Lisa McGirr & Kim Philips-Fein are two historians who've studied the new right. McGirr focuses on the grassroots movement (Orange County, CA, specifically) while Philips-Fein explores the big business-led development of the infrastructure enabling the right to gain power. Together, they provide a useful framework for interpreting the ongoing meltdown of the new right.
If one starts from a traditional, often fundamentalist Christian point of view, and accepts the premise that the US is perfect, any problems we face must be due to a sinister external force. The government is an easy target, especially since it embraced in the late 20th century a bureaucratic-technical approach to modernity, rather than emphasizing traditional church-based values.
Add to that the traditional conservative position that government is an inherent threat to individual liberty, and the western mythology of the rugged individual (contra the reality that the prosperity enjoyed by most Orange County conservatives was dependent on massive government spending in the form of defense manufacturing and the infrastructure required to support it) & it was easy for conservatives to feel that government programs aimed at amelioration of poverty represented confiscation of the fruits of their hard work and potentially a threat to their freedom (freedom largely being defined economically; the more fundamentalist among them were less concerned about freedom when moral concerns were involved). This is not to say, by the way, that there were/are no reasonable bases for concern about government threats to individual liberties; rather, the point here is that the threats perceived by modern conservatives have been generally imaginary (fluoridated water,gun rights, the Soviet Union as an imminent threat to the U.S. at the very moment the former was unraveling, etc.).
The inherent contraditions in these positions, as noted above, are pretty easy to see. Conservatives were generally hostile to the civil rights movement and many, including William F. Buckley Jr., infamously argued that efforts to expand rights to African Americans constituted government intrusion into individual rights of free association. Nor have many conservatives, despite their traditional zealotry about government encroachments on liberty, been similarly concerned about the potential for similar threats to individual rights by corporate power. The obviously selective choices of objects for conservative outrage lead many outside the movement to conclude that the stated motives for opposition are but smokescreens for racism, defense of socioeconomic privilege, and various other bigotries and fears.
It's kind of striking that movement conservatives depend on a manufactured sense of grievance and paranoia, and increasingly, a rejection of evidence & logic to maintain group cohesion & a sense of identity. Even after they got Reagan & then Dubya elected, the right continued to peddle conspiracy theories and nurture a sense of grievance. Now, after undeniable political dominance for 6 of the last 8 years (and really, considering the haplessness and complicity of many Democrats, it’s been more like 40 years), virtually every aspect of every policy enacted by conservatives stands revealed (to those willing to look honestly) as a total failure of massive proportions. Yet lacking a more sophisticated intellectual framework for interpreting the results, many on the right continue to resort to a belligerent form of denial. Hence the hysterical screeching, wild accusations and even occasional shootings we observe on cable TV and elsewhere. A simplistic template is inadequate for efforts to understand the complexities of the world we live in.
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
It's Not Arugula, It's Race
In It's Not Race, It's Arugula, Noemie Emery rejects the widely accepted argument that racism is behind much of the reluctance among working class white voters. (Roy Edroso has commented briefly on this article here, but I feel compelled to take it further, for reasons to be explained below.)
“In this view,” writes Emery, “race is the issue, and the big years in history were 1964 and 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson did the Right Thing, signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and consigning his party to electoral darkness by losing the South for the next several eons. By these lights, bigotry and fear are the main factors, and all the others are thinly masked surrogates for them. If Obama loses, this will be the excuse of the campaign and of the press that supports it."
Instead, Emery borrows a simplistic classification scheme from Michael Barone and Ron Brownstein between “academicians” (or to Brownstein, “priests”) and “Jacksonians” (Brownstein’s “warriors”).
The academicians, according to Barone, like peace (and/or appeasement) and moral equivalence; are against force; “traffic in words and abstractions, and admire those who do likewise;” love nuance and fairness; disdain Jacksonians; and their theme songs are "Kumbaya" and "Imagine.” (You can add Volvos, Birkenstock sandals, lattes, etc.) Incidentally, public employees are included in the above category, for reasons Emery does not explain.
Jacksonians, according to Barone, valorize the warrior ethos; dismiss the work of academics and public employees; favor “a notion of natural liberty: People should be allowed to do what they want, subject to the demands of honor;” like men of action, clarity, justice and just force; think academicians are inconsequential; and like country music. In other words, real men.
