The Atlantic - Latest Comments in The Fight We Want To Have

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

evets — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:19:03 -0000

I think Carter oversimplifies and paints with too broad a brush on this and other topics (the mideast comes to mind). While I'm sure he fancies himself an intrepid truthteller here, he's leaving out too much nuance and detail to capture the truth. Racism and demagogic appeals to racism undoubtedly add to the teabag frenzy, but after having witnessed the fury that surrounded Clinton, it's hard to say that they are the sole or even primary source of that frenzy.

I also agree with our host that Carter's words (partly because of their imprecision) serve as an unwonted distraction right now. They'll just provide fodder for 'race-card' accusations and push the focus off of healthcare. The political timing couldn't be more inept. All that said, I do begin to worry about Obama's safety.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

blackirish — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:46:35 -0000

Troy, very interesting. My mother was quite tolerant, but in her last years I did see vestiges of prejudice. I was driving back from a funeral "down home" and I took some back roads back thru the area she grew up. I drove into a town called Lancaster, which is the site of Eleutheria College, one of the first schools to accept African-Americans, including, I learned, one of the Jefferson boys. This was before the Civil War. Anyway, it is standing, and something of a museum, so I stopped. She didn't really want me to. Anyway, the curator gave me a big tour. When we left, I tried to talk to Mom about the place, and what people thought of it when she was growing up. She said, "it just wasn't talked about." After reading some of the literature I picked up, I realized she was referring to intermarriage of white and black students and especially teachers. That is something that had never seemed to bother her in day-to-day life, but the residual sort of disgust was palpable. But I never saw it in her, which is to her great credit.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Carrington — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:43:09 -0000

Bad news for the right wing when they are debating against a southern white former president from 1980.

Carter says a lot of interesting and controversial things. More power to him. If Beck and Limbaugh want to devote show after show to Carter, more power to them.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

tgas — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:49:10 -0000

"He doesn't even laugh at distasteful jokes," is what the young Wilson said, as if this is evidence of an unusually enlightened character.

The idea that it is NORMAL to laugh at distasteful jokes and that it is high-minded not to is a good example of what it's like to grow up white in South Carolina. It is a good example also of how many whites claim enlightenment on the question of racism while at the same time structuring the claim to downplay racism as something easily measured by one's response to jokes that are ubiquitous outside mixed company.

"I'm not racist, but did you hear the one about..."

As a white man in SC, I am frequently asked to participate in this kind of conspiratorial and supposedly benign jokiness. I suspect that the thing Carter is pointing to is a more public emergence of this kind of conspiratorial talk that has always occupied an uncomfortable spot in private interactions among whites down here...an effort I have always been subjected to that assumes an "us against them" connection based on skin color without any sense of need--without any shame because we're all good people--to see where I stand first.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Troy — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:48:11 -0000

Yep, that's exactly the kind of interaction I'm talking about, blackirish. Sounds very familiar.

I think the role of women in families like yours and mine was pretty interesting also. This topic came up in a late-night conversation with a group of friends a couple years ago (5 white guys, mid-30s), and we discovered we all had had the same experience: a moment of honest-to-God shock, one day in our early 20s, when we discovered our mothers harbored some deeply racist idea. Because every single one of them had NEVER allowed any of that kind of talk around their kids, and had always denounced it once they got you alone. Like they knew the world was changing and wouldn't let their kids grow up with the same prejudices they themselves had.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Katherine — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:35:08 -0000

I'm glad Carter said it. I doubt he was thinking about health care strategy - he's not a political strategist. He's a highly moral man who says what he thinks and speaks out against injustice when he sees it, which tends to make him enemies (as in the case of Peace Not Apartheid). That may not always be productive or create useful debate, seeing that he's now written another book on mideast peace with a less inflammatory title. But honestly and calling things like they are are qualities seen far too little among politicians, so I'm always glad to hear what Carter has to say.

Also, the South is Carter's home. I'm sure he'd like to see it improve, so he's inclined to point out when there are strong elements in Southern culture that are a problem. How a man like him managed to come out of a toxic place like that is beyond me, but I'm glad he did.

