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)

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 from Invesco Field (story not archived)

September 3: CBS2 Chicago Morning News: preview of Palin’s speech (watch here)

September 3: Naperville Sun: “Palin situation brings teen pregnancy to light” (read here)

September 4: WDCB public radio: analysis of McCain’s acceptance speech (story not archived)

September 5: CBS2 Chicago Morning News: analysis of McCain’s speech (watch here)


Keep Up with the RaceProject Guys
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