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“The High Road Is Yours To Take”

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Guest Post by Adam

It’s not so much a rule as an instinct: I generally cringe when the first thing someone says to me is how comfortable they are with black people. (Uh, thanks?) It’s partially because I’m one of those people who happens to believe everyone’s a little racist. But that doesn’t really matter to me, what matters is whether people actively indulge those inclinations, and the Republican Party has a recent history of doing just that.

Douglass McKinnon’s Op-Ed isn’t quite that bad at first, but the main point of his essay seems to be to establish himself as “not racist” and by extension, the Republican Party:

I am a Republican and conservative who finds much about Barack Obama to admire. I am also a Republican and conservative who spent my formative years growing up in abject poverty and being homeless a number of times. During that time, I often lived in majority black neighborhoods and was many times the only white child in class.

When asked what, if any, positives I took away from that time, I always say, “my immersion into black America.” To me then, to me now, and to me always, black America is a great America. To this day, I feel more comfortable with that community than anywhere else.

McKinnon, however, cringes when someone states the obvious.

It is for that reason and more that I was so disappointed with Obama’s recent comments regarding Republicans and race. At a fundraiser in Florida before a majority African-American audience, the senator said, “We know what kind of campaign [Republicans are] going to run. They’re going to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced, and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’”

What, the Republicans? Make a big deal about of barack HUSSEIN obama’s middle name? Yeah right.

Obama isn’t making that statement in a vacuum, or even in the context of the last few months, he’s making it about a party that saw the election of its greatest champion begin in a town where three civil rights workers were murdered. He’s making it in the context of a political culture that has seen race used as a wedge issue by Republicans, in which the last two Republican presidents before W. were being advised by the guy who said this:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

Somehow, while referencing the Op-Ed in which Bob Herbert used this quote from Lee Atwater laying out the racism of his political philosophy, McKinnon manages to be “saddened” as well as “offended” (I don’t know about you, but reading that column makes me sad for an entirely different reason). What is offensive about Herbert’s column is presumably the same thing that is offensive about Obama’s comments in Florida, which is that the GOP has in the past, and will continue to use racism as a political strategy. In fact, they already have by trying to run against the blackety black scariness of Barack Obama in Louisiana against Don Cazayoux and Mississippi against Travis Childers, and both times the strategy backfired by driving up the black vote.

But in keeping with one of the more bizarre aspects of our current racial conversation, saying something is racist is actually more offensive than doing or saying something racist. McKinnon muses:

As a Republican with a conservative point of view, I have written more on the greatness of black America, and the need for my party to reach out to that community, than just about anyone I know. Many of the single black moms I knew were some of the most “conservative” people I had ever met. They were death on a cracker when it came to law and order, going to church, staying in school, right and wrong, and personal responsibility, and it was and is my belief that their “real-life” success stories could only make the Republican Party a better and less hypocritical entity.

I’m sure they would be if the GOP wasn’t openly campaigning on anti-black sentiment, often on reductive caricatures of the urban black and poor often regarding the very women McKinnon names above. There are some very conservative folks in the black community, but rather than support McKinnon’s point that the GOP isn’t racist, it further indicts the party as so hostile to black folks that it has trouble attracting those who share their politics.

I am not a racist. I, like Obama, am simply an American who wants the best for my country and its people. As the campaign progresses, it is my hope that the gifted and caring senator from Illinois will choose his words a bit more carefully.

Millions of Americans have waited for this time in history. The high road is his to travel.

I hope Obama is careful with his words too . Not because Obama is wrong, but because, as I said above, people tend to be more outraged about accusations of racism than actual racism, the very dynamic that fuels this Op-Ed. But as far as the high road is concerned, it would be nice if some folks in the Republican Party could actually find it first, or if the GOP would listen to those Republicans that do. A good start would be not attempting to whitewash the party’s past.

Comments

  • IludiumPhosdex

    says:

    Come to think of it, even supposedly “morally superior” whites can run the risk of being reduced to poverty and homelessness.

    Case in point, from no less an example than South Africa, where a whole generation of whites were taught by the State to see themselves as “privileged” and “honoured” solely because of their racial status–and, in the process, not expected to imagine the prospect of falling into desperate circumstances which the regime forced blacks into, and excusing such as being For G-d, Country and Race.

  • FreeProton

    says:

    I’ve a little bone to pick with the idea that “everyone is a little racist”. I’m not a sociologist, but it seems to me that there’s a significant difference between “xenophobia” (e.g. “black people make me nervous because they’re… just different. I try to be open-minded, but it’s not working”) and “racism” (e.g. “colored people are stupid and dangerous. Why? I dunno, because they’re monkeys?”). Xenophobia is, alas, a natural byproduct of human being as herd animals who have an arbitrary trust for members of their own group, and an arbitrary distrust for members of another group. Xenophobia often leads to racism, where distrust is replaced with dehumanization, but often it does not.

    You may see this as splitting hairs, but let me give you this example: a person who subconsciously distrusts black people as “other” but is in favor of equal rights (to the point of fighting for them regardless) is xenophobic but not racist. A person who firmly believes that black people are monkeys and should not have rights is racist. You think the former is impossible? Think again.