On Joe Wilson: I don't see how someone can get racism from "You lie!", but given other comments he's made about Thurmond it's pretty clear that he is racist regardless of the heckling.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

blackirish — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:20:25 -0000

There is a certain satisfying circularity about this "tea party" opposition to health care reform. Let's revisit the original one, in Boston Harbor in 17(cough-cough). The tea-dumping was done by angry white colonists dressed as people of color--Indians. They were misrepresenting who they really were. Now comes the New Tea Party guests. And they can be read as corporate and lobbying interests who come out and misrepresent themselves as angry white Americans with little good to say about one particular person of color, the President.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

blackirish — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:11:19 -0000

Some good points here. I read this past week (maybe here, maybe somewhere else) someone writing that they grew up in a midwestern small town, where "nigger" was used so widely that you would have thought that is what black folks were supposed to be called. So it was with many of my family (from southern Indiana) and their friends, who were my friends as well. Everytime I heard something like that (pretty much every day), the internal struggle began as to how to respond (or not), and what to say (if anything). I am pretty sure that no matter how upset I felt, I didn't say to anyone: "you are a racist." And it was for pretty much the reasons Troy mentions. I honestly don't know if I ever said: "that's racist," though I suspect I did. I certainly let people know I didn't want to hear that stuff, but that just encourages them. Here's an example (from someone I didn't like, my widowed mother's one-time boyfriend "Cece," a used car salesman):

ME: "I drove up to Chicago and went to a White Sox game."

HE: "Did you pay the nigger?"

ME: "Did I WHAT?"

HE: "Pay the nigger, you know, one of the niggers that say they'll watch your car for $10. If you don't pay, you might not have any wheels when you get back..."

ME: "No, Cece, no one asked me and I didn't pay anybody, and nothing happened to the car."

HE: "Yeah, well, can't be too careful around those people..."

ME: "THOSE PEOPLE...oh, hell, do we have any scotch?"

Anyway, as often as I confronted Cece on stuff, I'm pretty sure I never called him a racist. And I don't think it would have been helpful to do so.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:13:21 -0000

No, I think "Is Joe Wilson racist" distracts from the health care debate. I don't think, say, looking at how race may affect outcomes in terms of health care is a distraction. I don't think asking whether certain health care policies adversely affect people of color is a distraction.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Joshua Lyle — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:03:26 -0000

To the folks taking to the streets to "take their country back" it represents 25 million undeserving people of color who they don't want to shell out even one penny to help.

That's a pretty wide arc you're shooting across.

He follows the history of welfare, social security and other social safety net programs in America and finds (no surprise) that the most bitter opposition to these programs always goes along racial grounds.

Bitter racists opposing social security, a regressive tax and transfer scheme that substantially amounts to a subsidy of a disproportionately white elderly leisure class at the expense of a disproportionately non-white working class, is deliciously ironic.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Quizfan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:17:32 -0000

TNC is right. There are layers upon layers here.

And this is hilarious: Thurmond's Biracial Daughter Seeks to Join Confederacy Group (NY Times, 7/ 2/2004, p13, 1p): Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a biracial woman who stepped forward last year to acknowledge that she was the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, now wants to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization of descendants of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. Evidently she is eligible: Senator Thurmond, once a fierce segregationist, was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a similar group for men. Ms. Washington-Williams, a 78-year-old retired teacher who lives in Los Angeles, also plans to apply for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Black Patriots Foundation, which honors black Revolutionary War fighters. One of her two sons will apply to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, her lawyer said.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Quizfan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:14:41 -0000

Wikipedia: In 2003, Wilson voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, including its Section 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually of taxpayer money to reimburse hospitals for treatment of illegal immigrants. In 2009, Wilson changed to his current position opposing public funds for healthcare of illegal immigrants.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

anna perez — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:03:27 -0000

Speaking of "sane elder-statesman" former Pres. George H.W. Bush has invited Pres. Obama to attend a community service/Points of Light foundation celebration at his presidential library in Texas. Pres. Obama has accepted and will attend the event in October. Can't wait to see the Texas tea-baggers and successionists rally their forces in protest.

Knowing both Pres. and Mrs. Barbara Bush, I believe (tho' they won't say so) that this is their smack-down to the "beast" that is overtaking their party. It was Mrs. Bush who said during the '92 GOP convention "the hardest job in politics is motivating a moderate."

And yes, I know "Willie Horton/these people never had it so good." But before anyone lets loose, remember it was Bill Clinton who left the campaign trail to pull the execution switch in Arkansas on a mentally challenged Black man. I may be biased, oh hell I am biased because I worked for them and know them personally, but George and Barbara Bush are good people and tho' they are doing it on their own terms, I welcome them to the fight.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Quizfan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:03:19 -0000

In case it is of relevance, Joe Wilson was the co-chair of the India caucus. http://www.usindiafriendship.net/congress1/wilson/wilson-statements.htm

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Sorn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:54:07 -0000

From the Huffpo article.