Until 1968, according to Emery, Democrats “frequently sported a veneer of priesthood, but it covered a Jacksonian heart.” After they “lost their warrior edge...Democrats started losing the White House.” Emery claims that Reagan Democrats abandoned the Democratic Party due to resentment of “post-1968 liberal activism--and racial preferences and busing much more than the original Civil Rights measures--but they also were drawn to the muscular foreign policy, democracy promotion, and unabashed patriotism of the FDR-HST-JFK line.” Academicians who claim that the GOP uses race to convince white working class voters to vote against their interests, according to Emery, are forgetting that national defense and security are the most important issues to such voters.
Apparently not recognizing the image reflected in her mirror, Emery asserts that “[t]his neglect often leads to a reading of history that aligns rather poorly with the facts.” She then lists a succession of electoral contests in which the Democrats nominated an academician and, predictably (if the Barone/Brownstein/Emery theory is your guide), lost.
Why Reject Racism as Causal?
Emery remarks in a tone of sarcasm that LBJ did “the Right Thing” in signing the Voting Rights Acts. What’s the point of the sarcasm? Does Emery doubt that it was right to enable black people to vote in this country 100 years after the end of the Civil War?
She goes on to say, “[b]y these lights, bigotry and fear are the main factors...If Obama loses, this will be the excuse of the campaign and of the press that supports it.” The term “excuse” is generally used as a synonym for ‘rationalization’; i.e., an explanation used to deflect attention away from the genuine cause. The generally sarcastic tone of the paragraph and the phrase “[b]y these lights” make clear Emery’s rejection of the idea that racism is at cause. However, she makes no effort to articulate any reason she might have for that rejection. This is all the more striking given the history of racism in electoral politics since 1964.
Lyndon Johnson famously said upon signing the first Voting Rights Act into law that he’d just signed away the South to the GOP for a generation. In this he was optimistic, as events would prove. When George C. Wallace gained unexpected primary strength in 1968, the GOP presidential candidate, Richard M. Nixon, took note and began appealing to southern white racism in an effort to put the South solidly in the GOP column going forward. This was the result of a conscious strategy developed by Nixon in conjunction with his aide Patrick Buchanan, among others.
From then until now, the GOP has relied on appeals to white racism, whether overt (Sen. Jesse Helms’ ad against affirmative action, featuring a pair of gnarled white hands crumpling a job rejection letter) or covert (arguments for states’ rights serve as a dog whistle to those adhering to the view that the Confederacy, which fervently argued in exactly those terms, was on the side of right in the Civil War). There’s no need to recite the endless stream of examples—just a few will suffice: The Willie Horton ad, Reagan’s campaign opening in Philadelphia, MS, the GOP pandering over the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina state capital, the racist button for sale at the recent Texas state GOP convention. Is Emery arguing that these things haven’t happened? If not, does she claim that they were ineffective? Considering that the GOP has adhered to these techniques for the past 40 years, isn’t it logical to conclude that either (a) they are effective or (b) the GOP is incredibly stupid to continue relying on them?
Then there are the exit polls. In West Virginia, 30% of whites stated openly that they voted against Obama because of race. The result was similar in Kentucky. Moreover, due to reactive measurement effects, it is reasonable to suppose that the same dynamic was at work in Texas and elsewhere. (Ohio may be a special case due to the intrusion of Canada’s conservative government in the primary with its now questionable report on a conversation with one of Obama’s top economic advisers.) Is there some particular reason why Emery discounts this evidence?
Given the enormous amount of evidence supporting the theory that race is at cause in Obama’s problems with working class white voters, why does Emery reject the theory out of hand? She does not say.
The (Ahem) Theory
Here’s Emery’s rather remarkable rundown of the distinctions between her two ideal types:
“While the term Academician explains itself, Jacksonian comes from Andrew Jackson, the first of the Democrats' warrior heroes (with an echo perhaps of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who seems now to have been one of the last)...In this reading of history, the critical year would be 1968, when the Democrats splintered on crime and security issues, and afterwards became the party of peace (and/or appeasement), of moral equivalence, and of aversion to force. In this reading, the Jacksonians or warriors reject Obama less because he is black than because he is a priest or academician...”
