U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins offered encouragement to conservatives at a town hall forum that the Republican Party would embrace a "great white hope" capable of thwarting the political agenda endorsed by Democrats who control Congress and President Barack Obama.
Jenkins, a Topeka Republican in her first term in Congress, shared thoughts about the GOP's political future during an Aug. 19 forum at Fisher Community Center in the northeast Kansas community of Hiawatha.
In response to inquiries by The Topeka Capital-Journal, a Jenkins spokeswoman said Wednesday the congresswoman wanted to apologize for her word choice and to emphasize she had no intention of expressing herself in an offensive manner.
Jenkins told people at the Hiawatha forum the nation could benefit from inspired leadership of a group of "really sharp" young Republicans in the House, particularly Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va. Cantor was mentioned as a possible GOP vice presidential candidate in 2008 and is thought to be interested in seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
"Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope," Jenkins said to the crowd. "I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington."
Matt, who's owed a hat-tip, offers some sympathy:
Now to be fair, there are virtually no non-white Republican members of congress, so in suggesting that the party's future hopes rest essentially on white talent Jenkins was arguably just stating the obvious. Joseph Cao has basically no chance of being re-elected, and that leaves the GOP with white people and the South Florida troika of Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers, none of whom are really going places.Sarcasm aside, again, the problem is that Jenkins hails from a party that has, historically, scorned talk of "diversity," believes political correctness has run amok, and thinks that the worst discrimination happens to white people. When you don't practice talking to people who aren't like you, you tend to not be very good at it. This didn't mean much twenty or thirty years ago--Who cares about a few Negroes in Harlem or Atlanta?--but the country is changing. The GOP, as we all know, isn't changing with it.
I can imagine some defense of the phrase "great white hope," as a kind of generic tag. But any politicians whose spent a portion of their career talking to black people, who knows the racist history of the phrase, or has some inkling of what it means to have a first black president, would know that invoking the phrase is a bad idea.
All of that said, it's worth noting that Rep. Jenkins apologized for her words--as opposed to apologizing "if anyone was offended by her words." It's a shame that we have to give people points for that.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I can imagine some defense of the phrase "great white hope," as a kind of generic tag. But any politicians whose spent a portion of their career talking to black people, who knows the racist history of the phrase, or has some inkling of what it means to have a first black president, would know that invoking the phrase is a bad idea.
Exactly. When I heard about this, I generally dismissed it and thought "she probably doesn't even recognize the meaning behind that phrase." But the point you make here is right. It shouldn't be a "gotcha" or "look! another racist Republican," but more "when are Republicans gonna recognize the disservice their racial and (increasingly) age-based cocoon is having on their party?"
I don't follow any sports whatsoever and I know that's an expression from boxing's hunt for a white guy to beat Muhammed Ali. To whom Obama has been compared more than once, albeit not by his detractors.
Of course, it would be great if the GOP tried to go for "it's a Moby Dick reference!" and Eric Cantor could then carry around all of Moby's symbolic meaning.
I always thought that it was reference for a white guy to beat Jack Johnson. It was later applied to Ali later on. There was a play and a movie with the title. James Earl Jones was in the movie.
actually about 50 years older -- it refers to boxing's hunt for a white man to beat Jack Johnson.
I don't follow boxing, either, but I want to say it predates Ali - back to the 20s or so. But basically you're right - first black man wins the championship and suddenly white people everywhere freak out and look for someone to "defend their honor."
See, this is why I should never attempt sports posts. I at least stay out of the football threads.
Still, I'm more with it than the GOP.
You don't even need to know the history of the phrase to know that any reference to a "great white hope" would be a Bad Idea if you actually wanted to speak to a wider audience. Good grief. But these people aren't talking in their heads to a wider constituency. They're speaking to exactly those people who are threatened by a president who's not just a Democrat, but a Black one at that. It's like the apotheosis of all their fears, and it's made it impossible for them to filter their response.
The GOP is just disgustingly out of touch.
The conservative of today seems to be only conservative with three things, intelligence, reason and compassion. Opposition orientation is not and charter, or a policy position.
Watch these cynical and manipulative rich people fool the public in to voting for Republican by putting a pretty white woman up for election. Low information voters fall in line.
I like Matts take on this: "Now to be fair, there are virtually no non-white Republican members of congress, so in suggesting that the party's future hopes rest essentially on white talent Jenkins was arguably just stating the obvious."
