For the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is, what are they angry about?There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they "oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care." Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.
Now, people who don't know that Medicare is a government program probably aren't reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they're probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing, than to who he is.
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's behind the "birther" movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a substantial fraction.
But how "right" is he? In other words, can we say that John Edwards would not have gotten a similar response? And even if he would have, is part of it based on the idea that "national health care" really will cover everyone? Historian Ira Katznelson outlines how Roosevelt was able to past the New Deal in part because Southern senators were able to cut their black constituents out of the "deal."
And there is the fact that never in this country's history have people admitted to being racist. Even the Confederate white supremacists insisted that they were looking out for black people. They were as cynical as any Senator today.
And then I got this via e-mail today:
Yesterday evening I was to attend to the Health Care summit with(D) Rep Betty Reed and(D) Rep Kathy Castor, I'm a Precinct Captain (203) in Tampa and we received our talking points to rebut any NEGATIVE GOP talking points on healthcare. I never made it in the building. I've never in my life really experience outright racism in a public place. Signs of Obama hung in effigy, racial slurs on signs, people chanting negative words ( too many to list) and outright screaming at Obama supporters. The hatred was in their eyes and they actually scared me for a moment. At first I was shocked, then a little scared and then I got outright mad in the span of 1 minute.............. I actually left (the "hood" would have come out). I was totally blown away it was a mad house. I'm kinda mad at my self now, because I left. I'm still shaking my head in awe....................I'm still cold inside.
One thingto keep in mind is that race, and racism, have rarely ever acted alone. One of the best points that Phillip Dray makes in his classic history of lynching is that epidemics of lynching often coincided, not just with an expansion of black rights, but with increased labor mobility among white women. So fear of white women, and their independence, as well as fear of sexual competition, all worked in concert. It wasn't simply "I hate niggers"--it never is. It was "I don't much like black people, and prices are going up, and I have to let my wife work, so I can survive, and I'm scared she won't stay with me if she's not dependent on me and I'd die if she left me for a black guy." Or some such.
Ditto for the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't just racism--it was class also. In the South you had this black middle class that always had to be deferential to the most poorest white person in the world. The prospect of losing that deference, of already being lower than the white aristocracy and now also being lower than a class of blacks too, wreaked havoc.
I don't know if the response to Obama involves a similar mix--I still don't know what to make of that Joker face. But it's worth noting that, to the extent that this is complicated, it's complexity is not new. The ingredients may be--but not the complexity. Americans have almost never admitted to being racist, and to the extent they've been racist, it's rarely been reducible to a simply "I hate black people." There's always been something more. It's always been hard to figure out what the "more" was.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
It's penis anxiety coupled with a deep, abiding fear that someone, somewhere is getting away with something. It always has been
Not just "getting away with something" but getting away with something of "theirs."
Damn. If this place allowed comment rating I'd rate the above two "+1+
So, if people are against Obama's health care plan, it's because they are racist... God, this is boring. What else you got, TNC, or is this pretty much it? I'm finding it harder and harder to visit this site, every post is a lecture on how much whitey sucks.
Someone who's on Medicare who (a) screams about the terrors of "socialized medicine" and (b) uses their Medicare and would oppose a proposal to do away with the program, is either a babbling idiot or a person for whom the issue is not really the issue.
If you think there's another explanation for Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries loudly denouncing dependency on taxpayer-funded social welfare programs, please share with the rest of us.
Yeah, you would expect them to say "Socialized medicine is bad, so let's repeal Medicare!" But instead, the argument is something far less specific - that Obama is simultaneously a socialist and a fascist and an Islamic plant who will force us all into burqas. Do these people realize he can't possibly be all three, that these groups pretty much hate each other?
Do these people realize he can't possibly be all three, that these groups pretty much hate each other?
No!! That's why they do what they do. They are easily led(or possibly paid .. or both), to do such things. They believe every insane word that comes out of Glenn Beck's(Or Boss Limbaugh .. Ann Coulter .. ) mouth. Lets face it, lots of them probably aren't the most critical thinkers in the world. Racist or not(which I suspect a fair amount of them are. After all, what was "The Southern Strategy" about?).
You are confusing political parties with ideologies.
No one claims Obama is a member of the Socialist Party or the Fascist Party. They claim his positions/leadership express fascist/socialist values. And fascist ideology is not in conflict with socialist ideology. Fascism is simply an ideology which elevates the state over the people, and socialism is an ideology in which the state controls major portions of the economy.
(Don't know enough about islam to comment, and people accusing Obama of supporting radical islam are much farther into the lunatic fringe than those calling him a fascist/socialist.)
I don't think alot of these folks consider Social Security or Medicare to be "socialist" programs because they already paid into the systems for decades. Now, they're just getting their "investments" back.
I believe the cries of "socialism" are just a mask for intense fear. Many people who have coverage now, whether it's employer-shared or through Medicare are deathly afraid that any big reform package designed to bring in millions currently uninsured will have some negative impact on their own coverage.
It's not that we think people opposed to the health plan are racist. It's that people seem to be reacting in an almost visceral way, like their lives were on the line or something. I expect people to protest; I don't expect people to burn images of the president in effigy. I expect some pointed questions at town halls; I don't expect people to try to shout down members of Congress who are trying to answer questions at those town halls. I expect complaints about how the health care reform is flawed; I don't expect people to say that Democrats are setting up a Nazi government because of minor changes to the health care system.
Everything has been blown so far out of proportion that it's not even funny anymore. There is something going on here. I don't necessarily think it's race (or at least not just race), but there is a bubbling rage that frankly scares me. I know progressives have protested Bush over the past few years, but I don't remember effigies or such.
Unfortunately, I do remember some effigies of Bush, though in my recollection they were pretty rare. They also tended to be more directed at Bush (and his general stance as a unitary executive) rather than at a proposal to reform healthcare. But that may be my prejudice showing.
You're right, they probably were out there. But I don't think it was ever a big part of progressive protests. Like, I attended a number of protests and such and never saw any effigies, but maybe they were at big things that tended to draw the crazies like the RNC protests in 2004 (not that I'm saying everyone who protested was crazy - I know some people who were there - just that the big protests tend to draw crazies as well as legitimate protest).
I've always been ashamed, though, by those guys who stand up in the middle of a presentation and start shouting at the person talking. It's always made progressives look bad - our goal is to have a discussion, not stop the discussion. But these recent protests - it seems to be hundreds of the interrupters trying to guarantee nothing can be said and no one can even hear the arguments. It just feels so wrong...
Which is to say - I'm all for Republicans getting their argument out. But don't try to strong-arm everything and shut down argument. Because that's far closer to brown shirt tactics than anything the left's done in recent memory.
Of course there was all kinds of extreme demonizing of Bush, but it seems mainstream Democrats and visible progressives stayed away from those comparisons, choosing instead to focus on Bush-Cheney's policies on their own horrible, probably criminal terms. The tea party contingent is being actively and vocally goaded by such mainstream conservative mad hatters and march hares as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Even John Boehner, the leader of the GOP in the House, has been perpetuating this absurd euthanasia storyline.
So do I polywogy, Bush 1 that is. On a visit to Portland, Ore. with Barbara Bush (I was her press secretary) we drove thru hundreds of liberal protesters (I forget what they were protesting) who were in fact burning her husband, the then President, in effigy. But I also attended dozens of town hall meetings with my former bosses, a GOP Senator and then a House member, and I don't remember any of this nonsense. I guess that was when the GOP actually had a moderate branch. We should all remember what Mrs. B. Bush once said, "the hardest job in politics is motivating a moderate."
I am mortified that none of my former colleagues see fit to call out the lunatics (including today's latest Palin tweet) who are shouting at the top of their lungs "euthanasia," and "Obama's death panels are going to kill my baby!"
I don't think everyone who opposes Obama or his programs are racists, but I know that all racists oppose Obama and his programs.
The town hall shoutdowns give me an eerie Leo Ryan-in-Jonestown feel.
If you read every post as a lecture on how much whitey sucks then yeah go read the WaPo or something else.
I would say that people are against meaningful health care reform because they hate millinns of their fellow Americans and love the upper economic 5% who have enough money to get health care for their descendants unto perpetuity. That, or played by the health insurance industry via all their insecurities about class, race, identity and so on.
What's boring is the stubborn insistance for decades to avert what will be an economic crisis of a larger magnitude than the one we are going through if this emergency room socialism isn't overturned and the US enters the 21st century in dealing with its health care costs. More than boring, criminal, for which our children and grandchildren will certainly pay.
TN pardon the tone, and feeding the troll, I stand by it, but would understand if you thought it ban worthy.
@derek, you won't be missed.
I think part of it is race-based, but when I sit down and really think about it, I'm pretty sure they would be doing the same sort of crap to Hillary had she won. Just it would be misogynistic language instead of racist language and effigies of a white woman. I think we've just hit a point where the far right has gotten so loony and so prone to violence that either someone has to stand up to them and say they are freaking crazy or something truly awful is gonna happen. Not sure what, but I'm kinda scared after the murder of Dr. Tiller and the scenes of these rallies.
McCain and Palin really did not help things by pandering to these people...
This I agree with, utterly. The question is: What are we (nuanced, atonal, sometimes shy, TNC-reading people) going to do about it?
Right now, there are few things I'd march on Washington for, but real health care reform (and yes, I'm one of those single-payer/socialized-medicine craving pinkos) is definitely one. It doesn't hurt, feeling the embarrassing sting of what Iranians are willing to risk their lives for, when I remember the election of 2000.
Would Ren-Faire tactics work on these angry, bitter and misled souls? Friendly crowd-manipulating skills are definitely a must, when dealing with these mobs.
You know, I agree with you that if we had genuine health care reform, I would be willing to march on Washington. But it would have to be real - single payer, etc. - which this isn't. So, don't really have the will to march.
The big problem I see on the progressive side is that we don't actually have something to argue for yet because Baucus screwed up things so badly in the Senate - if we had a bill, we could actually go out and say, "Hey, this is what the bill actually says and this is how it's going to help you." Instead, we have to answer these completely crazy arguments coming from the right with, "Um, that's not what the bill will say." But we can't say what the bill will say or do because there isn't yet a bill...
yeah how many people, on either side or no side, answering pollers asking about support of the Prez's health plan said that they didn't know because as of yet he doesn't have one. I bet that the # of folks to whom this reality would even occur is the real minority in our country.
Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. The closest I can see being reasonable, is the parallel health insurance provided by the government. And that's a BIG maybe.
Still, the Iranians had a choice just as marginal, if not more so, between their candidates. I think a chance (at the aforementioned gov't health insurance) is march-worthy, even if ultimately disappointing. Life is one big tilting at windmills escapade, anyways.
I agree. Similar (and worse) things were going on during Bill Clinton's administration: the Vincent Foster allegations, the militias, Tim McVeigh...
As Digby said, they'd find something about any Democrat. Whether Obama, Hillary, Bill, John Edwards or whomever. Look at all the stupid crap Bill had to deal with? But yes, there is an element of race since Obama is black.
Well we do have another example to look it.
When the Clinton's tried to do Health Care reform in the 90s things got heated and there was a lot of BS being thrown around, by the opponents but certainly nothing like this.
Maybe it is just that the world has changed, the internet makes it easier to organize, or Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has gotten better at it.
Or maybe a black president brings out the latent racism...
I think you're right, but I think racism plays a role there, too. The Clintons are symbols, in the mind of the hard Right, of the 60s: highly educated, progressive, working for equality. The Nixonian "Southern" strategy is just long-term exploitation of the fears of white people, especially men, losing their preeminent place. The Clintons are agents and symbols of that change, of the 60s counterculture. I think it's laughable - I mean, how counterculture can they really be? - but that's the root of the extreme reactions they have always received.
What I'm saying is, the specific language of hate may change a little, but whether it's Obama or Hillary Clinton, racism is a big part of the craziness of the health care debate. The Right doesn't want everyone, including non-whites, to have health care. It was there in the 90s and it's there now. That Obama is black just magnifies it.
its complexion is not new...fixt
Not sure what you're saying here... I think complexity is exactly what TNC meant, though of course he can correct me. Or were you saying something different?
Complexity is what TNC meant and complexion is what I meant.
Oh, sorry. Can you expand on that at all?
Racism, misogyny, intra-class resentment, reactionism -- all these roots (and others) run very deep in American culture, and you don't need to dig down very far to see how tangled up they are with each other.