Notice the long chain of binary oppositions above. Is it just coincidence that the qualities associated with each echo the smears and taunts directed, overtly or by implication, by the GOP against Democrats in every election since 1976? One wonders whether the attributes listed above were arrived at through the research of Barone/Brownstein/Emery, or whether they started with the former and then shaped the latter to fit. (Of course, the latter approach would be totally out of character for neoconservatives, as observers of the prelude to the invasion of Iraq know.) At the very least, it seems that Barone and Emery have trouble distinguishing between ideal types and politically motivated stereotypes. Anyone trying to use such obviously biased classifications in the social sciences would be laughed right out of academia—by social scientists of all political persuasions.
Note also that peace is equated, in true neocon fashion, with appeasement—in reference to 1968, no less. This clearly reflects a frame of reference according to which Vietnam was, in Ronald Reagan’s formulation, “a noble cause” that was betrayed (here the right wing updates Ludendorff and Hindenburg’s responsibility-deflecting “stab-in-the-back thesis,” transferring blame from the Jews in the original thesis to hippies, intellectuals, liberals and the Democratic Party in its post-Vietnam reincarnation. Those manly Jacksonians/warriors would not have appeased communism, as we morally equivalent latte-sippers supposedly did by opposing the war in Vietnam (and again, of course, in re the current war in Iraq). No siree—they would have stayed the course (in the words of President Katrina) and fought on, no matter how long (a la McCain), simply because, having gotten in, it would be supposedly ignoble to, y’know, bother to notice whether there was (a) a convincing reason for our involvement in the conflict in the first place; (b) any understanding on the part of our government of the culture and history of the country we’d invaded; (c) a realistic goal motivating our efforts; (d) the means and methods sufficient to achieve such goal consistent with our values and interests; and (e) lacking the above, stop and withdraw. Never mind (a) the fact that, in both conflicts, the arguments given the American public for our involvement in the conflict were patently false; (b) each case essentially amounted to the U.S. attempting to reengineer an existing society (of whose culture and history we were essentially ignorant) to more closely resemble our own, regardless of what the inhabitants of each country wanted; (c) consistent military superiority by U.S. forces in each conflict proved to be almost irrelevant to the outcome because of the arrogance and ignorance of our civilian leadership as to the limits of our capabilities in re (b) above, and the political nature of the underlying conflict; and (d) oh, by the way, perhaps Emery and her neocon friends never noticed this, but the monolithic communism against which we were supposedly fighting in Vietnam and which would take over all of Southeast Asia if we didn’t? Well, it wasn’t monolithic in the first place, as border wars between China and the USSR, between China and Vietnam after the U.S. withdrawal, and between Vietnam and the Pol Pot Regime of Cambodia made abundantly clear. Secondly, rather than taking over Southeast Asia, communism took a different shape in each communist country, and that shape had to do with the culture, history and political realities faced by each country rather than some supposedly shared overarching ideology. In other words, just as with Iraq, one of the most important stated reasons for our involvement was false.
The reference to 1968 also reflects the inability of neocons to recognize (or at least, to admit) that there was another limitation on our options in Vietnam—contra Barone’s and Emery’s pathetic attempt to rewrite history, China made explicit at the time that extention of U.S. ground forces and bombing any closer to the Chinese border would have triggered direct involvement in that conflict by the People’s Republic of China—something feared not only by those nuance-loving civilians in the White House at the time, but many in the military brass as well. (Gen. Maxwell Taylor, for one, had been a member of the Never Again Club after the Korean War—the title referring to a land war in Asia. Gen. Curtis LeMay wanted to bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age, as he famously said, but his was by no means the only view in the Pentagon.)
If this argument involving the Vietnam War seems a little off-topic, that’s only because the underlying premise of Emery’s piece is a decidedly non-reality based alternative (ahem) history of that conflict.