"But any politicians whose spent a portion of their career talking to black people...would know that invoking the phrase is a bad idea."
Well, the Congresswoman does hail from Haiwatha, Kansas...
How can they be struggling to find "the great white hope?" Is there a whiter bunch on the planet?
It's the "great" bit that's giving them trouble. Also the "hope."
1 for 3. Hall of Fame numbers!
I'll give her points for honesty - it's a less ludicrous proposition for the GOP than getting a black guy to front for them (Oh...wait a minute!)
The handful of minorities left in the GOP are either cranks (Keyes), opportunists (Steele), obsessed with Castro (Ros-Lehtinen) or cringing (Powell and probably Rice.)
Ditto!
I have some older relatives, who've been voting GOP since Eisenhower, but had to quit when McCain chose Palin as his running mate. They just didn't want to associated with the party of stoopid any longer.
The Cubans who vote Republican generally are white Cubans, rather than Black. Cuba's racial breakdown is rather similar to that of the US since most of Cuba's native people died off rather than contributing to the island's later genome. By white of course I mean full-blooded European (or with so little else that they pass easily as such).
I know, but anyone from this side of the Atlantic whose native tongue is Spanish is going to be hauled out as "minority." The most interesting thing about Ros-Lehtinen is that she's a Cuban Jew whose family converted to...wait for it...Episcopalian ! But with "Semitic" genes and a Florida tan, I guess she counts as a little bit "Brown." (To her credit, she's very good on gay rights. District demographics Uber Alles !)
If you've ever been to S Florida the Cubans are so thick on the ground that they certainly do not see themselves as a minority and the Florida GOP would never dare treat them as one. At the risk of using a broad tar brush and traducing an entire population, white Cubans resemble white Southerners in their attitudes on many things. To be sure, younger Cubans, like younger people everywhere, are abandoning a lot of that, and they are no longer an automatic lock for the GOP.
Yeah, but that doesn't matter. They're touted by the GOP as their "Hispanics" on the national stage.
In a way, I'm glad this happened. I am, because it exposes the "crazy" in the party for what it is, unvarnished and un-sugar-coated. Okay yes, points for Rep. Jenkins for apologizing for the poor choice of words. But sadly her words were probably on the minds of a lot of GOPers. Not all, of course, maybe - MAYBE - not even a majority of 'em. But a lot of 'em. Some of them are even self-aware enough to be grateful that those words came out of her mouth and not theirs (but then there's Pat Buchanan who chants those types of words like some White-Is-Right mantra).
As a black republican I can appreciate her transparency, much in the same why my Great Grandfather appreciated the Ku Klux Klan for wearing bright identifiable white robes.
"Those ain't the one's that you worry about."
I can hear it like it was yesterday.
I'd love to run for the GOP. Drop the bad crazy and you can only win. Votes that is. But the GOP does not seek votes - it wants supremacy. The old must usually die to make place for the new but in this case... you cannot kill what does not live. So the GOP remains crazy, sad and decaying.
I'd love to run for the GOP. Drop the bad crazy and you can only win. Votes that is. But the GOP does not seek votes - it wants supremacy. The old must usually die to make place for the new but in this case... you cannot kill what does not live. So the GOP remains crazy, sad and decaying.
I can't help but to feel like the GOP base has started to lose hope in Michael Steele.
Being from Jack Johnson's hometown, I do hope Rep. Jenkins gets her wish.
Jim Jeffries in 2012!
I know some people will think I'm delusional here and they may be right but I'm not sure she meant anything racist by it. I have to admit that growing up I heard the phrase great white hope and thought of it as just a turn of phrase like "knight in shining armor." It's only later that I learned it's significance. Ignorance is definitely no excuse and the condemnation of her comments are appropriate but is she that deep to know the ins and outs of what that phrase means? Being that the GOP hasn't exactly been at the for front of well read and culturally astute legislators I'm unwilling to bring the hammer down too hard.
Karl,
I think the lack of culutral understanding is damming enough on it's own and explains alot of why the GOP is where they are.
Context is everything, as one of Matt's commnetators noted the phrase can be used ironically, The Chevy Volt is the great white hope of GM. In that example you are aware of the culutural meaning and are saying GM is looking for a desperate, hail mary move that will backfire just like all the great white hopes did vs Johnson.
To use it the way she did referring to defeating the first black president can only be intrepreted two ways:
1) literally, she means that teh cultural order has been upset and we need to return to the good old days and only a white man can do it.
