorize people. Slaveholders characterized people. Segregationists characterized people. As a result, we now all characterize people. If we ignore those characterizations, we cannot do the work that is necessary to reverse the legacy of those powerful Whites who created systems that continue to oppress. Progressives do not make victims (though they may contribute to a mentality of victimization if the focus is on individuals rather than systems); they work to unmake victims.
   

This sort of Orwellian double speak is what Americans rejected as they propelled the plain spoken yet eloquent Obama into the White House. Conservatives like John McCain and Lindsey Graham recognize this and have acted accordingly over the past five days. John McCain chastised his Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate for holding up the confirmation of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State saying, "I remind all my colleagues: We had an election. I think the message the American people are sending us now is they want us to work together, and get to work.

To which Rush Limbaugh replied, "Well, what had happened was . . ."

Moving Forward in a New Era

It is undoubtedly a new era in American racial politics. While most of the old rules still apply, there is a new dynamic in place that will affect the way we (and others) approach racism in our work. THIS WEEK, we offer our analysis of the inauguration with an eye toward the future -- not just of the nation, but of the Race Project and research, commentary and analysis on race generally.



We have no interest in being the sobering voice that kills the collective euphoria that is sweeping the world this week. The symbolic nature of Obama's rise to power is an important element in the struggle for civil rights in and of itself; the fact that he will probably work to move us forward in this area while in office (and, we believe, even more so after he leaves office) is icing on the proverbial cake.

There was a good bit of hyperbole swilling about yesterday, but a lot of it was accurate. This is, indeed, a new era. There has been a shift to the left that is comparable to the shift to the right that occurred when Ronald Reagan took office. If it can be sustained for a similar length of time, there is a real opportunity to socialize a new generation into the core American values of putting others' needs before our own intersets, acknowledging the lasting power of the legacy of slavery and segregation to earnestly combat injustice and inequality, and fostering a genuine belief in the dignity of each individual that translates into equal opportunities for every American child.

That is a tall order, indeed, and one that is in competition with a very troublesome economy and a fractured foreign policy record for the attention of the new president. Not everyone will be pulling in the same direction. Despite impressive nonpartisan demonstrations from the likes of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and others, there is a small group of folks who could not listen to Obama's speech with an open mind and heart and who have already begun the countdown to the 2012 election (which clearly indicates that they have no plans of helping or even rooting for a successful end to the recession, a smooth withdrawal from Iraq or any of the other plans Obama has for his first term).

In a speech at a forum immediately following the ceremony yesterday, Stephen highlighted three categories of citizens in terms of their response to the historic event. The text of that speech appears below.

Finally, we would very much like to invite TWIR readers to share their thoughts about the inauguration. Where did you watch it and with whom? What did you feel and think? We would love for the comments section to be a repository for the reflections of our readers -- people who are constantly thoughtful about race and politics.

Stephen Maynard Caliendo
Faculty Panel Following Barack Obama’s Inauguration
North Central College
January 20, 2009

Americans’ responses to this event can generally be categorized into three groups:

One group – the smallest – is sickened by today’s events. These folks never wanted to see a minority (a woman or a member of a racial minority group) in the White House.

Another group, comprised of mostly young people, is unimpressed or even frustrated by the attention being paid to Obama’s race. These are folks who consider themselves “post-racial.” They understand that it is a big deal because it is a “first,” but since they are not overtly bigoted (and know very few people who are), they do not fully grasp the significance of the moment.

A third group – by far the largest – is moved beyond words. Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, folks in this category reflect upon this, a day many thought they would not see in their lifetime.

The first group, the bigots, will have their day yet. They will not go quietly, though I am confident that they will be rendered increasingly irrelevant. They will devise new ways to couch their racism, deny the impact of our racist history, and make certain that any failing President Obama has will be at least in part attributed to his race. Look for suggestions of an “affirmative action” president from members of this group. They subscribe to the familiar double standard when poor folks need help it’s welfare, but when CEOs need help, it’s government aid. They will use Obama’s presidency as a way to accuse poor people of color of resorting to victimization and laziness – after all, if this black man can be president, racism is clearly not a problem, right?

The second group is, of course, the future. They will push forward with their vision of a color blind society. I would advise members of this group to try to move into the emotional space of the third group today. See it through their eyes. Try to understand that reminding ourselves about the struggle results in two positive outcomes: 1) we are less likely to repeat our same mistakes, and 2) we constantly remember that progress does not equal equality.

It is squarely on the shoulders of the third group to move the significance of this moment forward. For it is you who remember that the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue this morning are lined with the blood of Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name a few, the sweat of Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Morris Dees and Jesse Jackson, again to name but a few, and the tears of Nelson Mandela, Mamie Till, and millions of people of all races, ethnicities and nationalities who have watched as a nation that in so many ways is the beacon of democracy, justice and equality has fallen far too short of those ideals for far too long.

But today is truly a new day. The next generation will not see race as a barrier to the highest office in the land any more than the current generation sees having been divorced or having experimented with drugs – both of which were once deal breakers, but now are quite irrelevant.

The next generation must understand, however, that Barack Obama became president in spite of his race. His election does not make it equally likely for a black man or a woman of any color to be elected to any office, though it makes it more likely. His election does not mean that African American babies born today have the same chance at prosperity as white babies born today. His election does not lift from our collective shoulders the burden of doing the hard work that is necessary to heal the wounds of the past and the present. His election does, however, mean that we are much closer to those goals and to that work.

As someone who has committed his professional life to combating injustice and inequality, I’m very proud to be an American today – more than any other day in my life. I’m proud to share this moment with you, on this campus of this College, which has such a strong commitment to social justice. I’m thankful to those of you who decided to share this moment with us, as well. And I’m looking forward to moving into a new era with an optimistic outlook about moving closer to realizing the potential that is America.

Thank you.

Black and White Americans Search for Authenticity. . . Separately, of Course

There is a considerable body of scholarly literature from a number of academic traditions addressing the concept of authenticity. This is not an appropriate space to parse the differences or in the ways intellectuals from different areas discuss authenticity, but the idea is relevant to the discussion of THIS WEEK’s events.

Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice thoughtfully addressed a topic that we tackled last week: Congressman Bobby Rush and would-be Senator Roland Burris’s allegations that failure to seat Burris as Obama’s successor in the Senate smacked of racism. The argument is leveled against members of the U.S. Senate (all of whom are now White), as well as Barack Obama and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, both of whom are African American and both of whom have argued that Burris should not be seated under these circumstances. Trice nicely captures a dynamic that we first formally identified in 2005 when she asks: “What does it mean to be authentically black?”

It is a question that surfaced in the 2002 and 2004 Democratic primary races between Artur Davis and Earl Hilliard in Alabama and between Cynthia McKinney and Denise Majette in Georgia in 2004. Most famously, the battle for major of Newark, New Jersey between Cory Booker and Sharpe James (2002), as documented in Marshall Curry's excellent film Street Fight, featured questions about whether a lighter skinned, ivy-league educated, Generation X African American could adequately represent the interests of “real” Black people.

Trice points out that this is not the first time Rush has implied that he is “Blacker” than his political opponents. When Barack Obama challenged Rush for his Congressional seat in the 2000 Democratic primary, a similar theme emerged. Trice implies what we argued last week: Rush is contributing to a racist view of African Americans with such rhetoric.

These questions of authenticity amount to a self-stereotyping that is particularly dangerous because, as Trice notes, it places African Americans – particularly Black men – in a box that was constructed by White supremacy. She cleverly asks why a (negative) image of Black men is not only reinforced but perpetuated by Black leaders when the behavior of the White men whose behavior has resulted in the current recession has not resulted in questions about the inherent nature of White men to be involved in harmful, criminal behavior.

The answer is revealed, in part, by a new piece of scholarship published in the journal Science. Dedicated TWIR reader Jessica Nelson brought to our attention a report of this piece by CNN, where the study’s authors claim, “there are still really a lot of negative associations with blacks.” Their proof: an experiment where Whites were placed in situations where explicitly and implicitly racist activity occurs. Results are consistent with our findings, as well as that of other researchers: participants underreport their own levels of racism.

Authenticity is, in short, the way that individuals consciously view themselves compared to who they really are. (If you do not think there is a difference, you are either very mindful and reflective, or, more likely, you are being inauthentic.)

To understand this, it is helpful to conceptualize a three-part hierarchy of thought (adapted from the work of Milton Rokeach) with “values” at the base and “attitudes” on top, with “beliefs” in the center. Values are farthest from our consciousness most of the time and, accordingly, are least susceptible to challenges and change. Attitudes are our conscious thoughts, which we allow to be challenged routinely. Even the most steadfast of our attitudes are more susceptible to change than our values. Between our values and our attitudes lie “beliefs.”

They key differentiation between attitudes on the one hand and values and beliefs on the other is consciousness. Stereotypes live at the belief level. Think about it: few people have core values that involve prejudice. Quite to the contrary, most humans share common core values such as justice, equality, fairness and honesty. At the (conscious) attitudinal level, fewer and fewer people express racial prejudice. So when experiments like the one reported THIS WEEK – or the ongoing Implicit Associations work at Harvard – find discriminatory behaviors and thoughts, they are being driven by information that is stored at the belief level, which is below our consciousness unless and until a stimulus triggers them.

We have found that our students are particularly resistant to understanding elements of thought that involve the subconscious. They believe that they are completely in charge of what they think all of the time – no one can fool them. But, of course, there is a multi-billion dollar industry (in the U.S. alone) that is predicated on being able to affect people’s behavior without them consciously processing information. It is called advertising. If a beer company said, “Look folks, if you drink our beer, you will probably be able to hang around with attractive people, and you will be more attractive yourself,” we would reject the message as absurd. Instead, the prompt us with images to that effect that activate desires that reside below our level of consciousness.

Crucial to understanding authenticity is the notion of self-deception. We deceive ourselves when we refuse to reflect upon the gaps that exist between who we (really) are and who we think we are. When we self-deceive, we cannot feel at ease, which is why it is often those who demonstrate the highest levels of implicit prejudice who are the most adamant about their lack of racial resentment or animosity.

Our lives are filled with countless choices as we exercise free will. If we are not choosing authentically (basing our choices on what we know to be right and wrong, not what is easier or the way we wish it were), we are not really taking responsibility for the freedom that we have. We are deceiving ourselves and being inauthentic. Existentially-oriented psychologists differentiate between passive volition, where we allow ourselves permission to not challenge these inconsistencies (which is often a healthy mental state if not allowed to continue indefinitely) and active volition, where we engage in reflectivity that is designed to lead to higher levels of authenticity.

As we argue often in this space, we must embrace our racism -- collectively and individually -- so that we can work to dismantle the system that has socialized us into adopting racist beliefs. If we differentiate between racism (systemic preferences for Whites and the resulting beliefs consistent therewith among those socialized in such systems) and bigotry (the attitudinal-level hatred or preference for one race over another), we move much closer to authentically making progress toward more racial equality. To the extent that we collectively engage in inauthentic behavior, we at once prolong such progress, reinforce the beliefs that are the manifestation of a racist system, and perpetuate the beliefs that allow the inequality to continue.

On NBC's Meet the Press this morning, comedian and activist Bill Cosby and his coauthor, Dr. Alvin Pouissaint (Come On, People) discussed what Obama’s election might mean to Black Americans. When David Gregory asked Cosby what he expects of the new president, Cosby responded as follows:

I believe he's, he's asking us to be honest. I believe he's asking us to look around and see in all honesty what we can do and what makes sense as opposed to what will go into our pockets or make us feel good or who we can punish according to our religion. I think it's time for all of us to, to do things in terms of community, to stop worrying about what other people think of us and, and just go right on in and begin to talk to our youngsters about correct choices, to not be afraid to, to challenge them and be honest with them and, and, and to not be afraid to just stand and, and work with him and think that we're working with him to make change and choices and challenge.

What Cosby is referring to here, clearly, is that he believes Obama is asking us to be authentic. He is absolutely correct. In fact, later in the broadcast, there was discussion about Obama’s call to Black families to parent more mindfully (which is a major argument in Come On, People).

Gregory replayed the speech from last Father’s Day where Obama made the remarks:

If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They've abandoned their responsibilities, they're acting like boys instead of men, and the foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent houses. Half. A number that's doubled since we were children.

When Obama says “if we’re honest with ourselves,” it is the same as saying “if we’re being authentic.” He is asking us to examine the degree to which what we think we are doing matches what we are really doing. As Cosby asserts, Obama is asking all Americans to be authentic.
Yet both Barack Obama and Bill Cosby have been accused of being inauthenticly Black because they have not toed the line of the Baby Boomer generation Black leaders. Michael Eric Dyson has a thoughtful, controversial book that directly addresses Cosby’s admonitions to young Black males. Jesse Jackson was caught making derogatory comments about Obama because of this Father’s Day speech.



In the January 2009 “The Meaning of Life” (quite existential in its own right) issue of Esquire magazine, Jackson provides this somewhat cryptic comment in an expanded version of the monthly “What I’ve Learned” series: “People are screaming for the running back who scored the touchdown. But the lineman knows how he got there” (p. 108).

There is a suggestion that Obama (the running back) does not know how he got there. It is possible that the Jacksons and Rushes feel as if their contributions are simply not being recognized. It is possible that they are resentful for paving the way and not achieving the success or accolades they feel are due to them. And it is possible that they sincerely feel betrayed by the new generation of Black leaders – that they feel as if the identity politics that they (we believe correctly) recognize as crucial to the realization of the dream of equality is being eschewed in favor of a more “mainstream” (read, White) realpolitik. (Jackson includes a comment regarding the “cut [Obama's] nuts off” statement, as well.)

One particularly disturbing aspect of Trice’s column is her report that Chip Saltsman, the chair of the Republican Party of Tennessee who is seeking chairmanship of the national Party, sent a CD with the racist song “Barack the Magic Negro” to supporters. Trice alerts us to the fact that

[i]n cinematic terms, the "Magic Negro," is a character who's just "white enough" in that he's neither violent, threatening nor hypersexual. His primary function is to save the white protagonist and assuage "white guilt." Think: Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith.

While it is, of course, perfectly appropriate for Whites to comment on and be critical of the policies of Black officials and the acceptability of Black candidates, Whites have absolutely no seat at the table for this discussion of Black authenticity. It is a symbolic extension of colonialism and White privilege for Whites to presume that there is any contribution to be made to this discussion.

Whites have their own issues of authenticity with which to struggle, and they are not unrelated to the belief that Black folks cannot sort out their own disagreements without assistance from Whites. It is a direct result of racism that Black folks are wrestling with these issues; recognizing that is a big step toward making sure that future generations of Black Americans do not find themselves having these same conversations.

Jillian Maynard Caliendo, a doctoral student at the Adler School of Professional Psychology contributed to this blog.



Note: Stephen will appear with Dawn Turner Trice at a forum entitled "Race and Politics in the Blogosphere" at North Central College's Koten Chapel at noon on Wednesday, January 14 as part of the College's Martin Luther King Week activities. For other appearances by Stephen and Charlton, bookmark the RaceProject.org "appearances" page, which is updated as new dates are confirmed.

Year End Double Issue: The Color of Racism and THIS YEAR IN RACE

After a holiday hiatus last week, we offer a year-end double issue of TWIR. We begin with THIS WEEK's news about the replacement for Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat from Illinois and end with our traditional replay of your comments from the year.

The Color of Racism

As has been widely reported, embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich used his power to appoint a replacement to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama to name long-time Illinois political figure Roland Burris as Obama's would-be successor. Senate Leader Harry Reid has said that the Senate will use its constitutional prerogative to refuse to seat any person appointed by Blagojevich, and fellow Democrats from Illinois to Washington, including Barack Obama, have indicated that Burris should not be seated.

Racial discourse was abundant yesterday, first in the racist notion that Burris was only nominated because he is African American and later by U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush, who issued an absurd statement suggesting that a refusal to seat Burris would smack of racism.

At the press conference to announce Burris's appointment yesterday, Rush said this:

Let me just remind you that there presently is no African- American in the U.S. Senate. Let me remind you that the state of Illinois and the people in the state of Illinois and their collective wisdom, have sent two African-Americans to the U.S. Senate. That makes a difference. This is just not a state of Illinois matter, although it’s (INAUDIBLE) to appoint and (INAUDIBLE) — which is in the state of Illinois, but it (INAUDIBLE) — it has tremendous national importance — national importance. We need to have not just one African-American in the U.S. Senate. We need to have many African-Americans in the U.S. Senate.

So I applaud the governor for his decision. And I will ask you to not hang and lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer. Separate, if you will, the appointee from the appointed. Ronald Burris is worthy. He is the only one, I believe, that could stand in the gap (INAUDIBLE) time, and gather the confidence — reestablish the confidence of the people of the state of Illinois.

A few minutes later, Rush added:

This is a matter of national importance. There are no African- Americans in the Senate, and I don’t think that anyone — any U.S. senator, who’s sitting in the Senate, right now, wants to go on record to deny one African-American for being seated in the U.S. Senate. I don’t think they want to go on record doing that. And so, I intend to take that argument to the Congressional Black Caucus. I intend to take that argument to the senators. I intend to start with our own senator, Durbin, who’s a friend of mine, and I’m sure that he will stand ready to be reasoned with.

Then, on the CBS Early Show on Wednesday, he continued:

You know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there could be individuals and there could be situations where schoolchildren -- where you have officials standing in the doorway of schoolchildren. You know, I'm talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Ark. I'm talking about George Wallace, Bull Connor and I'm sure that the U.S. Senate don't want to see themselves placed in the same position.

