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A Refuge for Racial Intolerance
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Last week President Jimmy Carter expressed deep concern at how the President Barack Obama’s most vitriolic critics seemed to be motivated in part by racial prejudice. “I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the south but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country,” he told NBC News. Since then Republicans have pushed back against that charge by denying or deemphasize the role race has played in the debate thus far instead of rebuking those who promote bigotry in their rhetoric.
Of course, examples abound that illustrate the former president’s point. Some of the teabaggers, birthers and deathers have carried signs saying “Obama’s Plan, White Slavery” or comparing the president to Hitler. Some Republican operatives have resorted to emailing racist cartoons of the president. Prominent organizer of tea bag parties Mark Williams called the president an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug.”
Right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh pointed to a fight between two black students and a white student as evidence of why, “We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff,” and said “This is Obama’s America.” The incident was not believed to be racially motivated. Limbaugh, the biggest attraction on shout radio, has been joined by a chorus of others including Glen Beck who has said that our half black and half white president has “a deep seated hatred for white people.”
But town hall fever reached its crescendo when South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson called the president a liar during a speech on health care delivered to a joint session of Congress. Rep. Keep in mind, Wilson’s accusation did not come when the president declared his plan would be deficit neutral or that it would drive down costs or during his mild defense of the public option – all of which GOP lawmakers are known to oppose. The now infamous “You lie” comment came precisely when President Obama said that unauthorized immigrants would not be covered under his plan. That is to say, it came right at the moment when race could be invoked.
Interestingly enough, the Republican leadership has largely criticized the Georgia native and Noble Peace Prize winner among others for unfairly characterizing what amounts to a fringe movement that they are actively courting.
House Republican leader John Boehner summarily dismissed the suggestion that there was any racial subtext to some of the opposition to the president saying, “Oh, there’s going to be someone now and then who’s going to get out of control or yell, but we are in the middle of a modern-day political rebellion in America.” The Ohio Congressman also added that the “American people are scared” and are concerned that their “kids and grandkids are going to grow up in a different country than I grew up in.”
Missouri Senate hopeful and current Republican Congressman Roy Blunt was more direct in a recent speech to a gathering of conservative evangelical voters about what he believed to be a bogus charge that criticism of the president’s health care plan is racially motivated. “That’s not what this is about. We can’t be intimidated into believing that’s what this is about.”
But Congressman Wilson has been anything but intimidated by his newfound fame. The South Carolinian and confederate sympathizer reportedly signed several autographs of a photo of his outburst a sure sign that Republicans have been seduced by their nuttier elements of their party.
As sad as it is to read and listen to such sentiments, however, its even more disturbing to hear Republican moderates such as New York Times columnist David Brooks not only give credence to the idea that race has little with it, but also explain it away as something that spring from other tensions borne out of the American experience.
According to Brooks, not only is race “beside the point” but “equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.” Brooks specifically pointed to warring factions at the dawn of the American Republic that favored urbanism, industrialism, and federal power on the hand, and those who supported frugality, limited government and personal responsibility on the other. In his view, these are the themes that have added such bright color and great passion to the debate, not racial prejudice.
Brooks in rightfully regarded by many as a keen observer of American political culture, but in this instance I believe he has missed the mark. As Eugene Robinson has pointed out in his most recent column in the Washington Post, its not that all of the president’s critics are racist or that one cannot oppose his agenda without being racist. Its that the undercurrent exists openly and its maddening to see it not be checked or denounced in the strongest terms. Its not that all those competing political sensibilities that have shaped the contours of the American experience are not still very much at work, its that the rhetorical fury tinged with xenophobia and racism has found refuge and legitimacy in the silence from Republican leaders and other leading conservatives.
Debates over Congressional representation, the relationship between state and federal government, our civil war, and yes even extending health care coverage have always been haunted by race. At one point, African Americans were counted as three fifths of person to appease white southerners who wanted more seats in the House of Representatives. Combating Jim Crow segregation and its legacy has often required the federal government to intervene in state affairs by passing expansive civil rights laws. In 1948, Dixecrats in key leadership positions blocked President Harry Truman’s health reform initiatives not only because of federal involvement in health care, but also because they feared it will lead to the abolition of racially segregated hospitals in the south.
President Bill Clinton relented under similar opposition during his ill-fated health care and poorly crafted welfare reform efforts in the 1990s due to the unjustified concern that legal and undocumented immigrants would enjoy the spoils of benefits financed by taxpaying citizens.
Thus racism does not have to be the dominant factor in this debate to merit attention. The fact that its tolerated the extent that is has is alarming in and of itself. Debates about other key government initiatives, namely immigration reform or tackling national security threats, could be distorted if this sentiment goes unchecked by our political leadership and the media.
During the campaign the President Obama, as he did during his interviews on the Sunday talk shows, constantly reiterated that he believes we are stronger as a nation when we concentrate on what unifies us as a people than dwell on what divides. Most Americans probably still agree with that, but we cannot forget that a determined and vocal few have set out to make that insight a forgettable truth.
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