  • james k. sayre

    says:

    The Grand Old Party has happily been the party of white racism since 1968, when Nixon led the movement to get racist white southern Democrats to reregister as Republicans. Had anything changed in the forty years (and ten Presidential Elections) since then?

  • Racer X

    says:

    Douglass McKinnon:

    “I happened to agree with Herbert that the major GOP candidates should have been at the BET televised debate moderated last year by Tavis Smiley. I was so angered that they did not show up that I wrote a column on the subject for the Baltimore Sun — which I then forwarded to Herbert. Unfortunately, he chose to ignore my outreach and my column.”

    So McKinnon was angry at his own party (for being racist, it would seem) and because this one Republican commentator was angry at them, we should all agree that the Republicans aren’t racist.

    Got it.

    He seems to be saying “The high road is his to travel, but the people on my team who travel the low road aren’t really important.”

    You wish.

    Obama is already travelling the high road, and it’s driving them nuts.

  • The Answer is Orange

    says:

    Dear Mr. McKinnon. No one wants to hear about your “black friends.”

    In fact, if you can talk about “Black America” with a straight face, I submit you are a tool. Actually, your touching story of how poverty forced you to live with the African-Americans proves your toolishness.

  • JakeD

    says:

    To be Republican is to believe in compassionate conservatism. As a compassionate conservative I believe that black people, even though born with diminished cranial size, and a propensity to wear their pants too low should be treated compassionately.

  • Dale

    says:

    Well let’s remember who got to Scotland afore ye.

    Obama is definitely taking the high road and I think it’s a winning strategy.

    I agree with you that all people are somewhat racist, be they white black or brown. It’s partly an overlap of xenophobia as FreeProton said and generalization of “the other”. It’s the crabgrass of the soul.

    Grass is green. Water is wet. Republicans are racist.

  • citizen_pain

    says:

    Jeez JakeD, that was low even for an Australopithecus like yourself. The world is a different place nowadays and you conservative people just can’t seem to get yourselves out of the 19th century.

    What is it that you people really want? All the niggers and jews and mexicans and everyone else that IS NOT a white anglo to leave the country?

    Someone, anyone on the right PLEASE describe to me what your dream country would be like, if you got everything you wanted?

    i’m waiting.

  • clar-z

    says:

    Hmmm…I wonder what has happened to InsaneFakeProfessor…where is he when we need him? JakeD, have you seen him?

  • Capt Kirk

    says:

    So now we now JakeD is a pasty big headed compassionate cracker with his pants pulled up to his armpits and belted, shirt tail in for sure. Be careful there Jake don’t trip and fall into your noose, must be hard to see through the eyeholes in your hood.

  • -jayinge-

    says:

    One of the latest bits of “humor” circulating in blue-collar O’Reilly worshiping circles is a set of images of celebrities showing Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson with superposed Islamic headbands. It is labeled “Obama’s Cabinet.” The e-mail is among the more mild hate “humor” that I’ve seen. At this rate, the next 100 days are going to be difficult. Not calling the the KKK wing of the Republican party “racist,” trying to maintain the high road, is going to be hard.

  • Douglass

    says:

    I’m not racist, but I hate it when black people won’t let their betters walk all over them!

    Did I mention I once went to school with black people? Yaaah me for being so cool about it!

  • Charles

    says:

    I’d like to point out that the issue is not whether the GOP is racist, given that, under the definition given above, everybody is, to some degree. Rather, the issue is whether they are willing to use the racism of others to get elected, and to stoke that racism to their political advantage.

    … and the answer is: yes, the GOP will.

    A well as any other fears, founded or unfounded, they can find or create.

  • Threegoal

    says:

    Whenever I hear one one of these riffs on “compassionate conservatism”, I find myself asking this question: What is so cruel and disgusting about regular conservatism that some find a need to contrast their brand of conservatism with the other brand. And who are these practitioners of the compassion-less conservatism, so we can all get together to renounce them and avoid them?

  • Michigoose

    says:

    Thanks, FreeProton, that was an excellent splitting of hairs. I think your point is well made, and explains a lot about the hate that has just spewed from the right wing ever since Newt Gingrich took over the House.

    And don’t forget the GLBT group, citizen_pain; they might be allowed in long enough to decorate the houses in that dream country, but then they’d have to swish off into the night. Although I suppose they might also let the Mexicans in by day to take care of their lawns. . .

  • RSA

    says:

    A good start would be not attempting to whitewash the party’s past.

    Republicans had an obvious chance to do this on July 4th; instead we saw Jesse Helms lionized on the right as the founder of the modern Republican party. There you go.

  • Lance

    says:

    Charles said: “Rather, the issue is whether they are willing to use the racism of others to get elected, and to stoke that racism to their political advantage.”

    If they try and fail (as they will) will they stop doing it in the future?

    I doubt it. They’ll blame JSMcC*nt and the Republican’ts failures on anything other than their overt and covert racism.

