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Thursday, August 16, 2012

How Indispensable Is White Racism to Movement Republicanism?

Upgraded and adapted from the Moot.

There is no place for racist discourse on Amor Mundi, and I have been deleting comments in the Moot from brave "Anonymous" respondents lately -- probably this is just one individual -- who have been indulging in what seems to me borderline white supremacist garbage. The following exchange from the Moot is an example of one of the comments I reluctantly allowed through, a comment that seemed to me quite false and driven by profoundly hurtful assumptions but one in which an actual argument provided what seemed to me to be an occasion for a useful response. I hesitate to seem to encourage this person -- if indeed this is the same "Anonymous" who has also made comments which I deleted for their racism -- but even if this person is not reachable, I wonder if anybody who might be influenced by this sort of comment might also be nudged into a more critical temper by the response to it? I welcome comments both to the post and also weighing in on the usefulness of publishing such comments (or deleting those that are more baldly white supremacist as I have been doing and will continue to do) and responding to them.

First off, in a rather glib post recommending a video clip of Joe Biden fighting back strong against some GOP phony-outrage about a comment of his on the campaign trail, I made the following (in my view absolutely and obviously true) claim: "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."

A bravely "Anonymous" commenter in the Moot responded to this claim, saying:
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.
To this, I respond at length:

95% of African Americans voted for the candidate who spoke on behalf of and then acted in their best interests, for example enacting against incredible odds and at steep political cost the Affordable Care Act that addresses (imperfectly but really) the crisis in healthcare outcomes that disproportionately affects African-Americans with substantial expansions of access to Medicare (famously being resisted at the state level by Republican governors, naturally, of states whose citizens would most benefit from increased access, naturally), the introduction of enormous numbers of new community health clinics, access to preventative healthcare screenings and wellness programs, and who also strives to protect the public sector jobs in which African-American communities historically have conspicuously participated as a mainstay of upward mobility -- teachers, postal workers, etc (take a look at Obama's Jobs Act, monolithically obstructed by the very Republicans who were elected in droves in the 2010 mid-terms promising jobs which they never delivered or even attempted to address while instead they devoted the lion's share of their energy to serial symbolic repeals of the Affordable Healthcare Act, passing anti-abortion measures, and failing even to keep to the lights on like all previous legislatures can at any rate be minimally counted on to manage -- recall the Debt Ceiling debacle). 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."

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. That is the larger context in which to understand the panic and intensity of the demonstrable racism of Tea Party activism and partisan disenfranchisement efforts in states under GOP control at present. I truly expect the weeks immediately following Obama's election to a second term will unleash a wave of stunning white-racist violence and hate of a kind that will provoke such horror in the American mainstream that Movement Republicanism will perish then and there, though I truly fear who might perish in the meantime.

Your reference to "Big Data" is interesting since, of course, 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. If any party seems vulnerable to exposures of p2p-mediation it is the Republicans -- who are forever stumbling into semi-public admissions that find their way to YouTube to the ruination of the campaigns revealing the horrifying details of their extreme anti-abortion anti-contraception anti-gay anti-secular anti-science anti-democracy agenda. What constant documentation has revealed at the top of the GOP ticket 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 Ayn Rand who wrote terminally awful 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 the equal right to the pursuit of happiness on their own 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 and Romney are doing yet again now to an even greater extent), 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).

9 comments:

jimf said...

> What constant documentation has actually revealed is that
> Romney will say anything to anybody to win power in the moment. . .

There's an article in the latest (Aug. 13 & 20, 2012) _New Yorker_
by "a critic at large" Adam Gopnik: "'I, Nephi', Mormonism and
its meanings".

The last few paragraphs are about Mitt Romney.

"All of which leads to the inevitable question: To what degree is
Mormonism responsible for Mitt Romney? . . . The most striking
feature of Mitt Romney as a politician is an absence of any
responsibility to his own past -- the consuming sense that his life
and opinions can be remade at a moment's need. Romney, according
to Romney, never favored the individual mandate, or supported
abortion rights, or opposed the auto-industry bailout, or did
any of the other things he obviously, and on the record, did.

