From: Jim Devine I wrote: >> that said, I don't know if it fits Allen West or not, but it's common for white folks -- including conservatives -- to cultivate black spokespeople who agree with them, simply to avoid the "racist" label (either in the eyes of the public or their own). For example, I can see no other reason why Thomas Sowell has been able to publish so many books and get so many honorariums. He's quite mediocre as an economist and a writer. And why did Michael Steele become chair of the GOP? And why was Clarence Thomas able to join the Supes?<<
David Shemano responds: > The theory presented is that the TP is racist. ?You appear to be saying that the very fact that the TP (or conservatives) go out of their way to favor minorities evidence the theory. ?What is the test that would disprove the thesis?< ^^^^^ CB: The problem is that for since Reagan, the vast majority of racism is not explicitly expressed. Except for a relatively few extremists, most have learned that racism cannot be explicitly expressed and even must be explicitly denied. So, anti-racists have to examine situations objectively to uncover racism. But even with that many of the leaders and "rand and file" activists in the Tea Party express white supremacist positions. For example, Senator Paul has proposed basically overruling the Supreme Court decisions making discrimination in public accomodations illegal. Amazingly, Paul would claim that that is not a racist position. That only demonstrates how bold racists have become in "covering up" racism by baldface denials of the obvious. The boldest was the California local official who claimed that an email picture of Obama as part of a monkey family was not racist. The reason it wasn't racist is that it was a joke. Then , importantly, as Carrol said, a main Tea Party's electoral source of energy came from its anti-Obama line; and its anti-dark immigrant line. The "Birthers" who claimed that Obama was not born in the US merged the anti-Obama theme into the anti-immigrant line. Those Tea Partiers who are sincere about being anti-racist have an obligation to separate themselves from the prominent and publically racist Tea Partiers, or else they become objectively part of a racist project. I don't blame Jim D for not trying to prove the proposition "the Tea Party is racist", because it implies that every single person who supports the Tea Party supports an explicitly racist idea. Most racism in the United States overall is not of that type today. Most racism is of a passive or "innocent" type, such as opposing affirmative action because they think it is reverse discrimination. Most opponents of affirmative action sincerely buy the reverse discrimination arguments, as evidenced by the vote to make affirmative action unconstitutional in Michigan and California. The fallacy of the legal reverse discrimination doctrine is that it makes forgets that the Supreme Court's designation of race as a suspect classification subject to strict scrutiny is based on the fact of US history that there has been vicious long term discrimination by whites against people of color; and _not_ the reverse. Thus, examining the racial classification in affirmative action policies as "suspect" does not follow from the US history that was the rationale for making race a suspect classification, i.e. a history in which there was very effective discrimination against people of color by whites but not the reverse. As to Clarence Thomas, et al. they are , of course, Black, but that doesn't matter because they espouse the reverse discrimination doctrine. So, objectively they are advocating racism, regardless of their own races. Reverse discrimination and affirmative action don't become racist because a few Black people say it is . They cannot deny the facts of history anymore than white people can. The fact that Thomas and Sowell are objectively racist helps, perhaps, to take some of the "emotion" out of designating the Tea Party as substantially and importantly racist in several of its main positions. Designation as racist is not a personal "thing" in this case. It is a claim that all Tea Party members don't want to spend personal time with Black or Brown people or the like ( though it would seem that a lot of them are personally racist). The point is not to name call. The point is to define an objective aspect of their politics. Thomas, Sowell and the Tea Party have objectively racist positions in important areas. ^^^^ Bizarrely (and I hope not disingenuously), David omits what I said before the quoted passage, i.e., >> though there are racists associated with the TP, I don't think the TP is itself racist. (And there are racists associated with the DP, too. ...)<< Those sentences are what "that said" refers to in the first quote from me above. That is, I was not trying to prove the thesis that the TP is racist. I do not know where David got the idea that I was trying to do so. By the way, when Carrol Cox writes that >The election of a black man triggered the appearance of the TP,< I think that's a misunderstanding of the TP. Similar right-wing forces have been around for a long time (e.g., the John Birch Society of 1950s). The newest wave seems to have been a reaction to _Bill Clinton_, packed with a lot of White _male_ resentment (partly in response to the decline of the old "middle-class jobs" that some working people had, partly in response to affirmative action rules (that helped _women_ more than ethnic minorities), etc.) The actual creation of the TP was triggered by the 2008 bail-out, fueled by among other things, the economic insecurity of the petty bourgeoisie in face of a big economic collapse. ^^^^^ CB: It was also triggered by Obama's election and the immigrants' rights struggle. All right-wing forces in the US especially are significantly racist. As you say in the following: Economic crises always spawn the rise of reactionary forces. Such forces usually incorporate the bigotry of the era (racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever). Then, the most reactionary billionaires like the Koch brothers rush it to help finance them (and to shape their opinions). While there's a racist tinge to the TP, it's a mistake to reduce that phenomenon to racism. There's a lot of money libertarianism involved (so we see such phenomena as the resistible resurrection of Rand) along with suburban angst and isolation and even more.[*] ^^^^^ CB: That the TP does not reduce to racism is good way to put it. I'd say there is much more than a tinge of racism in the TP. Racism or appeal to racism or racist sentiments is a major feature of the TP. Nowadays, this is noted as "dog whistle" , code words and themes. Anti-welfare themes are coded racism today. Racism always comes mixed with other themes especially post-Civil Rights era. As you note, it is almost always mixed in with right wing responses to economic crisis. Blatant racism has gone underground in most cases, though the explicit racism of Paul and others boldly denied, when some positions are obviously racist. is one of the scary parts of the Tea Party. Also, the Tea Party forms a new , more explicitly racist faction of the Republican Party. McCain and Bush did not have racism as explicitly part of their programs. David: >There is clearly a conservative fascination with black intellectual conservatives, precisely because they are black and rare.< _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