In 2003, Wilson called it "unseemly" and a "smear" for the mixed-race daughter of Sen. Strom Thurmond, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, to identify the longtime South Carolina senator as her father after his death.

I'm not going to call Joe Wilson a racist. I am begining to wonder what that word means. Considering his defense of Strom Thurmond in light of evidence of what Thurmond actually did, unreconstructed is probably a better term to describe Joe Wilson.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Liza — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:05:26 -0000

Who would have thought that one of the consequences of legislating civil rights would be that 45 years later we cannot come to agreement on what "racism" means or who is a "racist."

The white southern racists in my family would not have considered themselves to be "prejudiced" which is the word we used back in the 60s. They were actually passive racists. They made racial slurs only in the privacy of their own homes. They would never have harmed a black person in a one on one encounter, but they also did not concern themselves about social justice. "That's just the way things are," they would say. Unquestionably, they thought they were better than black people and I can tell you that the civil rights movement scared the living hell out of them. Back then, you didn't consider yourself "prejudiced" unless you attended meetings wearing a white hood and sheet.

People certainly have the right to their own self-concept. Arguing with someone about what he is and what he is not seems beyond futile. All you can really do is examine the evidence and study the patterns and interrelationships. Even if we converged on a 2009, 21st century definition of "racist," it does not matter whether or not we could compile a list of names of those who are indisputably racist.

What matters, in the context of President Obama's administration, is that the conservative right is using race to advance their agenda and capitalize on whatever residual fear of the racial "other" that is still present in the white majority. This was 100% predictable and it has been evident since the weekend of Reverand Wright. Furthermore, the GOP agenda right now consists mainly of defeating health care reform before the 2010 elections by showing Obama to be a weak and ineffectual leader and the Democrats as being unable to legislate their own agenda despite their majority status.

All they are trying to do right now is get rid of some Democrats in 2010. If they succeed, then 2012 starts looking a little better for them.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Josh Jasper — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:01:29 -0000

Is Joe Wilson a racist? Membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and rabid defense of the confederate flag sure seem to indicate he is. Was he being racist when he called Obama a liar? I don't know. But I am pretty sure he is a racist.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Troy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:10:49 -0000

You're right about that, Tek. That really struck me during the conversation about Gates and Crowley, too, how virulent the response was to someone even hinting that what Crowley did might have a racial element.

It made me realize something: there are things about racism in America that only white people really know, because there are lots of ways race and racism affect our relationships with one another that pertain whether we ever come in contact with other racial groups or not.

I think the emotion and turmoil that surrounds calling someone a "racist" is one of those things. The fact is that most white people's personal experiences with people being called a racist (or not) comes via interactions with other white people. How did your Mom and Dad react when your Uncle told that joke after Thanksgiving dinner? What about the rest of the family? What did your Mom and Dad say about it in the car on the way home? Do you repeat it to your friends the next day? How do they react?

For many white families since the Civil Rights era, the answer is that the joke was treated with a few strained laughs from the men and mostly dirty looks from the women (especially if told within earshot of the kids), once you got in the car Mom told you that that kind of talk was absolutely unacceptable, and when you told your friends the joke the next day at school they all said your Uncle was a bad guy who was probably going to hell for being prejudiced.

So when one white person says that another white person is a "racist", it's often meant and received in a very personally damning way. It's much worse than being called a "liar", or "unfaithful", or "stupid" or most other epithets. By using "racist", the speaker usually intends it as signifying a bone-deep, permanent moral failure, and the target takes it as such. I'm talking about connotations here, not denotations; the best words I can come up with to describe the connotations is "rotten" or "diseased" on the inside. Moreover, it defines you in a way that other personal moral failings don't.

But when white people who've thought deeply about ideas of institutional racism use "racist", or when black or hispanic or asian people use "racist", I don't think they usually mean it to carry those connotations. Even when referring to individuals. Once you understand that those racial biases are part of all of us, that you can't avoid it, but that it's just one part of who you are and that you can overcome it (or, at least, beat it back) in most of the ways that truly matter, then the term ceases to have those connotations of permanent rot, at least for each of us as individuals.