2) she is clueless and has no idea of the cultural history.
Now I suspect there is a little of both. In her right-wing, culture warrior mindset the 50s were the good old days and liberals are ruining everything. She doesn't put that all together and recognize the racism inherent to the 50s is part of the equation. If you ask her specifically about things like school segregation and so on of course she opposes them, but like Peggy Noonan she doesn't want to have her beautifull mind troubled by thinking about all that. She loved Mississippi Burning and Glory after all:-)
So that leaves us with mostly #2, being a plitical leader in America and not bothering to educate yourself about the cultural history of minorities in this country is a form of passive racism. Ignornace is a porblem for everyone, but the average citizen can be somehwat forgiven since they are busy trying to put food ont he table. A politican has no excuse.
I agree with your argument and am of a like mind. Still, I think the points laid out in your comments are probably deeper than she goes. The GOP has been cultivating a fierce know nothing brand of politician to reflect a know nothing constituency for nearly a generation now, and why not? Prior to very recently if you were white in the US and did not understand the subtle fabric of racist thought would it have really made that much of a difference in your life/career? The fact that now such racially coded speech is being swiftly decoded and exposed in the cold light of day is a testament to some progress. That said, expect some people to be behind the curve but again, ignorance is no excuse.
Still, I think the points laid out in your comments are probably deeper than she goes.
Yeah that is basically my point, if the GOP ever wants to be more than the party of angry white people they need to start going deeper,
Well, I'll accept that she doesn't think it was racist. I'm sure there are a shocking number of things she wouldn't think were racist, however.
I do like the idea of Cantor's new nickname being the 'Great White Hope.'
I think Republicans should just stopped being called out for this type of thing. Let them relax a little bit, and see how low they can go.
It cracks me up that she mentioned Eric Cantor as a possibility along with that phrase. Wouldn't it be interesting to see, considering how much religion plays a part in at least the vocal part of the GOP right now, a Jewish candidate?
Heh. I can see the campaign now:
CANTOR 2012
They're Good with Numbers.
;-)
Cantor may be Jewish, but he's not Jewish like other Jews, he's Jewish like Norm Coleman which is like being Jewish like Sarah Palin.
It is absolutely mind-boggling to me, but at the same time I have problem believing, that someone would be so clueless as to not understand what "great white hope" means.....
Okay, I'll give the lady some points for a fairly straightforward apology, but she gets zip for historical knowledge. I'm gonna bet that she never hear of Jack Johnson. On a more encouraging note, both the House and the Senate have passed a resolution urging President Obama to grant Johnson a pardon on his Mann Act conviction in order to "to expunge a racially motivated abuse of the prosecutorial authority of the Federal Government from the annals of criminal justice in the United States.”
The GOP still lives in the segregationist south of the last century and the hinterlands of this century where women are barefoot & pregnant and minorities know their place. Come to think of it shouldn't this woman be in the kitchen cooking up some grub for us menfolk before our meeting tonight?
Maybe she was inspired by this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Jeffries
The fight, which was promoted and refereed by legendary fight promoter Tex Rickard, and became known as "The Fight of the Century", soon became a symbolic battleground of the races. The media, eager for a "Great White Hope", found a champion for their racism in Jeffries. He said, "I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro."
That is actually when the phrase was coined.
It is also amazing to realize that Jack Johnson still hasn't been pardoned for his conviction for taking a white woman across state lines.
That's pretty heartbreaking.
I hear you, and can understand putting a racial interpretation on her choice of words. Maybe they were an insensitive act of omission, but perhaps not an insensitive act of commission.
Language changes over time, once common phrases are reinterpreted and invested with different levels of meaning. Sometimes common usage of language is slower to change than we realize. Spend some time around older people and see if some of their choices of wording means the same thing to their peers as they do to younger people who grew up in a different social and verbal environment. The offensiveness works both ways, from the youth to the elders as well.
Yet another reason I am a FORMER republican. Sigh.
The GOP isn't the only party facing challenges. The Democrats are running out of other people's money to spend on their constituents. It's actually good for the GOP that this is going to happen on the Dems' watch, because, on principal, the GOP could never match the zeal of the Dems' redistributionist policies.
As I've pointed out before, a majority of blacks started voting for Democrats when the Democrats were still the party of Southern segregationists and racists. Why? Because the blacks were pragmatic: Dems were dishing out the dollars.