One could presumably make a case that beleaguered faiths always
shy from admitting errancy in public. Dominant faiths can afford
tales of failure and redemption. . .; beleaguered ones have to put
on a good face in public and never lose it. Donny Osmond talks
about the anxieties that arose from a need to appear perfect,
and the impossibility of admitting in public to flaws or errors.
Better to have a new revelation about, say, health-care mandates
that renders the previous one instantly inoperable than spend
time apologizing for the old ways. When, in 1978, the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned the rule prohibiting
blacks from serving as priests, one church leader, Bruce McConkie,
explained, "It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody
ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June, 1978."
You could find, or think you've found, a similar logic behind
Romney's blithe amnesia when it comes to the things he used to
think and say.

Yet class surely tells more than creed when it comes to American
manners, and Romney is better understood as a late-twentieth-
century American tycoon than as any kind of believer. Most of
what is distinct about him seems specific to the rich managerial
class of the nineteen-eighties and nineties, and is best
explained so. . . In another way, though, this is precisely
where faith really does walk in, since commerce and belief seem
complementary in Romney's tradition. It's just that this
tradition is not merely Mormon. Joseph Smith's strange faith
has become a denomination within the bigger creed of commerce.
It's unfair to say, as some might, that Mitt Romney believes in
nothing except his own ambition. He believes, with shining
certainty, in his own **success**, and, more broadly, in the
American Gospel of Wealth that lies behind it: the idea that
rich people got rich by being good, that the riches are a sign of
their virtue, and that they should therefore be allowed to rule.

Then again, almost every American religion sooner or later becomes
a Gospel of Wealth. Forced into a corner by the Feds, [Brigham] Young's
followers put down their guns and got busy making money -- just as
the Oneida devotees who made silverware for a living ended up
merely making silverware. (The moneymaking activities of the
major churches hardly need outlining.) Christmas morning is
the American Sabbath, and it runs, ideally, all year round. The
astonishing thing, which would have brought a smile to Nephi's
face as he and his tribe sailed to the New World, is that this
gospel of prosperity is the one American faith that will never
fail, even when its promises seem ruined. Elsewhere among the
Western democracies, the bursting of the last bubble has led to
doubts about the system that blows them. Here the people who
seem likely to inherit power are those who want to blow still
bigger ones, who believe in the bubble even after it has burst,
and who hold its perfection as a faith so gleaming and secure and
unbreakable that it might once have been written down somewhere
by angels, on solid-gold plates."

Dale Carrico said...

I gotta say I don't personally see his Mormonism as particularly explanatory -- I mean, his father didn't behave this way after all, nor does Harry Reid as far as I can see. I'm an cheerful atheist of many decades' standing and I won't hesitate to tell you that Mormonism looks like a superannuated Scientology or Raelianism, a UFO Cult that has had the time to shore up a sizable treasury, more or less. But for me, Romney seems like a completely isolated rich kid with a sense of completely unearned entitlement insulated from any consequences of his actions, indeed from any unpleasantness or criticism even. I don't think he's used to the "help" talking back, I don't think he's used to getting called on his BS, I don't think he's even used to folks not chuckling at his bad jokes and, er, "pranks." His temperament and his politics seem to me to be shaped overabundantly by class. That said, I can't tell you why he even wants to be President, except maybe to outdo his dad. Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

jimf said...

