You Don't Have to Be a Racist to Practice Racism
ED KILGORE – APRIL 9, 2014, 6:03 AM EDT2676
Nothing, but nothing, enrages conservatives more than being accused of racism.
Yes, a whole wing of modern conservatism is rooted in the southern white struggle against civil rights. Yes, Republican politicians perpetually appeal to resentment of the beneficiaries of the “welfare state,” commonly (if mistakenly) understood as people of color. Yes, nearly all conservative political actors and writers treat minority grievances as an illegitimate projection of past injustices far past their point of relevance. Yes, in nearly every state where the GOP has the power and incentive to do so, their legislators are systematically seeking to make it harder for minorities to vote. Yes, the tea party movement has a foundational myth that the housing and financial crises which touched off the Great Recession were the product of loans made to uncreditworthy minority folk via the Community Reinvestment Act at the behest of the “black radical” group ACORN. And yes, the centrist technocrat Barack Obama has often been subjected to classic racist stereotypes in day-to-day conservative agitprop, as an alleged beneficiary of affirmative action, as a shiftless vacation-taker, as a boon companion to (and even a husband of) black radicals, and yes, as a Kenyan with a “neocolonial” outlook.
Since we cannot peer into souls and because it is entirely possible to favor conservative policy positions with no racial animus whatsoever, none of this evidence, of course, means that it is accurate to describe any particular individual conservative as a racist. Some Republicans frankly argue that the heavy Democratic voting proclivities of African-Americans, Asian-Americans and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Hispanic-Americans all but force GOPers to promote policies everyone knows have a disproportionate impact on minorities; why shouldn’t Republicans tend to their own bleached constituencies insofar as people of color won’t give their views a fair shake? More popular still is the theory (particularly beloved by the small tribe of African-American conservatives, but also alluded to by big-time figures like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul) that the Right’s deep sympathy for minority Americans requires a fight to “liberate” them from the Democratic Party “plantation,” where they are confined via dependence on government largesse (National Review’s Kevin Williamson has even argued that the welfare state was a conscious successor to Jim Crow).
And so, protestations of pure motives accompany even the most suspect of policies and messages — and intensify the conservative cries of “unfair!” and “race card!” when the r-word is attributed to their words and deeds if not their thoughts. It has reached the point where the very idea of racism — other than the “racism” of liberals playing the “race card” — has been delegitimized on the right.
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The reality a lot of us naturally want to avoid is the distemper and polarization in our political discourse is not simply the product of name-calling or rhetorical hubris or bad faith. Some of it has to do with genuine and very large differences of opinion about government, culture, and, yes, race. So much as I would like to find common ground with conservatives, and much as I know many of them have fine (subjective) motives: when I see racism, I’m going to call it what it is. Just avoiding the subject is not just bad politics: it is (subjectively, for me) an evasion and a lie.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/you-don-t-have-to-be-a-racist-to-practice-racism