  • JW

    says:

    Adam: If I’d known you were black, I’d of never cracked wise about staying off McCain’s lawn (lawn= lawn jockey statuettes= white man’s oppression). I, too, am comfortable around negroes.

  • Racer X

    says:

    If they try and fail (as they will) will they stop [use the racism of others to get elected] in the future?

    I doubt it…

    Let’s hope they keep it up, anyway. The sooner they drop the moron act the sooner they’ll come back out of the wilderness. Anything less than 40 years would be too soon.

  • JakeD

    says:

    You can’t stand the truth so you debate the identity of the truth teller. Refute the statement if you can-stoopid liberals.

  • libra

    says:

    JW, @21,

    I hope you are joking, with your “If I’d known you were black, I’d of never cracked wise about […]”.

    It’s not so much a rule as an instinct: I generally cringe when the first thing someone says to me is how comfortable they are with black people. — Adam

    Adam, you’d have loved my (now deceased) MIL. She was very democratic about her comfort level with a whole slew of “lovely people, but… not us”. Blacks and Jews topped her list but there was plenty of room left for Poles and the Irish, and the French, and Germans, and “the Asians” (*is there* a difference? They all look the same) and Hispanics (see: Asians). Even New Yorkers (all Jews, anyway) weren’t immune from being damned with that faint praise…

    It used to bother me no end (I’m half-Polish, half-Jewish, so got the “lovely” treatment on both counts), until — as a sign of the highest approval — she said one day that my nose was just like that of Barbara Streisand (I wish!). I collapsed in helpless laughter and never took it seriously again. With some people it’s so ingrained, they don’t even realise they have the disease.

  • Mona

    says:

    Well I sure as hell do not run around announcing that I’m “comfortable with black people.” But not all blacks apparently are comfortable with me and other whites, either. I work part-time as a librarian, and my favorite co-worker is African-American; she and I just have a natural cadence to working together almost without having to communicate on the division of labor, and we’ve done each other many mutual favors.

    But one day her sister was coming in to drop something off to her, and my co-worker warned me in advance that altho she would introduce us, “my sister does not like white people.”

    Uh, ok. And a lot of whites hold the reverse. To some extent it is a two-way street.

  • bubba the troll you all love to hate

    says:

    UH OH.. looks like its time to straighten y’all out again… damn.. what is it with the race card.. everytime one of you socialists…oops I mean progressive, gets in a quandry for a good answer to an argument you play the ole race card. lets see.. im from the south so I have to be a rednecked racists white trailerpark pot bellied gun toten moron.. just cause Im a repbublican.. well most of that is not true.. I do tote a gun, i am a redneck, but not a racists. I do hate liberals with the social mentality raised from political science class and bumper stickers but I am not a racist. I have said it before and I will say it again, the true racists in this country are the leftists elite with the buy the minority vote by supporting uneducation programs, welfare , food stamps and the like . You try and keep the minority in his place by paying for his remaining ignorant instead of instilling a family pride with work ethics and advancement. But that is your progressive way. YOU ARE THE TRUE RACISITS!! ….ok,, now that Ive cleared that up for you , im gonna have another beer and go traget practice…
    Bubba said that>>>>

  • joey

    says:

    There’s always an exception who thinks he represents the norm.

    But driftglass puts it best: “…Never trust these motherfuckers. Ever. They will never leave the business of winning and losing to anything that smells of “free and fair”, because they know if they do they’ll lose every time. Every game they run is crooked, every piety they utter is a lie, and every deck they deal from is stacked, marked and frozen.
    So…
    2. Never, ever fight them on ground of their choosing…”
    Rove, Cheney,Rumsfeld, Rice, Feith, Pearl, Lieberman, Graham the list is huge.

    And then this from driftglass: “…My Party spent 30 years lying, cheating, and clawing our way to power and calling anyone who stood in our way a traitor.

    To sieze power we methodically annihilated the very idea of political comity in America, and when we were at the peak of Gingrich-fever, we laughing at anyone who suggested that compromise was a virtue.

    And once we achieved our goal of running every branch of government, we proceeded to destroy everything we touched. We mocked the dead and dying of New Orleans. Broke whole countries. Bankrupted the nation enriching a handful of plutocrats. Pissed away an international reputation it took fifty years of skill and patience to construct.

    And now that we are falling into the abyss we created – now that all the consequence the hated Dirty Fucking Hippies warned us about are coming to pass – we’d like to, uh, move past partisanship and, uh, all get along….”

    No wonder Obama is looking good to him

  • goatchowder

    says:

    Anyone who tells you what a nice guy he is, almost surely is a huge asshole.

    LIkewise, it’s a northern/western tic for some people to jump in and volunteer how non-racist, non-sexist, or non-homophobic they are– almost certainly exposing them as bigoted fucks right off the bat… the polite, educated, wealthy northern kind, not the ugly, obvious Jesse Helms Bubba kind.

    So your instincts are probably largely correct. If some dumbass is going off about how much he’s not a racist, defeinsively, preemptively.. watch out. Dude’s probably got his white robes cleaned and pressed.