> It's unfair to say, as some might, that Mitt Romney believes in
> nothing except his own ambition. He believes, with shining
> certainty, in his own **success**, and, more broadly, in the
> American Gospel of Wealth that lies behind it: the idea that
> rich people got rich by being good, that the riches are a sign of
> their virtue, and that they should therefore be allowed to rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_(Book_of_Mormon)
-------------------
According to the Book of Mormon, "deseret" meant "honeybee" in
the language of the Jaredites, a group believed by Mormons to have
been led to the Americas during the time of the construction of
the Tower of Babel. [You can use Google to find the Elvish
equivalent. ;->]

Deseret was proposed as a name for the U.S. state of Utah.
Brigham Young -- governor of Utah Territory from 1850 to 1858 and
President of the LDS Church from 1847 to 1877 -- favored the name as a
symbol of industry. Young thought his followers should be productive
and self-sufficient, a trait he had perceived in honeybees.
-------------------

I'm glad I never went to school at a university named after
**that** character .


How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

Anonymous said...

Now you are revealing your true colors, deleting comments which dissent too far from your particular reality tunnel. If you would just admit that what you are saying here is pure ideology, and that others have different ideologies based on different but perfectly valid perceptions of reality, I might have some respect for your assertions. The problem is, when your kind try to shut even highly intelligent dissenters out of the debate by wielding "racist" like some kind of magical incantation, you will face an increasingly militant counter-reaction by those of us simply don't see reality the way you do. I guess I'll see you on the battlefield, you sorry old Stalinist.

Dale Carrico said...

My blog, my rules. Cry into your pillow all you want, that seems your measure. I allow a wide latitude here and will continue to do so. If you seek a forum to give full vent to your racist bile there are plenty of white supremacist sites that will accommodate you. As someone who traffics in the occasional insult I am usually happy to allow latitude there as well as it happens, but I see no reason to celebrate unproductive harangues against me in my own blog. I am no masochist. The absurdity of calling me a Stalinist even as I publish and respond at length to your comment should be palpable to all. It is true that I try not to allow others to derail comment threads or commandeer this discursive space more generally in ways that would alienate people of sense and goodwill, or undermine my larger purpose here, even as I try to remain open enough to views with which I disagree to expose them to scrutiny and benefit from their challenge, and this can be a fraught balancing act, and I take full responsibility for the judgments I make in adjudicating an open and critical and congenial channel. I say this for the benefit of readers who may wonder about my policy. I cannot say your dumb bigotry will be missed by anyone. Your closing threats of violence are all too typical of the brainless bullying braggarts of the right as they piss their diapers and propound their stupid nonsense (highly intelligent dissenter, indeed! you laughingstock!) swinging their imaginary swords in the livid light of a computer monitor. You are marginalizing yourself into harmlessness as the diverse and democratizing world moves beyond you. I recommend that you just sit back and relax. A planetary diversity beyond you in every way will provide a civilization without your approval or assistance from which even you benefit however little you deserve it.

Anonymous said...

I think there is a 'clubbing' (maybe there's a better term?) effect in representative politics that would lead to outcomes difficult to distinguish from those of racism. People who do not care much about politics are liable, I think, to vote for whoever seems to be culturally most like them – "if (s)he looks like me or seems to like the same stuff that I do, chances are (s)he'll govern in a way I like". Or, conversely, "(s)he seems very 'other', so I'll vote for the alternative".

Dale Carrico said...