Emery’s (and Barone’s and Brownstein’s) argument is an insultingly stupid example of reductio ad absurdem. If you doubt that, consider the number of latte-sipping, arugula-eating lefties who supported the invasion of Afghanistan (not to mention our involvement in World War II) but who opposed the war in Iraq. Here’s a really difficult concept for neocons to get their little heads around—one war involved an organization that attacked us and had a symbiotic relationship with the government that shielded them in Afghanistan; the other had no justification whatsoever and has brought nothing but grief to both Iraq and the U.S. What do you know—logic, evidence and the moral and intellectual rigor required to refrain from acting in the absence of both really matter. When the neocons contrast their belligerence to our opposition to senseless wars it’s not evidence of disproportionate allocations of testosterone between the two groups; rather, it reflects a refusal on the part of the neocons to think. And if arguments like Emery’s are any evidence, perhaps it’s because they don’t know how.
Emery’s argument is frankly ridiculous—and ordinarily I wouldn’t devote so much time to something so preposterous. What motivated me to write this response was the fact that it was recommended by an Obama supporter! I find that frankly astounding and disturbing. Surely we must be able to see through foolishness such as Emery’s article. We ought to be aware as well of the nature of The Weekly Standard, on whose website Emery’s article appeared. The Weekly Standard is generally considered to be the house organ of the neoconservatives and of the Bush Administration. Its editors are William Kristol and Fred Barnes. Kristol, in addition to infesting the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, was also one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century, a neocon group formed to push U.S. foreign policy into greater belligerence, and among whose members were many future top officials of the Bush Administration—such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. The mentality of The Weekly Standard is typified by a recent commentary in its pages by Michael Goldfarb arguing that obedience to the president overrides the rule of law (See Glenn Greenwald’s comments on this here.). Why anyone supporting Barack Obama would recommend such a discreditable source I cannot understand for the life of me.
“In this view,” writes Emery, “race is the issue, and the big years in history were 1964 and 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson did the Right Thing, signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and consigning his party to electoral darkness by losing the South for the next several eons. By these lights, bigotry and fear are the main factors, and all the others are thinly masked surrogates for them. If Obama loses, this will be the excuse of the campaign and of the press that supports it."
Instead, Emery borrows a simplistic classification scheme from Michael Barone and Ron Brownstein between “academicians” (or to Brownstein, “priests”) and “Jacksonians” (Brownstein’s “warriors”).
The academicians, according to Barone, like peace (and/or appeasement) and moral equivalence; are against force; “traffic in words and abstractions, and admire those who do likewise;” love nuance and fairness; disdain Jacksonians; and their theme songs are "Kumbaya" and "Imagine.” (You can add Volvos, Birkenstock sandals, lattes, etc.) Incidentally, public employees are included in the above category, for reasons Emery does not explain.
Jacksonians, according to Barone, valorize the warrior ethos; dismiss the work of academics and public employees; favor “a notion of natural liberty: People should be allowed to do what they want, subject to the demands of honor;” like men of action, clarity, justice and just force; think academicians are inconsequential; and like country music. In other words, real men.
Until 1968, according to Emery, Democrats “frequently sported a veneer of priesthood, but it covered a Jacksonian heart.” After they “lost their warrior edge...Democrats started losing the White House.” Emery claims that Reagan Democrats abandoned the Democratic Party due to resentment of “post-1968 liberal activism--and racial preferences and busing much more than the original Civil Rights measures--but they also were drawn to the muscular foreign policy, democracy promotion, and unabashed patriotism of the FDR-HST-JFK line.” Academicians who claim that the GOP uses race to convince white working class voters to vote against their interests, according to Emery, are forgetting that national defense and security are the most important issues to such voters.
Apparently not recognizing the image reflected in her mirror, Emery asserts that “[t]his neglect often leads to a reading of history that aligns rather poorly with the facts.” She then lists a succession of electoral contests in which the Democrats nominated an academician and, predictably (if the Barone/Brownstein/Emery theory is your guide), lost.
Why Reject Racism as Causal?
Emery remarks in a tone of sarcasm that LBJ did “the Right Thing” in signing the Voting Rights Acts. What’s the point of the sarcasm? Does Emery doubt that it was right to enable black people to vote in this country 100 years after the end of the Civil War?
She goes on to say, “[b]y these lights, bigotry and fear are the main factors...If Obama loses, this will be the excuse of the campaign and of the press that supports it.” The term “excuse” is generally used as a synonym for ‘rationalization’; i.e., an explanation used to deflect attention away from the genuine cause. The generally sarcastic tone of the paragraph and the phrase “[b]y these lights” make clear Emery’s rejection of the idea that racism is at cause. However, she makes no effort to articulate any reason she might have for that rejection. This is all the more striking given the history of racism in electoral politics since 1964.