I agree with you 100%.
This seems right on. How much of the racism is sincere, "My ethnicity is outright better than your ethnicity" and how much is, "Fuck this socialist shit, and the n----- bringing it." (Interesting how I, a white dude, can't bring myself to type that one word in this forum. Worthy of exploration in and of itself...) Racism's long and passionate history in this country gives its particular forms of invective a power few other vitriolic statements have. It seems more along the lines of voicing opposition to another ideology in the most emotionally charged way, one that will not only cut your opponents to the quick but allows the speaker a rush of power that only pure, unadulterated hate unleashed can bring.
I think it's pretty clear that the n-word (yes, I feel stupid saying that) is pretty much the one truly unacceptable word in this culture. Okay, maybe c-nt, too (interesting, eh?) Seriously, there are contexts where you don't say f-ck or sh-t, but the sheer emotional value and the level of hurt and offense that comes from those words pales in comparison.
I decided to self-censor because of the small print under the text box warning me not to post obscene or objectionable material. ;)
I don't much care if you use the word nigger in the context you're describing, and frankly, I'd be shocked if anyone objected. There's a difference between paraphrasing someone else's thinking (i.e. "Kill the fags," "Fuck Bitches, Get Money," etc.) and actually referring to someone that way. (i.e. "You're a nigger.") I think people are adult enough to know the difference, here. If not, there in the wrong place.
How do you feel about the word "cracker" and it's use? Shouldn't you be outraged by that word? The fact that you are not and the word "nigger" can only be used by blacks in this country shows me you are very ignorant yourself. Are you one of those guilty white people who is "brain-washed" by the liberal media into thinking we have something to be ashamed of? I am not ashamed of being white, I love being white! In fact the last time I said "white is beautiful", someone answered with, why don't you say brown and black are also beautiful? My response to that person was, when a black person says "black is beautiful" nobody says that you should also add that white and brown and yellow are also beautiful! Do you see what I am driving at? Wake up stupid! Everyone is beautiful, but if you want honesty, the blacks in this country have to be honest too and they are not. I hear it all the time about they want a "real" discussion about racism but when you start to ask questions about why the fathers leave their families to welfare and why they won't acknowledge the AIDs among their population they want to blame it all on slavery and the truth about slavery is that it was mostly blacks selling blacks into slavery. And one more thing, I have yet to hear a black person say thank you for the hundreds of thousands of young men who died freeing the slaves. Think about that, just think about that.
Is this satire? You're going to have to bring much more that. Yikes.
"than that"
It's always worse when the economy is bad. Lack of jobs mixed in with black people and women getting ahead (and in the case of Obama -- WAY ahead) is a powder keg. Bill Clinton was 100% right last year when he said that the crap he was put through would pale in comparison to what the GOP and their minions would do to Obama. No one seems to be willing to call them on it, but the GOP (and their media outlets) are inciting riots and getting dangerously close to urging their members to commit treason.
I'm glad your friend left the meeting before he did something that made headlines. But I do know how he feels. My thoughts as the thuggery at meetings goes on and on have lately drifted toward the "why do I have to pay taxes to keep these bigots on Medicare?" Which makes me feel like their ignorance and anger is seeping into my psyche, which disgusts me. Unlike them, I do know better. I do know that health care is not "us vs. them" or "no one else in the life boat" but an opportunity to ensure that all Americans get care without facing financial ruin. But just the same, racism can bring the "east side" out in me in a way that nothing else can.
It's worth noting that the e-mail author was a woman. Dunno if that changes anything. It might shine some light on her impressions.
Strange. Just from reading that email, I assumed it was a woman.
You are so right about the GOP and its media outlets getting dangerously close to inciting violence. I mean, how to do they expect people to react when members of Congress are saying that the Obama administration wants to euthanize your grandmother and create a Nazi state and the talking heads are telling people to gather mobs and go shout down their elected officials?
I keep wondering to myself what the end point of all of this is. Is it merely the defeat of health care reform? Would that be enough to quell all of this? I used to think so, but I'm increasingly doubting that. As we've been discussing, this goes so far beyond health care and so deeply into the darker part of people's souls, that I don't think a mere political win is enough anymore.
I hope I'm wrong, but I lay in bed at night worrying that I'm not... and what the implications of being right might be.
Has there been a single instance of major social progress in this country's history that wasn't preceded, accompanied, and followed-up by significant violence?
This is a violent country, and has been for a very long time.
Your second paragraph, tressea, is what I have been fretting about lately as well; the sense that this is never really going to end--during Obama's term(s), and for that matter a generation or two. And to think one of the many reasons I voted for BHO over HRC was the prospect of having to listen to more anti-Clinton vitriol for several years. I'm ashamed to admit I was that naive, but at the same time more proud of my vote than ever as I watch a new kind of class struggle emerge: those who have class, and those who do not.
DC Fem,
Your first paragraph is the bottom line.
However complicated the issue I think that the role of white privilege, which you touched on, may be at play in a lot of the current anger. Fears of a leveled playing field and a loss of status are rarely manifested as clear cut case of racism but ultimately, at least in the context of American history, is rooted in racial privilege in my opinion. It's hard for me to see it as anything other than this when you see such extreme reaction to even the prospect of a more egalitarian approach to health care reform. Maybe if the president wasn't black and we didn't have the history that we have I would see things differently but he is and we do.
To a person who thinks, "I'm content to live in the mud, as long as the n**gers have to live in shit!" a nice, clean shower with soap and shampoo and enough towels for everyone is nothing but a threat to their position in the social order.
This is awesome. I'm going to have to find a way of using this in conversation.
That's a great analogy, one that deserves much wider propagation. It's a meme that would take hold really well.
Read a little more closely. He says its a myriad of things, which likely include race. If not race, however, then why the fixation with Obama's otherness? Why the repeated references to lynching? Why the assanine insistence that Obama isn't American? Why the ranting against their own self-interest?
Not to avoid the racial aspect, I just don't have anything to add to what you have said. But this issue of whether or not voters can deal with complexity of any kind, or will always deal instead in simplified stereotypes/projections, may be the key issue for the future of our democracy. We will not always be the kind of ecomonic super-power that can feed into peoples' hopes for the American dream. And when that house-of-cards starts to fall we are going to need a significant number of people who are capable of voting for reps/plans that have some viability/validity. The failures of bank reform, healthcare reform, environmental reform etc, may be signs of the limits of our federal govts ability to do more than split up the pie. I had a scary premonition of our future when I was in England back in the 80s and if we don't find a way to come to terms with the end of our manufacturing age all the other matters of importance may just fall to the wayside.
After Katrina, I heard a lot of people say of the surviving victims, "They just want something for nothing". And I think this is the same sentiment. Perhaps it's not necessarily directly related to Obama being President, but there is still a sense that this will take away from the good, hard-working "real" Americans, and give to the people who "Just want something for nothing".
Yeah maybe they will "loot" our healthcare system and we`ll have to send vigilantes with guns after them like in Katrina.
I occasionally wonder what would have happened if it had been Greenwich that had been flooded, or Grosse Point, or some other such area. I don't recall hearing "they just want something for nothing" about the mostly white survivors of the Mississippi floods of 1993.
I find it extremely insulting that those who are exercising their first amendment rights to loudly protest the government becoming more involved in healthcare are being tarred as racist, and violent. Especially considering that the only physical violence I have heard reported so far has been against anti-healthcare plan protesters. For example, Kenneth Gladney, a black conservative activist who was attacked and had racial slurs directed at him for his opposition to healthcare reform.
Slightly o/t. I apologize, TNC.
I find it so interesting that black conservatives (as hard as some may try) cannot escape that moniker of black conservative. Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, et. al just want to be known by their conservative bonafides but they still get their pigment added to their ideology.
I only mentioned Mr. Gladney's race because of the claim that the movement against healthcare reform is motivated by racism. If that is so, how do you reconcile black citizens participation in the protests?
I don't need to reconcile the participation of people I can count on two hands among a throng. Also, there is legitimate opposition to healthcare reform and there is almost blind opposition to all things Obama. One of these things is different from the other, both in origin and in expression.
It's not "motivated" by racism, but racism is the tool being used to disrupt. The opposition to healthcare is profit motivated, racism is just a way to keep us all busy discussing the outrage of the racism while the deals are made.
It's Class Warfare 101.
Wow. Pre-scripted talking points much?
Well, the RNC's new plan has really worked well: they've stopped giving out McCain Points, and have started giving out Confederate Dollars.
I find it extremely insulting that conservatives dare to call what the protesters are doing nothing more than "an exercise of first amendment rights". Many of these activists set out to explicitly shut down the town hall meetings. They deliberately drown out opposition supporters. They bus the same protesters to different meetings all across a specific region and then claim to be representing some kind of grassroots expression of outrage.
I have no beef with people who come to local meetings to say their piece, even if they say it loudly or rudely. But let's call this what it is. This is an attempt by Republican organizers to shut down all debate and drown the airwaves in talking points about socialism and euthanasia. This is demagoguery from people who are afraid to let the other side speak.
How can you say that they are trying to shutdown debate when, if President Obama had his way, the healthcare bill would already have been passed? They are angry because the Democrats in Congress tried to railroad through a sweeping change in healthcare reform with little to no debate.
Well, basically because they literally are. You can say all you want about Obama trying to get the bill through quickly, but it's pretty hard to say that people who go to a meeting and shout so loud that no one else can talk aren't trying to stop debate.
Um, actually, it's the Democrats in Congress who have PROLONGED the debate. See: Baucus, Max; Conrad, Kent; Dogs, Blue. The GOP is going to vote against this no matter what. The legislation that will emerge will be bi-partisan in the sense that the progressive and conservative wings of the Democratic Party will reach an agreement, with maybe one or two Republicans in blue states jumping onboard (Snowe and Collins, for example).
Again, debate is good. Pointed questions are good. Even protests outside of town hall meetings are good. But not when the protestors are carrying signs that depict Obama as Hitler or a terrorist and effigies of lawmakers. Not when the protesters are doing all they can to scream over lawmakers and keep other citizens, probably with legitimate concerns, from engaging with their representatives.
Which is why all these folks were up in arms when the GOP-controlled House rammed through their Medicare Part D program.
Oh, wait.
Why are you bringing up the 1st Amendment? No one on this thread, as far as I can tell, is denying that the protesters have the right to protest or be anti-Obama or whatever. Besides, just because something passes constitutional muster does not make it a good idea.
Do you even know what the First Amendment says?
I saw a video today of Mr. Gladney's so-called "beating" by pro-reformers. It opens with a pro-reformer on the ground and then Mr. Gladney goes down as well, but he is up and at 'em in about 2 seconds, walking around and talking. The folks who are promoting this canard should have looked at the video before promoting yet another lie.
"I don't think everyone who opposes Obama or his programs are racists, but I know that all racists oppose Obama and his programs". You totally contradict yourself here Anna! You are the racist and the "taker" who drains this country and refuses to become American. I'll bet you have never even read the Constitution of the United States! You are an idiot if you believe anything the Nazi-Democrats have to say! Barrack Hussein is the Anti-Christ! I would think you would realize that if you are Catholic!
What? You don't even make sense! The reason why so many people are up in arms about the issue of health care is because it takes away our freedom of choice and although you may be used to somebody taking care of you, some people like myself may choose to take care of themselves. Take your Anchor-babies back to Mexico and straighten out your own country and then come back with a few good ideas as to how to fix America. We see our freedoms being taken away and maybe in Mexico that does not matter much since the whole country is corrupt anyway, but it matters to alot of people here. By the way, I don't have health insurance myself but I would rather take my chances than to have someone dictate to me how I should handle my health and life choices.
Banned.
I don't have a lot to add except, this post just reminds me how hard it is for the social sciences, to really measure this kind of stuff. There is so much difficulty in measuring different variables of human behaviors and thought processes, in order to come up with the definitive "why" something like this happens.