Anyway, this disconnect in the connotations of the word "racist" is, I suspect, why you thought "we could just call Wilson racist, quietly and calmly, and then simply move on to more important matters". And why we're all finding out that we can't.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Sandlapper — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:03:42 -0000

Sorry, but I took this: "Tha said, one reason some of us try to avoid this discussion is because of its enormous potential for distraction. From a black perspective, I care about the disproportionate number of black people who are sick and dying, not the contents of Joe Wilson's heart" to mean that you do not want to have this discussion of racism because it will distract from the halth care debate.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

aleks — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:01:10 -0000

Joe Wilson is racist like the winter is cold, and there's just as much we can do about it. It's part of the playing field and as I see it the only option is to elect more and better Democrats from the districts that don't spawn his type. We can't change him, the best we can do is marginalize him by keeping a large majority in the House so his opinion doesn't matter.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

anti — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:41:50 -0000

The problem is, picking this kind of fight in this particular kind of way, IMO, makes such an acknowledgment even less likely, even from the most well-meaning yet ignorant white people. I agree 100% that longstanding prejudices influence a great deal of our policy in the US. And I do think white people need to wake up and do a better job coming to terms with that. But the problem with this particular line of attack (I don't know that you could really call it persuasion, could you?) goes back to a previous TNC column on race, to the definition most white people have of "racism" in their heads.

To be a "racist" in this society is to be someone who drops the n-bomb in polite company, to be someone who would shoot a black man without a thought, who would sick his or her dogs on black children for being on the wrong side of the street. And most white people - even most republicans - aren't THAT. So when you stick them with that label, especially when it comes to something relatively innocuous like Wilson's outburst (how many of these people would have cheered to see this happen to Clinton or Pelosi?) they get defensive, and you weaken the effect of the charge if it must be used down the road.

The problem is, there seem to be two kinds of people on the right going into hysterics here: people who are racist and know full well that they are, and people who don't genuinely believe that they are racist, but whose beliefs have been shaped by a society full of racism, whose definition of "other" might be subconsciously about skin color but in the forefront of their mind is played off as culture or class or upbringing. When you call the former a racist, he thinks little of it, he calls you a racist back - basically, there's no sane discussion to be had. When you call the latter a racist, they get offended and say you're playing the race card, because they really don't see the truth in what you're saying. It might be worth taking the time to explain the influence of race to the latter, but that'll never happen - it'll never be accepted - once the charge of racism is lowered. At that point, you've declared war.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Tam — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:09:40 -0000

I'm a white woman. When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about how, if I were a man, I would treat women with respect and as equals and not be a sexist bastard. When I grew up I realized this was actually just a fantasy about having power over another group - the power to "treat" them well or not.

I have a similar feeling about wanting to be one of the "good" white people. Yes, I have genuine desires not to be a racist asshole, and to overcome the racism I find within myself, but part of my desire not to be racist also comes from a racist place, where I view myself (or want to view myself?) as having power to "treat."

But on the Joe Wilson question, there is just no way for anyone, probably including Joe Wilson, to determine whether and to what extent racism plays a part. Maybe he sees Obama as (for instance) a sly deceiver, and maybe he is more likely to see a black man as a sly deceiver than a white man, but whether it's racism that pushes Obama across that line for him...how can anyone say?

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Ulysses (not yet home) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:53:51 -0000

Cynical - See: Nixon's Southern Strategy , see: Ronald Reagan's Welfare 'Queens", see: George Bush's Willie Horton, see yadda, yadda

The issue is that Republican political strategy has RELIED on appeals to racism and racial animosity for a generation. The negative beliefs and attitudes towards minorities held by a significant (but dwindling) percentage of the electorate, persist due in no small part to 40 years of Republican campaigns to CREATE that belief in order to secure electoral majorities. The current infowar sorties being conducted by FoxNews, Beck, Limbaugh and the rest are explicit attempts to reinvigorate the brand with new and improved products. Cynical is actually too mild a term ...

The cynicism on display with the selection of Palin as a running mate for McCain is indicative of their complete disdain for the future of the country. The opposition to reform of our healthcare system is ONLY a tactic employed to disrupt what the electorate clearly indicated they wanted and to prevent the consolidation of power by the new political rootstock.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Tel — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:49:45 -0000

Honestly I don't find it weird that asserting reality is a distraction. Kinda like that one scene in 1776: "Nowhere do you mention fishing rights!" Well, yeah, there actually were problems with fishing rights. But are two words spoken by Joe Wilson really more important than getting the whole health care package passed? If not, it's a distraction.

Re: The Fight We Want To Have

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:46:43 -0000

Sorry, TNC, but I disagree with the contention that any discussion about racism automatically distracts from discussion of healthcare reform.

I don't think that's what I said. I just wrote the following two days ago:

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/09/race_is_a_factor_but.php