Lyndon Johnson famously said upon signing the first Voting Rights Act into law that he’d just signed away the South to the GOP for a generation. In this he was optimistic, as events would prove. When George C. Wallace gained unexpected primary strength in 1968, the GOP presidential candidate, Richard M. Nixon, took note and began appealing to southern white racism in an effort to put the South solidly in the GOP column going forward. This was the result of a conscious strategy developed by Nixon in conjunction with his aide Patrick Buchanan, among others.
From then until now, the GOP has relied on appeals to white racism, whether overt (Sen. Jesse Helms’ ad against affirmative action, featuring a pair of gnarled white hands crumpling a job rejection letter) or covert (arguments for states’ rights serve as a dog whistle to those adhering to the view that the Confederacy, which fervently argued in exactly those terms, was on the side of right in the Civil War). There’s no need to recite the endless stream of examples—just a few will suffice: The Willie Horton ad, Reagan’s campaign opening in Philadelphia, MS, the GOP pandering over the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina state capital, the racist button for sale at the recent Texas state GOP convention. Is Emery arguing that these things haven’t happened? If not, does she claim that they were ineffective? Considering that the GOP has adhered to these techniques for the past 40 years, isn’t it logical to conclude that either (a) they are effective or (b) the GOP is incredibly stupid to continue relying on them?
Then there are the exit polls. In West Virginia, 30% of whites stated openly that they voted against Obama because of race. The result was similar in Kentucky. Moreover, due to reactive measurement effects, it is reasonable to suppose that the same dynamic was at work in Texas and elsewhere. (Ohio may be a special case due to the intrusion of Canada’s conservative government in the primary with its now questionable report on a conversation with one of Obama’s top economic advisers.) Is there some particular reason why Emery discounts this evidence?
Given the enormous amount of evidence supporting the theory that race is at cause in Obama’s problems with working class white voters, why does Emery reject the theory out of hand? She does not say.
The (Ahem) Theory
Here’s Emery’s rather remarkable rundown of the distinctions between her two ideal types:
“While the term Academician explains itself, Jacksonian comes from Andrew Jackson, the first of the Democrats' warrior heroes (with an echo perhaps of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who seems now to have been one of the last)...In this reading of history, the critical year would be 1968, when the Democrats splintered on crime and security issues, and afterwards became the party of peace (and/or appeasement), of moral equivalence, and of aversion to force. In this reading, the Jacksonians or warriors reject Obama less because he is black than because he is a priest or academician...”
Notice the long chain of binary oppositions above. Is it just coincidence that the qualities associated with each echo the smears and taunts directed, overtly or by implication, by the GOP against Democrats in every election since 1976? One wonders whether the attributes listed above were arrived at through the research of Barone/Brownstein/Emery, or whether they started with the former and then shaped the latter to fit. (Of course, the latter approach would be totally out of character for neoconservatives, as observers of the prelude to the invasion of Iraq know.) At the very least, it seems that Barone and Emery have trouble distinguishing between ideal types and politically motivated stereotypes. Anyone trying to use such obviously biased classifications in the social sciences would be laughed right out of academia—by social scientists of all political persuasions.