So, long story short: Yes, the country is more diverse, and yes, a greater percentage of African Americans and Latinos tend to be net recipients of government largess, but we're getting close to the limits of that largess. The deficit this year will be bigger than all of Bush's deficits combined. When Dems can no longer offer minorities more dollars than the GOP can, the Dems' advantage with minorities won't be as strong. And after a while, when they tire of double digit unemployment, the pragmatism of blacks and other minorities will kick in and some of them will start voting for a change. And that change, since we only have two major parties, will be the GOP.
You keep telling yourself that Dave...
I am saying this as someone who usually votes for Republicans, the GOP's lack of success with minorities runs way deeper than them having tight pursestrings.
Yeah, I think the GOP is in a kind of ugly situation. A noticeable fraction of Republicans right now appear to range from uncomfortable with blacks all the way to actively hostile. Moving toward the center, becoming more tolerant, and keeping the disturbing racist crap to a minimum[1], would probably help the GOP pick up votes over the next several years. But that's probably not the path to power within the party right now, which means it's unlikely to be done.
This matters, because the GOP won't stay out of power forever. It will be a very bad thing for everyone if the right fringe is still running the show in the Republican party when they get another chance at power.
[1] This lady's comments sound like a fairly innocent screw up; this isn't a "waterboard Obama" poster or "Barack the Magic Negro."
But in the meantime, it wouldn't hurt for the GOP to learn how to talk to and about people of color.
Wow! Dave, thanks for giving me the first real laugh of the day.
So now that we have your sweeping pronouncements about the voting patterns of "the blacks," Hispanics and all other minorities, I await your same broad brush applied to White people or as you may say "the whites." BTW, unemployment among Black people and Hispanics has been in double digits for a very long time. And if you count all "govt. largess" including the Bush/Obama bail-outs, tax cuts and loopholes for the richest among us, govt. contracts (including defense) and grants, social security payments (long after the pay-in has been accounted for,) corporate farm subsidies et al, you may find a whole lot more White "net recipients."
Talking about the black vote historically is problematic, since blacks were denied voting rights in large swaths of the country between the end of Reconstruction and the civil rights legislation of the '60s. Eisenhower and Nixon both were able to effectively split the black vote through 1960, despite the impact of the New Deal on poorer and working-class people and Truman's integration of the Armed Services. The shift of black people from solid Republican toward the Democrats is explained, first, by the GOP's betrayal of Reconstruction and the machinations of the Hayes-Tilden election, and second by urbanization and class. Black people were increasingly among the Northern demographics who saw themselves as better served by the Dems. By 1964, with Goldwater's repudiation of the Civil Rights bill, the die was cast.
I also think you're delusional in thinking that the GOP is going to be picking up minority voters in the foreseeable future. The problem with the GOP and government is that they hate it so much - as an ideological quirk - that they can't run it competently. Your economics are superficial at best, and frankly a false hope. As a Dem, I'm not worried...
I've also got more faith in the country than you do - we're not going to go broke because we provide health care. We'll go broke if we don't... The deficit is manageable and will be reduced by the party that has historically handled budgets, unemployment and economic growth far more effectively than any GOPers in recent memory. The GOP create deficits because they aren't fiscally responsible - they don't have the political strength to cut spending, but they still cut taxes. This is infantile and they aren't about to abandon their puerile bullshit because they're like pretty much just like Communists - they believe in their ideololgy and doctrines whether or not it corresponds to anything related to the real world. I think they've pretty much brainwashed themselves into oblivion for quite a spell...
A note on "Obama's deficits" from Krugman...
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/a-note-on-the-bush-fiscal-legacy/
I would be inclined to write this off to the "Topeka" factor, but Topeka is more diverse than most Coasters would imagine - nearly 12% black and nearly 20% "Hispanic of any race".
Yet another reason I am a FORMER republican. Sigh.
She could not qualify her apology. Too many people know about Jack Johnson to render "great white hope" innocuous.
Actually it seems Ta-Nehisi got it wrong. She did exactly qualify her apology to make it a non-apology. The link TNC had didnt quote her assistant so this doesn't come out clearly. Check this link out:
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/08/great_white_hope_gop_rep_apolo.html
"She apologizes if her words have offended anyone," Jenkins spokeswoman Mary Geiger told The Associated Press today.
