Is ‘That One’ American Enough?
The continuing stream of articles dealing with race and the presidential campaign contrasts with the infrequent coverage we saw in the primary season. Just a sampling of articles in the past 24 hours:
TIME’s Peter Beinart in an article titled “Is He American Enough?“: “With their incessant talk about who loves their country and who doesn’t, McCain and Palin are doing something different: they’re using race to make Obama seem anti-American.” [Thanks to David Wilson for bringing this article to our attention!]
From an unattributed blog post, “McCain takes on ‘that one’,” on the Chicago Tribune’s Exploring Race forum: “When I heard the comment, I wondered: Was it racial? (And not in a conscious way. It just sort of had a tinge of “you people.”) … That’s the thing about race: if you’re a person of color and you hear something like that, it can pull you up short and you’re simply left to wonder.”
Politico’s Jonathan Martin thinks that “McCain will be accused of racism regardless“: John McCain is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. He could never mention Jeremiah Wright and ensure his campaign aides don’t either, and he’d still be accused of running a racist campaign. … But is McCain doing anything overtly racist? No. … That doesn’t matter, though, to the outrage industry, ever on the lookout for any sign of racism and quick to pounce even when it’s not there. … McCain has not called Obama “a terrorist.”
Philadelphia Daily News columnist Christine M. Flowers in “Obama camp’s racial decoders” says that “race has become the not-so-secret weapon of the Obama camp, allowing it to both promote the candidate as a historic step forward while at the same time attack his opponents with the bigot label. And the polls say that it seems to be working. I’m not saying that Obama will win or lose because of the color of his skin. He probably won’t.”
Commentary by Dr. David C. Wilson, Assistant Professor of Political Science & International Relations at the University of Delaware:
Who’s on First?….”That One”
So-what John McCain is 72, and has grandparent tendencies, Barack Obama is a United States Senator, a presidential nominee, a father, and a human being.
What’s most interesting to me about the “that one” comment is that it’s not necessarily the comment that’s indicative of the underlying racial meaning, it’s the use of it with Senator Obama. Saying “that one” to a white male (or a real child) would be relatively fine in context, but if it’s a woman, a racial minority, or other underrepresented political group member (e.g., disabled person), it’s closer to an “ism.”
But, to be clear, there is a difference (in social scientific thinking) between “racism” and “racialized” behavior; they are not one in the same. Racism rests on an ideology of a group’s biological superiority/inferiority, whereas racialized behavior is an action that calls attention to race, bringing about consequences that can be intentional or unintentional. I’m not denying that racialized behavior is not influenced by racism (that would be naïve), but McCain’s “that one” statement is closer to racialized behavior.
However, by no means should we look at McCain’s “that one” behavior in a vacuum. His “that one” comment, in conjunction with the personal attacks (e.g., “who Obama is” and a lack of reciprocal admiration for Obama’s storied background), and a refusal to look at Obama along with other very cold interpersonal behavior (e.g., no real salutation at the handshake) are all indicators of McCain’s apparent discomfort or antipathy toward Obama. McCain definitely does not respect Obama. We know this because he hasn’t apologized for anything he’s done or said recently.
My point is that John McCain is not racist, but regardless of what most people might think, at the very least John McCain displayed a social dominance orientation targeted at something about Barack Obama. Perhaps it was Obama’s height (i.e., Obama is taller), or his party affiliation…..or maybe it’s just plain okay to say McCain sees more of Obama’s race than he thinks (or knows… shout out to all my psychologist friends).
Social Equity Videos by Society of American Law Teachers
The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) today released two voter education videos on the benefits of maintaining policies of social equity and opportunity. The videos are intended for distribution in Nebraska and Colorado, where anti-affirmative action initiatives qualified for the November 4th ballot.
The shorts were created by Sean Nalaboff, a young student filmmaker, and feature two prominent African Americans discussing their views of affirmative action. One video features Mary, the first woman to be elected president of her union. The other features Lance, the first African American to be elected president of the local bar association.
Denver Post: Amendment 46 Wrong for Colorado
The Denver Post yesterday came out against the Connerly initiative in Colorado:
Amendment 46 isn’t as simple as it seems, and there have been disingenuous arguments on both sides of the issue to further muddy the waters.
We hope Colorado voters take the time to understand what it means and what it will do. And then, we hope they vote it down.
In short, this ballot question purports to end discrimination, but what it would really do is slam shut the small — and let us emphasize small — window that allows race and gender to be factors in state college admissions and in the awarding of government contracts.
Amendment 46 is being pushed by Ward Connerly, a Californian trying to export his political solutions to states that don’t necessarily want or need them.
What’s the difference between a “racial joke” and racism?
“McCain dumps racial-joking campaigner” is the title of Mark Silva’s post yesterday on the Chicago Tribune’s Swamp politics blog. Silva’s post cites an earlier post by Don Frederick of the Los Angeles Times on the subject, which is titled “John McCain backer dropped from Virginia campaign team due to racially tinged column.”