In a secularizing and racially and otherwise morphologically diversifying and society (differing ages in the workplace, wheelchairs in the streets, sartorial signals of ethnicity ubiquitous, etc.) like ours is becoming more and more all the time, in which interracial and other multicultural relations are commonplace both in everyday life and in media representations, it seems to me it will be harder to ignore the extent to which we simultaneously are members in multiple and open-ended communities while at once always only partial members of most/any of the communities in which we presently are members. I would think under such circumstances politics would be more a matter of shifting alliances among affinity groups and comparably positioned stakeholders from issue to issue, or to the extent that politics is a partisan affair involving partial identification with party programs this will be forced into a more explicitly propositional matter rather than one of subcultural signaling. I actually wonder whether one sees this kind of difference already reflected somewhat in the fledgling difference between US policy-oriented Democratic diversifying coalition politics as against US Republican homogenizing culture-war politics? Part of the exasperation expressed by Democrats about Republicans being welcome to have their own arguments but not their own facts is the exasperation of secular multiculturals disapproving the reframing of arguable issues into matters of subcultural signaling -- eg, scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, public instruction on evolutionary biology, Keynesian macroeconomic literacy for economic policymakers, harm-reduction models for drug policy, access to healthcare, childhood sex education, for gun regulation, and against capital punishment, and so on. You may note that this puts me at odds with Lakoff's "moral politics" proposal -- I do not entirely agree that we are animals more suited to moral/subcultural framing of political questions, I think we are animals whose politics are re-constituted in culture, and that ubiquitous planetary p2p-networks transform practices of identification and dis-identification (and cintingent solidarities) in ways that render our politics more ethical than moral.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you about (and am gladdened by) the direction in which we're going, but I don't think we're there yet by a long shot, especially in certain parts of the country.

But no less importantly, there's the issue of motivation. It's takes some work to figure out policy, especially in a way that gives one reasonable certitude that one was not tricked by any sources trying to provide ostensibly helpful but actually partisan summaries. The more interested will do that work, but there are likely to be be some who are motivated enough to go vote, but not motivated enough to seriously study the options they have to vote on. Not to mention people who would usually not bother voting, but get thrilled into voting for someone just like them or scared into voting against someone who looks very different. Such a case, I think, would be less about supporting a representative of one's culture (one of one's cultures? – forgive imprecise terminology if any, just a dilettante, here...) as a result of wanting to promote that culture's central moral(s) and/or out of solidarity (if I understand Lakoff and your critique of him correctly), and more about a lazy moral shortcut "looks/acts like me => thinks like me, and since I'm basically good and smart, (s)he'll be better than the alternative". The affinity is between candidate and voter, rather than between voter and culture and candidate and (same) culture. This is obviously false to anyone who bothers to think, but I suspect that the number who bother to vote is materially larger than the number who bother to think about their voting. And I don't see any evidence for this improving.

Dale Carrico said...

I have elaborated that comment to which you are responding further as its own blog post and I hope you won't mind if I export your comment and this reply to the Moot there so that more might read it (and also bypass the nonsense of our "Anonymous" racist friend, at least until he gurgles back up to the surface of his swamp.)

Part of what I am saying is that even if it is the case that so-called "low information" voter will vote on the basis of identification we should not be so quick to assume practices of identification function always the way they seem to do for Movement Republicans for whom identification seems to mobilizing racial typing or culture war subcultural signaling. I think there is lots of evidence for this, but that it isn't being grasped as the evidence that it is, eg, what Lakoff decries as the cluenessness of liberals who want to debate issues rather than morals may at least sometimes be liberals for whom identity is operating differently in consequence of our practical experience in diverse urban setting and immersed in p2p-network formations that are more ethical than moral (as I deploy those terms). I don't doubt that candidates will continue to mobilize mass-mediated ethos in soliciting votes, but I believe that secular multicultural practices of conviviality in dynamic diversity actually produce different strategies of identity. This is part of the reality that is being referenced when people speak of liberal voters tending to live in urban as against rural areas, being more educated than not (higher education immerses one in diversity rather in the way that urban life does), and so on. Again, I agree with you that we are still in the midst of a transition here and so viable national politics requires tricky translations that manage to speak both to equity-in-diversity as well as to moral/subcultural identification, but I do insist that a transition is indeed afoot and in fact well along by now. What muddies our grasp of its demands on our affiliative and stakeholder politics is, on the one hand, the fact that few secular multiculturals seem to have the language with which to attest to their reality and tend to borrow from older moraliizing vocabularies that distort their assumptions, experiences, and aspirations as much as express them, and on the other hand, the fact that reactionary moralizers grow energetic and strident as they sense their marginalization in ways that may seem to compensate for the ongoing reality of that marginalization itself by cannot sustain the mirage for long.