And what set off their maelstrom of hatred and lunacy? Was it that their daughter married a black man? No. This is 21st century fear and loathing. It's their worst nightmare come true: "Their" country (not "ours") elected a black man president.
I am 54. Demographers say the U.S. will become majority people of color in about 30 years. I'm hoping I live to see it. In the meantime, this fear-hatred-take-back-what-we-think-we've-lost mentality is menacing to me. Because it could get ugly. Way uglier. The right is systematically organizing, using fear as their central tactic. And the crazies are getting crazier. The central theme? Everything Obama does is a conspiracy against white people. For real.
Tim Wise nails it. Read every word of his latest entry in his dairy: Black Power's Gonna Get you Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism.
Here's a few excerpts, but please. Read. It. All.
"Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.
Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad.
What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?
Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?
No.
Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same?
No.
Was it the massive nationwide study that estimated at least 1 million cases of blatant job discrimination against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans each year, affecting roughly one-in-three job seekers of color?
No.
Is it the fact that black males with college degrees are almost twice as likely as their white male counterparts to be out of work?
No...
...Maybe it was because of those guys over at the popular right-wing website, FreeRepublic.com who called the President's daughter, Malia, "typical ghetto trash," and a "whore" whose mother likes to entertain her by "making monkey sounds?"
No.
Or perhaps they finally had enough when they heard about how Rep. Ciro Rodriguez was called a "wetback" by one of his constituents and told to go back to Mexico?
No.
Or maybe it was that lawmaker in South Carolina who called both President Obama and Republican Gubernatorial candidate (and Indian American) Nikki Haley, "ragheads?"
No...
...It is none of this. Neither the evidence of systemic discrimination against people of color in every walk of American life, nor the repeated examples of blatant racism directed towards people of color individually moves them.
But they're angry nonetheless about racism in America.
They're especially angry about the tax being placed on those who use tanning salons. Because this is racist. Against white people. No, seriously.
Oh, and the President criticized a white police officer for arresting a black man for a crime that, turns out, the black man didn't actually commit, according to state law. That Obama would do such a thing--namely, criticize an officer for making an unjustified arrest--means that white police officers are "under assault" from Obama, and that the President is trying to "destroy" the white officer, no doubt because he's white.
Oh, and since people of color disproportionately lack health care coverage, the President's plan for expanding coverage is obviously a racist scheme to get reparations for slavery...
...Oh, and the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. And she's a Latina, who notes that she sees the world through the lens of her experience, and that she hopes that experience would positively inform her decision-making. And that means she's a bigot. And the fact that Obama nominated her, as well as Eric Holder, proves that he "views white men as the problem" in America, and that the only way you can get promoted by Obama is "by hating white people."...
...Yes indeed, they all agree, Obama is a "reverse racist" who has a deep-seated hatred of white people...
...And for sure, Obama is the reason race relations are so strained: not because of the ongoing discrimination against people of color, which the data indicates is commonplace, or because of the incendiary rhetoric coming from conservative commentators...
...Or by a prominent conservative commentator insisting that white men are experiencing the same kind of oppression that blacks faced for years, even as that commentator has previously reminisced fondly about the days of segregation...
...Or perhaps by having a right-wing talk show host announce a plan for conservatives to "take back the civil rights movement," and compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr. This, even though conservatives were almost uniformly opposed to the movement and King, and even though the talk show host's favorite authors, whose work he promotes regularly, viewed the movement as a communist conspiracy and referred to civil rights activists as animals...
...No, none of those things could strain race relations, or further racism.
And certainly not when compared to a tanning booth tax.
While on the face of it, these kinds of right-wing inanities may seem so absurd as to hardly merit being taken seriously, it's important to step back and think about the internal logic of even the most outlandish claims. I mean, no one can honestly believe that health care reform is reparations...
...But the intellectual strength of the claims is not the issue. It doesn't matter. From a political perspective, even the most insane-sounding claim about Obama's supposed hatred for white people makes sense. It's a perfect way to prime white racial fears and anxieties, to say, in effect, they're coming for your money white folks, and then your children. In a nation where the population will be half people of color within 25-30 years, and where the popular culture is now thoroughly multicultural (and thus many of the icons don't look the way they used to), and where the President doesn't fit a lot of people's conception of what such a person is supposed to look like, and where the economy is in the toilet for millions, playing upon white anxiety is the perfect recipe for political mobilization.
They've said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it.
Did you read that? One more time, for the record:
"They've [white right wing conservatives] said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it."
Need a little something after reading all that? Me, too.
Here's Tracy Chapman's prophetic "Talkin' About a Revolution" to sip on.
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