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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Go, Joe, Go! (Also, White Racism and the GOP)



Biden effortlessly dismisses the nonsense that he is making a racist claim, when he simply reverses the glib market fundamentalist metaphor of "unshackling market forces" by reminding us that deregulation and privatization always actually "shackles" people who have to work for a living, then he goes right back on target pointing out that what is really outrageous is not the phony culture war outrage of the day Republicans try to trash the public sphere with but their actual stated policies and the actually demonstrably disastrously failed outcomes that follow from those policies. It's a joy, I must say, to see Democrats fighting back strong against Republican crap.

But to say one word more about the clumsy effort to pretend Biden was specifically being racist in his reference to Republican policies putting people in chains: There is not a single Republican in office anywhere in the country at any level of governance who does not owe at least some of the vote that put them in office to white racism. This doesn't make every Republican a racist, but it makes every Republican beholden to white racism in America. An anti-racist Republican would concede, deplore, and actively work against this reality, not pretend it's racism when anti-racists recognize racism, not cleverly ascribe racism in a racist society (a strategy that is undeniably racist itself) to those whose anti-racism make such a charge discomfiting in ways that disadvantage them.

Also: from my Dispatches from Libertopia: "LXXIII. The intolerant always demand tolerance for their intolerance. Bigots always decry as violence and as bigotry the restraint of their bigotry from the worst of its violence. Racists always declare racist the exposure and denunciation of their racism. This is all very clever, if you are very stupid."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"There is not a single Republican in office anywhere in the country at any level of governance who does not owe at least some of the vote that put them in office to white racism. This doesn't make every Republican a racist, but it makes every Republican beholden to white racism in America. "

That's so very interesting. Obama got 95% of the African American vote. If he was no half-black but with two white parents, how many percentage points would that have earned him? What does that tell you about African Americans and racism?

I am rather optimistic that with the emergence of big data and constant documentation via video and audio of all interactions in public places, the unconfortable truth - that minorities are not less - actually probably more - racist than whites will make it impossible for people like you to make these unsubstantiated arguments.

Dale Carrico said...

95% of African Americans voted for the candidate who acted in their best interests, for example enacting the Affordable Care Act that addresses the crisis in healthcare outcomes that disproportionately affects their communities with community health clinics and wellness programs and preventative healthcare screenings and programs, and who strives to protect the public sector jobs in which African-American communities historically have participated as a mainstay of upward mobility -- teachers, postal workers, etc. I eagerly await the sputtering bile with which you will respond to a public registration of that reality. Meanwhile, to continue to the flip side of that coin Republicans (even the ones who do not constantly signal their racism with dog whistles both racists and the targets of their racism understand perfectly well) are constantly attacking communities of color, devastating public education, public sector jobs, public transportation infrastructure, access to healthcare, and so on. Of course, you are a disgusting racist asshole so you would attribute people voting in their own best interest and against those who denigrate them to their own "racism."

Dale Carrico said...

There is no reason to pretend it is possible to have a serious intellectual conversation with you. America is a demographically diversifying and secularizing nation, the white racist Southern Strategy the Republicans depended on to divide working class southerners while they continued to dismantle the welfare state and demolish organized labor so that their corporate-military plutocracy could prevail even in a notionally representational democracy is failing before it managed to dismantle the New Deal and Great Society programs it so despises. Enough of that fledgling social democracy still exists to function as a foundation on which an actually functional social democracy can be built and sustained, which in turn can support a more equitable and diverse democratic society in which marginal hate groups (including racists like you) and parochial plutocrats can be limited in the damage they do enough for people to work together to solve their shared problems.

Dale Carrico said...

The Obama administration is using "Big Data" to an unprecedented extent in their campaign strategies. That is why, for example, they continued to hit Romney hard on his vulture capitalism even when many Democratic pundits and big city pols dependent on financial sector donors expressed dismay at this choice. Polling has demonstrated the wisdom of the Obama focus on the data obtained from rigorous and fine-grained polling. What constant documentation has actually revealed is that Romney will say anything to anybody to win power in the moment and that Ryan is devoted to an anarcho-capitalist pseudo-intellectual who wrote terrible bodice-ripper novels and yet whose anti-big government stance doesn't keep him from advocating a police state to control women from making health care decisions about their own bodies and whose pro-individualism stance doesn't keep him from refusing queer citizens from the pursuit of happiness on their owbn terms, and whose so-called budget hawkery didn't keep him from voting to pursue two illegal immoral unnecessary ruinous wars of choice without paying for them or a prescription drug benefit without paying for it or tax cuts for the rich without explaining where the revenue would come from to balance the budget (something he is doing again now), and who likes to bask in the praise of his wonkery even when his math never adds up.

Like most hate-mongering know-nothing assholes you feel sure that reality will "reveal" the deep truth of your deep knowledge of a world in which white people are at the apex of the pyramid of awesomeness when the truth is that white people -- like me! -- are just people, no better, no worse than anybody else, no more no less capable of helping or undermining the shared work of progress toward sustainability and equity-in-diversity, no more no less worthy of attention, reward, authority, right than anybody else.

Without white racism no Republican would occupy any position in government. As I said, this doesn't make every Republican a white racist, nor does it mean that any Republican owes their office solely or even mostly to white racism. But the belief in white supremacy has a home in the GOP and is factored in GOP strategies in ways that has no correlate in the Democratic Party. What I said is true, and you also know it is true. It is an utterly damning truth in my view. It is easy to see why you do not agree. You, too, are damned: every year to greater marginality in a diversifying secularizing planetizing democratizing society in which white supremacy makes less and less sense to anybody and exercises less and less destructive force on everybody (very much including white people).