Finally, Burris defended Rush's comments:

Burris, appearing this morning on WGN-TV, defended Rush's comments and denied the South Side congressman -- whom Burris invited to yesterday's U.S. Senate announcement--was playing racial politics.

Rush, Burris said, was just relating "facts and not playing the race card and not being emotional about it."

We'll be as clear as we can here: Bobby Rush is way out of line. Not only is he using race in a way that is counterproductive to the cause of advancing racial equality, but he (and Roland Burris) seem to be being used by Blagojevich because of their race to attract support for his defense. It is an immediate backslide of the symbolic progress that was made over the course of the campaign and in the last few months with respect to how race matters in American politics.

Bobby Rush is a former Black Panther, who clearly has the interests of racial progress and equality at heart. In this case, though, he is simply wrong. However, the distinction is more nuanced than many recognize.

Rush is absolutely right about the fact that Obama's successor should be African American. While the issue of no Black members of the Senate is larger and more complicated than this one case, given the context, it would be inappropriate for a replacement for Barack Obama to not be African American. This does not, as some reactionary commenters have asserted, make this a "Black seat." Given the history of Blacks in the Senate (there have only been three since Reconstruction) and the fact that Obama, who left because of being elected to higher office, left the Senate under positive political circumstances, an appointment should be as similar to Obama in terms of politically-relevant criteria -- ideology, policy preference and, indeed, race -- as possible. It's up to the people of Illinois whether an African American will hold the seat once the law provides for an election. But when the law calls for an appointment, the appointing official should be attentive to what the people preferred in the last election. (This is why it was appropriate for Obama to send a list of possible replacements to Blagojevich.)

Rush is also correct in his history. It would be quite negligent to not be attentive to the propensity for Whites to (consciously or otherwise) block progress leading to racial equality.

Where he and Burris err is in applying those principles to this situation. Harry Reid said that he and the Senate Democrats would not seat an appointee by Blagojevich weeks before we knew who that appointee would be. If Blagojevich would have stepped aside and Lt. Governor Pat Quinn would have appointed Burris, no Democrat would have been interested in blocking the appointment.

It is a smart, racially-charged political move by Blagojevich to 1) refuse to resign and then 2) appoint a Black successor so that he can create a coalition of support that was not there previously. By calling on Rush and Burris to not only defend Burris's appointment, but to defend Blagojevich generally, he believes that he is making it difficult for Barack Obama, other Black officials, and White Democrats to continue to pursue him politically. He is wrong, though. Bobby Rush and Roland Burris are being used. Perhaps they know it; perhaps they do not.

Rush may have "played the race card," but it is not an anti-White card, as some have suggested; it is an anti-Black card that he unwittingly is stuck holding. It is fundamentally racist (that is, anti-Black) because he is allowing himself to be used as a pawn in Blagojevich's political defense. Roland Burris would be a fine U.S. Senator, and under other circumstances, he would be a good choice for an appointment until the next election. Under these circumstances, his selection is simply a finger in the eye of the Democratic establishment that has abandoned Blagojevich. It is an attempt to make them chose between appearing to be racist and supporting the (perhaps prematurely) disgraced Illinois governor. Barack Obama didn't bite, issuing a statement almost immediately stating that the Senate should not seat Burris. We aren't biting, either.

There is, of course, an alternate possibility. Some have argued that Barack Obama is "using" right-wing anti-gay pastor Rick Warren as an opportunity to win support among those who expect that Obama is too liberal. Getting criticized by the left is one way to show the right that one is not too far from center. It is possible that Rush and Burris are playing Malcolm X to Obama's MLK in the sense that they give him a chance to prove to skeptical Whites that he will always come down on the side of "his people" (as Saxby Chambliss would say). So it is possible that we are being unfair to Rush and Burris: they may be skillfully manipulating conservative Whites into supporting Obama so that Obama has more of a mandate to govern. We doubt that this is the case, but it would be unwise to ignore the possibility.

We have a lot of respect for Bobby Rush and Roland Burris, and we certainly do not question their commitment to advancing civil rights in America. Unfortunately, as we all do from time to time, they goofed this one and are contributing to a counterproductive political maneuver that ultimately will fail. Stephen is spending the holidays in Western Pennsylvania and has already heard at least one conservative quip "They say that if we don't support the Black guy we are racist." It is not Rush's job to win over the hearts and minds of those who believe racism is a joke or an excuse, but this political stunt is merely fueling the fire of racial animosity at a time when it is not strategically wise to do so. It is an unfortunate turn of events at the end of a year that has moved us further toward racial equality than any individual year in the last four decades.

THIS YEAR IN RACE

It would be ridiculous for us to try to recap how relevant 2008 has been to advancing the cause of racial equality in America. We hope that readers stumbling across this blog for the first time will browse through the archives and look at what we have offered each week throughout this historic year. Instead, we continue the tradition of reproducing selected comments from TWIR over the past year (see our wrap ups from 2007 and 2006, as well). Since we have been quite busy (and quite public) this year, we also offer a few comments from our YouTube pages and Facebook Group page, where appropriate. As always, we reproduce these comments without editing or further comment: the good, the bad and the ugly. Enjoy!

Alex and Darla said...
Thanks for this blog...I am assigning it to my women's history students for discussion!
1/7/08 11:13 AM

jonm said...
Interesting discussion of tolerance. One might argue that I can be tolerant of views I disagree with but not be approving of them. So, what would it mean to be tolerant of those views? Well, perhaps it means that I "allow" that position to be heard (in the case of those with power) or do not dispute the right to express those views (in the case of the powerful and the less powerful). But can't I express disagreement or disapproval of a view and still be tolerant of it? Can't I say I am not going to have my convention here as an expression of my disapproval but I still tolerate your expression of that view?
2/11/08 11:24 AM

jonm said...
Many people might say "Why are these two guys wasting their time watching The View?" But this is where a lot of people get their information and ideas. And this might have been the only place where many Americans encountered a discussion of these issues. So, I think we need more such (good) analysis of what we encounter in the media. Nice work!
3/31/08 10:39 AM

Anonymous said...
I check out Dictionary.com for the meaning of racist. Here is what I found:According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, racist has 3 definitions, not just 2. Joy said 2 of them, but the third is "hatred or intolerance of another race or other races". According to WordNet® by Princeton University:Racist (adjective): 1. based on racial intolerance; "racist remarks" 2. discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion Racist (noun): 1. a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others According to the American Heritage DictionaryRacism: n. 1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. 2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race. So the word racist or racism doesn't just refer to a group who feels they have the right to dominate. It can apply to an individual who hates others on the basis of race or religion. So, by definition, anyone can be a racist. And to those people who think that white people haven't been oppressed: Nazi racists killed millions of Jews, and gypsies, Polish people, etc. They were white and were victims of racism. As a matter of fact, according to Online Etymology Dictionary, the word racist originated to describe Nazis:1932 as a noun, 1938 as an adjective, from race (n.2); racism is first attested 1936 (from Fr. racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories. But they replaced earlier words, racialism (1907) and racialist (1917), both often used at first in a British or South African context.Racism isn't going to end until we are all honest about it, starting with the fact that anyone is capable of being racist.
4/16/08 4:30 PM

George Lujack said...
Charlton McIlwain, I feel so guilty for being born white! I wish I could know how it is to be a victim of racism in America, like you are, so I could cry along with you and you would acknowledge my tears as being genuine. But alas, I am white and I could never know or understand such suffering. What could white people do to make blacks in America feel better about racism? I know... Elect Barack Obama! White people should give more to blacks by means of reparations, welfare, affirmative action and undeserved token appointments of prestige. Perhaps whites should become slaves to blacks for 200-years. After all, that is the path to true equality and healing!

Anonymous said...
I think obama has situational ethics too. He only addresses the hate speech with his associates when he is forced to and then it is only half heartedly. He painted granny as a racist in his "big speech" and in another interview I thought he said she was like all white people....what does that mean?
3/30/08 12:49 PM

Brandon said...
It is not deplorable to say that 9/11 may have occurred because US foreign policy.It is unfortunate to deliver the message so artlessly as to allow other people (conservatives) to frame the comments in way that somehow implies "We deserved it" and by extension the people who died deserved to die.It is unlucky for Obama that these words came out and that he had it respond to them.It is selfish for Reverend Wright to go out and repeat his statements without considering the blow back that would come at Obama. Especially after Obama went out of his way to embrace Reverend Wright while dismissing the statements as out of context (which they were).It is thoughtless for Reverend Wright to say that Obama's speech was political in the sense it was somehow duplicitous or dishonest when Obama said he had never heard the 9/11 remarks or didn't know what Reverend Wright had been preaching for 20 some years. And yes it is “deplorable” to suggest that he and others would not be surprised if the U.S. government was involved in systematically infecting the black people with AIDS!For everything the the United States has done wrong and the list is a long one. To suggest the the US government created or spread the infection of AIDS willfully (not through ignorance of ignoring the problem or not wanting to face it)is horribly hateful. The Tuskegee experiments are horrible and terrible. But if true, creating the AIDS virus would be a horror unlike any other.If the charge were true (especially creating it)then the United States would be responsible for the most evil, cruel, ungodly act ever committed by human beings. Nazism and fascism would be pebbles next to monument to sin that the United States would have created if it is true. Reverand Wright spoke about this in the Q&A session after his speech. This would be a crime that is unparalleled in human history when considering the scope and magnitude of death and damage caused by the disease, not to deny that there have not been other uses of biological weapons throughout human history or that those horrors are somehow less than important.If he really believes that the US created HIV/AIDS and purposefully infected black people with it then he needs to do more than say he read books that we haven't read. It is encumbant upon to him to back up these incredibly serious statements. And dismiss them with statements like, "I'm a pastor and not a political figure"On the plus side I have new summer reading to do.This point is really indefensible and honestly for a guy who was right on about 11 out of 12 points it isn't so bad. But to defend everything this man said because you may agree with him on his other points and you want Obama to be elected is wrong. Pobody is Nerfect! And sometimes people who we like disappoint us by saying and doing terrible things. His statement on HIV/AIDS doesn't make him crazy it just makes him wrong on that particular point.When we play into the paradigm that we have to defend even the indefensible we lose sight of what really matters and leave ourselves vulnerable to charges of ignorance and blind adherence and these are not intellectually tenable positions at least not in the long run.Reverend Wright may have dealt a fatal blow to Obama presidential run with his NAACP conference (I hope not) and its doubly disappointing coming off the fantastic Bill Moyer's interview he did.Here is hoping for the best!
4/30/08 6:58 PM

Anonymous said...
Why is it so "deplorable" to feel that the U.S. is above infecting a part of it population with HIV/aids. The U.S. government was not above removing and murdering Native Americans, enslaving blacks, or lynched blacks in large numbers through the Nadir.We are talking of the same U.S. government that ignored the plea of Jews during WWII, telling Roosevelt to bomb railroad lines to help save the lives of Jews in the Holocaust. Or the government that put Japanese Americans in prison camps because they were Japanese.This is the same government that is cited for human rights violation every year, and commits acts of terror (according to its own definition of terror) against its own population and the populations of other countries. Nope, Brandon your right the U.S. is above deplorable acts. How dare Rev. Wright question the U.S. government.
5/1/08 6:08 PM

Anonymous said...
I have learned over these many years and from traveling that racism knows no color. It is displayed by people of every culture. It is wrong - and allowing for mitigating circumstances for any group only permits it to fester and grow. The greatest and first lesson I received: as a child of nine after coming to the US I became close friends with a girl who like me was not part of the popular group. I was foreign and she was half-black and half-white. I could understand why I was not really accepted but not why she had no friends - she was an American from birth. So I asked her, and she told me: white people hate me because I'm half black and black people hate me because I'm half white. That wasn't just true of friends it was also true of family. At family festivities her mother's family (black) and her father's family (white) were never there at the same time as they did not get along at all. Imagine how much more positive things could have been for her if these two families had tried to learn from each other and come to an understanding if not friendship.
5/8/08 12:03 AM

Anonymous said...
Look, people that read the blogs. Racism is the term used by this website to represent top down systemic oppression. It can also be called individual verses systemic racism. People, stop being hung up on the fact that all people are racist. We are. Bigotry knows no color. White people can feel the sting of bigotry. However, they can never feel the sting of systemic oppression. Thats the point. Lets stop getting hung up on words.
5/8/08 4:11 PM

Brad said...
Buchanan's comments may have been "bigotted" or unPC, but nothing he said wasn't true, about black people or anyone else.www.goodoleboybumperstickers.com

5/9/06 6:12 PM

isaacjosephson said...
You look good on video, Charlton. I'm sure you made Rupert Murdoch very proud!
7/23/08 6:17 AM

Sandra said...
Actually, I DID think Barack Obama had--and still has--a "chance in hell." Perhaps you'll need to forgive me for being overly optimistic--but I've been a Barack Obama supporter ever since I heard he was running! Not all Whites are idiots! Let's agree that race IS an issue for many people--but it isn't the only issue, and it can draw voters both ways--to vote against, or to vote for. More importantly, many of us really do pay attention to the issues and to what our Current Occupant has been doing, and we REALLY don't want a repeat. I vote for the person--man or woman, Black or White--who presents a stance on the issues that I appreciate. There are others like me--people who really care about more than the color of someone's skin (or political affiliation!).
9/2/08 11:27 PM

Nichole said...
I think I have to unsubscribe my rss from this blog. I thought I was going to be reading something constructive about issues of race in our country and what to do about them. Instead what I have seen is a message that further spreads hate by labeling others and stereotyping.This is not a blog about racism... this is a blog about being antirepublican.I'm offended and disgusted, but mostly I'm disappointed.May we please have a constructive blog to read? For example,-here are the issues... and here is what you should do about them. These are the senators you should write to, vote for, etc...You're doing the exact same thing the republicans did about the lipstick on a pig comment... stretching what has been said to fit your agenda. Are you the pot or the kettle for writing this? I'm not sure, but I'm getting off the stove.Oh, and if this is how Obama supporters think and feel, perhaps as an independant I need to vote for McCain, or maybe throw my vote away on a third party, or maybe not even vote at all.
9/16/08 12:14 AM

Kim said...
"Constructive" defined as laying out the issues and telling readers what to do and for whom to vote as a result...strikes me as passive. There are plenty of sources for that. My precinct captain and any candidate or special interest website, for starters.I agree with many but not all points raised by "This Week in Race." However, each one provokes me to consider hard questions about why I agree or disagree, my opinions on these issues and what the campaigns are saying, and make up my mind for myself. That is what I see as the purpose.Nichole, your last comment about reading a blog, making an assumption about it and about a whole group of voters as a result--and using that assumption as a basis for what to do with your vote...wow. Consider that such a comment doesn't gibe with wanting to read and know the issues as a basis for deciding.
9/16/08 8:56 PM

Anonymous said...
I think it is good to have conversations around the issues that are raised in TWIR. I don’t think that 100% agreement or passive reading is the point of the blog in the first place (or ever a good idea). In that spirit, I want to react to the first posters concerns and raise a few points and concerns of my own. I admire that you are reading it; I personally tend to only read stuff that I like—preaching to the choir. You are the brave one here.No, all democrats don’t agree with TWIR, so I wouldn’t worry about voting any certain way based on being put off by this blog. It would be my guess, in fact, that most people do not notice or digest racist (and sexist) messages with the depth of analysis that you find here: democrat or republican. Most people never even think they are receiving a racial message—and just digest it unconsciously. That is the point of a close reading: to illuminate the message and talk about it in daylight.I know you said you are independent, but let me grapple with Sarah Palin as an example of really analyzing gender—as a way of reaching out. I am a democrat, and won’t be voting for her (not in a million years), but have extreme compassion to the sexism that this woman faces.Questions regarding her child rearing disturb me greatly—and my own internal reaction to her having a tiny baby—I had to realize that on some level even I was assuming that WOMEN should always care for children instead of men. Obviously her husband (or a nanny) can care for the child. And that is what very powerful, famous, motivated, rich, elite, (you decide) people do. I can judge that, but I shouldn’t say that men can raise kids that way but women never should. I’m sure that republican and democrat alike, many of us had to work through that moment—even if it is being framed that the democrats where sexist and the republicans were not. Democrat or republican: this issue (although used as a tactic) is about identity.

Another example: lipstick on a pig. I personally don’t think Obama was attacking HER simply because he has never (to my knowledge) waged an attack as petty and demeaning as that on anyone—it does not appear to be his style. However, the fact that we are *suddenly* realizing that a statement like that has sexist connotations, which it does, speaks to how sexist our culture is. I think a statement like that really gets back to how decorative women are expected to be, puts down “ugly” women for trying to be attractive, makes fun of bigger women perhaps (pig = fat), etc. I actually have total empathy for the people who really feel he was attacking her. If he was (and I don’t think he was): they are right, that is a horrible way to go! Democrat or republican: this issue (although used as a tactic) is about identity.What I am trying to say here is that this isn’t about political parties. This is about breaking out of the system where only white men can be leaders (at the highest positions)—and FOR ONCE noticing all of the little ways (and huge ways) that racism infests our communication. Just because you (or I as a white person) do not see how a phrase or comment could be racist, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t. It doesn’t mean that it is. But I say: read the blog. Try to grasp why it may be a racist attack. And commit yourself (regardless of how you vote) to trying to understand the complex, sometimes subtle, sometimes unconscious ways that we believe in our hearts that one race is superior, or one gender is superior. As I white person, I think for me, engaging with issues of race is something I have to do, I consider it an ethical obligation. And for every white person who actually worries about racism, there are a zillion who don’t. So I have a lot of work.