Complexity is only one of the problems with the idea of a science of social phenomena, because unlike say ph levels or forces like gravity, attitudes/thoughts/etc are not seperable/measurable/calcuable in the same way. The logical spectre of reification looms large over the social sciences
"unlike say ph levels or forces like gravity, attitudes/thoughts/etc are not seperable/measurable/calcuable in the same way"
Right, exactly. So we are left with discussions like this, which are great and wonderful, but in the end, we only have oour anecdotes, and individual personal and cultural experience to go on in measuring how much of this is class? racism? sexism? etc. etc. with situations like the one in TNCs post. We just don't know, and talking and discussing it can only go so far. Don't have any firm conclusions myself.
well you might notice that once in a while someone, often me, asks so what are we going to do about it. I would prefer trying to 'diagnose' these things in terms of solutions because while the talk of "causality" might be entertaining/engaging, at some point it gets too much like the discussions here about which athlete was better.
And talking that way about issues like racism is worrying and has gotten a bit ugly here on occasion.
I think that there is a kind of pop-psychoanalytic view that if we can get to the primal scene and air it out, talk it out, that somehow this will bring about change but frankly that kind of catharsis doesn't even make sense at the clinical level. These kinds of human affairs only make "sense" in fiction, in the world one just has to figure out how to come to terms with them in order to change them.
it's not racism per se. it never is. but it race become the vehicle through which people tend to understand their predicament. these are issues of class. in america, race becomes a rough short hand for class, but this is really about class and the beauty of the american experience is that you can control poor whites a lot easier by appealing to their racial solidarity than with their class solidarity.
the reason we don't have many of the safety nets that other industrialized countries have is that oppositions to such programs was easily reduced to opposition to giving Blacks a benefit they don't deserve.
money is always available to kill or incarcerate. money becomes more scarce when it needed to educate or serve.
Amen.
It's not just racism, it's also nativism, which plenty of minorities get wrapped up in, as long as they themselves never had to deal with it. I've known plenty of minority people managed to get citizenship via wealth or parentage turn around and spit on anyone who's status is questionable. Michelle Malkin, for example.
What's amazing is when they get hooked into movements like the tea baggers, minority members become totally blind to the bigotry all around them. Malkin has ties to VDare, which is a white nationalist group. She even spoke out in favor of internment based on race.
Oh, and another thing, the "tea bagger" and anti-healthcare reform movements? Overwhelmingly anti-choice. They're the core of the right wing movement. There's not even a hint of bipartisanship about them. It's all right wing, all the time. So I'm not surprised at all to find racism, sexism, and other right wing bigotries bubbling up from the surface. You can't have a movement made out of right wing ideology and not have those things.
"The tea party contingent is being actively and vocally goaded by such mainstream conservative mad hatters and march hares as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh."
Pure & Simple, there is alot of money to be made off generating and perpetuating this outrage. My late uncle never turned off the Fox news in his house and his living room was full of every latest book by Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly etc etc. IMHO Fox is simply the 'pusher' and the likes of Hannity et al are like your your mexican exports while my uncle was just a poor addict.
Except, maybe, for Michael Moore the rabid left never 'monetized' the outrage the same way you see with conservative pundits/authors etc.
These charecters don't give a bleep about the country or anything other than selling their next book or ratings for their show. I'm less clear that it is politics or racism as greed in selling 'whatever works'
Obviously, they're Limbaugh, Beck et al are driven by greed, but their over-reliance on dog-whistle racism and appeals to Christian extremism betray a deep cynicism that is borne out of some form of extreme disdain for minorities. They must know the more rabid their base gets, even to the point of violence, the more they'll sell.
TNC, your colleague Andrew Sullivan just really nailed this over on his blog:
"But it is also surely cultural - an expression of the rage some in white America feel at the new social make-up of their country. I just sat through a PJTV segment on Sarah Palin, in which the host blithely referred to the heartland as "real America."
"If that is what you really believe - that people in cities or suburbs, that minorities, that gays, that blacks and Hispanics are not part of "real America" - then of course, you are angry. You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to "take over" all healthcare provision ... and on and on. And no one is left in the GOP to challenge this, to calm it down, to present practical alternatives to the obvious crushing problems the country and the private sector have in paying for increasingly costly healthcare."
Illustrative of the issue (the extremity of reaction) is "derek sutton's" comment that "every post is a lecture on how much whitey sucks." Of ALL forums, on the internet, THIS is the MOST thoughtful and considered. That on reading these comments, his internalization is that what is being said is that whitey sucks, says volumes about how the average Republikaaner feels. Not what they feel about healthcare, not about the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or anything you care to mention, but about the fact that "goddamnit, the nigger got elected" (note to Erik V: context is everything, use sparingly)
They cannot separate the issues from the emotional context of their loss of symbolic power. They have had the white supremacist narrative as a background context (implied even when no racial aspect is apparent) to everything for generations and to have that overthrown in what seems to be an instant, is simply not comprehensible. For them it appears "everything you know is WRONG". Hence we get, the birthers, the socialist/muslim/anarcho-communist monster shouters. Those elements represent the interior chaos their collective mind feels at the turn of events.
What this reveals is the extent to which the racial superiority subtext is built in to the fabric of thought. What it says for the future, is less certain.
"Republikaaner"
Damn, that's a good one. I don't think I've ever actually laughed at an insulting word corruption before.
So a slur like that is acceptable, but calling Obama a socialist is out of bounds. I know, it isn't the same because Republicans actually are racists. Just like there isn't as much outrage when a creep like Tancredo, Ann Coulter, or Ward Connerly get shouted down at events because it is combating hate speech.
Absolutely right, DougEMI. We have to remember to remain gracious-- determined, but polite.
Trash talking only leads to more trash.
Lefebvre's comment didn't indicate that the term (not looking to debate whether its a slur or not) "Republikaaner" was appropriate or acceptable. Just that it was funny.
Lebecka and Doug, I appreciate the sentiment. But we've tried it before. It's time to get tough--and yes it was funny.
I wasn't thinking "slur" so much as "diffrentiator". Republican is to Republikaaner as legitimate political party/perspective is to non-rational clinger to a less than ethical, unsupportable, world view. Negative? sure. But (IMO) hardly rising (or falling) to the level slur. Intended as wordplay/humor, and received as such by lefebvre (glad that was the FIRST response).
Krugman (and TNC) are right, it's never just one thing. In addition to the class anxiety, the fear of some nebulous socialism, and the healthy dash of racist birther hysteria, it's also what that one (crazy) woman spoke about in that Republican town hall meeting, when she held up her birth certificate and shouted that she wanted her country back. I'm relatively young, so it still shocks me to see the way the last few decades have scarred some parts of the older generations. Large parts of what they took for granted as "the country" are crumbling or already gone for good. It excites me to think of the possibilities for the future, but that woman has unfortunately been left behind.
TNC,
Like that you pointed out that manifestations of racism are rarely grounded purely in the belief of racial superiority. Peoples fears and uncertainties are a result of many influences. This topic alone could fill a year's worth of blog posts.
My other comment is simply, 'so what'. If what Krugman says is true and the reform haters are acting out purely from racist motivations, does that change anything? The reform haters would certainly deny being racist so shame will not influence them. Since the GOP and conservative right have for a generation exploited their constituents fears, the reform haters recent actions are wholly predictable. They recognize they are a minority (not necessarily in race, but rather social views) and their fears have been their motivation for so long, that is what they know.
To sum up your post, I felt it was provocative in the end and futile in the beginning.
Cheers
I think it's not trivial to try to understand why people are really protesting, as opposed to taking them at face value. If it's true, you can't really deal with their opposition just by explaining to them about what the plan really is. Or at least it's less likely to be effective. But if you recognize where it's coming from, there might be other strategies that could deal with the anger and fear... You don't have to call them racists to try to find methods to deflate the racist energy.
obama has used this strategy very effectively. He has even brought my Republican father (2 time Bush voter!) around to his side because he remains calm and is so obviously well-informed and intelligent.
lebecka, your GOP dad has resisted the party's "Margaret (who are you going to believe, me or lying eyes) Dumont" strategy, Congrats to him. Republicans Unite: "I am not Margaret Dumont!"
Agreed. And its not only important to understand where all this comes from in order to deal with the protesters themselves, its also important because a greater understanding of these peoples' motivations could effect the broader public impression of them. If the American public takes this actions at face value and truly believes that there are this many people this worked up about the health care proposal, they will be less inclined to support it, and even less inclined to ask their representatives to support it. The protesters want all the questions and doubts to focus on the bill itself (what is wrong with the proposal, that so many hate it?) and not on the people doing the protesting (why are these people THIS worked up about health care, when they don't even seem to know what the bill entails?). If it becomes common public assumption that these people aren't REALLY protesting the health care bill but are simply angry, marginalized white Republicans who want to strike out against an administration they see as patently anti-white and anti-Christian, most sane Americans would either ignore them entirely or be horrified at the level of anger being displayed.
pol, I don't understand why not take grown-up people at their "face value", why do you assume that you might come to know their "real" values/motivations better than they do? Or did you mean "face value" in terms of the assumption by other people that they are racist? Or someting else? Couldn't racism be a "cause" of anger and fear?
I think its almost impossible to take a person at face value if that persons claims to be anti-socialized medicine but is on Medicare.
I agree with Krugman. On a related note, I've found myself wondering how the media and "real Americans" would view the state of our country and voice their opinion if the last few weeks had been the same only the roles reversed:
- A black cop arresting a 60-year-old white man in his home.
- Groups of predmoinantly black and brown protesters interupting town-hall meetings and displaying signs filled with misinformation and aggressive language.
- Black senators (remember hypothetical) over-analyzing one past comment from a qualified white soon to be Supreme Court justice and accusing said person of being racist.
- A Latino man shooting up a gym because he was angry at the hand dealt him by life.
- Far left news personalities accusing the white POTUS of being racist with names like "Magic-Honky" and making Hitler and Brown Shirt comparisons.
All of this following talk by some of secession and others questioning the validity of a white male president. Is it just me or would these folks be called out as thugs and anti-American? How often would we hear "this is America, if you don't like it you can leave/ go back to where you came from" or "stop complaining" or "who raised you people." We'd also hear about the downfall of manners brought on by Hollywood and the younger generation.
Much of what is going down is all partisan politics. It's just one side of the isle has lost all adult leadership and moderate members. That they have no alternative ideas and thus can not particpate in debate likely adds to the anger which I believe is real. How these folks are expressing their anger is dangerous as it exposes what has always been at or below the surface, which for many happens to evolve around race no matter which side of an argument they find themselves.
Exactly. You are so right on. Well said.
@Polywogy: Upthread you asked me to expound on what I meant when I substituted complexity with complexion. This exactly.
you made me LOL at the ' what ifs'
a Black cop arresting a 60 year old WHITE professor, who uses a cane, IN HIS HOME, after the WHITE man presented him with TWO pieces of ID?
You need not go any further than that.
honest folks know which way would be up. ...
The specific statement being:
"I would hope that a wise White Man with the richness of his traditions would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a black or a woman who has different experiences."
Well more precise would not be "who has different experiences" but "somebody who hasn’t lived that life.
It's the difference between having different experiences, and no experiences.
And yes, if 108 out of the 111 supreme court justices had been Back and Latino women with only 2 whites and 2 males having served before and he would be the first white male? It would have been an entirely justified comment.
In this context really does matter I think.
Much of what you've been describing has been applied to white Democrats in the past. I recall a story Al Franken told about a woman he talked to in 2000, who said she was voting for Bush because she feared Gore would take away her guns. As Franken continued to discuss the matter with her, he eventually discovered that her views on gun control were to the left of Gore's. I've had similar experiences, and so have many people.
People who think that rabid, violent conspiracy-mongering of the sort we're seeing is anything new have a short memory. Remember the swift-boating of Kerry? Remember the theories about Vince Foster? Remember how Clinton was called a murderer, a rapist, and a drug addict, and how these theories were advanced openly by major right-wing figures like Jerry Falwell? And that's not to mention how the right has long screamed "socialist" and "communist" at politicians who are in fact quite moderate. As Justin Miller on this site reminds us, back in the day the Birchers were calling Ike a Commie agent.
Make no mistake: there is definitely a racial element to the attacks on Obama. But racism is wrapped up in the entire cultural outlook of these people, which has many different aspects to it, race being just one of them. I do not believe that all these people are crude bigots--probably most of them aren't. See the interesting discussion on Andrew's blog about whether GOP voters would treat Bobby Jindal the same way. I believe they would not, for the most part. You can't separate the race factor from the political and cultural factors; it's all bundled up in their basic fear of cultural change, though when it's applied to a politician of color, it manifests itself in racist ways.