Even though her comment was distasteful, I think that it's probably true--just maybe not in the way she meant it. The Republicans do need a "Moses" to lead them out of the desert and into the diverse America of today. This Moses will almost certainly have to be white.
Since almost all current Republicans are older, white, Southern, protestant, and by definition not terribly open to change, it's going to take one of their own to convince them that change is necessary if they are to survive. In other words, their "great white hope" better have Republican street cred--go to the Baptist church, love hunting and SEC football, military vet, etc.--being white is just the tip of the iceberg.
Except Jim Webb is a Democrat.
(Also if my prior comment ever appears it will be obvious I don't know my boxing history; I didn't think they had world champions for decades later. Sorry.)
There is a really good Ken Burns documentary on Jack Johnson, worth watching even if you aren't a sports fan
The problem is that it was a "Moses" who created the desert they live in, so getting anyone who they'd all follow to be a decent human being is pretty much impossible. Their youth leadership is in an even sorrier state, outside of Megan McCain, who'd be tossed out on her ear from a Young Republicans meeting if she didn't have her daddy to fall back on.
Perhaps someone like Pete Petraeus might fit the bill, but I don't think he's evil enough to actually fit in.
The phrase is doubly apt when considering that all those "great white hope"s lost to Jack Johnson. That same myopia and aversion to diversity is gonna mean a whole lot of losing in the future for the GOP.
This Kansas republican may be cute on the outside but Lynn Jenkins is oh-so ugly on the inside, similar to a church in Kansas which last November wrote on its marquee (like a movie theater marquee, only taller than the church itself) "Obama Muslim President a Sin." You can read about it at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2008/11/kansas-church-marquee-obama-muslim-president-a-sin.html#more
Rep. Jenkins and her "great white hope" comment, and subsequent denial that neither the statement or she herself were racist, also remind me of how the news media took off on a story about the park service trying to rid the White House grounds of a family of raccoons, shortly after the Obamas moved in. The racist journalists were absolutely gleeful in their double entendres about "coons in the White House" and, of course, denied any intent of racism. You can read about this at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2009/02/raccoons-at-white-house-america-still-waits-for-postracism.html
Ah, Kansas, my home state. Your one-stop shop for all right-wing buffoonery including: religious nutjobs, murdering religious nutjobs, cowardly, hypocritical GOP senators, secretly racist representatives, and creationists of all stripes. And my mom wonders why I don't plan on going back too soon . . .
Hey! Easy on the Kanza hate, there, pardner! Our President Obama is from Kanzas (yep, I'm-a-claiming him)!
Now, I'm gonna speak to what Lynn Jenkins said. She really doesn't know Jack about Johnson. She just knew that it was a phrase of power, like all good pop culture references, and, unfortunately for her (and us), free of historical context, in her mind, when she said such. It does fit like the proverbial velvet glove cast in iron of the Republicanonicals. The truth of the matter is: Barack Obama is The Great White Hope. I'm NOT talking about his genetic makeup. He is the vindication of these United States, and he is a confirmation of what common sense and decency are inherent within The Rights of Man.
Now, in speaking to the years just after World War II (not so very long ago), when we had a chance to really be that shining beacon on the hill. Before Reagan and H.W. Bush and his son, W., we blew a lot of that credit, right out the airlock of Spaceship Earth. We blew it on commmie-fear, on paranoia. After Carter, instead of addressing the complexities of the world, we went Blood Simple and got into bed with Reagan, the Geo. W. Bush prototype. (If each president plays the USA as a cover song, his was an extreme rendition.) Still, we looked okay to a passing glance (maybe because George the Elder was an actual adult, and Bill Clinton could pretend to be one when he wasn't getting his cock sucked, meaning most of the time), and it wasn't until we sanctioned torture that everything we worked so long and hard for, as a representative republic, was completely depleted. You don't miss the water, until the well runs dry.
It's too bad the Republicans are too mule-headed to realize that #44 is their great hope, too. I guess they still want us to go into hate-frenzy, live in caves and as serfs in a corporate-feudal state (yeah, I went there), whilst praying for a lucky hit at the lottery to pay for limbs lost to diabetes. Theirs is a scorched-earth partisanship obsession. I guess their shining beacon is China combined with Dubai, with a side-order of Taliban.
I'm a white man of the 21st Century, and I stand behind this slightly off & surreal rant.
The real racism is the fact that my President's name, Barack Obama, is still popping redline on the auto spell-check.
I hope she means it literally. I hope she's looking for a white conservative Republican to box fifteen rounds with Barack Obama.