The history of racism on this planet is staggering. Anything we can do to continue to create a racially equitable world is worth our time.Both parties are totally capable of racism and sexism—just as all people are. I think the policies of the Republican Party do less to address these inequalities—for lots of reasons you may disagree with—so maybe that is what you are frustrated with. You don’t have to agree with that. Perhaps the authors of this blog are more involved with the political race—hoping that Barack will win and losing sight of the larger identity piece. I still think the information on this blog is extremely valuable. It feels democrat heavy because a black man is running on the democratic ticket—and yes, the Republican Party (unconsciously or not) is using racism as a voting tool. Same thing with the Democratic Party using sexism as a voting tool with Palin. Keep reading. Listen for the messages about how racism does function. Forget about the election, just like I am trying to with Palin, and think about the cultural messages that we are all receiving. Do these messages put down women? Do they encourage hatred of the African Americans? And then remember the election when you actually choose a person to vote for.
9/16/08 10:23 PM

Karla from the 'Burgh said...
Hi there, this is my first post to your site. I am actually an old friend of Stephen's from the 'Burgh, and I thought I would weigh in. First let me state that I am a Republican with a very open mind, yet very strong opinions. I did watch the speeches last evening, and paid attention to the items you had mentioned in TWIR yesterday. You were correct, the crowd was almost all white men and women, no suprise there unfortunately. You were also correct in your prediction regarding Ronald Reagan. To be honest, I think RR was one probably the best president of the 20th century. Most Republicans yearn for those Reagan years again in some ways. However, that's a whole other story. I do not believe that Obama is or was portrayed as a shallow orator who has political ambitions but no true love of country. I think Obama is an extremely intelligent man who loves his country and wants to change it. The debate starts as to how he wants to change it. I don't believe he is seen as someone that doesn't get it because of his race, I believe it is because of where he stands on the issues, and what his Presidential agenda is. People made that same comment about Hillary as well, myself included. What I took away from last night was that it was classic partisanship. It is alive and well. I believe that the Republicans would vote for someone whether they were black, white, purple, or some other color as long as they shared the same beliefs. When Fred Thompson used the words "smooth talkers and big talkers", two people came to mind to me, Bill and Hillary. Not once did I even think it was a racist comment. I talked with numerous friends today and we laughed because they thought of Hillary and Bill too. In my opinion there were not any racist undertones, only partisan ones, and rightly so. Furthermore, when Thompson mentioned the old beltway crowd, I would like to know how many people out there thought he meant anyone on the Obama/Biden ticket. My first thoughts were of your typical white political players, Teddy Kennedy,etc. McCain is conservative, and for awhile there, I was concerned he wasn't conservative enough. I was very concerned that he would pick the usual white male senator type candidate. Instead, he impressed me with Palin. The only better pick would have been Condi Rice. I think we need to remember that no matter who wins, this is a historical election, and we should be proud of our country. That doesn't mean that more work doesn't need done, but if you go back a decade or so ago, would you have predicted these two tickets? I was excited for the Dems to get Obama and I was thrilled that McCain didn't select an "old white suit from Washington". As far as the pictures of the classroom students goes, if there would have been a true representation of US classrooms, then the McCain camp would be under fire for not enough diversity in the photos. Do you see my point in this? I think the Republicans HAD to make a point to show they were inclusive, otherwise they would be under fire for not doing that. How do they win?Lastly, I will continue to watch for any racist stereotypes, etc. I do have to say though, that all I have seen is partisanship, partisanship, and more partisanship. If Barack Obama, or any black man would have been on the Republican ticket, I would have voted for them without thinking twice. I tend to think that Republicans are so partisan and set in their ways, that most of them would do the same. I am proud of Obama for going on the O'Reilly Factor, I am proud of Obama for defending Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter. I am proud of our country for electing Obama to be the Democratic party nominee, and I am thankful for the freedom of speech that allows us to debate this very topic.
9/3/08 9:22 PM

Jeremiah said...
RONALD REAGAN! Do you mean the president responsible for the 80's a time when the prison population of african americans nearly quadrupled, crack cocaine ripped through inner city communities, (just to name a few a things) where and what did the president do during that time people so dearly remember. The Reagan years which you idolize bring back harsh memories for some black people but many whites, republicans seem to be oblivious to situations faced during that time by black people. This kind of resonates in your comments. Obama has been portrayed as several things throughout this election I think a shallow orator is the kindest implied message and frame he receieved in a long time. Regarding Guiliani, I think many black males growing up in New York City during his "GLORY" days understand me when I say #$%^#^%Guiliani. He has a record of having issues with black leaders(google David Dinkins, police brutality is okay!,police state)The problem I have with the "smooth talkers" satement is that Bill Clinton was referred to as the first black president so it still rubs me the wrong way.And what does partisan mean anyway..AAHH I hope Obama gets elected for many reasons but overall I just want an election process with integrity and a president who will atleast help three fifths of the population........
9/4/08 9:17 PM

Sandra said...
You inspire me to watch what I really had thought to avoid, gentlemen! I look forward to your interpretations and analysis!Sandy Moore-Furneaux
9/2/08 11:17 PM

Monica said...
Well, first off, y'all totally had it for the themes--impressive. So enjoyed reading the entire weeks analysis of the RNC. Awesome.I'd like to add/suggest a possible theme with implicit racist undertones--"Celebrity"Convincing people that Obama is a celebrity I think plays upon the role that we (white people) frequently perceive as an appropriate role for African Americans. I think the celebrity claims, and the idea that he is “merely” a crowd pleaser, a skilled orator in this case, feeds the sensibility that African Americans can best be understood in terms of their entertainment value—and not in terms of their intellectual or political value. It’s like saying, “yeah, of course, he’s really entertaining, they sometimes are, but seriously, let’s leave the politics up to the white people, mmkay?” Amongst other things, one thing missing from this “analysis” (Obama is a celebrity) is the reality that black culture values expressive communication styles, more so than white culture. (Side note: think Rev. Wright). White American culture is not as verbally and nonverbally expressive (emotions included) as many other cultures (including Mexican culture and African American culture). I have witnessed this misunderstanding in the classroom many times. I would suggest that part of the critique of him being an “entertainer” is a cultural misunderstanding (on purpose) to lead (white) people to feel that he is not a real player in this election. I think the “celebrity” claim is culturally insensitive and yes, totally racist.
9/5/08 10:09 PM

MomSandy said...
All of this is making shudders run down my spine. I couldn't even finish the video, "The Rise of the United Socialist States of America," because it was so full of misinformation. I'm appalled and ashamed of my fellow Americans and parents--those who are teaching their young children obnoxious--indeed, truly noxious--racist behavior. Yet in some ways, I can see a good coming out of this. No more can Whites claim that racism doesn't exist in America anymore, that it's all "gotten better." The racist rhetoric reveals the truth--it is NOT better. Maybe, just maybe, people will look back and be ashamed and will strive for true change. Then again, maybe not. I will pray for true change, and some of us will work towards it, but the vitriol is a nasty disease--one that is highly infectious, I fear. I am so ashamed.
11/1/08 2:25 PM

Anonymous said...
Five years and a Super Bowl appearance later, McNabb has proven not only that Limbaugh is a bigot, but that he knows as little about sports as he does about politics.Oh, snap!
10/27/08 11:58 PM

Anonymous said...
I blog at Daily Kos and left a link to your blog and RaceProject.org in the comments of this diary on reaction to Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama at the site Free Republic.I listen to Dr. Caliendo when he appears on WGN-AM overnight, and think you all do a helluva job. If Obama wins this thing, we'll need your valuable input more than ever.
10/19/08 1:57 PM

Anonymous said...
Thank you for putting this all up, together, in one place. It is sad to read, but needs to be discussed nonetheless. It makes me sad to see people so at home in their hatred. It makes me sad to see candidates afraid to stand up and denounce the hatred. There is more they could be doing to stop this and less they should be doing to fuel it. McCains face when the woman said "he's an arab" was the look of a man who created Frankensteins monster.
10/13/08 10:50 PM

Anonymous said...
What I most appreciate about your column this week is the calm, thoughtful, well-reasoned method by which you proceed through damning fact after damning fact. McCain and Palin are creating a monster; McCain appears to be starting to recognize it, yet Palin continues her over-the-top, ludicrous attacks. The sad thing is that so many want to believe her slander.Someone we both know as a savvy political observer at OU with a pretty good knack for prediction told me today, "The race is over. There is nothing McCain can do to retrieve his position at this point." I truly hope that person is correct, as I fear for our country should McCain, and worse, Palin, gain access to the power of the presidency.Sandy M-F
10/15/08 2:45 AM

Sam Sommers said...
Very interesting post. I raised some similar issues on my blog when discussing the "real American" comments:http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-of-small-talk/200810/in-search-the-real-america
10/30/08 9:56 AM

Dr. N said...
First, the Bradley Effect doesn't measure racism. I'm not sure if you think it does. Do you? If someone tells a pollster that they are voting for the black candidate because they don't want to appear racist, that doesn't make them a racist.Second, I think the Bradley Effect is more myth than reality (even in the race that the supposed effect is named after). I've tried to find a peer reviewed study that shows evidence of an effect, but have found none. Do you know of any?
11/23/08 1:55 PM

Anonymous said...
I saw the "cool" video for the first time last night. I don't think it's overtly racist. Many of us thought the younger Bill Clinton was cool (maybe it was his coolness that made many call him the first Black president). However, in the SNL video they also linked coolness to temperament and not just to style. BTW for the idiotic Stephanoplous's for the record, Alan Keyes is not cool, Clarence Thomas not cool; JC Watts uncool; Colon Powell, smart, but not cool. I should also say 50 cent not cool, OJ Simpson lost his cool(in Vegas not Brentwood). Bobby Dinero, cool; Clint Eastwood, super cool, Mario Cuomo very cool so you see it's not a color thing, it a hip thing (something George would never understand).
12/19/08 4:09 PM

buddo1999 (2 months ago)
It was Adolph Hitler that spoke loud and proud, guilty of mass hypnosis..The people believed the promises and lies about the real agendaNow much of America falls for the same snare, (ahhh Im going to get my share)Star struck at fancy lawyers words, Disingenuous bla bla bla.. They do not really need to know much about facts, just rock my world stuff They sit and swoon fooled by promises of the moon.. Rom 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

chiefnugt (2 months ago)
I think this is crap - it is a big deal that Palin has been formally exposed as a liar and abuser of power by a bipartisan panel including 10 republicans. I don't see how she can make any argument that her opponents can't be trusted because of who they met with years ago when she's been found to have abused the public trust in her CURRENT position. I think that's a really big deal.

gmcjetpilot (2 months ago)

Does this dude [Stephen] seem like a woman, he almost looks like Palin. I agree it is going so bad for McCain but the Palin camp has spun it and of course....... LIED. They said it was partisan Obama supporters that come to this finding? WHAT THE F? Do republicans think we are stupid. MY GOSH THEY ARE LIARS.

okiedragonlady2 (3 months ago)

Silly?? And they didn't even notice that poor Palin didn't have a clue what the Bush Doctrine was. Your newscast [Stephen on CBS2 Chicago] is rather fluffy and full of air.

mjkopitzke (3 months ago)
I really appreciate the fact that even though we are aware of your [Stephen's] political standings, you can still analyze each side fairly and honestly.

TheBritishWatcher (3 months ago)

lmao, just slightly biased [Stephen's analysis on CBS2 Chicago]

nbear69 (3 months ago)
LMFAO, what exactly are you watching 'watcher' it certainly wasn't this video clip!

FindIntegrity (3 months ago)
I agree with Watcher. The analyst is not objective (expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations). But that is understandable, i is difficult not to be biased when one is from the opposite party. Just as it would be difficult for a conservative to be unbiased towards a Dem candidate. As and Indie, I avoid the experts and do all my own research.

allencrider (6 months ago)

Hah! You wingnuts insist that crazy preachers are going to cause John McCain to win the presidency. But you forget McCain has two crazy preachers hanging around his neck. I think this is the year that crazy preachers were kicked out of the national political dialog for good!That means the right-wing evangelicals are out of the GOP's inner circles.

greg2009 (5 months ago)
Obama has to get at least 40% of the white vote nationwide which will be difficult. The lowest I see Obama getting (no foul ups)is 35% nationwide.3rd party candidates will benefit Obama because they tend to pull away from Republicans and yes some of the white vote. If Obama gets 35% of whites he need overwhelming support from blacks and hispanics. He'll get it from blacks, hispanics is tough to get. Blacks and Hispanic must make up 30% of the electorate-this represents their % in the gen pop.

The following comments relate to Stephen's analysis of Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama. Warming: some of these are quite crude.

osrav (1 month ago)
You know what Oprah eats for breakfast?I'll tell you...STUPID CEREAL!!!

cscbill (1 month ago)
She doesnt cereal idiot! She is a very successful wealthy black woman who is in support of a new day!Obama is sent from heaven!

thejoker223 (1 month ago)

wait, i think you mean hell.

cscbill (1 month ago)
No heaven! I know what I meant to say. He's sent from HEAVEN! Most people talk the talk but dont walk the walk, Obama is living more Christian like then anybody!

thejoker223 (4 weeks ago)
so... are you saying christians kill babies? Well, i'm a christian, and i dont think Jesus said "Let men kill inocent children, before they get a chance" I dont know why any true christian, jew, or even muslem would think he's God-like.

mrscorie (3 weeks ago)
I agree. And so is Michelle! I could never be a First Lady because if Sarah Palin would have talked about my husband like that I would have said when you learn what the VP does based on the Constitution then you can have something to say. My 11 year old daughter knows more about civics than you do. But that is just me.

osrav (1 month ago)
lmaoget a real religion dumbass
:p lol

TruenoBlues (1 month ago)
Folks, keep this respectful, and don't bash other's religion... You will end up looking like an ass, even in the anonymity of the internet. A politician's religion has almost
nothing to do with how they govern. Listen to Dr. Caliendo speak before you
comment, and you may gain a greater understanding of politics.

gotcha109 (4 weeks ago)
Niger host, nigger president, ouch..like she would be as happy or supporting if he was white...think about it the fat hippocrat

eltel0686 (4 weeks ago)
u r such a racist idiot

tag1989 (3 weeks ago)
its racist fuckers like u which
is the reason why black people dont like voting for fat white racist
motherfukers like uurrrmm you.

mrscorie (3 weeks ago)
Well if you look at the
alternative, the two on the GOP ticket, its a no brainer.

nycsky38 (2 weeks ago)

there is always so white dumb fuck who wants to keep america stupid and
ignorant like him and his dumb cunt parents

Ama005 (2 weeks ago)
ignorance is what is wrong with this country.. READDDDDD GET EDUCATEDDDDDDDD

liquidaqua (3 weeks ago) It's a lie that Oprah hosted Obama as a presidential candidate on her show. I quote Oprah"At the beginning of this presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a
candidate, I made the decision NOT to use my show as a platform for ANY of the
candidates."

liquidaqua (3 weeks ago)
Oprah has had Obama as a guest twice -- in January 2005 and
October 2006. Both occasions were BEFORE the Illinois senator officially
announced he was running for the White House.

bjohnson9993

A peek of the White House 2 weeks after the Obama's get in-

1) 10 broken down cars on the front lawn

2) Garden overflowing with Watermelons

3) Motorcade now will have 3 Black Escalade ESV's with 26in Chrome Rims equipped with a stolen stereo

4) 15 of his family members sitting on chairs in front of the white house playing cards

5) Flavored blunt wrappers on the sidewalk

6) A pen full of chickens

7) A monkey as a pet

Tall Cool One

Because of concerns over being labeled “racist,” comedians have had trouble making fun of Barack Obama (there are some here). His relatively short time in the public eye has made caricatures difficult. There’s just not “much there.”

For its part, Saturday Night Live (SNL) has mimicked Obama (through the somewhat controversial depiction by Fred Armisen), but the jokes have not been grounded in anything particularly negative or hurtful. Part of this is likely due to a progressive-bias in the entertainment industry, but concerns about racism are undoubtedly at work, too.

THIS WEEK, Armisen artfully portrayed Obama as “cool,” but moved ever closer to racial stereotypes while providing ostensibly complimentary material. The performance is not offensive on its face, but even seemingly positive stereotypes are stereotypes nonetheless (few Jews are happy to be referred to as “good with money,” for instance).


This is not the first time Obama has been referred to as “cool.” For some time now, members of the mainstream media have referred to “no drama Obama” as a way to explain how the president elect’s grace-under-fire personality has handled all of the criticism that has come his way over the past two years. In May of 2007, This Week’s George Stephanopoulos asked Obama whether his race had something to do with his appeal:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings, when you're out on the campaign trail. And I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

OBAMA: That's interesting.

Here was our response at the time:

We LOVE the response. “It’s interesting,” which means, “what the hell is THAT supposed to mean?! All black people are ‘cool?’”

Cartoonist Kevin Moore appreciated our response and noted it in the caption to his April 22, 2008 "In Contempt" strip.


By couching that “coolness” in a jazz motif, SNL has taken the stereotype of the “cool Black man” a step farther, as jazz music has its roots deep in the African American musical experience.

For its part, Ebony magazine -- a publication with an overwhelmingly Black audience, put Obama on the cover this past August with an indication "Black Cool."

By complimenting Obama on his ability to be “cool,” SNL and Ebony Black politicians (current and future) in a box in a way that would not be the case if the target of the compliment were white. It’s not “insulting” the way Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton’s attacks were or the way Republicans invoked negative stereotypes about African Americans to question Obama’s truthfulness. In fact, it’s quite likely that Obama would not be offended personally. Still, it is important to point out that the joke rests on stereotypes about African Americans.