I'm not sure if you're addressing this post, or some broader argument about racism. This, for instance, is basically my point:
I'm not sure how this differs from what I wrote. I don't think I was arguing that this was the manifestation of "crude bigotry." The point is that racism--in this country--has rarely been just "crude bigotry." From the OP:
As someone older, I disagree with the premise that (and I am not sure this is what you are saying exactly) open bigotry is somethng that has been historically rare. Quite the contrary, I grew up in a neighborhood (1950s)in which blacks were strictly forbidden to buy into vis a vis a neighborhood real estate association agreement, and that in the multicultural Los Angeles, CA, that bore no relationship to the antebellum south. Moreover, well into the late 20th century there were all sorts of "sundown" townships through out the north in which blacks were faced with curfews, which had vigilante as well as police enforcement.
When I moved to a rural Northern California town--Mendocino County--in the early 1970s, it was well known that if a black inadvertently walked in the main bar in town, he had better be ready to take on a bunch of drunken, belligerant white regulars (hippies also found that it wasn't so pleasnt for them either; worst of all, be a native American).
I don't believe in conspiracies much, so rather than conspiritorial, I view this phenomenon as synchronistic: many of the liberation movements of the 60s and 70s made out and out bigotry taboo; certainly that taboo has ascended in much of today's US, so those who wanted to play upon racial, gender, class insecurities for profit and political gain found more subliminal ways to do so. The "reverse racism" meme is one of the handiest.
The white face joker is (pardon the expression) riddled with racist semiotic meaning, heartbreaking in its signification. The question is--what is to be done? What is to be done?
I see what you are saying but I think TNC's point is still valid in certain ways. When challenged on it in the cold light of day open bigotry, while it may be the truth is rarely sited by individuals as the reason for racist behavior. Housing discrimination could be cast as protecting property values, violent wrong place/time confrontations could be cast as protecting the neighborhood/bar, the list goes on. In America there has always been a way out of pure grotesque bigotry either by lying, re-framing or projecting. All of which we have seen employed in the last few months.
Yes and no. The word "racist" itself only goes back to the 1930s, but in the 19th century most whites did not try to hide their belief that blacks were biologically inferior. Of course they claimed to be acting for black people's benefit, but what they were arguing was explicitly racist by any contemporary definition. I agree that antiblack racism has usually manifested itself as something other than "hating all black people," but that's because the very nature of the prejudice is largely about keeping blacks in their place, not eliminating them (like the Nazis' attitude toward Jews). It wasn't really until the 20th century that racists started claiming to be believers in racial equality, and it wasn't until at least the 1950s that people began to consider that racism was a psychological condition rather than simply an ideology--something that might afflict people who do not perceive themselves as racist.
I think it's worth pointing out what we'd all agree on--that the amount of color-prejudice has declined significantly. So to the extent that one would say that there's less racism at play here than before, I'd agree.
But that doesn't mean what's left isn't dangerous and shouldn't be sussed out. I understand you're not saying that. I'm arguing why it's worth doing that.
I'm not being obstinate, but I want to highlight this because I think it gets at something--that being a change in standards. Black equality, regrettably, wasn't really up for debate in the 19th century. Even some abolitionists didn't believe in it. But what was up for debate--race-wise--was slavery, the ownership of man by man, and what I'm trying to point to is the fact that those who argued in defense of slavery were always more than "crude bigots." I don't want to go over this again since I've written so much about this. But Robert E. Lee is the perfect example. There was nothing about him that said "crude bigot." His arguments for slavery, and "the Southern way of life," were quite complicated.
The point I'm driving at, and what I was trying to say in the post, is that racism is always wrapped up with other things. Now there's less of it today, no question. But it was never uncomplicated. And it's advocates rarely declared their bold intention to suppress black people. I don't even think they always saw it that way.
Those are all valid points, and I agree. The point I'm trying to make is that nobody in the mainstream today disputes the principle that everyone should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, yet not only did most people in the past dispute it, the principle would have seemed utterly incomprehensible to the average 19th-century white--it would be like trying to discuss gay marriage with someone in the 1950s. The idea that skin color is irrelevant and that race is a social construct was absolutely radical in Lincoln's day, yet it is taken for granted in almost all modern discourse, even by most of the people who engage in seemingly racist behavior.
I believe that Rush Limbaugh is a true racist, but he always rationalizes his views in the language of racial equality. His way of thinking is highly representative of the cultural right, many of whom sincerely perceive themselves to be the "color-blind" advocates of racial equality. I agree that the racism underlying the social changes in this country's history has always been complicated, but there was a fundamental shift when the country decided that, at least in the abstract, racial equality was a laudable goal. It wasn't just a matter of a declining amount of color-prejudice, it was a fundamental change in the society's attitude. And we need to take that into account when addressing the protesters today, many of whom consider it the height of absurdity to suggest they want anything but a racially equal world.
I'm trying to avoid this spinning out into something else. I'm not clear on the exact disagreement. There isn't, for instance, anything in the original postthat argues against this:
This is, for my money, a truism. I assume you state it to say that people were more open about their "racism" in the past, and thus maybe it was "less complicated" in the past--but that's a question of degree, not difference. We need look no further than the civil war, where Confederates, during and by the end of the War, were insisting had nothing to do with slavery--but was a matter of states' rights, northern arrogance, and a belief in agrarianism. All of that was actually true--even as race was at the core. These guys rarely portrayed themselves as the craven white supremacists we think of them as--that's the whole point of "The Lost Cause."
That there's considerably less racism today seems beyond debate. That does not mean that racism isn't still an important part of the calculus, interacting with about four or five other things. If we can agree on that, what's the problem in trying to see where it lies, and how it's working. I've re-read the post. I don't think I ever referred to the protesters as "crude bigots." The point is the exact opposite.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing, but I felt your original post gave the impression that the motivations of today's rabid anti-Obamites are complicated in much the same way the motivations of the opponents of black equality in the past were complicated. I thought you needed to make clear that there's a fundamental difference between the two, in that most of the anti-Obamites accept the idea of racial equality in the abstract, whereas most of the past figures explicitly held to some notion of white supremacy even when it was wrapped up in other ideas. It is much harder for me to brand all the current protesters with the "racist" label than it would be for me to apply that label to the old slaveholders and segregationists. The latter were pretty obvious about their racism, whereas the anti-Obamites, for the most part, are not. States' rights was clearly, for the most part, a cover for allowing oppression of blacks to continue; opposing Obama's health-care plan or stimulus package, not so much. I'm not saying necessarily that today's issues are more complicated than those in the past, but I am saying that the racial element is far less overt.
Then this is the core of it. Frankly, I don't think I need to differentiate--it really should go without saying. The notion that the mindset of Americans, regarding race, today is fundamentally the same is, on its face, laughable. I assume a base-level knowledge of American history, here.
I think very few, if anyone, in this thread thinks that nothing has changed in the past, say, 50 years. Moreover, I don't think anyone who regularly reads this blog thinks that I think it.
Again, I just don't know who would dispute this. It's the reason the post doesn't say, "Protesters who vigorously oppose health-care reform are racist."
I'm sorry I have taken two days to respond. Friday night was the beginning of Shabbat for me, then I got off track. I don't know if you're still reading, but I'll post a response anyway.
You're a nuanced thinker, and so are many of the people who post here. But many on the left are not, and tend to imagine that all the anti-Obamites are just a bunch of walking Archie Bunkers. Maybe I've been hanging around Daily Kos too often, but this is the kind of attitude I see in many liberals, and it only fans the flames of those conservatives who imagine the left is using the "racist" label to suppress dissent.
A common theme in many of your posts is how people in our society react defensively when accused of harboring a racial bias--to them, it is tantamount to saying they might as well wear a white hood. Exploring prejudice in ordinary folks who aren't crude bigots is not even in the average person's vocabulary. I didn't understand the concept myself until I was in my late teens, and numerous people I encounter go through their entire lives without ever getting it.
This handicap can be found on both the right and the left--the right, from people who think racism is dead, and the left, from people who see nothing but racism (the rude, crude kind) everywhere. It's a cruel cycle that permits little dialogue, because each side imagines the world in a particular way and has made racism into such a mortal sin that few have the courage to own up to harboring racial prejudices. When such admissions do surface, it is usually by anonymous commenters on Internet forums. Famous people rarely have the luxury of admitting it, because their careers may hang on the line, and a statement like "Yes, I'm a racist, but I want to learn to overcome my prejudices" may not be greeted as positively as it ought to be. That's why all the actors, politicians, athletes, and other public figures caught saying something stupid always have to resort to the "I'm not a racist" game. You can complain that it's silly and betrays a lack of understanding, but it's something that the entire media culture practically forces them to do.
Thus, you can't really take for granted that people naturally understand you when you talk about how racial motivations may underlie a particular movement. There are a lot more people than you realize who will automatically react as though you're accusing all the anti-Obamites of consciously and intentionally furthering white supremacist ideas. Some have even appeared in this comments section. And even though you may not wish to be directly addressing such people, your nuanced understanding of race is not as well-absorbed by our culture as you seem to think. It should go without saying, but the simple fact is that a lot of the time it doesn't.
Fair enough. It may well not go without saying. I make certain assumptions. They aren't always right.
Thanks for this. I am going to ponder that complexity today. I did not know or consider the history that Americans have almost never admitted to being racist. That helps put recent conversations here in better context for me.
People throughout American history have often been quite explicit about their beliefs that they felt that other races were inferior in some, or all, ways, and that this justified whatever horrors that they unleashed on such people when they could. But they didn't typically characterize their own acts of domination as being oppressive.
Hmmm ... thanks dmf. Sometimes you commenters make my head hurt as my brain expands. And that's setting the painting discussions aside -- those make my brain explode and make me want to go eat candy and watch the ball game.
well it can get confusing when we are all using "racism" in different ways, I'm not buying the "you" commenters on one side and you on the other, if we were picking teams you would be a early rounder. enjoy the candy.
"American Exceptionlism" indeed. We don't colonize, we civilize.
Wonderful post. Your point reminds me that racist "Sambo" caricature entered the American popular consciousness just as the abolition movement was coming into to full force.
I think the answer is actually quite simple: people, in general, are afraid of change and difference. The complexity comes in how this fear manifests itself.
The assumption seems to be that white resentment towards blacks is always a fundamentally irrational phenomenon. I beg to differ. I'm white, and I live with an Asian wife in a townhouse complex that has gone from 95% white to 95% black in the last twenty years. (We're the ones with the word "chink" spray painted on the fence out back.)
The families are mostly immigrant blacks, with working class immigrant attitudes on the part of the adults. You could feel really good there as a white liberal living among your hardworking taxi drivers from Somalia and so forth. But, alas, these hard working families had to have kids, Black American kids, who had to watch all the sick American TV and had to go to school with kids there age at the huge Section 8 housing complex a half mile down the road. Took awhile, but sure enough, the ghetto has finally arrived in our neighborhood. The details are too boring to go into. They involve cops with flashing lights, late at night, night after night. Or yeah, and the idea that apparently walking the shopping cart home from the mall across the street and leaving it on the town house common ground area is cool.
And so now my wife and I are in the position of trying to find a safe and decent neighborhood to live in. Or, not to mince words, a neighborhood with a majority of white residents. And what do you know? Every other white person, liberal or otherwise, is looking for the same thing. Correspondingly, the choices are limited to 1) paying over 600K for a house in such a neighborhood; or 2) commuting two hours or more a day back and forth to work.
I don't expect any of you to care about my resentments or appeals to fairness. But don't expect me to care about any of your resentments or appeals either. Also, don't deceive yourself that a lot of whites like me haven't had similar bad experiences. And don't forget that Obama still needs at least 43% of the white vote to win an election.
You're banned. Plenty of places on the net to explore your rational white resentment toward black people. But not here. Please don't comment on this post, folks.
Sorry TNC. I commented before I read you.
Why do you think people like this find your blog and want to comment here?
No fucking clue. It's like me going to Stormfront to comment. I don't get it.
Outright one-line-trolls aside, my guess is that they are attracted to the level of discussion and imgaine that they too have a thoughtful/nuanced view to share.
To me there is a similar dynamic here among liberals who just want to reason with the poor deluded, scared, confused, Right-wingers and show them the error of their ways.
Seems related to your post a while ago about the limits of dialogue, some gaps, regardless of the evidence/reasons on either side, are too large to bridge. And then it's good to have benevolent dictator to give them the hook.