I would get HBO *and* pay-per-view to watch that.
"When you don't practice talking to people who aren't like you, you tend to not be very good at it."
I just posted that line to my FB account. So obvious, so much a part of how I see the world, that I just came back to it.
Kinda like the time, years ago, when Ross Perot addressed (I think) a meeting of the NAACP or the Urban League and, trying to show that he understood that they approached the world with a different perspective, kept referring to the audience as "you people." Well-intended, but utterly tone-deaf.
When will the republicans realize they have to dump the Bachmann, Jenkin types to rebuild the party? There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?page_id=588
DaveInHackensack says:
This sort of rank hypocrisy is one reason Republicans have a credibility problem, especially with people of color. People of good conscience can (and often do) disagree about how and where to spend tax money, and in what amounts -- but I see this "redistribution" meme repeatedly from conservatives, apparently with no self-reflection. Why are economic policies designed to help urban areas labeled as "redistributionist" but farm subsidies are not? I've got news for Dave: ALL TAXATION IS REDISTRIBUTIVE. Republicans seem to only have a problem when the targets have names which don't end in "Inc". Or when they're the wrong ethnicity.
So many of these rock-ribbed republicans/libertarians/conservatives/whatthehellever are seemingly anti-tax, yet none of them are willing to unleash their inner billionaire by moving to a place where the central government is too weak to tax anyone for anything (we call such places "failed states"). I wonder why that is?
The fact is, a vibrant market-based economy requires a strong central government that redistributes a percentage of income to things like paved highways, police and fire services, rail systems, a postal service, an army of bureaucrats and jurists to support a robust system of property law, and so on. These things aren't anti-capitalism, they enable capitalism to thrive -- as it has done for almost all of this country's history since we've had them.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Grover Norquists of the world would be bent over a camel, pulling a train for every warlord in the Hindu Kush if they tried to make money in that free-enterprise-friendly environment, away from the oppressive hand of civilization and infrastructure.
Additionally, if DaveInHackensack could be bothered to talk to some actual black people, he might find that our negative feelings about so-called "welfare queens" are as strong as Ronald Reagan's, if not stronger. Nor are we under any illusions that we have any permanent friends (to paraphrase Disraeli) in the government. It's not lost on us that many Democratic politicians tend to take black voters for granted. It's just that most of us prefer to be taken for granted than to be treated with outright contempt, which is why Republicans can't get any real traction with Black America.
I'm referring, of course to this quote from DIH:
"Dishing out the dollars"? This is a simplistic reading of history, to say the least. If you're talking about the FDR-era shift in black voting patterns, you need to look at it in the context of the Great Depression, which had a disproportionately severe effect on black people (who were segregated out of the mainstream workforce, with a few notable exceptions that were FDR's doing anyway). Roosevelt's jobs programs (the Public Works Administration and the CCC can't properly be called welfare programs) helped make the Depression survivable for a lot of people, black folks included. FDR's steps to desegregate the military, grudging and belated as they were, also helped him and the Democratic party immeasurably.
If you're talking about the Johnson-era shift, do you think maybe his support for the Voting Rights Act had anything to do with it?
DaveInHackensack's take on this strikes me as faintly insulting, but he's got a right to his view. One might expect a little more preparation and a slightly less superficial reading of political history, though. Oh well.
He actually articulates the underlying fear and rage of the right/GOP/birther/forum shouter - WHITE voters. The Democratic party redistributes hard-earned wealth from white people and gives handouts to color people. His premise, though faulty, is common.
Jenkins wasn't thinking about Jack Johnson, but she spoke their truth. They "need" a Great White Hope. Upthread, someone referenced Burn's doc - Unforgivable Blackness. I urge everyone to watch that doc.
When you take a look at how America WAS, you can begin to understand what America IS.
You know, when I look at crap like this sent out from Michael Steele's offices I don't really thing racial insensitivity is the GOP's biggest problem ...
http://washingtonindependent.com/56844/obtained-the-rncs-health-care-survey
I read the quote recently "Forget about a 'loyal opposition', I'd settle for a sane one!" That's pretty much where this thing has gone.
She didn't mean nothing by it.
She believes that you can toss the word "white" into politics without thinking about what it means.
What is the GOP fighting for? It's fighting to protect a white self-understanding that doesn't have to face up to race as a factor in our past and present. It's fighting not to look at the foundations of the house we live in. It's fighting to remain oblivious.