Too “sensitive?” That argument can (and likely will) be made. (See this “politically incorrect” Obama joke site.) We look forward to your thoughts in the comments section below.

Teach Your Children Well

While the vast majority of the country is looking forward with hope and anticipation to the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, a small minority of bigots are not only still licking their wounds, but refusing to accept the reality of America with a Black president.

While many bigots were concerned that Obama would win, many of them have apparently decided that his election was the end of the battle. For others, however, the concern that Obama will actually be successful is apparently more pressing. Some of the post-election hatred is coming from self-proclaimed Christians (something tells us Jesus might not approve) – and not just folks sitting around their homes. Here is the marquee from a church in Wichita, KS. Click to watch the video (below) of CNN’s Rick Sanchez’s story that includes the church’s pastor explaining (or trying to explain) the sign.

And, lest TWIR readers think the suggestions of Obama as anti-Christ were mere campaign ploys, see this Newsweek story about folks who seriously believe that he is.

The great wish that America’s racial tensions will lessen with subsequent generations is jeopardized by the resentment that some White Americans are passing down to their children. What was once implicit racial bias has, as we predicted, become explicit in the weeks since Obama was elected.

Among the most prominent in the news THIS WEEK is the incident in Rexburg, Idaho where children on a school bus chanted “assassinate Obama.” Mayor Shawn Larson issued an apology that is worthy of our analytical attention:

"I am extremely sorry that this incident occurred, and I do not believe that it reflects the values which make our community a great place to live and raise a family," Larsen wrote. "Parents must realize that things said in anger or even in jest can have lasting repercussions not only damaging young hearts and minds, but a city's reputation."

Whether purposeful or not, Larsen correctly uses language that differentiates between layers of consciousness. “Values” reside at the deepest layer under consideration here – the aspect of our thought process that is least likely to be effectively challenged. Most Americans share values and, indeed, most humans share a deep commitment to ideas of justice, equality, fairness, honesty, etc. Two layers toward (into) consciousness reside “attitudes.” These are the most likely to be challenged and changed. Adults who are open and honest about their distaste for an African American president have bigotry that resides at the attitudinal level. Most Americans do not. So when Larsen says that he does not believe that it reflects the “values which make [their] community a great place to live and raise a family,” he is technically correct.

What he misses, however, is what most of us fail to consider – the level of thought that exists between values and attitudes: beliefs. This is the place where stereotypes reside. If you have ever wondered how two Christians, for instance, can have such different political attitudes, this is the answer. While the values are identical, the degree to which and the ways in which values correspond to beliefs drive the degree to which and the ways in which beliefs are manifested in conscious attitudes. What Larsen does not identify (or perhaps even recognize) is that the collective beliefs in his community, like so many other American communities, are deeply racist. In other words, his note about the community’s values is beside the point; the values of which he is so proud have not been reconciled with resentful beliefs, which is difficult to detect under normal circumstances between at the attitudinal level, folks do not wish to be racist and know that they “should” not be (and even think that they are not), so we are skillful at hiding those beliefs – sometimes from ourselves.

But at times of high stress, fear, excitement, etc., our defenses come down, and our attitudes begin to more accurately reflect our beliefs. When this happens, we are surprised (remember how shocked Michael Richards was when he went on a racist tirade against Black hecklers at his comedy show?) because we are not used to seeing this side of ourselves. That doesn’t mean that the hatred is new; it means that the filters that we use to hide the uglier aspects of our nature fall, and we get a glimpse into who we really are.

We encourage readers to take a look at Idahoan Jeff Brady’s thoughtful op-ed regarding this incident.

In Maryland, at least one school official is working to battle the bigotry that is being reflected through children by designing a curriculum that targets racial hatred in the context of backlash against Obama’s election.

But in other places, the school officials, rather than serving as a calming force against parents’ racial hatred, are attacking minority students in the wake of Obama’s election.

In Allison Park, PA (Western PA – you know, the area that criticized Congressman John Murtha for calling them racist), a teacher’s aide went on a tirade after overhearing a Black student talking with enthusiasm about Obama’s win:

"He started laughing and went over to another student, in front of another teacher, and said that 'Oh, guess what they're going to change the flag to? The KFC flag. And they're going to change our national anthem to 'Moving On Up.’''

It's disheartening on one level, but on another level, it is very important that we recognize that these beliefs exist (and have existed) despite all of the attempts to cover it up and despite Obama's election.

Three Mexicans Walk Into a Bar. . .

Ok, that’s not the sort of racial humor we’re into, but we did decide to keep the blog super light THIS WEEK. After months and months of bringing you disturbing examples of American bigotry and racism, we offer some fun.

It’s important that we understand exactly why the items we include below are funny and why we are comfortable putting them forth in this space. First, while we are quite far from achieving racial equality or eliminating racial prejudice in America, there is certainly cause for celebration after white voters did not succumb to deep-seated resentment at the level that we expected on Election Day. So we’re giving ourselves permission to chill out a bit. A second (related) point is that we laugh with full knowledge that the ugly reality that undergirds each of these pieces is waiting for all of us on the other side of the joke. Barack Obama’s presidency will have a gigantic net favorable impact on race relations in America over the long term. But in the short term, there will be a level of psychological divisiveness with respect to race that we have not seen in decades.

Consider, for instance, this quote by Republican U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, who sought reelection this year. Because Georgia (wisely, we feel) requires a majority of votes for electoral victory (as opposed to a mere plurality), Chambliss will face Democrat Jim Martin in a runoff election next month. When asked on Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes (watch the clip below) why he wasn’t able to secure an outright majority on Election Day, Chambliss had this to say:

There was a high percentage of minority vote, and I am tickled to death that as many Georgians as did examined their right to vote. That’s what make our election process the envy of the whole free world, but we weren’t able to get enough of our folks out on Election Day.

All-righty then.

Chambliss could certainly have been referring to Republicans or simply to his own supporters when he referenced “our folks,” but given the proximity to his acknowledgement about the high number of minority voters in Georgia, it is clear that he was distinguishing “our folks” from minorities. We will certainly see much more of this “us versus them” mindset rise to the surface over the coming months. For our part, we will be examining the extent to which Whites strive to avoid or combat that tendency publicly. (Thanks to loyal TWIR reader Dr. Kevan Yenerall for forwarding this story to us.)




Daily Dose of Humor

Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart has not been afraid of highlighting race as an issue in the aftermath of Obama’s victory anymore than he was during the campaign. In the days since the election, The Daily Show crew has offered a number of hilarious takes on what it means to have the first Black president.

Black Liberal Guilt
The Daily Show’s Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore is deadpan in his admission that not only are Whites and Blacks are “square,” but that the real lesson to be learned from Obama’s win is that interracial relationships benefit everyone. But when he turns his attention to the ways so many White progressives have allowed their concern for racial inequality to be manifest in condescension, he hits the proverbial nail quite uncomfortably on the head. Take a look:



Takin’ It to the Streets
Race Project research assistant Sidra Hamidi alerted us to this Daily Show tidbit from earlier in the week. Here, Stewart points out the unfortunate comparison made by CNN’s affable correspondent Jeanne Moos as she reported on Obama’s motorcade’s trip to Washington, DC. If McCain would have won the election, her reference to O.J. Simpson as the helicopter cameras followed the SUVs would not have caught our (or Stewart’s) attention. As it happens, however. . .
(The relevant section begins at about the 4:45 mark of this video.)



“But It’s Different”
If The Daily Show writers were quick to point their mocking little fingers at patronizing Whites through Larry Wilmore’s commentary (above), they were even more hostile (appropriately so, in our view) toward African Americans who voted to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples in California. The dynamic of “oppressee becoming oppressor” is not new, of course: ethnic minorities from Western Europe were among the most openly bigoted against Blacks in the first half of the 20th century as the former began to assimilate into the mainstream of American social and economic (if not yet political) life. After being granted suffrage, White women did not uniformly turn their attention toward rectifying the ills of racial oppression, and Black churches have long featured some of the most homophobic attitudes in America. The cruel reality of anti-gay bigotry is highlighted, though, by the suggestion that one of the reasons Proposition 8 passed was because of the increased turnout of African Americans to the polls so that they could signal a defeat of one form of oppression (electing the first Black president), only to participate in another. Watch here to see Stewart’s comic outrage:




Fear of a Black President (1980s version)

Finally, the folks at Gawker.com cleverly posted this video of Eddie Murphy from 1983 (you remember Delirious, right – the red leather suit?) joking about the first Black president (after he referred to Chicago’s first and still only Black mayor, Harold Washington, as “that boy”). Murphy joked (watch below) that Jesse Jackson could win because White people (who might even get drunk before heading to the polls) like to vote for the “wrong” person as a “goof.” Of course, as the folks at Gawker point out, a good piece of the “humor”in this bit is the reality of how many people would be interested in assassinating the first Black president. It’s a sobering thought, of course, but as is the case with all great comics (and Murphy in his prime was certainly among the greatest), we are encouraged to soothe our fears with a good laugh now and again.



Consider, also, this Richard Pryor skit about the first Black president. In it, he notes that one of his priorities is to have more Black quarterbacks in the NFL, as well as more Black coaches and team owners. While there has been a proliferation of Black NFL quarterbacks in the past decade and the number of Black head coaches has risen slowly (the 10th Black head coach in NFL history assumed control of his team last month), there are still no Black owners. Further, a report released THIS WEEK shows that the number of African American head coaches in Division I-A college football is at its lowest point in 15 years (only four of the 119 schools have a Black head coach; nearly half of the players are Black).



Perhaps the most prescient element in Pryor’s routine, though, is the suggestion that the first Black president will use that position to “court White women.” Not only does this humor strike hard against the now-unspoken concern, which runs back to the arrival of the first slave ships, that Black men are looking to “violate” White women (perhaps Chambliss would refer to them as “our White women?”), but it brings us full circle from the first comedic piece we posted (above), where Larry Wilmore joked that Obama’s victory was partly the result of Obama’s Black father having “hooked up” with a White woman. It also reminds us about how the Republican National Committee played on resentments of Black men being intimate with White women in its discraceful 2006 attack ad against Harold Ford, Jr. in his bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate from Tennessee. Click the photo below to view the ad.


Of course, at the end of Pryor’s piece, the president attacks a reporter for talking about his mama. We’re going to go out on a limb and advise you not hold your breath waiting for that to happen in Barack Obama’s White House.


Major Overhaul of RaceProject.org

Many of you have already heard via Facebook or a direct email from one of us (or both of us – sorry if that was you!), but we want to be sure that everyone is aware of the massive revisions that have been made to the website home of The Project on Race in Political Communication. The full list of updates is too lengthy to print here, but it includes:

• a greatly expanded “resources” page
• detailed information about booking one or both of us for an appearance
• an updated “press room” with links to our print and broadcast appearances and an updated “studies and data” page with links to our publications and scholarly presentations
• more biographical information than you can imagine (or want) for each of us
• a video archive of some classic and contemporary clips relating to race and politics
• some nifty bells and whistles like the addition of a RaceProject “favicon” so that when you bookmark or navigate to RaceProject.org or TWIR, you’ll see the RaceProject logo in the navigation tab and address bar of your browser. (Look up now – is it there? If not, you may have to clear your cache and restart your browser to get the full effect.)

Please be sure to bookmark or favorite RaceProject.org so that you remember to check back for updates. As always, the best way to stay updated is to join our Facebook Group and maintain your email subscription or RSS feed to TWIR.

Bradley Effect: Dead or Dormant?

While it will still take some time to comb through all the entire exit polling data from the presidential election, one thing is clear: there was no net Bradley effect. Barack Obama won the states he was projected to win, within the margin of error that the last polls projected him to win. This does not mean, of course, that there was no Bradley effect. It is possible that Whites who indicated support for Obama in the polls chose McCain in the voting booth, but if so, they were offset by Whites who indicated support for McCain in the polls but voted for Obama.
This is especially possible in parts of the Deep South, where the “norm of racial equality” is weaker – where White folks might have actually been driven to conceal their support for Obama.

Further, it is inappropriate to declare the death of the Bradley effect as a result of one election. It is possible that the Bradley effect did not apply to Barack Obama's presidency, but the salience of the campaign, the fact that Obama is half White, the fact that McCain's campaign was so poorly run, or the fact Obama is a "first" might have mitigated the effect in this election (though it is also possible that this would have contriubuted to a Bradley effect). So we're not sure we can sign the death certificate for the Bradley effect just yet, but we are certainly happy to sing it a bedtime story (and slip it some Ambien) at the very least.

By the way, was John McCain advocating a Bradley effect vote the night before the election when he was interviewed on Monday Night Football? We wouldn't speculate on his intent, but we wonder if the fact that he knew that a Bradley effect was his only chance at that point didn't affect his answer to the question. Watch (below) and see what you think.



In any case, Obama did not simply win the election – he dominated. A six-point popular vote lead may not sound like a lot, but when one considers that there have been only five Black candidates who have won high-profile statewide office (U.S. Senate or governor) since Reconstruction, Obama’s victory was impressive. Further, in many states where he ultimately lost, he was competitive up until to the end. The Electoral College tends to exacerbate a popular vote victory (when it doesn’t reverse it), so that trouncing of McCain paints an exaggerated picture of Obama’s support. And it is true that winning a third term for the Republicans was a long shot in the current political climate, but it is wise for us to revisit – as we did after Obama secured the nomination – our prediction nearly two years ago that Obama would not win.
Before noting that Obama would not win the Democratic Party nomination, here is what we said about the general election in December 2006:

Let's begin with the general election, where Republicans and other conservative types will of course be part of the electorate. It seems an almost foregone conclusion at this point that Republicans, especially in the South, have mastered and continue to refine the art of race-baiting; they know such messages will always find fertile ground to influence voting decisions at the least, and develop into vociferous anti-black/minority opposition, even hysteria, at most (especially in a Presidential race). Of course there is always convenient cover for such insidious messages; for Republicans, it is ideology.

And you can already see it coming in this week's evangelical rancor over Rick Warren's invitation of Obama to speak at his megachurch AIDS summit. Should Obama win the nomination, he is certain to face vigorous opposition from Republicans who believe Obama's real sin is his skin. This sentiment will be denied of course, with claims that it is his stance on abortion, stem cell research, homosexuals, etc. - not race - that is the reason for opposition.

Unlike our incorrect prediction about Obama’s inability to secure the Party nomination, we were fairly accurate in our prediction of what Obama’s opponents would do.

Republicans absolutely used ideology as a cover for their racist rhetoric. Rather than attacking Obama for being “too Black,” they called him “radical,” “risky,” and labeled his policies “socialist” and “Marxist.” Rather than using Jeremiah Wright to suggest that Obama was too empathetic to the cause of Black liberation, McCain supporters suggested that their concern was Wright’s “anti-American” positions. Nothing about Jeremiah Wright’s sermons are anti-American per se; they were anti-White supremacy, and to the extent that White supremacy is an inherent part of America, the point could be made. We’re pretty sure that’s not what the McCain supporters meant, though.

Perhaps because of the primacy of the economic crisis, there was little substitution of progressive social policy positions for race. We were, for the most part, mistaken about that.

At the end of the day, we underestimated the American public with respect to the likelihood of using Obama’s race against him. Our final sentence in that blog reads as follows: “Obama certainly has the qualifications to be President, yet the barriers of race make us quite skeptical about the possibility of the nation electing the first black President.”

But if there is any doubt about the role race played amongst McCain supporters, consider this map from The New York Times, which shows the handful of counties where McCain got more support than George W. Bush got in 2004. Progressive blogger Yglesias astutely notes that given the level of poverty in those areas, it is unlikely that McCain’s call for tax relief for the wealthiest Americans can account for this increase of support for the Republican candidate this year. As our good friend Rush Limbaugh might say, “It is totally about race!” (Thanks to loyal TWIR reader Matt Zanon for passing along this link.)
















“Wright” Up Until the End

While John McCain technically kept his promise to not invoke Jeremiah Wright during the campaign, the last two days (Sunday and Monday) saw a flurry of ads featuring the out-of-context statements by Obama’s former preacher. The Pennsylvania Republican Party (PAGOP) ran one, as did the National Republican Trust (NRT) political action committee, the friendly bigots at Freedom’s Defense Fund (FDF), and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). Click each of the four images below to enjoy the full video.









The National Republican Trust (NRT), Freedom’s Defense Fund (FDF) and the Pennsylvania Republican Party (PAGOP) released a flurry of ads that used implicit racist messages. For the PAGOP, there was an ad called “Bitter” that brought forth a flurry of White folks (and one Black man with his child) that were supposedly the target of Obama’s “elitist” comment about his inability to win over rural White Democrats during the primaries and one that altered photos of U.S. leaders meeting with leaders of rogue nations to suggest that Obama’s believe in diplomacy with enemies of the U.S. was naïve. The spot includes an image of Obama shaking hands with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.



NRT ran an ad about Obama’s tolerance for terrorists, one criticizing Obama’s opposition to denying driver’s licenses to undocumented workers, and one linking his "redistributive" economic plan to illegals and terrorists.

TWIR readers will recall that FDF is the group who made the “Willie Horton 2008” spot linking Obama with former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. This group also ran an ad using Jeremiah Wright (above), and one linking Obama to a Kenyan leader (another scary Black man!).

While not a legitimate ad that ran in any states, it is interesting to note the attempted satire in this YouTube ad that targets voters who would only vote for Obama because of his race. Please be sure to note the last frame, where the person who made the ad declares that its not racist. Thanks for the heads-up, pal.

