Opinion
Racist undertones of the 'socialist' epithet
With the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama joins the company of fellow
laureates Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. But he already shares with
them the more dubious distinction of being assailed as a socialist.
By Christopher J. Lee
from the October 16, 2009 edition
Christian Science Monitor
Chapel Hill, N.C. - By most assessments, this summer's moment of racial
anxiety and outcry – namely, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge
police in July – came and went faster than it takes to empty a glass of beer.
This was perhaps to be expected. Americans are famously reluctant to talk
about race and racism, and the self-congratulatory remarks by Professor
Gates, Sergeant James Crowley, and President Obama after the touted "beer
summit" only appeared to reinforce this aversion.
Yet, as seen at various town hall meetings and the Tea Party rally in
Washington Sept. 12, a deeper sign of racial tension has emerged with the
reappearance of a different inflammatory expression: socialism.
In the context of American politics, socialism has seldom been about the
economy or state power alone, despite its political-economic roots. Instead,
it has been a slur, synonymous with the charge of communism, but with
meaning extending beyond this term as well.
Black leaders in particular have faced this accusation. In 1964, amid the
momentous occasion of congressional approval for the Civil Rights Act,
Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina declared its passage the result of
"Negro agitators, spurred on by Communist enticements to promote racial
strife."
Martin Luther King Jr. was not an exception to this allegation, but a
direct target. Indeed, he faced immediate pressure to distance himself from
close aide, intellectual mentor, and key organizer of the 1963 March on
Washington, Bayard Rustin, who once had ties with the Communist Party.
Take another black leader, another society fraught by racial division. In
1956, Nelson Mandela and 155 other antiapartheid activists were arrested by
the South African government under the infamous Suppression of Communism
Act of 1950, a law that was used gratuitously to incarcerate anyone who was
critical of the government.
The treason trial that followed resulted in a 1961 acquittal for all those
involved, the government unable to prove any "socialist" intentions. But
the political equation of black activists as "communists" would continue up
through the 1980s.
The Reagan administration egregiously soft-pedaled the issue of apartheid
on the basis of the South African government's purported anticommunist
stance. Indeed, the South African government itself viewed its policies not as
racist, but as anticommunist. Only popular pressure through a global
antiapartheid movement persuaded the US to isolate South Africa.
Needless to say, the cold war has ended. But its legacies have not. The
re-emergence of "socialist" as an epithet amid this summer's healthcare debate
has served as an expression of fear among far-right critics toward the
idea of a bigger, more powerful, tax-heavy federal government. Yet this
discourse has gone wonky when this term has been placed beside others that
would,
by any strict definition, appear incompatible. The Obama administration
embraces socialism and fascism at once? Mao and Hitler as ideological
comrades?
The response among progressives to such associations has ranged from
silence to a shaking of heads to a sober litany of examples as to how federal
and
state governments already provide much-appreciated public services for the
common good – public education, fire departments, Medicare, and so forth.
But this reaction is inadequate. It takes the cry of "socialism!"
literally, whereas it should be read as representing a more complex set of
political
feelings. It fails to take full historical account of the xenophobic,
hypernationalistic, and, yes, racist uses of this expression.
When Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, among other Southern politicians,
voiced criticism of Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists, they did so
not
on racist grounds, but on anticommunist grounds – a more publicly
acceptable stance given the cold war climate of the time. But in hindsight we
can
easily connect the dots, if there were any doubts about their shared sense
of white racial entitlement.
Understanding this history also informs the present. The passion
surrounding the expression "socialism" has less to do with the actual meaning
of the
word, than its associations with foreignness, anti-Americanism, and racial
difference. If its reemergence and use sound antiquated and anachronistic,
the motivations for its revival become clearer when placed in a context of
latent white anxiety toward a black president. The "birther" movement and
its concern over Mr. Obama's origins were but an earlier sign of these
race-based, xenophobic sentiments held by some.
To his credit, Mr. Obama has sought to defuse the situation by stating that
he believes the drive of his harshest critics is not racist in
orientation, going so far as to distance himself from comments by former
President
Jimmy Carter that reinforced this perspective. But this quick resolution risks
overlooking a historical pattern of how black leaders have been viewed and
treated, and passing, yet again, on a more meaningful conversation about
race in America.
Now that President Obama finds himself once more in the rare company of
King and Mandela, albeit in the more auspicious setting of the Nobel Peace
Prize, perhaps he will embrace the political courage to address racism more
thoroughly as a social issue as they did – beyond beverage socials and
one-time campaign speeches.
The persistence of racism cannot be attributed alone to such blatant acts
as a white cop unfairly arresting a black man. The intersection of Jim Crow
and Joseph McCarthy needs to be better understood.
Christopher J. Lee is a professor of history at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he teaches courses on the history of race and
racism.
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