You say you're looking for "a neighborhood with a majority of white residents." I'm betting that if this neighborhood is of the same social class with under-edcuated children, you will have the same problems of "ghetto" behavior. I've seen many poor whites who will happily insult you for having an Asian wife and bring the late night police visits too.
I'm betting that if you moved to an upper-class neighborhood (which I'm guessing you foolishly assume are only white in population) that was mostly all black and/or brown you'd live safely and be happy. That you assumed race is the cause of the poor behavior from your neighbors instead of education and/or opportunity says a great deal of how you have chosen to see the world.
Thanks for this, TNC. I watch the health care debates in the US (from up here in Canada - hey, we haven't gotten our name tossed around Capitol Hill this often in a couple centuries! even if it is as a bogeyman in this case, we'll take it) with a mixture of amusement/confusion/repulsion at the ignorance of the "socialist" rhetoric that gets tossed around. I have had trouble comprehending the sheer levels of hatred and paranoia that the idea of "socialism" brings out in many Americans, even progressive ones - I thought, naively maybe, that Red Scares were something for the history books. Anyway, I may be wrong on that point, but certainly adding all this racial/class/etc complexity into the mix helps me to understand the force of the reaction.
Eva, it would be hard to overstate the American, regardless of race, attachment to personal freedom/choice and the fear that this might be impinged upon by others. This tends to overwhelm rational attempts to point out how we are already interconnected or how we collectively might do better by sharing. If you look at our history of public support for various rights movements they are almost always couched in terms of individual rights vs collective wellbeing. Also the Red Scare was alive and well all through the Reagan and Bush-1 years and that wasn't so long ago.
I think "complicated" is probably the best word there is for the anger we are seeing emanating from whats left of the right. I grew up with people who have this anger inside them, I am still related to many of them... I saw sneak peeks of what was coming back during the campaign (didn't we all?), trying to do field work for Obama in an area partially dominated by the white working class folk with whom "racial resentment" is particularly resonant.
I think our current overall economic insecurity is an extremely dangerous catalyst here ... it is taking what, during normal times, would be potent and is making it outright dangerous. Whats driving this madness isn't just your typical racial one-upsmanship. There was racial anxiety (not just against blacks but against hispanics) throughout the prosperous 90s and early 2000s, but as long as the kids had full bellies and a nice roof over their heads, the anger only grows so much. But when you, working class white guy with a high school education, lose the job you worked for 20 years, when you're filling out applications that are going into this new, more diverse pool of candidates and praying you get picked, or, worse yet, when you see some black guy fresh out of college (it MUST be affirmative action! he couldn't possibly have EARNED that!) take that job you wanted... suddenly you act like you are fighting for your life, because in your mind (and to an extent in reality), you ARE fighting for your life, at least as you know it.
But sadly, instead of taking that anger and turning it into justified outrage against the many parts of our political and economic system that favor the rich at the expense of the disadvantaged, instead of channeling it into political energy to create a better safety net for ALL working class Americans, these guys are listening to the same tired old right-wing corporate-leaning douchebags they've always listened to - and these talking heads are borderline inciting riots, because it works in their favor to do so. What Rush and his compatriots do so well is stoke that old school white working class supremacist sentiment, as anyone who has ever listened to them for more than 10 minutes knows well.... its all about making that GOP fringe feel like they are SOMEBODY, they are RIGHT and they are REAL AMERICANS compared to those welfare queens and thugs (shorthand for the whole afam community, of course) and illegal immigrants (shorthand for hispanics) and those slutty women off having abortions (and that would be shorthand for all of us, ladies!).
So you've got a group of people who are already receptive to that message - who have spent the last, what, 16 years suckling at the teet of it, really. Then, over the course of less than a year, you subject them to an incredible series of things: first, an economic collapse and the resulting insecurity. Then, complete and total political impotence (imagine the effect of this psychologically on a group of people who were told not 5 years ago that they would hold the majority in America for decades to come!). Then you elect a black President whose life experience is totally outside anything they can understand and you get him to introduce policies that these people have been taught for 16 years or so to believe would favor poor people (read: blacks, hispanics and women) over "good working class Americans" (read: white guys who make less than $60k a year). And the Democrats can pass them if they want - they don't need to take this group's opinion into account at all.
For a group thats had a lot of say in politics over the last couple of decades, thats quite a reversal of fortune. And what terrifies them is that they fear THIS majority might actually BE permanent, that they might not ever return to their former glory. So this is their power play - they know they can no longer "win" within the system, so they are going to try to act on the system from without, to pressure it, to scare it into submitting to them once again. And I don't know where it stops. And thats what scares me.
Excellent post. I couldn't agree with you more.
On election day, my fiance and I were down in Richmond working as poll watchers for the Obama campaign. It was a truly terrible day, weather-wise... rainy, cold, windy... and the lines were so, so long. But it was so amazing: not a single person complained. People stood in those lines and shared their doughnuts with each other, cheered each other on, huddled under umbrellas. My fiance and I were so moved. We saw so many different kinds of people vote... illterate people who needed the ballots read to them, 95-year-old grandmothers who had never voted before, African-Americans that had lived through Jim Crow and cried as they voted for the first Black man with a real chance of becoming president. It was awesome.
In the midst of this, the poll watcher from the McCain campaign wandered over. He was an older white man, maybe 65. We made some small talk for a while, and then I said to him, as we looked out over the lines, "Isn't this so amazing? What a great day for democracy." And he said (and this is a direct quote), "At least they're not bussing them in." I looked where we he was looking, and it was at a black family walking towards the end of the line.
My feeling at that moment was one of pity more than anger. I looked at this man and I thought to myself, "Society has really passed you by. You're so confused and upset and pissed off because you just don't get it. Your time is up. How sad for you."
I was more hopeful in that moment than I am now. I still think that man's time is up, but I'm worried, like you are, that he's not going to go down without a fight. A big one. People in this kind of position do not go gently into the good night. They have too much at stake and too much unwillingness to change. Too much entitlement. And I, like you, don't know where all this ends.
indeed, no telling where it ends but thanks for taking the time to get involved, gotta do what we can.
So very true.
One thing to keep in mind is that race, and racism, have rarely ever acted alone. One of the best points that Phillip Dray makes in his classic history of lynching is that epidemics of lynching often coincided, not just with an expansion of black rights, but with increased labor mobility among white women.
This is a great insight. I have always marveled at the racist's obsession with Black men "defiling" white women when the evidence shows that sexual violation overwhelmingly ran in the opposite direction -- just "ask" the DNA of almost every Black person in this country.
On a side note, you are bad for my finances TNC -- I keep buying the books you mention. (I got the last copy of Dray's book in stock at Amazon.)
TNC, the visuals of the people in the viddeos are striking.
They seem to be homogeneously old, white, relly angry, and seriously overweight. A lot of bald heads.
The more the protestors are seen, the more America will be turned off.
This seems superficial....but it is simply not good for the GOP base to be seen as devolving into the demographic make-up of a Klan rally.
Cooltown counts.
I think the disproportionate anger targetted at Obama is partly due to racism, partly due to partisianship....but more than anything....it is.....the past protesting the future.
This is my first post on your blog. I have a number of thoughts.
1) It takes a certain motivation to get out and protest. It also takes a certain amount of free time. If the reason for the free time is also a motivator, so much the worse. Whereever they are on the political spectrum, however ill informed, they are motivated.
2) Motivation is independent of intelligence or knowlege. Those who are unhappy and uninformed may very well pick the first available target, regardless of merit.
3) The bushitler crowd were painfully obvious when the Republicans held the White House and Congress. Now that it is the Democrats' turn to be blamed for all our ills, we also get a different set of looney protesters.
4) There are a great many people who are uncomfortable with the sheer size and scope of the federal government and dread adding health care to the list of things done badly by a monopoly. Most of them are nowhere near these protests, and would try to be polite to the President of the United States.
I am uncomfortable with the size and scope of government, and I find it disheartening to see some comments that attribute such an attitude to racism. I get that there are Republicans (I even know Obama voters as well) who don't like that there tax dollars might find there way into the hands or stomach of a minority. But many people who want a lesser government have complex ideas of how a government should be run, how much invasiveness we should let into our lives by a government that is often corrupt and incompetent.
Its well known that there are those who just want "limited government" but it often seems that it can too be code for cutting programs to minorities. The issue is these "I just want a smaller government!" people are not the loudest at the town hall, not the most powerful in the Senate, not the ones working at FOX, etc, where are they when you need them?
I understand that it is true, but there is a lot of rooting for the home team here. The Republican who says "end Welfare as we know it" and announces "The era of big government is over" has a high chance of being called out as a racist. A Democrat did it, and he still was called the First Black President. Though that declaration was voided once his team took the field in the Democratic primary and some called him a racist.
While to some degree I respect conservatives such as Sullivan who point out the profligacy of the Bush years, I will always throw down this gantlet--from the Reagan era onward our national taxpayers have supported the military-industrial corporate welfare project know as Star Wars, the most costly boondoggle in American history. It has a long record of failure, and a longer one of ineffectual uselessness. It was initiated as a ruse to break the Soviet economy, and has gone a long way to break our own.
Anyone who protests the cost of health care for our poupulace, a far more utilitarian investment in which worker productivity and per capita cost reductions will have real and beneficial long term dividends for our citizenry--conservative and liberal alike--but year after year has been willing to nod off in Reagan's rocking chair about Star Wars is in my personal opinion, to be generous, off his or her rocker.
@DougEMI - perhaps the Republican being called out as racist is paying the tax on his party having proudly profited from the Souther Strategy. It has worked but is finally showing the costs. The GOP owns it, good times and bad. If a Repub is running they have to kow this and make effort to off-set such a message by acknowledging that this will not be used to divide amongst the races, especially as there are more white Americans on welfare than black. They would also help their credibility by attacking all forms of govt waste, including military and agriculture. That these individuals have not done so and tend to only use this langauge in the primary gives it a tent of racial overtone. Not fair? Okay, but that's politics. Being upfront about the failures of your own party and seperating yourself from past (Southern) strategies would go a very long way to gaining credibiity.
I think the way Andrew Sullivan has criticized the town hall mobs and the tea-bag parties before them, gives you a great guide in how you should criticize Obama over government growing. That is, if you want to avoid charges of racism and cynical partisanship.
#1. Acknowledge that most of the current debt and growth of government is still Bush's fault. You can start with such things as his huge tax cut for the wealthy and Medicare Plan D, then move on to the torture of US citizens and the abuse of the 4th Amendment with the warrantless wiretapping program.
#2. Actually criticize the debt and growth of government. Comparing him to Adolf Hitler, using racial slurs, and being so clueless that you accuse his plan as being a scheme to purposefully kill the elderly are not forms of justifiable criticism.
To be sure, I'm certainly not accusing you of any of this personally. But the topic of this post was not to call principled conservatives racist. I watched "Real Time with Bill Maher" tonight. On the show were two Republican congressmen; one from California and one from Georgia. As some as Marher brought up the nut-jobs at the town halls, the two congressmen brought up the debt.
If I was there, I would have asked, of the protestors that have made a scene of themselves, which ones are worried about the debt? The lady who had her baby hold a "No to Socialism" sign, complete with swastika? The teenage boy who wore a shirt saying "Hitler gave good speeches too", with a picture of President Obama? The lady who nearly had a nervous breakdown, clutching the microphone as she said, "I want my America back"? The guy who wheeled out his son with cerebral palsy, enraged because he thought health care reform would euthanize his son? The lady holding up a Bible, (the New American Bible, the version preferred by Roman Catholics incidentally), saying "this is the only law that matters"? The one nut-job leader at a training session of nut-jobs, comparing health reform with not just the Holocaust but also Robert Mugabe, Stalin's Great Purges and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime?
Now, these few examples don't prove every last member of these town hall mobs is certifiable. But the real nuts feel perfectly free to let loose with their insanity in public. That says something about the overall tenor of the crowd as a whole, as well as mainstream conservatism as an ideology, as it exists today.
I think the way Andrew Sullivan has criticized the town hall mobs and the tea-bag parties before them, gives you a great guide in how you should criticize Obama over government growing. That is, if you want to avoid charges of racism and cynical partisanship.
I would rather not follow the Sullivan model. He voted for Obama, spends more time these days attacking the right, and has been insanely obsessed with with freakish birther-like lines of questions about Palin's baby daughter.