Racists for Obama


Of course, for Obama to win, he had to put together a coalition. Surprisingly, Salon reports that some of Obama’s supporters were espoused bigots. (Thanks to psychologists and loyal TWIR readers Dr. Jon Mueller and Dr. Steve Davis for passing this along.)


Strange bedfellows indeed!



Uncle Ralph

Ralph Nader, apparently not satisfied with the degree of offensiveness of his remark about Obama “talking White” this summer, had the following to say about Obama’s win: “[Obama’s] choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.”

Fox News had Nader on to discuss the comment (see below), and Nader explained that Obama wasn’t Black enough in his policy preferences. What is so remarkable about Nader’s remarks here and back in the summer is that he feels so comfortable telling Obama how to be Black.

As a rule, when Fox News calls you out on your racism, you’re in bad shape. If Fox would have been as diligent in calling out conservatives on their racism as they were with lefty Nader, we would be more impressed.




Not Taking This Well

Our colleague, historian and loyal TWIR reader Dr. Alex Kindell, learned of some text messages that were going around Northwestern Indiana after Obama’s victory. Here’s some examples (spelling errors in the original):

1. Free bbq chicken, chitlins', watermelon, and 40's at the white house tomorrow be there & bring your own blunts. We runnin this shit now!
2. The Statue of Liberty is coming down today. Aunt Jemima is going up holdn a chicken leg!
3. ALL WHITE PEOPLE MUST REPORT 2 THE COTTON FIELDS TOMORROW MORNING AT 7 AM FOR ORIENTATION!!
4. Washington is on the dollar. Lincoln is on the 5. I heard Obama will be on food stamps. (Reminds us of the Republican women’s club email that came out of California a few weeks back).

The truth is, however, that many McCain supporters will be supportive of Obama's presidency at the beginning (during his "honeymoon" period). Many of these folks shed tears with the rest of us on election night as the historical importance of the moment became apparent. Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will continue to have their coalition of the under-educated and the ultra wealthy, but there is little question that as a nation, we move forward together to try to address the most pressing issues of our day.


This GUEST

Be sure to check out Dr. David Worth's GUEST blog this week, where he discusses the work yet to be done with respect to race relations in America.





These ANALYSTS

Stephen and Charlton were busy this week providing analysis of the election. In addition to the spots embedded below, Stephen did an interview for TVN of Poland and had a live appearance on Al Jazeera English. If those clips become available, Stephen will post them on his YouTube page.










Re: Comments

We had to turn on the "moderator" function of the comments section because of the ridiculous amount of spam TWIR has been receiving. Please know that, as always, we will not filter or edit any germane comments. If, however, you are selling gold or erectile dysfunction remedies, you will have to look elsewhere for a host.

Four Days Left: Will The Hate Stop on Tuesday?

As we have done for the past three weeks (last week, the week before, and at the end of the first week of October), we continue to highlight the parade of hate that has surfaced from individuals and groups who oppose Obama’s candidacy. The question that remains is whether this activity will stop when the heat of the campaign ends on Tuesday (irrespective of the outcome).

All Together Now!

The vitriolic force behind bigoted Obama statements continued this week on the McCain/Palin campaign trail. At a rally in Denver, an Obama supporter has his or her (the supporter is not on camera) patriotism questioned and is told that “Satan is on [his or her] side,” while the words “terrorist,” “socialist” and “communist” are repeatedly applied to “Hussein” Obama (at some points referred to as “Osama”). One woman suggests that if Obama is elected, we will get “free turbans.” A man calls Obama a “Muslim communist” (whatever the hell that even is). Obama is also called “a bum” and a “piece of crap,” both of which we support because while they are mean-spirited, they are not racist.

The most disturbing element in this video comes at the beginning, when a little girl repeatedly creates monkey sounds and mannerisms while her family chants “Nobama.” She then remarks about Obama: “A monkey president,” while her little sister (we assume) is heard to say “a monkey from Tarzan” (twice). Click the image to the left to watch the video.


In Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the racism continued, but with more direct threats of violence. A McCain supporter chants “bomb Obama,” and clearly indicates that he knows of plans to assassinate Obama if he is elected, indicating a gun with his fingers (see image to the left – click for the full video). We expect that the Secret Service will be spending some time talking to this sweet gentleman.

Another man, with a sign that reads “Democrat for McCain,” admits that he would “never vote for a Black man.” Our favorite from this rally is a guy who is clear that he doesn’t “want to sound racist” when he states that he does “not want a black man running [his] country.”

No worries, bud. You don’t sound racist at all. You didn’t use the n-word or anything. It's all good.

One woman claims that Obama’s “associations and his judgment are not American.”

The well-informed McCain supporters at this rally inform us that Obama was 1) born in Kenya, as one man wonders where his birth certificate is (it is here, by the way, and has been for a very long time, though we’re sure these folks assume that it is either fake or that the Hawaii designation proves that he was, in fact, not born in America); and 2) Catholics who vote for Obama will be excommunicated from the Church.

Of course, there was the now-typical “Obama Hussein,” “Vote McCain, Not Hussein,” “communist,” “terrorist,” “welfare politics,” etc., as well. Good clean American heartland fun. On the “plus” side, one of the angriest men called Obama a “child killer,” which, again, at least is not racist.

Take Us To Your Leader

As we have pointed out before, the hatred is coming from the top down, not from the grass roots. A current example is a mailer sent out by the Virginia Republican Party that seems to have altered a photograph of Obama in a way that made him look similar to Osama bin Laden.

Research on campaign communication has shown that white candidates have darkened the skin of African American opponents in attack ads to make them look “more Black” (which translates into more sinister, lest trustworthy, etc.). Such an ad surfaced just this week in Minnesota.

The Republican National Committee has produced a spot in support of Erik Paulson, who is seeking re-election in the 3rd congressional district. His opponent is Ashwin Madia, who is Indian-American. Click on the image below, which compares images from Madia’s own ads to those in the RNC ad, to see the report from “Vet Voice” (Madia is a former Marine who served in Iraq, just the sort of person the RNC likes to attack as unpatriotic or anti-American -- see Republican Saxby Chambliss's indefensible abuse of Democratic Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in the war). You can see the RNC ad for Paulson here.

Robert Greenwald and the folks at Brave New Films have put together a compelling short compilation that shows how language that comes directly from Sarah Palin and John McCain has translated into the racialized hostility that we have seen at their events. It ends with David Gergen (you know, that member of the “liberal media” who advised left-wing wacko Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan) warning that such prompting could certainly lead to violence.

THIS WEEK, we witnessed a couple of steps in that direction. In Miami, Florida, two Cuban-American Obama supporters were surrounded and threatened by what the folks at FiveThirtyEight.com characterized as “an angry mob.” No one was physically hurt, and we hope that this is not a preview of things to come.

It was widely reported THIS WEEK, of course, that the federal government foiled a half-assed plot by skinheads to assassinate Obama. Though there was not much chance of this particular scheme being successfully carried out, the details are appalling.

Besides innuendo coming from McCain and Palin, there are more direct (but not too direct, of course) accusations coming from other Republican operatives.

Disgraced member of Congress Tom DeLay appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews on Thursday, who said not only that he was pleased with the tone of the campaign, but that McCain should actually step it up. He calls Obama a “radical” and a “Marxist,” and referred to his relationship with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers as evidence. DeLay is not afraid to play explicitly on white racial resentment: he noted that the problem with Jeremiah Wright was not his “outrageous” sermons (by whose standard?), but that he “is a black liberation theology preacher.”



When Matthews pushed DeLay about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s call for a media investigation to find out which members of Congress are anti-American, DeLay defended the latter day McCarthyite, calling her “brilliant.” (Hey Tom: even if you like her, saying stuff like that on national TV, which prompted her vastly underfunded and under-supported opponent to raise $1 million in less than a week, is far from “brilliant.”)

DeLay suggested that people “call it [Obama’s philosophy] what it is” (e.g., socialist, communist, anti-American, terrorist-supporting), and noted that “the real Obama” is surfacing. He went on to differentiate Obama from a “legitimate liberal” like Congressman Barney Frank, for whom DeLay “has great respect.” In contrast to Frank, Obama wants to “shred the Constitution,” according to DeLay.

Finally, DeLay issued a guarantee that Obama will not cut taxes – essentially calling Obama a liar – but rather raise them to “80 per cent or 90 per cent.”

Remember, this guy was the most powerful man in Congress not too long ago.

This characterization of Obama as hiding who he really is (for another example, see the implicitly racist flyer sent out by the RNC last week that appears to the left -- click for enlargement and a related article) plays best against an opponent of color because white Americans, who are distrusting of politicians anyway, are all the more likely to believe that a person of color would be dishonest.

McCain national spokesperson Mike Goldfarb’s suggestion of Obama’s “shady” connections unraveled on CNN Thursday, as host Rick Sanchez did what members of the supposedly liberal media should have been doing all along: he challenged Goldfarb to back up his statement that Obama has associations with people who are anti-Semitic (which, of course, is really a suggestion that Obama is anti-Semitic, a claim that has particular power when leveled against an African American), anti-Israel and anti-American. As you can see in the video below, Goldfarb had nothing and was caught literally speechless in a lie.



Goldfarb is not the only one spreading lies about Barack Obama in the last week of the campaign. What appears below is the text of an actual email making its way around the Internet. Pay attention to how “official” it is designed to look (never mind the sentence fragments and what we would hope would be largely laughable arguments).

From Sunday's Televised 'Meet the Press' Senator Obama was asked about his stance on the American Flag. Obama Explains National Anthem Stance

Sun, 07 Sept. 2008 11:48:04 EST, General Bill Ginn' USAF (ret.) asked Obama to explain why he doesn't follow protocol when the National Anthem is played. The General also stated to the Senator that according to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171... During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform are expected to stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. At the very least, 'Stand and Face It'

Senator Obama Live on Sunday states, 'As I've said about the flag pin, don't want to be perceived as taking sides, Obama said. 'There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression. And the anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all. It should be swapped for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song 'I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing.' If that were our anthem, then I might salute it.' We should consider to reinvent our National Anthem as well as to redesign our Flag to better offer our enemies hope and love. It's my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren. If we as a Nation of warring people, should conduct ourselves as the nations of Islam, whereas peace prevails. Perhaps a state or period of mutual concord between our governments. When I become President, I will seek a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, and a freedom from disquieting oppressive thoughts. We as a Nation have placed upon the nations of Islam an unfair injustice. My wife disrespects the Flag for many personal reasons. Together she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past, many years ago. She has her views and I have mine'. Of course now, I have found myself about to become the President of the United States and I have put aside my hatred. I will use my power to bring CHANGE to this Nation, and offer the people a new path of hope. My wife and I look forward to becoming our Country's First Family. Indeed, CHANGE is about to overwhelm the United States of America.[']

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it right. This could possibly be our next President.

If only that were the only one. Check out this stuff from a group called Wake Up USA that is making its way around the Internet.

These people would be hysterical if they were not so scary. They accuse Obama of using “hypnosis” in his speeches (we’re serious – see this 60-page document for the “evidence”), among other alarmist claims (oh, and this is literal, as well – check out this video which actually starts with an emergency alarm).

Click on the image to the left to see their video entitled The Rise of the United Socialist States of America. The video lists all of “Barack Hussein Obama’s” radical friends and makes predictions of what will happen if Obama is elected, which includes “Increased company shake-downs by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and their ilk, if your company is not color-coded to their requirements. Black Reparations on the horizon?”

There’s more. You seriously just need to watch this (and listen to the doomsday music that plays in the background) to get the full effect.

Oh, and you ask who is behind “Wake Up USA?” We don’t know. We can’t know because they hide behind the technological equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan hood. They steadfastly refuse to identify themselves because of the “many threats” they’ve received. They have an elaborate set of “email guidelines” that is also worth a read.

For a satirical swipe at these sorts of web-based lies, see A.J. Caliendo's posting at This GUEST on Race.


The “Comments” Bigots

This is an actual comment on a YouTube video that Stephen stumbled across this week. (He wasn't searching for an example – it was the first comment when he clicked on this video). The actual video is pretty lame (a couple of guys ranting about how stupid McCain's arguments are), but the comments are reflective of what we've been seeing all across the country over the past month. Read through the comments section of this or any of the videos about Obama and you will see some of the most amazingly horrific racist vitriol you can imagine. Just look at this person's YouTube member name!

Y0UFILTHYN1GGER (57 seconds ago)
barak obammmba = dumb ugly nigger!
Michele 0bamba = monkey face baboon with smelly nigger hole!
John McCain = honest war hero!

Reverse Racism

Finally, former NBA star and outspoken critic of racism Charles Barkley joined the ranks of Barack Obama, John Lewis and John Murtha as he was chastised for speaking honestly about the role of race in the 2008 election in an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown. Barkley’s comments are not really worthy of note for TWIR readers (but they are all on point, of course), but Noel Sheppard’s response is definitely worth consideration. Check out how incredulous he appears to be:

Words like welfare, terrorist, and Muslim are racial innuendos? Really?

Wow. I guess when I refer to Osama bin Laden as a Muslim-extremist and a terrorist, I'm really being a racist.

Thanks for telling me, Charles.

Of course, did you notice that Campbell never asked Charles if it's racist for a black person to vote for Obama just because he's black? Why doesn't that ever come up in any of these interviews about race and the campaign?

Hmmm?

We'll tell you why, Noel: Because perhaps Campbell Brown understands the racism is a term for systemic oppression, so it only works in one direction: to promote White superiority. The reason it “never” comes up is because most educated people understand the difference between racism and bigotry these days, so your invocation of what we have called the false reciprocity argument is way behind the curve.

We have already discussed in this space why using a word like “welfare” to refer to a tax policy by a Black candidate is racist. Ronald Reagan propagated a false image of a cheating welfare mother from the inner-city, and the image that most Whites have of a person on welfare has been that of an African American ever since. If the topic was a policy regarding aid to the needy, the word “welfare” would be more in order; because the topic is raising the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans so it can be lowered on the rest of us, the word “welfare” is inappropriate and patently racist.

The reason that it is not “racist” to call Osama bin Laden a Muslim extremist is because it is a description (and an accurate one) of one man, not a suggestion of characteristics based on stereotypes. When it is suggested that Barack Obama is a Muslim, there are implications that 1) all Muslims are extremists (which is patently false), and 2) that he is lying about who he really is, which plays into negative stereotypes about African Americans not being trustworthy.

Further, Sheppard conveniently ignores all of the “personal responsibility” calls Barkley puts forth – admonitions that conservatives would celebrate if made by one of their own.

But Barkley’s probably lying about his views on that anyway. He is Black, after all.

How Many “Individual Acts” Before It’s a Pattern?

Those of you who rely on the email distribution of TWIR probably wondered why you didn’t get last week’s issue. We wonder, too. There was a glitch with the email subscriptions that we think is fixed now. Please do take a moment to read last week’s offering, if you haven’t already. Sorry for the inconvenience.

For the third week in a row, we present a selection of blatant acts of bigotry related to Barack Obama’s candidacy. To be frank, the level and scope of these instances is surprising to us. From the start, we expected that there would be implicit racist attacks (and there have been). Scattered explicit bigotry is to be expected in any race where one of the candidates is a person of color. This current trend is exceeding our expectations, though, which is notable for two guys who are always "looking for racism" as our critics often note.

John McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates have worked hard to drum up anti-Obama sentiment surrounding his status as “other” in American culture. But, thankfully, they did it wrong. They were too obvious, which led to them being called out on their hate mongering, which in turn led simultaneously to rejection of that message by most Americans and an embracing of it by the most hate-filled among us. Here are this week’s examples with our analysis and Stephen’s annotation of a racist parable that is making its way around the Internet.

. . . To Promote the General Welfare . . .
One of the contributions to American racism from the Reagan years is the image of the “welfare queen” – the ubiquitous African American woman who lives off the hard work of White taxpayers, has more children so that she can have more money for drugs and alcohol, and raises her children to cheat “the system” so that they, too, can live work-free off the backs of “real Americans.” Despite the fact that there are and have been far more white Americans who receive public assistance, when the word “welfare” is mentioned to Whites, a Black face – often a Black female face – comes to mind. Like “extremely liberal,” “urban” or “city,” and “dangerous,” “welfare” is a code for “Black.”

It is no surprise, then, that McCain supporters have taken up the “welfare” call, even though Barack Obama has no plans to make any meaningful changes to the public assistance system that the “liberal” Bill Clinton greatly contracted. No matter, of course: Obama’s plan to change the tax structure (so that, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, 80% of Americans would be better off than under McCain’s) looks like “welfare” to the 20% of Americans who would pay more taxes under Obama’s plan.

But most of those 20% are already voting for McCain. So how can this help the ticket?

It helps because McCain and his surrogates refuse to ever publicly acknowledge that his plan differs from Obama’s primarily by way of McCain’s tax breaks for the wealthiest 20% of Americans. So, rather than acknowledge that 80% of Americans would be better under Obama’s plan, McCain and his surrogates attempt to convince the whites in that group that Obama’s break would go primarily or exclusively to lazy Black folks.


Both of the ads in question – one by a group called Right Change and another by McCain (watch below) himself, use the word “welfare” in the text, as well as prominently displayed on the screen, always with a picture of the (obviously) Black Obama. There is great potential for tapping into latent (or not-so-latent) predispositions equating African Americans with laziness, cheating and desiring that which they do not deserve.