The story is that Bobby May, a McCain campaign organizer in Virginia, wrote a column in a Virginia newspaper that included:
Obama would hire the rapper Ludacris (a prominent supporter) to paint the White House black. And the….
…Democrat’s administration would divert more foreign aid to Africa so “the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.”
May also joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars on the U.S. flag “with a star and crescent logo,” an Islamic symbol, and that his policy on drugs would be to “raise taxes to pay for Obama’s inner-city political base.”
What motivates some journalists to call overt racism like this “racially tinged” or “racial jokes”? Why not just call it racist?
Zogby says ‘Bradley effect’ unlikely this year
John Zogby on forbes.com today says the “Bradley effect is not likely to be a factor in the presidential race this year,” citing the relative accuracy of polls in the Democratic primaries and the increasing racial tolerance of younger voters.
Analysis of Zogby polling has showed that younger voters, whom I identify in The Way We’ll Be as “First Globals,” are much more racially tolerant than their parents, and especially their grandparents. The trend toward each new generation being more open to diversity is peaking with these First Globals. Any remnants of submerged racial bias surfacing on Election Day are eroding, and I doubt we will see it Nov. 4.
I find it curious that this was published on forbes.com. Is the piece part of some editor’s notion of colorblindness? Or part of the growing realization among journalists across the spectrum that race is a factor that we need to grapple with in this historic election?
AP Analysis: the Racism in Palin’s Attacks on Bill Ayers
Associated Press writer Douglass K. Daniel yesterday writes about how Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s relationship with University of Chicago Prof. William Ayers embed negative racial connotations without resorting to “overt racism.”
Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain’s purpose so well. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.
Republican strategist Joe Gaylord is quoted in the article saying that it’s a “legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with.”
UPDATE: Adding commentary by Camille Z. Charles, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania:
Of course there’s racial subtext! Right or wrong, character and “guilt by association” attacks are commonplace in presidential campaigns, but that doesn’t mean that such attacks cannot and/or do not also tap into white voters’ racial fears and resentments.
Republicans and their allies mastered the subtle. implicit racial appeal that has “plausible deniability” more than a century ago: the most (in)famous example being the Willie Horton ad in 1988. The recent attacks by Governor Sarah Palm are a prime example of this approach.
From the outset, McCain-Palin have emphasized their own patriotism with the catchy Country First slogan, sending an implicit message that their opponent is unpatriotic or un-American. Plausible deniability? Easy, it isn’t about race, it’s about being patriotic and loving America; they never even mention race and they don’t have to because you can just look at him and see that he’s, well, black. When questioned about potentially racial motives, they simply respond: What are you saying? That everything is racial? Really, he’s the one “playing the race card.” Sound familiar?
What Republican strategists are counting on is voters’ tendency to equate “American” and “patriotic” with, well, being white. So, the catchy slogan, the emphasis on McCain’s military/POW experience. and Palm’s hockey-mom-who’s-just-like-us-and-knows-our-story persona all send the message that they are real Americans. Implicit in all this is that Senator Obama is, well, not. Remember the uproar over the flag pin? Same thing. Nobody cared that HRC was often sans flag pin.
Obama’s “associations” with Rev. Jeremiah Wright (e.g., “God damn America”) and William Avers (former member of the Weather Underground and the “terrorist” that Obama “pals around with”) are offered as evidence of his lack of patriotism. (Never mind that he’s severed ties with Wright, barely knows Ayers, or that Palin and her husband have a real tie to the API, an organized political party with an anti-American platform that advocates Alaska’s secession from the United States! Oops—sorry. I digress).
That one man is African American and the other is white is a perk for Republicans—allowing them to play on whites’ racial fears again without ever mentioning race. The three of them are angry, dangerous and anti-American. Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric and Ayers’ criminal past both targeted America, so the message goes. These men are angry, dangerous, and clearly hate America; Senator Obama is guilty by association and the American people need to be warned (did I mention that Palin says Obama is “dangerous”?). Plausible deniability? This matters no matter what color they are! Bill Ayers isn’t even black, so how are we playing the race-card? But hey, two out of three aint bad and, you know, they are angry and dangerous and unpatriotic …
Preying on (some) whites’ nagging feeling that they “don’t really know” or “can’t be sure they can trust” Senator Obama perpetuates racial tensions and divisions that most of us long to be rid of; doing it “on the down-low” is dishonest. How un-American.
Do We Still Have the ‘Bradley Effect’?
Stop Dog Whistle Racism posted a link to a piece yesterday by Pat Morrison questioning if the Bradley Effect still exists. Morrison writes about two differences between Obama and former L.A. mayor Tom Bradley: Bradley hardly if ever mentioned race in his politics while Obama has “confronted race forthright”; and people polled today seem more willing to openly reveal their bias towards someone of another race.
It seems that at least one Florida teacher isn’t concerned about sharing his racism with his student. As Bart Motes writes on HuffPost, the teacher wrote this on his chalkboard: “C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A N—-r Get Elected.”