(Which is terribly sad, because the house itself is actually pretty sturdy and sharing it honestly could be both rewarding and fun.)
You know, I have only ever heard the phrase "great white hope" used ironically, or even downright sarcastically, where the implication is that people are looking for some hero or miracle to solve their problems with a flick of finger when they really ought just roll up their sleeves and get busy on the problems themselves. This is the first time I can recall someone using the phrase seriously. If the GOP is looking for miracle-workers or mythic heroes they really have gone down the tubes.
One word: Reagan.
One of the better analyses of the Republican primary last year came from a Republican watching the debate at the Reagan library, after about 50 "as the great Ronald Reagan would have said..."s, who expressed a sincere desire that Reagan's zombified corpse would rise and anoint a successor by eating all the also-rans.
Two thoughts. The 'Great White Hope' theme gets kind of poetic in the present context of the self-destruction of the Repub party. Back in 1912, Jack Johnson was refused passage from England to New York on--you guessed it--the Titanic. Of course the sinking of 'that great ship' became an obvious Sign from the Almighty that pride does indeed go before destruction. The obvious analogy of the Repubs casting minorities ashore and steaming hell-bound toward disaster is pretty obvious.
And Jon (of the comment @ 6:54) is saying that 'the emperor has no clothes'. The Cuban-American tendency to vote straight Repub (fortunately a dying trend) is an extension of the class warfare of the ancien regime in Havana. A glance at the photos in the papers of Cubans demonstrating in Miami shows white people. In Havana, the crowd is much more Black. This is not an accident.
they're inching closer to NIGGER with every outburst.
it WILL happen before President Obama crosses the 2nd anniversary mark. [I would say 1 year mark, but I'm giving them more credit than maybe they deserve.]
they're itching to say it.
You mean say it when the cameras are on?
yep...in front of the cameras..
it's coming.
yep. Watch the clip of today's Glenn Beck's show on Media Matters. This really hateful man conflates clips of Farrakhan, Black Panthers and some Black kids doing some military style exercises to, not imply, but say that Obama is building a civilian army of thugs to mirror Hitler's SS. One really insightful blogger says Beck is doing it this week to "prove", in the face of his losing more than 3 dozen sponsers, that the President is in Beck's words "a racist, with a deep seated hatred of White people and White culture."
I think you're right. And if Obama runs again, we may see a racist campaign against him that will make the resistance to Reconstruction look like a summer camp sing along.
This reminds me of something that happened on Daily Kos a couple of weeks ago. One diary calling President Obama a failure (from a progressive standpoint) began with the statement "It's time to call a spade a spade." Since the site occasionally gets trolls from Stormfront, this kind of thing makes people's ears perk up, and several commenters (including me) pointed out that it was a poor choice of words.
The diarist became indignant, insisting she was an African American woman and uses the expression all the time. Of course it was not the expression itself we were objecting to but the use of it in that particular context. It's kind of like if someone said Joe Lieberman gives them the "heeby-jeebies," or that Sonia Sotomayor will make the Supreme Court "spic-and-span." None of these expressions have racist origins, but it's conceivable that someone might use them in a racist way simply because they sound like common slurs.
Furthermore, none of us accused the diarist of being a racist; we simply warned her that she might inadvertently give that impression. I myself have encountered people on Kos who implied I was an anti-Semite, even though I'm an Orthodox Jew. I first resented the level of paranoia and suspicion I ran into, but I've come to understand it a little better as I've seen some of the trolls they get, some of whom are pretty sneaky about their intentions. As a result, you have to be careful about the way you phrase things so that you're not mistaken for one of them.
This is kind of a mixed blessing, right?
On the plus side, this kind of comment helps you and everyone in the discussion notice ways you may be stepping on the toes of people you're talking with. It's a really good thing to learn how to avoid unintentionally giving offense.
On the minus side, this kind of comment usually seems to derail an interesting discussion about some real issue into an argument about terminology, almost inevitably with an implied accusation of racism or sexism or whatever. In the best cases, the original point is lost; in the worst cases, the discussion becomes a flamewreck and the bad blood created sticks around to become a problem in future discussions. A fair number of people come to decide not to participate in discussions on some topics, because life is just too short for this crap.
The fact she extended a real apology for her words, instead of a phony "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" lends credence to her being unaware of the original meaning. She had a "Great White Dope" moment. That's all.