Colin All Turncoats
Remember the Black Republican that conservatives most enjoyed pointing to as “evidence” that 1) racism was a myth, and 2) African Americans are attracted to the Republican Party?

Yeah, well, they hate that guy now.

The biggest campaign news THIS WEEK was also (surprise!) the biggest race-related news. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama on NBC's Meet the Press, bringing calls of “racism” from former Powell fawners. Despite the fact that Powell was very clear about the bases upon which he based his endorsement, conservatives reduced his thoughtful decision to race, suggesting that he, like most Blacks, is a liar.

Immediate response from George Will on ABC’s This Week was subtle but direct.

Subtlety and attempts to hide raw resentment of and animosity toward Black Americans was nowhere to be found when Rush Limbaugh weighed in first thing Monday.
Rush Limbaugh



It is not just Limbaugh’s policy preferences that reveal his racism. He resigned from a short stint as a sports commentator in 2003 after saying that African American quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media was hoping for a Black quarterback to succeed. (Five years and a Super Bowl appearance later, McNabb has proven not only that Limbaugh is a bigot, but that he knows as little about sports as he does about politics.)

Good Old American Values
Last week in this space, we noted Congresswoman Michele Buchmann’s call for an investigation (watch below) into which of her colleagues were “pro-America” and which were “anti-America.” We’re not the only ones who noticed this. Buchmann’s opponent, the unfortunately-named Elwyn Tinklenberg raised $1 million over the weekend, doubling the amount he raised throughout the entire campaign. At the same time, Sarah Palin was blatantly lying (again) through a half-apology for her comments about "real Americans."



By now, most of you have seen the footage of this crowd gathered outside a Sarah Palin event in Johnstown, Pennsylvania – a town smack in the heart of the rural “T” that the McCain campaign has been targeting in their efforts to win that state.



Loose lipped (and increasingly eyebrow-raising in his inability to filter his thoughts) Congressman John Murtha, who represents that part of west-central PA, was frank about the level of anti-Black bigotry in his district. Oops. Dude, you’re totally not supposed to say that stuff out loud. It’s like talking about a no-hitter in the sixth inning.

It was a matter of hours until Murtha’s opponent produced an ad feigning shock at the proposition that there were racists in the district.



Oh, did we mention that a fun-loving bigot in Ohio has hanged Obama in effigy, and, while too cowardly to show his face on camera, was happy to provide quotes to the local media stating that the gesture is not to be dismissed as political – it is racial.


McCain supporters dismiss this sort of activity as the actions of a zealous few, but if one looks back just to the examples we have pointed out THIS WEEK, last week and the week before, we need to start to question when these ostensibly anomalous actions are part of a larger pattern. Even if these were the only incidents (we know of more, and we certainly can’t assume that all have been captured on tape), is there really no concern? This YouTube video nicely reminds us about the ways marginalization and dehumanization have been used to oppress members of out-groups throughout our history.

Good Apples Begin to Surface
McCain supporters – some of whom are Muslim – strongly challenged a fellow supporter who was spreading unfounded lies and promoting anti-Muslim hatred at a McCain rally. Good to see you, folks! Nicely done!

This just goes to remind us that there are legitimate reasons to oppose Obama’s candidacy that have nothing to do with his race or religion. Those reasons are not convincing to enough Americans this year to win an election, of course, so appeals to racism have been the primary focus of the campaign since the end of the Republican National Convention in early September.

Coming Up Next?
Another week has gone by, and we have still not seen or heard much about Jeremiah Wright, even though Sarah Palin has argued that we should. Will we see him in the last 11 days? It appears as if the man in the running for worst campaign manager in history, Rick Davis, is leaving the previously-closed door open. Stay tuned.


Ant & Grasshopper

Here is a version of an old Internet-distributed piece of conservative propaganda that has been adapted for the current electoral context. When Stephen received it earlier this week, he posted it on his Facebook page with annotations that correspond with his unpacking of the racist assumptions implicit in the tale.

The Ant & the Grasshopper
This one is a little different...Two Different Versions. Two Different Morals.

CLASSIC VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, laughs, and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION: (1)

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, laughs, and dances and plays the summer away. (2)
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. (3)
CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? (4)
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green." (5)
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing "We Shall Overcome."
Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share". (6)
Finally, the EOC drafts the "Economic Equity and= Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. (7)
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. (8)
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of multi-generation welfare recipients. The ant loses the case. (9)
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. (10)
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood. (11)
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008.

(1) It is clear that the ant represents white people and the grasshopper people of color, most likely African Americans. If you think I'm reading into this, hold your criticism until the end when color (literally) comes into play, and Jesse Jackson shows up.

(2) Irrespective of race, people who are not working do not scoff at those who work as foolish. There is no dignity in not working. Most of the poor are, in fact, working very hard and working very long hours. Many of those who are not have primary child care responsibilities where enrolling the child or children in day care would be more expensive than money that could be made outside the home. The belief that the unemployed are lazy is merely a myth that middle-class folks use to make themselves feel better about not advocating for policies to help everyone get and maintain meaningful employment.

(3) This would be a horrible shirking of responsibility if, in fact, the "grasshopper" fit the description as put forth. Given that the grasshopper is actually working three times as hard as the ant but for far inferior pay, the question raised at the press conference is a fair one in a society that claims to be morally-grounded. Further, bringing it to the public's attention is the responsible thing to do, as many ants believe that everyone has had the same chance to gather winter supplies.

(4) Here is a misrepresentation of America that is as stunning as any other myth herein: Americans are very rarely collectively outraged at such inequality and injustice. If we were, there would be much less of it.

(5) Here comes the racism part! Both Oprah AND an animal of the same color as the grasshopper, lamenting that it is his color that is keeping him down.

(6) In this story, the hard working ant gathered his winter supplies all alone, so the claim that he got rich off the back of the grasshopper is unwarranted. In real life, almost no one makes it on his or her own. There are always people who make others' success possible by keeping the streets clear of snow so we can get to work, keeping the buildings clean, keeping the sewage treatment plants operating so we don't have to worry about that, keeping the electricity running, mining the coal to produce the electricity, loading the trains and driving the trucks that carry the coal to the plant, stitching the clothing that allows us to make a good impression at the meeting, and on and on and on.

(7) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (I presume these brainiacs meant EEOC, not EOC) does not pass laws designed to be a detriment to one race. In fact, they don't pass laws at all; they enforce laws regarding equal employment opportunities passed by Congress. The work they do is designed to maintain equality of opportunity because the ants's ancestors have designed a system that has allowed ants to maintain superior education to the grasshopper, which has allowed ants better opportunities to get better jobs, which has resulted in ants living in better neighborhoods so the little ant kids can get better education to go to better colleges to get better jobs and to further perpetuate the cycle. Because a grasshopper here or there breaks the cycle, ants are comfortable believing that the trends they either see or ignore are a result of grasshoppers being lazy. Ants begin to develop Internet parables to push this theory.

(8) White people do not get fired for failing to provide equal employment opportunities. If anything, the company is sued on behalf of discriminated workers and forced to pay fines. If that fine did result in a layoff, the ant would still have a much better chance of finding gainful employment than a grasshopper due to his experience at the offending firm.

(9) This is so offensive it almost doesn't even warrant comment. We are to believe that progressives are walking around handing people who have no experience positions of power (it wasn't progressives that advanced the careers of Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin, for goodness sake!). And I guess that the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate approved these Clinton appointees, right? Finally, the suggestion that "welfare recipients" (wonder if they're "green?") are not objective enough to fairly interpret information put before them is presumptuous.

(10) Here we see the same old fear mongering that conservatives have been putting forward to scare whites (of all social classes) for generations. Lazy "green" folks will take the homes of ants, and because of their genetically or culturally flawed character, they will not even take care of it when they do.

(11) Of course grasshoppers are all drug users. And are we back in the 1940s now? "There goes the neighborhood" when the grasshoppers (or spiders) move in (it's impossible to tell if "once peaceful" refers to the time when the grasshoppers lived there or way back when the ants lived there). As I have said in other spaces, dismissing this crap as acts of a fringe of folks is dangerous. Certainly there are thoughtful conservatives who care very much about racial and economic inequality but have different ideas of how to bring it about. But a lot of people buy into these convenient myths so that we can believe in the fundamental goodness of the American political and economic system and preserve it in the false hope that we, like Plummer Joe, can fantasize about someday taking advantage of our relative "ant" privilege -- a fantasy that does not include reaching out a helping hand or even giving an empathetic thought to grasshoppers who struggle each day to give their children a chance at breaking the cycle. Missing from the story: the millions of us ants who aren't so gullible and calloused.


If you have not yet set an RSS feed or subscribed to This GUEST on Race via email, please take a moment to do so now. Dr. Kevan Yenerall has a critique of the "Joe the Plumber" argument in the latest installment.

In related news, Dr. Yenerall and his home institution, Clarion University, will host Stephen as he delivers a lecture entitled "Fairytales, Radicals and Crooks: The Role of Race in the 2008 Presidential Election" in Hart Chapel at 8:00 p.m. this Tuesday, October 28. The event is free and open to the public.

Republicans’ Internalized Racism Continues to Surface

Lest readers think that we are cherry-picking examples of racism on the campaign trail, or that last week was an anomaly in terms of examples of blatant racism surfacing, we present four examples that have come to our attention this week.


ACORN’s Aches
There was continued discussion THIS WEEK about allegations of fraud surrounding the voter registration efforts of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The group was mentioned almost as much as alleged Obama BFF William Ayers on the campaign trail, and even during the third (and final) presidential debate on Wednesday night. On Friday, Sarah Palin spent time trying to link Barack Obama to the group, which is facing an FBI investigation over allegations that its operatives have submitted false applications for voter registration.

The group is clearly guilty of misconduct. We have no doubts. But there are significant racial implications to the attacks by the McCain campaign. ACORN is, by design, centered on work in the inner cities, where a disproportionate number of people are of color (and others who tend to vote Democratic) live. It is no secret that higher levels of voter turnout (which are not only predicted for Election Day, but are being seen in early voting states already) will benefit Obama and down-ticket Democrats. What is most disturbing, though, is the false label that has been placed on the allegations.

ACORN is not being accused of “voter fraud,” but rather voter registration fraud. Technicality? If one were to point it out to exonerate ACORN, maybe so. But we point it out merely to demonstrate that the result of the mislabeling is to lead folks to believe that inner-city (i.e., minority) folks are working to steal the election for Obama.

The truth is that while submitting fraudulent voter registration applications is both illegal and reprehensible, it cannot, on its own, result in any additional votes for Obama (or anyone else). ACORN has long had a practice of paying workers on a per application basis for their ability to secure voter registrations in their assigned area. To get more money, they submitted fake applications. That is horrible, and those folks should be punished; perhaps ACORN should be held responsible for their inability to stop the practice (and for engaging in tactics that encouraged it). But the fake people can not show up to vote. Even if all the fake applications were approved (which they clearly were not) and those fake names ended up on the voter rolls, the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team (which was reportedly submitted in Nevada) will not show up to that precinct to cast a ballot on Election Day. In other words, this is a story that is worthy of attention on the merits, but is far from the story that the Republicans are putting forth.

So why are they doing it? Some have argued that they are laying the groundwork for legal challenges if McCain loses by only a few electoral votes and has lost some swing states by a small margin (most allegations of fraud against ACORN are in swing states). We try to avoid speculating on intent, so we will point out that the effect of such cries plays into the stereotypical view of African Americans that they are untrustworthy, corrupt, and willing to cheat to get ahead. As we have pointed out in previous weeks, these are messages that have been leveled against Barack Obama almost since the day he announced his candidacy (by Hillary Clinton, and then by the Republicans). John McCain has had associations with ACORN as recently as 2006, but it is much easier for white Americans to believe that Obama would be involved in a scheme to steal the election.


“Out” in Ohio
Are we overreacting? Check this out.

While concerns about the so-called Bradley effect continue to play a role in political discussion throughout, we are presented with this example, where the Bradley effect is nowhere to be found. Far from telling pollsters they will support Obama and then revert to their racial fears behind the curtain of the polling booth, these White Midwesterners are out and proud about their contempt for African Americans and Muslims, and they’re happy to announce that these reasons are enough to keep them from considering voting for Obama.



While the sheer bigotry of these people speaks for itself (oops! Is that “elitist” of us?), we feel the need to comment on three of the comments.

1. “I’m afraid if he wins, the Blacks will take over.” Right. Because as soon as Obama wins, African Americans will gain the majority of seats in Congress and most state legislatures, be placed into seats in the highest positions of Fortune 500 companies, and kick all the White folks out of their suburban homes, forcing them to go and live in public housing. She’s got a good point, “that one” does.
2. “When you’ve got a Negra runnin’ for president, you need a first-stringer.” Which “Negra” first-stringer does this guy think should have run? That’s the problem with Black folks – they just cannot get their first stringers to do the heavy lifting for this country.
3. “He is friends with the terrorists of this country.” We cannot be sure if this guy meant terrorists who are of this country (William Ayers, perhaps?) or terrorists who wish ill upon this country (e.g., some radical Muslims), but that nicely makes the point of how well muddying the water can work on folks who are not in a position to process information critically. Neither McCain nor Palin ever accused Obama of directly befriending Muslim terrorists, but by 1) stoking the fires of his “other status” amongst the rumors of Obama being a Muslim while 2) focusing obsessively on Ayers, they allow people to come to the conclusion that Obama is friends with or even related to (in the previous speaker’s claim) foreign terrorists.

Chris Matthews confronted member of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) earlier this evening about her equating “liberal” with “un-American.” You need to watch this exchange to believe it.



Our research has shown a tendency to use "liberal" as a surrogate for "Black" in biracial contests, so there is no surprise that this logic is in play. We cannot assume that Bachmann is representative of Republicans broadly (or even a critical mass of them) in her ridiculousness, but directly after that, Pat Buchanan and The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel argued about whether or not Bachmann’s attitudes signaled a potential beginning for a fascist atmosphere rivaling the Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Short of that, though, is the clear evidence that the strategy to paint Obama as “other” (Black, criminal, liar, terrorist, Muslim, unpatriotic, un-American) is the only strategy for McCain. Polls show that it is not working (and likely backfiring), which makes us curious as to why it continues to be the exclusive campaign tactic with a little over two weeks to go in the campaign. Perhaps McCan’s internal polling reveals something that we do not know.


California Cruelty
A newsletter sent out this week by the Chaffey (CA) County Republican Women’s Club included this illustration – perhaps the most disturbing and blatant piece of racist propaganda that has surfaced in a number of years from a mainstream group.


To get a true handle on the myriad elements at work here, we quote from Michelle DeArmond’s article, printed in the October 16, 2008 issue of the Press-Enterprise.

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."

Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.

She said she doesn't think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

She said she also wasn't trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: "Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!"

As we have indicated in this space on a number of occasions, intent is irrelevant to the effect that racist messages have. It is hard to believe that Fedele did not intend to be racist (and it is impossible to believe her outright lie that she did not intend to link Obama with food stamps), but whether she did or not is beside the point.

Why does Fedele think that Obama’s statement that he does not look like any of the presidents on money was “outrageous?” It may not be relevant to someone who wants Obama to lose that he would have to compete against deeply ingrained images of U.S. presidents throughout American history in order to be elected, but it is an essential element of his historic candidacy. She was “offended” that he would draw attention to his own race? Sorry, there, Diane. I’m sure Senator Obama just failed to think about how offensive his comment might be to you. We can certainly see how being reminded that Obama is black (eeew!) might turn be off-putting. If “that one” would just keep that to himself, we could move past all this racial stuff, huh?

But the most hilarious (if it were not so dangerous) part of her statement is her claim that she does not think in racist terms because she once supported Alan Keyes. That is a good point, Diane. You forgot to mention how much you really enjoy the music of The Temptations and that you think Michael Jordan is an American hero.

As Joe Biden’s mother would say, “God love her.”


Missouri Motorway Madness

Finally, consider this billboard, which appears on a highway in southwest Missouri. The use of Obama’s middle name at rallies has been the subject of media scrutiny over the past few weeks, as it signals what appears to be an attempt to feed untrue Internet rumors about Obama being Muslim, which to thoughtful Americans is not an insult, but to those Americans who believe all (or even most) Muslims are violent and “hate America,” will work to perpetuate the idea of Obama as “other.” Taken with alongside charges that Obama is not patriotic, pals around with terrorists, and is not trustworthy, the potential for Whites to find a viable excuse to serve as a surrogate for race will allow them to vote against him guilt free.

The billboard was defended by local residents on the basis of "free speech,” as if the only other option was that government should censor the messages. But that -- like Obama’s “association” with William Ayers, his willingness to wear or not wear a flag pin on his lapel, and his “relationship” with ACORN -- is mere distraction from substantive issues, including Obama’s true character (which is certainly a fair issue for consideration). The issue here, however, is why this sort of speech is being used. People are absolutely free to be as verbally and symbolically bigoted as they want to be (so long as there is no incitement, which, we suppose, is arguable in this case). But in response to attacks on this message, the folks who support it defend only the process. We (and others critical of the billboard) would agree with them that the process of guaranteeing free expression should be upheld. So to argue on those grounds is irrelevant. We advocate for genuine compassion, acceptance and equality, not simply censorship to cover up the lack thereof. Suggesting that opponents simply do not want to see messages with which they do not agree is a sophomoric deflection from dealing with the ugliness of the message itself.

On the bright side THIS WEEK, Stephen’s prediction (on the RaceProject.org Facebook page) that we would see Jeremiah Wright has yet to be realized. Perhaps the comments by John Lewis rendered unwise drudging out that old argument, at least for now. Further, we predicted that someone would be caught using the n-word and/or displaying an effigy of Obama (with a noose, most likely), but that, thankfully, was not revealed either.

