Some conservative commentator whose forebears were from Bangladesh is asking me not to call racism ‘racism.’
One thing that is undeniably true is that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white in a country that is increasingly less so. As the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans has increased in coastal states like California, New York and New Jersey, many white Americans from these regions have moved inland or to the South. For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide.
Last night I was watching superhero movies on TNT and I started playing a little game. I watched every commercial to see if it had people of more than one race. All night long, in commercial after commercial, I was presented with an ideal of coolness and happiness that involved young men and women of all races (but mainly white, black, and Asian) having fun at Burger King, or buying car insurance, or wearing fancy jeans, or whatever. The advertisers are just trying to sell a product, but the truth is that young people are receiving a non-stop deluge of subconscious programming that race (and to a large degree, gender) doesn’t matter. That’s an ideal. It’s largely aspirational. Every big city and most college towns have examples of these kinds of seamless cross-racial cultures. I’ve lived in those cultures in both Los Angeles and Philadelphia. But Los Angeles and Philadelphia also have far larger areas where race is the most important thing and where blacks and whites do not mingle easily, if at all. Even in the suburbs where you see increasing diversity, all you have to do is go to your local mall to see racial divides and mistrust. There is a ton of bad racial feeling still alive and well even among our young. And economic conditions for blacks and Latinos are shockingly worse than they are for whites. We have not yet come close to erasing our race-related issues.
It’s understandable that some whites want to live among other whites and feel uncomfortable about the increasing racial (and even religious) diversity of their communities. But when someone comes along to play the role of champion for those sentiments, that’s an appeal to racism. When economic times are hard and people are having trouble paying the bills, the temptation to steal is greater. That’s natural and understandable, but you don’t praise someone who taps into those sentiments and encourages people to go on a looting spree. What we’re talking about is whether a leader appeals to peoples’ better or worse angels. It’s always possible to stir up resentment and ride people’s hatred to a position of power and influence. That’s doesn’t make it right.
When you go around asking where the president’s birth certificate is, you are nothing better than a champion of racism.
As for the post-racial Eden that the advertisers are selling us? The counterprogramming is available 24 hours a day on talk radio and Fox News. That’s all racist, too.
Even though many people really don’t pay close attention to it; most are too busy just trying to get through life, race really is running silently in the background almost all the time. Kind of like spyware/adware on a computer. If you listen and pay attention in your daily life, it becomes obvious that is woven through so much of what goes on. And you don’t have to live in a diverse community for it to be evident. All you have to do is pay attention to the conversations that go on around you. It is there. And if you live in area where talk radio is dominant (are there any areas where it is not???), it seems to be an integral part of the community discourse. Though those involved will claim it is not a significant part of what they do, it is still there, lurking just under the surface. Just listen to the callers and their comments. There is a reflexive dislike for those who are different than the majority of the community.
But you have to be able to push aside a lot of your inherent biases to be able to recognize what is going on. And most of us are just unable to do that. So we go on denying that it plays any role in what goes on around us, while at the same time continuing to unconsciously perpetuate the problem. Most people keep these feelings under close guard and will only express them when feel they are in a position of comfort and relative safety. And that is just not conducive to addressing and dealing with the problem.
What is the old adage??…“You first have to accept that you have a problem before you can begin to successfully deal with it”. Well, right now we are not doing a good job of dealing with it because a significant percentage do not think they have a problem. In fact, in many ways we are regressing. And that doesn’t bode well for the near future.
thank you BooMan.
As a Black woman in America, I will say only this….White people do not comprehend, in any way, the amount of racial slights that Black folks let pass on a daily basis. We do it, because we have to save our energy for the ‘big’ slights, and because we have to live our lives. The last thing damn near every Black person I know wants to do is to have a racial ‘ confrontation’. but, folks whittle patience away, and the ‘last Black nerve’ is plucked, and there you go.
Yep. Salam appears to be suffering a case of “Brooksitis”, the syndrome named after NYT columnist David Brooks. Brooksitis is a puzzling brain disorder in which an otherwise reasonable and rational writer inexplicably writes a column in which he/she comes to conclusions that are contradicted by the evidence cited in the same column.
Thus Salam:
“This bias against efforts to speed up social change has led to a number of horrible misjudgments, including the opposition of conservatives like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, more recently, the almost universal opposition among national conservative politicians to letting the states decide whether or not to grant same-sex couples the right to marry.”
And again:
“For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love.”
Based on this evidence Salam concludes:
“It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist.”
At which point the column ends. He doesn’t even say it’s wrong to call this sentiment racist, just that it’s “unfair”.
Are we to conclude that it’s unfair because the sentiment is not, in fact, racist? Or are we to conclude it’s unfair because there’s something “unfair” about calling a racist sentiment, well, racist?
Alas, the column is over so we will never know.
Little is known about “Brooksitis” but the syndrome appears to be a chronic condition, although those who suffer from it do (sporadically and occasionally) stage temporary recoveries. Unfortunately it’s not known what causes the abatement of symptoms, and the abatement itself is usually short-lived.
P.S. What rikyrah said.
I am white. I am over 50. I live in the South. The country I grew up in in the 1950s can’t go away fast enough. I thought we might have made progress in the 1970s, but Reagan completely and deliberately undid it. Starting his campaign in Philadelphia, MS was a big slap at everyone who had works for equality.
And my neighbors frequently remind me that what rikyah said is still true, even in diverse communities that have intentionally tried to work through the racism.
The Asian subcontinent conservatives do not have a clue about this. Which is why Bobby Jindal can get elected in Lousiana and Nikki Haley can get elected in South Carolina. They provide protective cover for the defenders of racism. “See, we don’t discriminate. Lookee at who we electd governor.”
The disconnect is stunning to me. Makes your head hurt.
Racism is the great unspoken driver behind much of our turmoil here. Wisconsin ‘s population is about 7% each black and Hispanic. That’s about half the national average. And we are one of the most segregated states. White flight has created a ring of GOP white suburbia around Democratic and minority heavy Milwaukee. The same is true an a smaller scale in our old industrial cities such as my own Kenosha. And of course, huge swaths of rural Wisconsin are still as white as our dairy.
It’s not that Wisconsin folks are any more racist than other Americans. It is more a factor that most Wisconsin whites don’t interact with most Wisconsin minorities. They have no personal experience, so they are more vulnerable to the scary screeds put out by the dyed-in-the-wool racist element.
This is why, IMO, so many GOP voters are gleeful about Scott Walker’s attack on, well, everything. In their minds all the people who donot work are city minorities. All the state money spent on non-roads projects, are money just “given” to minorities who do not work. So when Gov Walker takes the axe to the budget, these people think that there is no way the cuts will affect their own families. The cuts only affect the lazy and the brownish-hued – who are the same people.
Mind you – no one NO ONE actually comes out and says these this. But as for me, the illogic of racism explains much of the illogic of the Walker supporters.
These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide.
I’ve said it before and will repeat it: they long for the world of Mad Men, wrapping themselves in the delusion that they were big fish in a big pond. When, in actuality, it’s not hard to be a big fish, if 80 percent of the other fish are shoved into a can of sardines.