From Adam Serwer, at Tapped:
"...whether it's the full-on embrace of birtherism or Glenn Beck leapfrogging the shark yesterday by claiming the president is someone "who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture."
I think what's going on here is pretty simple. The GOP has elevated a number of figures it believes represent justified white resentment at minorities encroaching on the power that is their birthright as "real Americans" from Sarah Palin to Joe the Plumber, and they're attempting to do the same thing with Sgt. Joseph Crowley." [emphasis mine]
Read the rest of the post; I have one quibble.
I would say that the GOP's tactics aren't merely 'increasingly racial' but increasingly white supremacist. Calling their tactics racial, or even racist, isn't enough. It allows folks to
"only accept such appeals as coded...deniability is an important factor in modern racism, because without it, it's too radioactive for people to associate themselves with." In other words, coded racism is too benign a cover for the true evil lurking underneath - the political and social ideology of white supremacy, a hard-core belief that the natural order of things begins with a white man on top.
At last, racism goes from the personal ('But I'm not racist! I've never done anything wrong to people of color!') to the structural (America and its institutions, its definition of citizenship and its values are for the benefit, and support, of White Power.)
And now is the perfect time to start calling that shit out.
And calling it what it is.
(I mean, we can all get behind being anti-white supremacist, right?
I mean, no one would be an apologist for it, right? Or do we want to indulge in another mealy-mouthed 'conversation' about white supremacy?)
2 comments:
It's totally about cognitive dissonance, and there is a parallel with the way abusive people talk to those they abuse. When the person traditionally in power turns that language on the other person it is a mind-screw. When I see these fat-cat white guys (Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, whoever) trying to paint their class of person, and by extension themselves, as VICTIMS, I remember being an oppressed wife with a husband who turned everything around on me and made it all "my" fault. Those guys need to shut up, and we need to stop listening to them if they won't. My only hope is that they are currently overplaying their hands and that the group of people associating with them will continue to decline.
Thanks, ding.
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