We suppose one could take those things to heart and try to look at the bright side, but in the face of the overt bigotry that has been revealed over the past two weeks alone, Pollyanna would have a hard time being so optimistic.


Be sure to bookmark our new blog, This GUEST on Race. In the coming days and weeks, we will be privileged to have blogs composed by guest scholars who will bring a fresh perspective to some of the issues that are of interest to TWIR readers. RSS feed it and share the link with your friends and family!

The Irrelevance of Intent: McCain and Palin Benefit from Racism

THIS WEEK, John McCain and Sarah Palin – both in public and in their campaign advertisements – continued their personal assault on Barack Obama as their standings in the polls (both nationally and in battleground states) continued to nose dive. This is typical, and on its face, not particularly problematic. Irrespective of party or ideology, when one’s candidate is losing on the issues, the last resort is to turn personal. Further, the politics of personal attacks have been part of presidential campaigns throughout our history. Most recently, Republicans attacked John Kerry as unpatriotic and untrustworthy, and Democrats attacked George W. Bush as being elitist and (paradoxically?) stupid. So some of this is not new. What is new is the extent to which these personal attacks on Obama tap into racist stereotypes of African Americans as untrustworthy (Obama has been called a "liar"), dangerous and as unAmerican.

Increasingly, McCain/Palin supporters have their backs up about this, so before they deluge the “comments” section with remarks that do not take into consideration the totality of our argument, let us be perfectly clear about what we are arguing (and what we are not).

We are NOT arguing that Palin and/or McCain are being intentionally bigoted in their comments. They very well may be, but whether they are or not is irrelevant to the point we are making here. Intent is absolutely irrelevant to consideration of what has been happening over the past week on the campaign trail. Intent is relevant to judging the character of candidates, but that is not what we seek to do in this space. We are interested to read about that in other spaces, but we do not claim to “know their hearts,” as President Bush might say.

We ARE arguing that the sort of assertions that are being made have the potential of unique and magnified effect as a result of the fact that they are being made against an African American candidate.

Perhaps what is most surprising is that we are not alone in this. While we have been writing about such effects for two years in this space, the mainstream media have, by and large, refused to engage in discussions of implicit racism. News organizations have certainly pointed out blatant, explicit bigotry (such as Don Imus’s comments, Michael Richards’s tirade, Mel Gibson’s drunken comments, etc.), but have largely shied away from shedding light on messages that maintain levels of plausible deniability from the sources. That is, if the racism inherent in the message is not a “slam dunk,” the mainstream media organizations have largely stayed clear of discussing it.

And for good reason. Since white folks want to talk about “intent” incessantly, any discussion of racism ultimately deteriorates into whether this person or that person is a “racist.” There is very little utility in this.

But what we have seen THIS WEEK is the media’s willingness to engage in decoding messages that are racist. While this is happening, McCain/Palin supporters are arguing that they are “not racist,” which, again is not at all the point. It is another example of Americans talking past one another on the complex issue of race relations.

Here are some examples.

While not new, we had yet to link to the Time Magazine story about the McCain ad (below) that some have argued suggests to fundamentalist Christians that Barack Obama may be the Antichrist.



But less alarmist concerns about Obama being “not like us” continue to pervade the McCain campaign discourse, just as we predicted at the start of the Republican National Convention.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd criticized what she sees as fear mongering by the McCain team (and McCain himself) in the wake of his “that one” comment at last week’s debate and what appears to be a resurgence of the same racist strategies that were used against McCain by Bush-supporting Republicans during his run for the presidency in 2000. (More on "that one" below)

In a Salon.com article, Gary Kamiya criticizes McCain’s campaign rhetoric THIS WEEK as reverting back to the historic Republican “Southern strategy” of invoking racial resentments to win the votes of white Southerners.

In The Washington Independent, Mary Kane reports about a flier that was circulated in her neighborhood that accuses white Obama supporters of liking him because of their own white guilt.

In contrast, a colleague of Stephen’s found this flier posted around her central Ohio neighborhood. (We are not sure if the errors are in the original or came during the transfer, but the substance is what is important.)

There were other reports that McCain volunteers were circulating information about Obama being an Arab or a Muslim, as well.

People protested outside of a Hendersonville, North Carolina real estate office, which featured this message on its marquee: “Osama-Obama; Not American; Not Welcome.”


This video (below) of McCain/Palin supporters in the parking lot of a campaign event made its way around the Internet THIS WEEK. Supporters are seen to be supportive of their ticket not because of the candidates’ merits or even the legitimate concerns about Obama (or Biden), but because of Obama’s status as “other.” The length they go to rationalize their irrational positions would be amusing if it were not so scary.



Politico also had a story THIS WEEK about voter anger at McCain/Palin rallies.

Individuals at McCain/Palin events were all over the news THIS WEEK, in fact. Much attention has been paid to the fact that John McCain twice had to disagree with supporters at events: one who said he was afraid of an Obama administration, and another who called Obama “an Arab.” John McCain responded in both cases by criticizing the supporter's comments, though he was booed by the audience after he did so in the first instance.

One guy brought an Obama monkey doll to a McCain campaign event. Watch the video below.



The mainstream media jumped all over this stuff (not fast enough for some, but it is irrefutable that they brought it to light).

Time Magazine’s Peter Beinart’s article complements TWIR guest blogger Ann Fisher’s offering last week by noting that attacks against Obama’s “patriotism” are not entirely distinct from appeals to “otherness.”

CNN’s Campbell Brown has put forth a number of statements and programs exploring the degree to which race has mattered in the election generally, and in the recent McCain/Palin events specifically. But, bless her heart, Brown does not entirely get it either.

Take this statement (below) as an example. Brown acknowledges the possibility of “race baiting” at McCain/Palin rallies, but criticizes those (like Dowd) who suggest that McCain’s referring to Obama as “that one” in the second presidential debate is overreacting. It is not. Invoking the common admonition by surface-deep ABC commentator John Stossel, Brown tells us to “give [her] a break” and asks us to “be careful” – to “use our heads.” Brown implicitly refers to the conscious mind as “our head” – as always, we argue that we must dig below that to really understand what is going on.

Brown says that calling Obama “that one” is not racist because she can remember her grandfather “talking about one of his kids or his grandkids as ‘that one.’” She allows for the fact that McCain may have meant to be disrespectful, but not racist. Here’s why she’s mistaken.

First, AGAIN, intent is not the issue. We do not believe that McCain was consciously being bigoted or even necessarily trying to implicitly tap into racist predispositions among potential supporters. He was, as he has been in all of the debates, being dismissive of Obama as not ready to be president. On its own, that is a legitimate campaign strategy. But with an African American opponent, referring to him in a way that puts him in the position of one’s child or grandchild is consistent with centuries of whites treating African Americans as children. If he had called Obama “boy” (as a McCain supporter called an African American cameraman this week), Brown would not have argued that the comment was not racist. If we are focusing on intent, there is a big difference between referring to Obama as “boy” or “that one”; since intent is not the most important element, the distinction is not important.

The McCain campaign has a strategy to convince white voters that Obama is not fit to be president on a number of levels. Since experience is not an option after they chose Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidate, they have focused almost exclusively on the “not like us” motif.

African American member of Congress John Lewis, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, reacted to all of these stories with a statement:

"As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

Speaking of the segregationist former Alabama governor and one-time presidential candidate George Wallace, Lewis said that Wallace "never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

The McCain campaign responded with outrage, and the Obama campaign came to McCain’s defense, all of which was centered on the ridiculous notion that Lewis’s claim was about McCain’s intent. Lewis was, like we do each week, pointing out that it is not enough to be non-racist; one must be anti-racist in the face of such harmful messages. McCain himself clearly realized this at the end of the week as he began to criticize those messages at his rallies.

Watch McCain supporter U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (below), who claimed on Face the Nation Sunday morning that Lewis’s comments were “an absolute offense to people like [him].” He went on to say “[W]e’re not going to be intimidated by this playing the race card simply because Senator Obama’s record has been attacked in a very fair way.”



But John Lewis was not at all reacting to attacks on Obama’s record. He was responding to suggestions that Obama is a terrorist, which the campaign has almost solely focused on since they abandoned discussion about issues two weeks ago. When host Bob Sheiffer asked Graham if some of the comments at the McCain/Palin rallies were “over the line,” Graham responded that what was over the line was Obama’s attacks against McCain on things like stem cell research. Hey Lindsey – that’s AN ISSUE. There can be disagreement as to whether Obama misrepresented McCain on that issue, but to not understand how criticizing an issue is not the same as implying that one’s opponent is sympathetic to terrorists is an alarming display of either stupidity or disingenuousness.

In contrast to all of this is an op-ed by Michael Cohen of The New American Foundation, who basically argues that if race matters at all, it will be in a way that benefits Obama. He says concerns about the way race implicitly biases white voters against Obama are “wildly overstated.”

Ok, Mike. Whatever you say. The examples we list above are surely just anomalies. Very few people really think like this.

How does that sand taste?

We leave you THIS WEEK with a grim prediction that we hope is not realized: the McCain/Palin events will become more heated and racial over the coming days. Someone will be caught using the n-word; someone will be caught with an Obama doll in a noose. Those actions cannot fairly be argued to be reflective of the candidates or the campaigns, but it is important to ask, as John Lewis has, why those folks feel comfortable saying and doing such things at McCain/Palin events. Remember, when McCain chastised the man for saying he was afraid of Obama, McCain was booed. In contrast, when Obama gave McCain credit for doing so, the crowd cheered. This is not to say that no Obama supporters are overly angry or out of control, but neither is it fair to merely say that “both sides have their wackos.”

The hatred is very lopsided here, and it is the responsibility of John McCain (and to a lesser extent Sarah Palin) to vociferously condemn such ideas, not just the actions. If they do, they risk putting a damper on the excitement they have stirred up among their most conservative and less educated supporters (we do not mean to imply any degree of overlap between those categories, by the way); if they do not, they will continue to alienate moderates that they will need to win the presidency.

Guest Blogger: Obama and Terrorists

THIS WEEK marks the first guest blog that we have posted. Ann Fisher is a senior political science student at North Central College and a multi-year participant in the college's Model United Nations program. Her research interests center on race and politics, as well as international relations.

It’s time to face it; Barack Obama was not just a skinny kid with a funny name. He was a skinny, black kid with a funny, African and Muslim name. These adjectives completely change the perspective with which we look at him. So when Sarah Palin claims that he is “palling around with terrorists,” she is not hoping to make one think of Bill Ayers, a former elementary school teacher and leader of the militant group Weather Underground. Instead she is hoping for a different picture.

It is not my intention to deny that the Weather Underground is considered a terrorist organization. The attacks committed by this group were horrific. Nor is it my intention defend Senator Obama’s interaction with this man. There may be a defense for why he would be involved with such a person, but more importantly I think we should look at the way in which her statements were framed. As the McCain campaign has fallen behind in the polls, they have attempted to turn the conversation to Senator Obama’s character. This should be no surprise to the Obama campaign, which has been defending his character from the beginning.

Obama has to deal with Reverend Wright, while no one is talking about the endorsement of John McCain by John Hagee, who even conservatives have called a bigot. As I said, I am not attempting to defend or condone some of Obama’s associations, but it seems to me that there was intention on Sarah Palin’s part not to make Americans think of William Ayers who in the past committed these acts (and is a school reformer in Illinois). Instead she wants us to put him in the same light as Osama Bin Laden. She is perpetuating this idea of difference.

Senator Obama is different in every way. It is true; Barack Obama is black, he has a father from Africa and attended a Muslim school in Indonesia. Barack did have a pastor who said things not often said by white pastors, and some of his past associates have committed horrible acts of violence. But John McCain has skeletons in his closet too. According to Paul Begala on Meet the Press (Oct. 6, 2008),

This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign…John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization. It was the U.S. Council for World Freedom. It was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. It was an ultraconservative right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981, when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League, the parent organization, which ADL said, “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and Anti-Semites.”

The Obama campaign claims that they are going to stick to discussing the economy, a strategy that I believe will benefit them. But now that I know this about John McCain, I wonder if a discussion on “guilt by association” really would play against his favor. I don’t think it would. I believe that this has everything to do with the fact that he is white man named John McCain, and his opponent is a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. The images displayed by that name ultimately display fear in the American public.

The views of TWIR guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect those of the directors of The Project on Race in Political Communication.

Here Comes the Scum

It is about to get nasty. With John McCain slipping quickly in the polls (both nationally and in key states – McCain’s campaign announced THIS WEEK that they were conceding Michigan), we are bracing for the most racially-charged rhetoric and advertisements to surface in the coming days and weeks.

Here is what to look for:

1. We certainly haven’t seen the end of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Since the high-profile release of snippets of selected sermons by Rev. Wright this spring, there has been almost no mention of him in the mainstream press. But conservative radio hosts bring him up all the time, so it is virtually certain that ads will surface that attempt to link Barack Obama to the incendiary remarks by Obama's former pastor. The plausible deniability of racism here is that it is Wright’s radical position, not his race, that makes him (and Obama’s association with him) scary. Wright’s radical positions, though, are based on theories of racial oppression and black liberation theology. Since that is not understood or endorsed by most of white America, and because it will highlight Obama’s “blackness,” the result is an effective prime of white fears and resentment about the potential policies of a black president. These concerns are reinforced by the fact that even though Obama does not espouse similar beliefs, a stereotype of African Americans is that they are shifty and untrustworthy, so it will be easy for white Americans to believe that Obama is simply being deceitful.
2. Look for associations of Barack Obama with former member of the Weathermen Underground William Ayers. Even though Ayers is white, there are racial undercurrents to Obama’s relationship with him because portraying a black candidate as “a radical,” “out of the mainstream,” or “extremely liberal” has been an effective mechanism for priming racial resentment in biracial campaigns over the past twenty years. Add to this ostensibly race-neutral (but very racially-infused) terms such as “street agitator” and “thug” (both used by Rush Limbaugh), Obama will be portrayed as “dangerous,” which plays into the stereotype of the dangerous black man that has been cultivated over the past 400 years in America.
3. While it is possible that the first two items might come primarily or exclusively from 527 groups and the Republican Party, expect the McCain campaign to hammer home a broader theme about Obama that “he’s just not like us.” Part of that will focus on policy differences (which are largely non-racial), but a large part of the strategy will also be suggestions that he is at once too black (he is liberal, he cannot be trusted, he associates himself with shady people) and elitist (he has contempt for fundamentalist Christians, he is not in touch with common people because of his Hollywood connections and Ivy League education, he has shown a disregard for American troops in battle, he is getting a pass from the “liberal elite” media while McCain and Palin are continually grilled over irrelevant issues like having seven homes or being unable to name one Supreme Court case).

The real question will be the degree to which these racist attacks will be effective. Remember that the most powerful defense against “stealth,” "implicit" or “dog whistle” racist appeals is pointing out the inherent racism in the appeals. When moderate and progressive whites realize that their deep-seated racism is being activated, the result is usually the reverse of what would be the case if consciousness is not heightened, with folks pushing against the discomfort of the realization. In this case, though, Republicans have learned from the Clintons’ strategy from the nominating contests and will accuse Obama and his surrogates of “playing the race card” when they point out the racism. Because the most dangerous thing for Obama in the remaining weeks is being seen as “the black candidate,” he can hardly afford the risk. We expect that Obama himself will avoid mentioning race at all in the coming weeks (unless there is a direct question asked of him in an interview or a debate), leaving the spotlight shining to surrogates and media analysts. Because of Republican efforts to equate the media with the Obama campaign proper, though, there will still be plenty of fodder for accusations of Obama playing the race card, which, as noted above, will be a consistent element in McCain’s attacks.

Bias Against the Young?
Tuesday is the next presidential debate, moderated by Tom Brokaw in a town-hall format. We expect that the folks who believed that Gwen Ifill could not be objective in her role as the vice-presidential debate moderator because she’s finishing a book on African American politicians will be equally vigilant about arguing that Brokaw, who wrote a best seller about “the greatest generation” will not be able to be fair toward the 40-something Obama in a debate with the 70-something McCain. Unless the attacks were more about African Americans not being able to resist helping each other at the expense of whites (or otherwise being cheaters) instead of the issue of the book. Hmmmm.

Stephen on the Move
Stephen will be making several appearances next in October. All are open to the public (with the exception of the October 24 event), so if one or more is in your area, please stop by and say hello. All times are local.

• Monday October 6: “Race in the 2008 Elections,” Perkins Auditorium, Penn State University—Berks, 6:00 p.m.
• Wednesday October 8: “Race and Politics” (panel), ATC Auditorium, Elgin Community College (Elgin, IL), 12:15 p.m. Lunch provided, though reservations required by 10/4/08. RSVP to Joyce Fountain, 847-214-7534 or jfountain@elgin.edu
• Friday October 24: “The 2008 Presidential Elections,” St. Mary’s Cathedral third grade classes (Lafayette, IN)
• Tuesday October 28: “Fairytales, Radicals and Crooks: The Role of Race in the 2008 Presidential Election,” Hart Chapel, Clarion University of Pennsylvania (time TBA)

Defining Our Role

In the past two years, we have received our fair share of critical comments. THIS WEEK, though, a new trend has emerged: some of our most thoughtful readers have begun to question (publicly and privately) our commentary. We are thankful for their honesty – thankful that they felt comfortable confronting our assertions and trying to keep us grounded.