I do wish the current crop of protesters would have pressured Republican admins to cut the defense department, to rein in the Department of Homeland Security as well as Education and many others(someone mentioned Agriculture, and Bush actually did propose cuts in many subisidy programs, but farm state Senators run the place) But they are partisans and it is easier to complain when the opponent does it than when your guy does.
People don't like to criticize there own, especially in a very public manner. If a President McCain proposed a surge in Afghanistan similar to Obama's, a lot of the liberal half of the country would be going nuts and would continue their demands that all McCain voters of military age enlist to fight McCain's war. It is a natural human occurance that afflicts both sides of the spectrum and there have been studies that show how these biases hit both sides. A more recent example was how Bernanke's approval rating among liberals went up once Obama took office, and I am pretty sure the same happened to Bush's Secretary of Defense once he because Obama's Sec of Def.
I understand and appreciate that you aren't calling me or my views racist. I certainly am in the minority here and I understand that, but it does get frustrating to read others attribute your beliefs to racism. Again, I most certainly am not saying you did this.
Although I certainly do agree that many dynamics besides race go into the displays we are currently seeing from disgruntled protesters, I also believe racism is most likely THE major factor. I think we all know the racist history of the GOP and the fact that it has in the past, and continues today, to appeal to those with racist or bigoted beliefs. These protesters, in many cases, reflect those beliefs. We can speculate on whether, if Edwards or Hillary Clinton were President, would we see the same behavior, but I don't think so, at least not to this degree.
All the symbolism, all the -isms, and nobody brings up the one thing that should really get old people into a blinding panic about health care reform. If you are going to cut costs, and true reform is going to have to do so eventually, you're going to have to cut back on end-of-life care. That's where the big bills come from.
But when people are very old, nobody knows which illness is going to be end-of-life and which isn't. Which means at some point, you do face the issue of withholding some forms of health care that would be useful from the elderly.
In some countries with government-provided health care, it's already the case that a 45-year-old can get treatments for diseases that a 75-year-old would not. In this country, the 75-year-old is a lot more likely to get the treatment paid for by the government. If he would only live another six months, that seems like a waste of resources. But what if he's got another 20 years in him? Most people would fight like hell for that 20 years.
These people aren't nearly as afraid of white women having sex with black men as they are of dying. Maybe some notion of getting killed by a black man is out there too, but I doubt very much that it trumps the whole dying idea. Few things do -- we're wired to fight for our own survival. That's the reason the euthanasia notion has picked up the steam that it has.
The other end of life is where you're going to get the other big fight. Extreme preemies and babies born with severe disabilities. Big money for health care, weird links to abortion and eugenics debates, extreme rage as parents fight to protect their children (perhaps the only thing people will fight for more than they do for themselves) -- and ultimately the place a lot of the much-heralded cost savings are going to have to come from if they come from anywhere at all.
Just tossing it out there. You've got primal rage potential here, a kind of fear that is actually far WORSE than fear of "The Other" and social change.
I think you got it. Now, I'm not so naive as to think race isn't a part of this. That said, look at the people most worried about health care reform: people who are over 65. Granted, they're more likely than the average person to be worried about a brother getting a benefit from the state, but correlation doesn't equal causation. Say what you will about the rumors, but there's a not-unrealistic chance, based on experiences with other government-involved health systems, the elderly might get short-shrift on health care. Throw in the fact that a) the elderly are generally going to die sooner than the rest of us and b) people tend to fight death tooth and nail in this country, and you can get the emotional responses. I think one thing people who are pushing single-payer and other government schemes are neglecting is a radical difference in attitudes towards death and dying, and it's something you can't legislate away. You can't use the law to control thoughts and minds. (Part of this attitude on the left that it's somehow easy to control human beliefs as well as laws is why I'm not on the left, but that's a different story.)
I suspect racism is simple available to be brought up around a black target. That is, being black is one of those things, like being fat or ugly, that we wouldn't criticize in a friend, but that can form part of our negative image of an enemy. So, Hillary is a bitch, Obama is a n-----.
Even as a white person raised in the South, what we're seeing now surprises me, though. I don't know. It probably shouldn't.
For what it's worth i do not think that every criticism of President Obama has to do with racism.If Hilliary or Edwards had won i think the reaction would have been the same.
As to the people who claim that liberals did not demonize Bush.Sadly they are mistaken.I do recall people claiming that Bush blew up the towers on 9/11.
This leads to the question of who has the most nutcases ,the political right or the political left.I do not claim to know the answer to that one but i would say that the mainstream Democraticic leadership defintly has the leftwing nuts under control and that the lunatics have taken over the Republican asylum .
The reason that the leadership of political right does not have it's nutcases under control is because there is no leadership.Boehnor has no power and very little influence as far as im concerned.That is why guys like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh can step into the void.There is complete anarchy in the Republican Party right now.That is why talking about their strategy is silly.They have no strategy!
I am not saying that the mobs at these town meetings are right.Far from it.To shout someone down is as anti-American as you can get.
But while i voted for Obama and generally support him i do reserve the right to disagree with some of his policies and i do have the right to criticise him.I do not want to be lumped in with the "Birthers" just because i disagree with a particular peice of Democratic legislation.
And for what it's worth i think that there are a lot less "birthers "than people think.I find these polls that were taken by the Daily Kos to be somewhat suspect.I have many friends who are Republicans.And none of them has even mentioned the "birth issue".I know i don't live in the deep south .But you would think that i would meet at least one "birther" if there were so many of them.
I hope that we do not get to the point where any criticism of Obama is considered racist.I sadly remember when Republicans claimed that any criticism of Bush was unpatriotic.
I realise that this is not MR Coates intent nor the intent of most of those who comment here.But we seem to be headed into the wrong direction when talking about criticism of President Obama.
We should not let the rightwing nutcases become a strawman.I myself am undecided on the healthcare plan because i find it hard to find good information about it in the media.All of the articles seem to be about the political side of it.The Washington Post has been one of the exceptions to the rule.
I have my doubts about the number of birthers as well; I know a lot of Republicans and the only birther I know is my cousin and he isn't a Republican. He sure as shit didn't vote for Bush or for McCain. He thinks Bush shot a missle into the Pentagon.
However the whole thing has usefullness to both sides. The right can pay some lip service to the concept and add a few Ron Paul devotees to the party. The left loves this story because they can portray Republicans as deranged extremists and can tell everyone how superior they are to a bunch of country fried rubes.
I think there is a 20-30% lunatic far right fringe that is always there, Some are republicans, some are John Birchers who think the republicans are practically socialists:-) some are Larouche followers and so on. You find a lot of them supporting Ron Paul.
When the Republicans are winning elections with more than 60% they are easy to marginalize. With Republicans in the low 40s they are more than half the supporters.
You could just read the bill for yourself rather than relying on someone else's interpretation.
I am new to the internet so i had a hard time finding the original bill online.If you could provide a link it would be aprecciatted.I am getting ready to go out so i will thank anyone who provides a link in advance.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:H.R.3200:
MR Danny Schroeder
Thank you .I appreciate the link.I am going to go over it as soon as i come home tonight.Best regards to you sir and have a good weekend
Daily Kos did not conduct the poll, they only paid for it. A firm called Research 2000 actually conducted it and I have heard nothing damming concerning their reliability.
Now I do think some liberals in the media are having too much fun with this whole "birthers" issue. But to say that the entire phenomenon is largely non-existant just because you haven't met any personally, it does not strike me as logical. If it's largely a political mirage, why do GOP congressmen and women run away when they are asked if they believe Pres. Obama was born in America? Or they says things like, "I'd like to see the documentation to make a firm decision".
To further the point...I heard that Daily Kos didn't actually conduct the "birther" poll but I wanted to be sure. So I let my fingers do the walking and checked a few websites, none of them being the Daily Kos. I found the information and verified my suspicions.
During the process, I visited the "Politico.com" website, which I have heard is somewhat right-leaning. This is not scientific either but it certainly encompasses a great number of people than your poll of your friends. The comments came in three basic flavors.
#1. "Republicans and Conservatives are freaking batso, here is a link to a copy of the President's birth certificate..."
#2. "Obama is not a US citizen, he was born in Kenya and his step-grandmother told me so, that's why he won't show his holy grail...I mean, his long form birth certificate".
#3. "Obama is a US citizen who was born in Hawaii...but he's spending over $1 million dollars, employing 4 law firms, to keep his real birth certificate secret because it would reveal that he once was a Muslim".
Numbers 2 and 3 often lead into cheap shots about Rev. Wright , Communism and drug use. There were, I think, two people who said something like...."come on guys, we may dislike Obama because we are conservatives/Republicans but let's not go on with this crazy BS any longer".
The scariest feeling I have had in the last two months is this:
Even though we won, I feel like we are losing.
So much of the hope, joy and wonder I felt after working hard to see Obama elected is now being drowned out by a vocal, scary, non-reality based opposition.
We keep hearing how dominant the left is now and how we have the House, Senate and WH and how the GOP is a shrinking, regional, impotent force facing years in the wilderness in an increasingly brown America.
Yet, I feel like everywhere I turn it is the Bush/Cheney/Bolton/Beck/Limbaugh variety of unreconstructed neocons who are owning the day.
I am sick of the hatred, the racism, the made up realities of the far right. I felt that things would really change and we really were the majority now and all that the last 8 years were would be left behind. And yet, because I am a left of center progressiove I feel like I am still the one out of touch with reality in an increasingly ugly, racist and hateful America.
I would like to make one last comment before going out.Many people here talk about these rightwing protests as if they are a show of strength.To me they are obviousely a show of weakness by the political right.
The fact that the Republicans got their asses beat in the last election is not a trivial matter.If the commenters here are waiting for every single last American to talk sensibly ,then they are in for a long wait.Obama and the Democrates should just govern with the help of the few sensible Republicans left[Senators Snowe and Collins to name two].
They should simply ignore the rightwing nutcases.To treat these protests as anything more than a p.r. stunt gives them too much credit.
Pete, it's difficult to ignore these folks for two reasons:
#1 - Ignoring nutcases who are motivated and (at least at home) armed is foolish. These people, undereducated or not, racist or not, poorly informed or not, BELIEVE they are in the right and have no interest in debate or dialogue from the other. They're not going away and to completely ignore would be to further isolate them. Isolated and/or cornered people act out much like Sodini this past week. I also think it's critical to expose the foolish logic and boorish behavior of these individuals as to set a cultural standard of what is and is not acceptable behavior. You can never get everyone on board but to not address it is to allow a few more, including those on the far left, to believe this is how one should engage others.
#2 - Going with the comment from 'thephoenixnyc' these folks are at every turn because the media treats them and their leaders as though they have the power. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and others have TV and/or radio programs and thus control a great deal of air time. Other networks, say CNN, spend time interviewing members of the GOP and treat their talking points as fact. Andrew Sullivan has appropriately pointed this out since before the election, how members of our media put these folks on TV while asking zero probing or fact finding questions. Since the inauguration I've seen more of the two Cheney's, Rove and GOP congressmen than policy wonks or folks from the left of center crowd. It almost makes me forget that Obama won big, the GOP is going in the wrong direction and more importantly, the GOP has ZERO credibility on the issues after the past eight years at and and are offering zero solutions to boot. From the coverage I've seen, you'd think there were dueling plans for healthcare currently taking place. Nope, but the group determined to misinform and obstruct is receiving most all the oxygen.
Speakup
My point is that you should not forget that Obama won big.As you yourself said ,the media take these people too seriousely.Why should you?
You feel that the media is not doing it's job.That depends on what you think it's job is.Sadly too many in the media feel that ratings top all.And let's face it the "birthers" and other assorted nutcases get good ratings .
I also think that you should look at all of the media coverage.Tv coverage is fairly bad in my limited experience of watching tv news . And cable is the worst. But The Washington Post and the New York Times as well as Time and Newsweek do a good job.The Economist is excellent as well.
All of us should realise that the freak show we see on cable has little to do with reality.
I remember staying in a motel in Myersdale PA while on a bike trip.It was raining out so i turned on the tv. It had Sean Hannity on.I had never seen him before.He was ranting about how angry Americans were about the state of the country[ and this is when Bush was still in office!].
I turned off the tv after 5 minutes of this hate filled crap and went to the local diner.No one there seemed very angry to me.They were a little peeved while talking about about their trash pickup rates going up [they had to pay for trash pickup]. But no one was hateful or angry.The main topic of conversation was the county fair that was going on and who would win the prise for the best types of cows.
My point is that America is a lot less hatefull place than you might think.
Pete - we are not in disagreement. I personally keep perspective quite well, including the knowledge that we're seven months into a 4 year term in a world (politics) where things change quite rapidly. I just want a more intelligent discourse on big issues, especially something as critical as healthcare.
I also agree that America is not as angry or divided as can be presented. I've learned that in my travels and believe that is partly why Obama's message of working together won out. That said, I am bothered by the foolishness of the birthers and those who are intentionally shutting down a needed debate on h/c. That many of their antics are rapped with racism makes me angry when it's not called out. I'd prefer we not become apathetic to this kind of behavior.
Maybe it's time to pull out Richard Hofstader's (sp?) book about Anti-Intellectualism in American History, or something like that. So many progressive movements have been driven aground by exploiting many Americans' fears of change and, generally, thoughtful discourse.
Good god. Where is I.F. Stone when you need him.
?
OK, TNC, I'm going to bite. I'm a racist, and I'll admit it. I desperately wish I weren't, but reading your blog is a large part of what has made me realize that I am indeed prejudiced against people of a different race.
It really, really pains me to describe myself as racist. I'm a young white female, and growing up I prided myself on not being racist. My parents were overtly racist, and I was proud to be of a newer, "better" generation. I treated everyone I met exactly the same (of course, like you, I never met many people that weren't the same race as I was).
Why the sudden self-awareness, you ask? Well, it really started last year with the Obama campaign. On some level, I realized I could use a little brush-up on black culture. I started reading The Root, this blog, etc. The more I read, the more I realized how little I knew about what life was like for black folks. I saw myself in bad stereotypes about white people; inappropriately commenting (albeit positively) on black hair was one of my more common faux pas.
What really made me realize I was racist was when I read a post of yours talking about the nuances of what makes a person racist. I realized that in my ignorance, I too was racist.
So there you have it. You say no one will admit it; here's one person who will. I still don't have any black friends. I don't want to try to get a token black friend, because that's also racist. Acknowledging my racism has been particularly unpleasant, since I'm so young and hip and liberal and all.
I don't want to be a racist. I think many of America's current problems can be directly traced to the existence of slavery (even ones that don't seem to have anything to do with it). So what do you say to people like me, TNC? I'm ignorant and the more I try to read the more ignorant I feel.
I could have written this--as a white young female who grew up very naive. I admit it. But I, still naively, want to be part of a solution. How do I do it?
And by "it", I mean, I'm racist.
not here to speak for TNC but if your serious about this then I would suggest these things; the first would be that whatever inclinations you might have towards thinking racist thoughts that you make sure that you don't act on them, including making such comments to your white friends/family/etc., this kind of bonding/reinforcement has got to go.
And instead ask yourself why are your thinking such things, what purpose if any does it serve in your life, where did these prejudices come from?
Then learn to embrace that feeling of "ignorance" as it relates to your growing exposure/knowledge. This kind of humility will go a long way in cultivating greater respect/empathy. Keep reaching out and learning. And then get politically/socially active do something in your local community that makes a difference in the lives of people who do not enjoy your level of priveledge, there is no teacher like service.
Lastly pls don't put some black person in the position of being your confessor, the forgiveness that you might feel the need for is yours to bear and work through. Good luck and thanks for trying to make things better.
well..umm....you shouldn't feel bad....it is hardwired.
I mean the fear of the Other. we all have...this underlying neuro-memetic substrate that gets colonized by the social mores and taboos we get from our tribes/cultures growing up.
Tomasello documented that fear of the Other is emergent at about age 7, in his book Origins of Cognition.
So someone raised...in the Deep South....might very well be racist against blacks.
That is why the birthers and teaparty protesters are probably operating on a combination of partisanship and racism, their substrate has been colonized by both memes. Racism against blacks is socially unacceptable in the 21st century so the teaparty protesters subliminate racist sentiment to questions about Obama's birth certificate or questions about his patriotism.
But they are really protesting against Obama, not healthcare reform.
That is pretty obvious.
But you can overcome it....i think.
I am working on my own deep seated prejudice against evangelicals.
I really don't like them...I imagine I feel the same way about them as racists feel about blacks.
I think they are icky.
I don't want them to have any say in my government, or my culture, or my society, or marry my eventual children, or go to my eventual childrens eventual schools. I think they should live in evangelical ghettos and marry each other and send their children to evangelical ghetto schools.
I mostly really don't want them to have any control over me.
Bad huh?
Im working on my prejudice by reading Dr.Francis Collins book.
He is an evangelical I respect. I suppose people chose to evangelicals...it isn't like being born black.
I was raised in an extremely intellectual family, so that is likely how my prejudice got laid down.
But I have hope I can overcome it.
Discussion is a good way to overcome prejudice.
Reading TNC is very good.
Having a black friend would be good....why would it be tokenism?
I don't see much racism in this post. Did you discover that you thought black people were stupid? I don't see the actual racism.
To the point about ignorance, I say no ethnic group holds a monopoly. This blog is, in many ways, about my own ignorance and limits. What's the point in feeling bad about that? It's not like the people next to you aren't ignorant about some things too. Best to acknowledge it, and keep exploring.
Oh, I got this one. It's a white person trying to make a discussion about racism All About Them. There's the racism. Subtle, isn't it?
I'm trying to find the post of yours I referenced, but I can't seem to locate it. Perhaps I'll be more clear once I re-read it.
It wasn't that I thought black people were stupid, it was that I realized that I didn't truly know any black people. I began to realize how many racist thought patterns I had absorbed that I wasn't aware of before I tried to learn more about what life is like for a black person.
I would very much like to expound on this more, but I'm about to get cut off the internet and will not be online for a few days. Your writing is great, Ta-Nehisi, and I'm sure that one of your more nuanced future posts will enable me to better explain myself. I'm glad I signed up to post.
And Josh Jasper, you're totally and unhelpfully off the mark.
Greenery,
Seems like 100 years ago now, but when I first arrived at college, I was a white fellow, "ignorant" about blacks, and I signed up for a tutoring program for at-risk minority high school students. One person in particular stood out.
He was a genius in a technical field, with a full-ride college scholarship in hand, contingent on a C in a humanities class he hated. That was my role - tutor him in the humanities class and make sure he got that C. (As an aside, if you ever want to test your self-esteem, try tutoring someone clearly more intelligent than you!)
He made it, he's a big star now, and it took quite a bit of perseverance, courage, and integrity for him to, as he put it, "escape, nerd, from the 'hood". I usually don't talk about this, greenery, because I find that well-meaning whites often put it into the context of some alleged vague understanding I gained about the black experience.
I didn't. Not because he didn't like me. But for more obvious reasons: people going through hell, under terrible pressure, tend not to talk about it. Not because they don't like YOU, they don't like the CIRCUMSTANCES, and so they tend not to discuss.
But in a forum like this, they might. Consider your own life, and the things that matter and are stressful to you. Would you talk about them with a casual friend, watching a Cowboys game at BW3? Probably not. Would you talk about them anonymously here? Maybe.
So you should be suspicious of your white friends with the alleged black insight that comes from their accessory of black friends. Not because blacks dislike your peers - just that people are typically more guarded than that.
But not as much on the internet. Which makes it great, and which makes this blog in particular great. If you want to gain understanding in other folks' lives, and other cultures, here's as good a place as any to get that education.
Greenery,
Seems like 100 years ago now, but when I first arrived at college, I was a white fellow, "ignorant" about blacks, and I signed up for a tutoring program for at-risk minority high school students. One person in particular stood out.
He was a genius in a technical field, with a full-ride college scholarship in hand, contingent on a C in a humanities class he hated. That was my role - tutor him in the humanities class and make sure he got that C. (As an aside, if you ever want to test your self-esteem, try tutoring someone clearly more intelligent than you!)
He made it, he's a big star now, and it took quite a bit of perseverance, courage, and integrity for him to, as he put it, "escape, nerd, from the 'hood". I usually don't talk about this, greenery, because I find that well-meaning whites often put it into the context of some alleged vague understanding I gained about the black experience.
I didn't. Not because he didn't like me. But for more obvious reasons: people going through hell, under terrible pressure, tend not to talk about it. Not because they don't like YOU, they don't like the CIRCUMSTANCES, and so they tend not to discuss.
But in a forum like this, they might. Consider your own life, and the things that matter and are stressful to you. Would you talk about them with a casual friend, watching a Cowboys game at BW3? Probably not. Would you talk about them anonymously here? Maybe.
So you should be suspicious of your white friends with the alleged black insight that comes from their accessory of black friends. Not because blacks dislike your peers - just that people are typically more guarded than that.
But not as much on the internet. Which makes it great, and which makes this blog in particular great. If you want to gain understanding in other folks' lives, and other cultures, here's as good a place as any to get that education.
GG, I've said it before, given the 300 years of American history during which every social, economic, legal, political and cultural lever in this country supported the notion of White supremacy, I am always delighted to find White Americans who have either not bought into, escaped or are trying to escape this rigorous form of mental oppression. And remember, ignorance can be fixed but as Ron White says, "you can't fix stupid."
And Josh, White racism against Black people, is in fact all about the White people. Not the effects, mind you, but its existence is all about the White people who still believe this shit.
I'm flabbergasted by what I'm seeing in my country. I can only think back to 1966, when, during a song called "More Trouble Every Day," Frank Zappa proclaimed, "Hey, you know something people? I'm not black, but there's a whole lots a times I wish I could say I'm not white." I couldn't have put it better.
Racism aside (and that it a pretty big aside) I'm not really seeing how these nutcases are much different than the lefty nutcases who's insanity we had to deal with for the last 8 years. A lot of (presumably more left wing) posters here seem to think there is a fundimental difference (ie "our side was never that bad"); I think they are deluding themselves. I predicted that, after Obama's win, the far right would change places with the far left and from what I can see, they have - even down to the tactics (effigies, Obama = Nazi signes, etc...) I've heard a lot of comments from bitter right wingers saying essentially "they did this to us for the last 8 years, well now its our turn!". Don't get me wrong, that's not a justification or an attempt to draw moral equivilance; its just that I am a bit uncomfortable with what feels like people saying "OMG. Look at these guys, this is what conservatism is!" when the same people would most likely have objected to being lumped in with the looney left of the Bush era.
On a broader note, I don't think this sort of anger, nor the radical tactics - essentially public theater - get anyone anywhere. In the end, its more about venting and feeling like you are "making a difference" (self-satisfaction) rather than acutally, you know, making a difference.
Someone needs to ask these people why they hate democracy so much.
Seriously. It's like the response of the losing parties in 3rd world countries. Just don't acknowledge the results and threaten the winners.
Why do they hate democracy?
This is the best blog on the internet.
Every day is a new insight. Here are mine for today, way too far down the thread to generate much heat:
There are "orders" of racism. By this I mean "first" order, "second" order, etc. "First" order racists are those who hate other races as a matter of course, on their business card if you will, no matter what. Second (and higher) order racists are those that hate other races due to some contingency (or contingencies, for the higher order racists).
First order racists would be like the Jim Crow, white supremacy crowd, the ones that want to destroy blacks. There are probably first order black racists too, though in truth the vast majority of first order racists in the US are white. A second order racist might be like the fellows who drop by back here to say "To be honest, Ta-Nehisi, I don't hate blacks, but I wish they hadn't have come in my neighborhood/messed everything up/dated my cousin/etc." Were it not for the contingency, the second order racist wouldn't chase down blacks, which is suggested by the fact that they feel enough bonhomie to be honest with TNC on this blog.
The relevance to Obama comes from the fact that conventionally, only first-order racists are thought of as racists, for the following reasons:
1) First-order racists are the only ones proud of their racism.
2) If social order is kept reasonably intact, much - if not all - second and higher order racism can be prevented.
3) As mentioned above, all higher-order racists don't intrinsically hate the other fellow, they're just responding to circumstance..
And Obama - its a well-established fact of political life that a President that presides over a crashing economy invites the hostility of the polity. In the context of this conversation, that hostility is a contingency that could unleash all manner of second, and higher, order racism.
How much?
Hard to say. Officially, higher order racism doesn't exist.