Two things might account for this shift, and they are not mutually exclusive. First, it might be that conservatives have been so effective in pushing a position that any racial messages in the campaign are the “fault” of progressives and the Obama campaign so that our friends are beginning to panic about the possibility of losing moderate white voters. Second, it might be that we have veered off the path that we have set out for ourselves. Accordingly, we thought it appropriate to sketch out how we perceive our collective role – not just in this critical election period, but in general.

Before doing so, however, we want to direct your attention to a poll that was released this week by the Associated Press, in cooperation with Yahoo! News and Professor Paul Sniderman of Stanford University. Unlike most tracking polls by news organizations, the AP employed an elaborate instrument and used sophisticated analytical techniques on a very large national random sample (N = 2, 227). Results show that “[d]eep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close . . . [O]ne-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.” The AP story on the poll continues:

The poll suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about 2.5 percentage points.

Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word "violent" strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with "boastful," 29 percent "complaining," 13 percent "lazy" and 11 percent "irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.

Among white Democrats, one-third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.

The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites."

Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn't.

Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks "intelligent" or "smart," more than one-third latched on the adjective "complaining" and 24 percent said blacks were "violent."

Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they "try harder."

The survey broke ground by incorporating images of black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That test suggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with more than half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks than whites.

This is consistent with our research, as well as research from others who have been studying implicit associations and the potential effect of implicit racial messages.

The attack ads that have been produced take advantage of these deep-seated predispositions about African Americans. Whether that is the intent of the McCain campaign or the third-party sponsors of the ads is irrelevant to us. The point is that the messages, while they may have been leveled against a white opponent, will be more effective because Obama is black. We feel that it is our responsibility to continue to point this out as it occurs. Here’s why.


The Project on Race in Political Communication

In 2001, we set out to put forth an ambitious agenda to fill gaps in social science research on race, language and politics from an interdisciplinary angle. Shortly thereafter, we decided that students, other scholars and media organizations (as well as other interested persons and parties) might benefit from having a central place to go for historical information, updates on our work, and occasional analysis. We launched the RaceProject.org website in 2002 to provide that service.


THIS WEEK IN RACE

By 2006, we realized that we could reach a broader audience by applying scholarly principles to current events. We began this weekly blog in September of that year. Since then, there have been a number of other excellent websites and blogs devoted to explorations of latent racism (we are particularly impressed with the efforts of the folks at "Stop Dog Whistle Racism"). While it is true that we have been preoccupied with the presidential election as of late, our focus is much broader. If Obama wins, readers can feel confident that we will continue to follow attacks on him that activate racist predispositions. Irrespective of the outcome of the election, we will continue to bring forward elements of popular culture and news that reside at the intersection of politics, language and race.


Seeing the Big Picture

A reporter from the North Central College campus paper emailed Stephen about the comments exchanged on last week’s blog. She asked: What is your response to the blog being referenced as "about being anti-republican"?

Here is Stephen’s response (with hyperlinks added for TWIR readers):

A primary goal of the Race Project is to conduct research on race, language and politics and use what we learn to better understand racism so that we can move closer to racial equality. That is not a value-neutral position, but neither is it partisan. My blog writings are designed to explain the way racist and racial messages operate; we have been critical of both Democrats and Republicans over the two years that the blog has been up. While we do not endorse candidates, our feeling is that given not only Barack Obama's background, but his attitudes about race (expressed in his writings and his historic speech this past March), we as a nation would do more to address issues of racial inequality under his leadership than under John McCain's. The truth is that since the 1960s, neither party has gone out of its way to make progress on this issue. As a nation, we have largely swept under the rug the most important questions that still remain (disproportionate poverty, incarceration, lack of educational opportunities, joblessness, access to health care, etc. in communities of color). Progressives have expressed concern about the issue, but conservatives have by and large either argued that it does not exist or argued that it is up to people to pull themselves out of difficult conditions (ignoring the systemic barriers that lead to these conditions). Not since Jack Kemp in the late 1980s has a prominent conservative offered a specific strategy to rectify racial inequality (see our exchange with Professor William Voegeli in last month's blog for more on this issues). As a result, it is not surprising that we appear to be "anti-Republican" at times. For us, though, it's not about party or even this election specifically; it's about the bigger issue.

She also asked:

Do you think blogs such as these will have a positive effect on this year's election (as it pertains to more people becoming knowledgeable and aware of this campaign and politics in general)?

Stephen replied:

I have no illusion that the blog I write will have much of an effect on this election. Despite some healthy debate, most of our readers are already sensitive to these issues (or have become sensitive to them by reading our blog each week). In that regard, TWIR is an echo chamber of sorts. The fact is that because of the way the power structure is set up in America, and because white folks generally are not bigoted and like to believe that they have no racist predispositions, the deck is very much stacked against Obama. Most messages that take advantage of racist beliefs are subtle, so white folks do not see them as relating to race. When we or others point it out, folks generally think that we're "looking for racism" or are being overly sensitive. This has happened to Obama on a number of occasions during the campaign, as well. The problem is that if he (and we) ignores it, the implicit racist message will be effective, but if he (or we) points it out, it is he (or we) who is accused of "playing the race card." White folks would like to believe that we're "past race" in America because they have black friends or do not have conscious prejudiced thoughts. As a result, it is very uncomfortable to talk about race at all, and even more uncomfortable to admit that a message was particularly effective because of one's latent racism.In short, we feel that our job is to continue to help folks to understand how powerful systemic racism really is by pointing out the myriad ways it works. There is no doubt that we'll continue to get criticism from those aligned with the right when we expose messages from their side (as we've been doing with Republicans) and those from the left when we expose messages from their side (as we did repeatedly during the primaries with respect to Hillary Clinton's campaign).

Breakfast of Racists

An example of a racist message that preserves plausible deniability occurred earlier in the month at an event sponsored by Focus on the Family. The Values Voter Summit, like many conferences, invited vendors to come and sell their wares to an audience that is presumed to be interested in what they have to sell.

One of the vendors featured a box of waffle mix with Obama’s likeness on it. Besides the caricature of Obama and the obvious link to Aunt Jamima, there are mocking references to Obama supporting “illegal aliens,” a picture of Obama in a turban, and a rap song (in hip-hop vernacular) about Obama’s “waffling.” (See details and an interview with the vendors here.)

Some of our most thoughtful and respected friends disagreed with our early analysis (which we posted on the RaceProject.org Facebook page) because they believed either that the box was attacking, but not necessarily racist, or that Focus on the Family had no responsibility for the product.

Our response is that the box is clearly racist, irrespective of whether the vendor intended for it to be so. Here’s a similar example.

In 2006, African American candidate Harold Ford, Jr. ran for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee. Like all black candidates running in majority-white districts, his election would rely on a significant number of white votes in addition to any minority support he would receive. The Republican National Committee ran a humorous ad against him (see below) that, in part, featured a white woman who claimed that she “met Harold at the Playboy party,” asking at the end (after the disclaimer, for Ford to call her. In fact, Ford had attended a Super Bowl party at the Playboy mansion, so while the woman was fictitious, the tone of the ad was clearly tongue-in-cheek, and therefore not inaccurate. However, the fact that the woman was white and Ford is black is not inconsequential. In a country that is still largely uncomfortable with interracial relationships (and even more so in the South), such a suggestion plays into deep-seated resentment about black men’s sexual prowess, and the need to protect white women from them. (The woman, by the way, is pictured from the shoulders up, with no visible clothing, even though she is on the street.)



In short, the ad was not inaccurate (as one could argue is the case with some of the claims on the Obama waffle box), but was more effective because Ford is black. The ability to deny that race is involved is not only not an effective claim that there is no racism, but it is, in fact, crucial to a racist message to work at all in the 21st century. (Though see Fox News Channels Neil Cavuto's comment from earlier THIS WEEK that lending money to "minorities and risky folks" is a disaster.)


In Solidarity

One of the reasons that progressive movements and activists have trouble is that they are constantly having wedges driven between them. We are not activists (we don't work that hard), but neither are we neutral bystanders in the struggle for social justice. Further, we understand that activists look to social scientists and other scholars for information relating to their work. We will not be providing any answers, per se, of how to defeat racism. We leave that to our readers and our students. Our role, as we see it and have defined it, is to help others to understand the myriad ways racism works to perpetuate white privilege and maintain racial inequality.

We invite our friends to continue to hold our feet to the fire. We do not want to stray from our mission. However, we believe that vigilance is more in order now than it has been for some time because 21st century racism is not nearly as recognizable as 20th century racism was. We do not wish to “find” it where it does not exist, but neither will we allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of satisfaction that explicit racism is out of vogue. On that point, as we noted in an earlier post, Obama’s selection as nominee (whether he wins or not) is likely to allow explicit racism to resurface since whites can feel confident that discrimination is gone once and for all as a result of this notable event.

Willie Horton 2008: Republicans Go Racist Early

It took less than a week after the Republican National Convention for the racist attacks to hit the airwaves. As we predicted, racist messages will likely not come directly from McCain’s campaign, but rather be offered by third-party groups. THIS WEEK, a conservative group called Freedom’s Defense Fund released an ad that is virtually a carbon copy of the infamous Willie Horton ad against Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 (Republican operative Lee Atwater apologized near the end of his life for tactics he used during that campaign, including the Horton ad). The current ad is planned to "run a saturated one-week schedule" in Michigan. There is one important difference, though: this time, the ad is run against an African American candidate.

The Horton ad has been discussed in popular and scholarly literature as being the quintessential implicit racist message. Because the words “race,” “black” or “African American” are never spoken, white viewers can assure themselves that the message is not about race, freeing them up to accept the message without violation of the cultural norm. The racial factor comes with the tacit associations with stereotypes about black men; in these cases, the stereotypes are about black men’s criminality. In the Horton ad, viewers were prompted to be more afraid of Willie Horton because he fit the stereotype of the “scary black man” who would perform violent acts (presumably on white folks) if given the chance. While Horton’s story was true (and, as such, fair game for a political attack), his race was irrelevant to the message that Dukakis was “soft on crime.” By alerting whites to the fact that he was black, the ad sponsors multiplied the effect of their fear of a Dukakis presidency.



Because the target of the attack this time is black, there is a further benefit to playing into racist predispositions. In this case, there is a direct link made between shamed Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Barack Obama. The message: they (African Americans) are all the same. The ad explicitly notes that a candidate’s “friends” matter. This foreshadows what we predict will be a similar ad featuring Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the coming weeks.



Obamas are “Uppity”
This next story could have been printed in The Onion. As TWIR readers know, we focus almost exclusively on implicit racial messages because explicit messages have been shown to backfire. Every once in a while, though, an overtly bigoted comment surfaces. Often, such comments are revealed through surreptitious means, as most bigots are careful to keep their true sentiments out of public spaces. U.S. House member Lynn Westmoreland, however, is apparently of a different mindset.

Here’s what happened, according to The Hill:

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

What is particularly amazing is that even given the chance to back off the term, Westmoreland decided to stay with it. “Uppity” is a term that has clear, deep racial implications. Painting Obama as “elite” is effective largely because of the deep-seated presumption among whites that African Americans should “know their place.” That is an implicit racist message. Using the term “uppity,” however, comes as close to explicitly racist as we are likely to see from a mainstream public figure (i.e., not a member of the Ku Klux Klan or another white supremacist group) in the 21st Century. “Uppity” has historically almost always been followed by the “n-word,” or, in more polite circles through the Jim Crow era, “Negro.”

Lipstick on a Party
Finally, another that pervaded news THIS WEEK was about gender. While this space is devoted to race, we mention this here because there are very similar principles of power and oppression at work in this particular dynamic.

Barack Obama made the following comment on Tuesday:

John McCain says he’s about change, too – except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics . . . That’s not change. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig – it’s still a pig.

The McCain camp immediately jumped on the remark, arguing that Obama was clearly referencing Sarah Palin because of her comment during her speech at the Republican National Convention that the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom is lipstick. They issued a web ad, but quickly pulled it after widespread criticism on the blogs. We've got it, though, embedded in a spot from MSNBC, along with a ridiculous ad attacking Obama for wanting to teach sex education to kids before they can read (it was a bill to help kids avoid child sexual predators).



This is not surprising given the fact that the choice of Palin’s was clearly overwhelmingly due to her gender, and Republicans apparently believe that they have inoculated themselves against any criticism of her whatsoever because to attack her is to be sexist. In reality, their claims of “sexism” are further evidence that they do not understand the way systemic oppression works.

“Sexism” is not saying something bad about a woman. Sexism is leveraging people’s existing predispositions about the role and character of women in society in a way that advantages males (generally or specifically). The type of patriarchal protectionism that they have exhibited toward Palin could be considered more sexist than any negative attacks that the Obama campaign have launched against her. (It is important to note that the questions about her readiness to lead because of her childcare responsibilities are deeply rooted in sexist assumptions; the Obama campaign, however, has not raised such questions.)

Obama’s “lipstick” comment 1) was clearly not made about Palin, as she was not even referenced until later in the speech and he was directly talking about John McCain (see the quote), and 2) employed a common expression that is used to describe dressing up something that is otherwise perceived as bad or “ugly.” In the first case, it should be noted that even if Palin was mentioned prior to the comment, referring to her as a “pig” would not only be far outside the mistake buffer of someone who has been running for president for two years, but nonsensical at best. There are many of negative adjectives that might be used for Sarah Palin, but “pig” is not one of them because she is neither heavy nor dirty nor conventionally unattractive. In short, such an attack would make no sense. It would be like calling George W. Bush an elitist: it might be meant as an insult, but it is an insult that does not fit into any preconception about him that it would be an ineffective jab. Further, it has been widely noted that McCain has used the expression himself (in reference to Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, in fact), and Obama has used it in the past.

The bottom line is that the McCain campaign engaged in what Obama appropriately labeled as “faux outrage.” Because the conservatives generally do not acknowledge the power of systemic oppression, they have no credibility making accusations of sexism. As we have seen, they do not even know what it means.

To wrap up this section, though, we do want to note that the very expression “putting lipstick on a pig” has clear sexist overtones. The expression is sexist on its face, and therefore should be avoided. But Obama’s use of it was clearly not a reference to Palin at all, and certainly not a sexist attack. This seems to be at once a misguided attempt to claim the moral high ground on issues of oppression and to paint Obama as oppressive himself. It is a common tactic to divide the left by instigating what has been called “the Oppression Olympics.” In other words, if those in power can convince women that African Americans do not care about their interests, they can drive a wedge in that coalition. If they can convince the LGBT community that women’s groups and African Americans are not interested in their concerns, they can drive a wedge in that coalition. The insulting presumption that women will vote for Palin simply because she is female is illustrative of this approach. To date, it is working to a greater extent than we would have anticipated.

What It All Means
Putting aside the false accusations of Obama’s sexism, here is the cumulative effect of the racist messages coming from Republicans thus far:

Obama is

• all talk and no substance
• wishes to fool us with his slick rhetoric
• has “jumped the line” by getting where he is without putting in the work (he is inexperienced; he desires to get what he does not deserve), and
• is an elitist who looks down on “regular” (white) folks (he and his wife are “uppity”).

Further, America would be taken in a dangerous (liberal) direction where taxes would be raised and spent on programs to benefit people like him.

This does not particularly advance the positives for the McCain/Palin ticket, but it muddies the water enough to make people frustrated about the way the campaign is going. Because it is the longest presidential campaign in history, it is not difficult to frustrate most of the public in this regard. Once folks get off their Obama high (seems to be happening quickly lately) and start to feel that “all politicians are the same,” the choice will come down to visceral reactions and comfort level. The guy who is “not like us” will have a hard time competing in that situation. The chance to secure a plurality of votes in enough (majority white) states to win 270 electoral votes in a context shaped with such messages is, indeed, quite daunting. Obama will have to find a way to cut through the politics of distraction and get back to the issues that got people excited about him in the first place. He needs to make “change” mean “change from Republican policies,” while McCain needs to make “change” mean “change from liberal values that would allow a black guy to get the nomination in the first place.”

Fifty-four days to go. . .

Anniversary
This week marks the second anniversary of THIS WEEK IN RACE. For the past two years, we have worked to apply the results of our research, as well as that of other scholars, to current events in a way that is accessible to as many folks as possible. In those first few weeks, we only had a dozen or so hits a day. Now, there are approximately 400 people who read our blog each week. It’s certainly not HuffingtonPost numbers, but we are happy to have our corps of loyal readers. Your comments and suggestions have greatly enhanced our posts and our work in general. We extend our thanks with the hopes that you will keep reading and providing feedback.

RaceProject in the Media
While we are regularly asked to provide media analysis on a variety of issues, we were more busy than usual during the two back-to-back weeks of the national conventions. Below is a list (with links, where available) of the interviews we gave during that fortnight.

Charlton
August 27: St. Louis Post-Dispatch video blog: preview of Obama’s speech



August 28: National Public Radio: “Inside the art of political speech writing” (listen here)

August 28: Tokyo Shimbun: analysis of the Democratic National Convention (no link available)

August 30: CNN, “Hillary v. Michelle Obama” (watch here)

September 4: National Public Radio: “Speech writers preview McCain’s RNC address” (listen here) (read here)

Stephen
August 24: WGN Overnight with Brian Noonan, WGN radio (show not archived)

August 26: Radio France International: “Obama black in the U.S., mixed race in France” (listen here [in English]) (read here)

August 27: CBS2 Chicago Morning News: analysis of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the DNC, via phone from Denver (watch here)

August 28: CBS2 Chicago Morning News: live from Invesco Field in Denver (watch here)

August 28: WDCB public radio: analysis of Obama’s acceptance speech fr