Uh. That last post wasn't meant to be response to Fershlugginer Potrzebie (sorry, dude!) but rather to the main post.
While I'm here...
@greenerygirl/relizabeth
So, I read your comments and I think its great that you want to "educate" yourselves as it were, but what I'm having trouble with the "I'm racist" declairations. Is there something you aren't telling us? Cause right now, ignorance is the only sin you've addmitted to and - while ignorance may be the root of rasict thoughts or actions - it is not in and of itself sufficient to make one a "racist". At least not in my book, though you'll note I don't go in for all that liberal "white guilt" stuff.
I come from a racist white background, and I've been and I'm sure still am guilty of stereotypical thinking. I congratulated myself that I wasn't like my relatives and believed that refraining from acting in a racist way towards people I encountered was "enough". I agree with you that ignorance isn't enough to make someone racist; but willful ignorance or comfortable insularity, I believe, can breed racism.
I'm not asking questions, nor educating myself, out of white guilt. For me, it's about understanding and owning my faith, moving beyond my extremely conservative and evangelical background, trying to live more Christlike. Realizing I was racist was a shock; but I knew it was true as I looked back through my life at all the tiny instances in which I automatically absorbed without reflection or concern racist language and behavior.
re,I appreciate your candor and your being commited to walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.
I think that you are correct that racism, like most of our socialized attitudes/behavoirs, is built up bit by bit, layer by layer, and this is how they have to be 'unbuilt'.
Some here seem to be under the impression that once you understand something intellectually then you are free to choose or reject it, but racism isn't a matter of intellect or calculation. And as such isn't going to be resolved simply by figuring it out. Such matters are seeded in us through relationships and they will have to be resolved through relationships,with your-self, your community, and for you your savior. peace, d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Hauerwas
Obama's gonna kill Grandma?
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/obama-wants-to-kill-your-grandma/
OK, so if they're not racist, they're bug f*ck crazy.
You know, one of the main reasons we never saw stuff like this under Bush II is that he thoroughly controlled any town hall under his rule. If you didn't agree with him, you weren't allowed in.
I don't care if their rage is being expressed through race or class or any other number of irrational things: they key here is "irrational", just like it was when McCain and Palin whipped up their crowds with "terrorist", "muslim", "socialist" defamation.
It is incumbent on the MSM to denounce these people as literally mindless and crazy. It is incumbent on everyone to denounce them as truly, clinically insane, non-institutionalized individuals. They hijacked the country for 8 years; we can't let them have it back.
I'm sure racism is a factor here ... but I think there are plenty of other atavistic fears in the mix. As a person with a disability, I can tell you that the fear and concern among at least some people about possible connections between euthanasia and health care economics is real. I don't mean the connection is real, but that drawing a link there isn't as crazy as it sounds. All of us with disabilities and chronic illnesses have low moments in our lives when we ponder how much money and trouble we're causing ... to our families and community at large. And most of us have also experienced scary conversations with doctors and other experts who just don't seem to "get us" and yet seem to have power over us. It's not such a long leap for us to imagine a more organized government health care system trying to persuade us to forego treatment in order to save money.
I don't for a moment believe this or anything like it is part of anyone's plan, but the fear and concern come from very real places. Its just that they are being used and exploited by insurance companies who don't give a damn about us and in fact do more to make the above scenario real than anyone else.
"For the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. "
Genuinely angry? Really?
How would we know? What is genuine anger?
Can you be genuinely angry about something that you know to be false? Probably not.
Can you be genuinely angry when you simply don't know the facts one way or the other? Debatable, isn't it?
In some sense this is falsified anger, not genuine anger, because it is not based on anything these people know from personal experience, but rather on things they have been told, and that were manufactured to generate anger.
I'd say "genuine anger" has some kind of connection to first hand knowledge and experience.... doesn't it?
This is all about racism. Consider: how many teabaggers have you seen wail that, "they want their country back!"?
But what has changed in 6 months? Nothing, really, except that we have a black man as President.
I see no other compelling cause for the insanity of the teabaggers except that, as old Southerners who grew up in the white supremacist South, they were born into a society that told them that black people were inferior to white people.
America will not change until the white generations born in the segregationist South finally die off.
People have an inherent capacity for self-delusion. Whatever our political affiliations we must constantly be on-guard against our baser instincts, for we can if we so desire convince ourselves that down is up or left is right. People aren't rational, in fact most of the time we rationalize. We believe we know what the answer is and then we go looking for facts to back up our assertions. Our educational system backs this up, students are taught from middle school onward to develop a thesis statement and then to provide evidence that supports the argument, instead of the other way round. Now I don't wish to debate the merits of deductive vs inductive reasoning an intelligent person knows that sometimes our lives require us to use one, and sometimes to use the other. However I will say that in my opinion the capacity for self delusion is made much worse when one uses a certain type of deductive reasoning.
Currently, the media climate in which we live has more in common with the nineteenth century than it does with the middle 20th. Lyndon Johnson's words that "If I've lost Walter Cronkite I've lost the American People" no longer apply. Indeed, the current information climate would be far more recognizable to Will Irwin or Upton Sinclair than it would be to my grandfather. At present our information climate resembles nothing more than one giant feedback loop. A person starts with the assumption or more accurately the erroneous thesis statement that "liberals are out to destroy America"
and then after a steady diet of Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Coulter, Savage, and Hannity one becomes convinced that Obama is peddling "socialized" medicine, that liberals not only hate America, they also hate you as a conservative, and given if given the chance they will over-run this country with ill-legal immigrants who will take your job --and this doesn't matter if you are a lawyer, a construction worker, or a member of the military-- and make it impossible for your kids to go to college.
Now, just like it says on a bottle of shampoo, lather, rinse, repeat. Say the same thing over and over until people forget all about the erroneous thesis statement that you started with, and instead are willing to argue about your supporting evidence. Stir in the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Add in an unsuccessful war with ill-defined objectives and no clear exit strategy. Remember to keep harping on how not only liberals but now anyone who disagrees with you also "hates america." Finally add in the first Black President --the first realization of the dream upon which this country was founded-- who happens to be a Democrat, because Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson cared more than any republican since Lincoln, and watch things explode.
This is the same type of logic behind how cults form. The same type of self-referential feedback loop is what convinced the people at Waco that Joseph Smith was the Son of God, or the Posse Commitatus Justus Township people in Jordan Montana that they didn't have to pay taxes. In order to be successful, a person merely has to start with a feeling of general discontent, an erroneous thesis statement, and a climate of circular information that feeds back upon itself, until burning the president in effigy doesn't seem like that far of a step outside the ordinary. In fact, this whole climate of information and circular reasoning was described almost perfectly by Upton Sinclair in The Brass Check we only have to change a few words in his description to update this sentiment for the modern age:
Now, lest anyone think I'm playing favorites the same type of circular reasoning, but the same degree and distinctions of degree matter a great deal, underlies the belief that the PATRIOT ACT gives Ameican Intelligence agencies to power to employ satellites to collect and use information on American Tourists traveling abroad without probable cause. If a person is a committed enough ideologue one live entirely in a feedback loop that constantly re-enforces one's pre-existing view of the world until those who present information that is outside of the loop are viewed as crazy.
Personally it is my belief that the current craziness caused by birthers, T-baggers, town-hall disrupters, and the yet-to-be-revealed-others-who-will-follow, is, in part, caused by the circular nature of the conservative media. Are there racist manifestations? Yes. Are there sexist manifestations? Undeniably. Are there homophobes? Without doubt. Is there a good deal of resentment at the root of all of this that may be traced back to Nixon's silent majority? For sure. However, the structure that undergirds, supports, and informs the entire movement is one big self-referencing loop with a biased premise, namely that there are person's unkown who for reasons that will be explained to you by the talking heads, hate America, hate Conservatives, and therefore want to destroy everything that is good in the land of the free and the home of the braves.
The idea that someone is out to get you is never true. It holds no more truth than the idea that aliens in spaceships built the pyramids. Yet when a person is locked into an informational system that constantly self-references and does not allow for the possibility of outside objective truth it becomes increasingly easy to believe that aliens built the pyramids, or liberals hate america, or that Obama was born in Kenya. Individually countering such allegations can be done. However in order for any real progress to be made one first has to tear down the superstructure that supports such faulty circular reasoning. Unfortunately almost to a man the current crop of conservatives is against the re-introduction of the fairness doctrine. Apparently they are also afraid of the words of Mr. Lincoln who said:
I wish TNC had an edit button. I feel like an Idiot.
Should Read:
I meant no disrespect towards anyone of the Mormon Faith. Forgiveness for the typo.
should read
should read
As I said many apologies for the typos/omissions/errors.
"that liberals not only hate America, they also hate you as a conservative"
To be fair, there are quite a lot of liberals that *do* hate people for noting more than being "conservative" or Republican; I've had the pleasure of working with some of them. Of course it works the other way around as well... (and has most likely intensified on the right wing now that the Republicans have foundered.)
One could I think, also probably write a post about the self-referencing feedback loop among any community of activists. I'm reading Theodore H. White's America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President 1956-1980 and he talks a considerable amount about the emergence of the new politics of cause and image as opposed to the old machine politics of ethnicity and identity. For someone born during the Reagan Administration who doesn't remember what the old system of affairs was like this book has been a fascinating insight.
However, and this is important I think, I would venture an unscientific WAG (wild ass guess) that there are far more books being published, and far more money being made from the conservative media feedback loop than from the "Liberal" media feedback loop. The talking heads aren't stupid they know that there is far more money to be made by telling people what they want to hear and stirring up emotions than by investigating what is going on, being resonable, fair minded, and more importantly showing people how they are being manipulated. Not to quote George Seldes again, but someone has to "Tell the Truth and Run." (If I ever start a blog that's going to be the title or the caption.)
I will agree that the "conservative feedback loop" as you call it does seem to have been... institutionalized on a scale that the liberal equivalent has not.
It's not treason. It's Sedition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition
""Sedition is a term of law which refers to overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.""
Birthers
Tea-Partiers
Town Hall Disrupters
They are all part of the same group (I call them Soros-haters) and they are all Seditionists.
For comparison: "Laura Berg, a nurse at a United States Department of Veterans Affairs-run hospital in New Mexico was investigated for sedition in September 2005 after writing a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, accusing several national leaders of criminal negligence. Though their action was later deemed unwarranted by the director of Veteran Affairs, local human resources personnel took it upon themselves to request an FBI investigation. Ms Berg was represented by the ACLU. Charges were dropped in 2006."
Just a letter to the editor, and yet here and now we have genuine disruption, genuine threats, actual shootings and killings (thus far no politicians) and NOTHING is done.
I can't help but wonder why not.
To All.....you all do KNOW, don't you....that it was the DEMOCRATS who created and operated the KU KLUX KLAN....and that is was the DEMOCRATS who instituted Jim Crow Laws.....and that it was the DEMOCRATS who fought against EVERY Civil Rights law from the 1860's thru 1964, when Al Gore Sr had his RECORD breaking FILIBUSTER AGAINST the Civil Rights Act of 1964....which the Republican's got passed. Read "UNFOUNDED LOYALTY" by Wayne Perryman (a Black American). You really all are showing your ignorance. Or, you've been lied to....you figure it out. The Democrats want you to stay on their PLANTATION!
You do know, don't you, that it was a Democratic President (Harry Truman) that issued an executive order to desegregate the armed and civil services. And that it was a Democratic President (Lyndon Johnson) that pushed through the Civil Rights Act by twisting arms in Congress. You also should know that prominent southern Democrats left the party because of these initiatives and became Republicans. I'm sure that you also know that the Republican Party of Lincoln bears no ideological relationship to the Republican Party of Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan. And I'm sure you know, (but won't admit) that since 1964, the Republican party has used racist resentment against black equality to win elections for at least the last 30 years.
I think that's enough...
Dear Mr. Coates,
Very interesting atricle.
One thing puzzles me.
The email you quote describes:
"Signs of Obama hung in effigy, racial slurs on signs, people chanting negative words ( too many to list) and outright screaming at Obama supporters"
Now I have had a good search on this and looked at still and video photography and read reports from local and national sources.
But I cannot find a single photo or piece of video or indeed a report which mentions effigies of the president or racial slurs on signs.
I know you are of course a busy chap but do you think you could direct me to some of the sites and images you used to check the veracity of the email you quoted?
I do beg you pardon.
That should be article.
Butterfingers.