Note also that peace is equated, in true neocon fashion, with appeasement—in reference to 1968, no less. This clearly reflects a frame of reference according to which Vietnam was, in Ronald Reagan’s formulation, “a noble cause” that was betrayed (here the right wing updates Ludendorff and Hindenburg’s responsibility-deflecting “stab-in-the-back thesis,” transferring blame from the Jews in the original thesis to hippies, intellectuals, liberals and the Democratic Party in its post-Vietnam reincarnation. Those manly Jacksonians/warriors would not have appeased communism, as we morally equivalent latte-sippers supposedly did by opposing the war in Vietnam (and again, of course, in re the current war in Iraq). No siree—they would have stayed the course (in the words of President Katrina) and fought on, no matter how long (a la McCain), simply because, having gotten in, it would be supposedly ignoble to, y’know, bother to notice whether there was (a) a convincing reason for our involvement in the conflict in the first place; (b) any understanding on the part of our government of the culture and history of the country we’d invaded; (c) a realistic goal motivating our efforts; (d) the means and methods sufficient to achieve such goal consistent with our values and interests; and (e) lacking the above, stop and withdraw. Never mind (a) the fact that, in both conflicts, the arguments given the American public for our involvement in the conflict were patently false; (b) each case essentially amounted to the U.S. attempting to reengineer an existing society (of whose culture and history we were essentially ignorant) to more closely resemble our own, regardless of what the inhabitants of each country wanted; (c) consistent military superiority by U.S. forces in each conflict proved to be almost irrelevant to the outcome because of the arrogance and ignorance of our civilian leadership as to the limits of our capabilities in re (b) above, and the political nature of the underlying conflict; and (d) oh, by the way, perhaps Emery and her neocon friends never noticed this, but the monolithic communism against which we were supposedly fighting in Vietnam and which would take over all of Southeast Asia if we didn’t? Well, it wasn’t monolithic in the first place, as border wars between China and the USSR, between China and Vietnam after the U.S. withdrawal, and between Vietnam and the Pol Pot Regime of Cambodia made abundantly clear. Secondly, rather than taking over Southeast Asia, communism took a different shape in each communist country, and that shape had to do with the culture, history and political realities faced by each country rather than some supposedly shared overarching ideology. In other words, just as with Iraq, one of the most important stated reasons for our involvement was false.
The reference to 1968 also reflects the inability of neocons to recognize (or at least, to admit) that there was another limitation on our options in Vietnam—contra Barone’s and Emery’s pathetic attempt to rewrite history, China made explicit at the time that extention of U.S. ground forces and bombing any closer to the Chinese border would have triggered direct involvement in that conflict by the People’s Republic of China—something feared not only by those nuance-loving civilians in the White House at the time, but many in the military brass as well. (Gen. Maxwell Taylor, for one, had been a member of the Never Again Club after the Korean War—the title referring to a land war in Asia. Gen. Curtis LeMay wanted to bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age, as he famously said, but his was by no means the only view in the Pentagon.)
If this argument involving the Vietnam War seems a little off-topic, that’s only because the underlying premise of Emery’s piece is a decidedly non-reality based alternative (ahem) history of that conflict.
Emery’s (and Barone’s and Brownstein’s) argument is an insultingly stupid example of reductio ad absurdem. If you doubt that, consider the number of latte-sipping, arugula-eating lefties who supported the invasion of Afghanistan (not to mention our involvement in World War II) but who opposed the war in Iraq. Here’s a really difficult concept for neocons to get their little heads around—one war involved an organization that attacked us and had a symbiotic relationship with the government that shielded them in Afghanistan; the other had no justification whatsoever and has brought nothing but grief to both Iraq and the U.S. What do you know—logic, evidence and the moral and intellectual rigor required to refrain from acting in the absence of both really matter. When the neocons contrast their belligerence to our opposition to senseless wars it’s not evidence of disproportionate allocations of testosterone between the two groups; rather, it reflects a refusal on the part of the neocons to think. And if arguments like Emery’s are any evidence, perhaps it’s because they don’t know how.
Emery’s argument is frankly ridiculous—and ordinarily I wouldn’t devote so much time to something so preposterous. What motivated me to write this response was the fact that it was recommended by an Obama supporter! I find that frankly astounding and disturbing. Surely we must be able to see through foolishness such as Emery’s article. We ought to be aware as well of the nature of The Weekly Standard, on whose website Emery’s article appeared. The Weekly Standard is generally considered to be the house organ of the neoconservatives and of the Bush Administration. Its editors are William Kristol and Fred Barnes. Kristol, in addition to infesting the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, was also one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century, a neocon group formed to push U.S. foreign policy into greater belligerence, and among whose members were many future top officials of the Bush Administration—such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. The mentality of The Weekly Standard is typified by a recent commentary in its pages by Michael Goldfarb arguing that obedience to the president overrides the rule of law (See Glenn Greenwald’s comments on this here.). Why anyone supporting Barack Obama would recommend such a discreditable source I cannot understand for the life of me.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
History and Geraldine Ferraro
Just about everyone has already opined on Geraldine Ferraro's statements about Barack Obama's supposed race-based advantage in the current primary contest. I see no reason why I should be left out. Rather than rehash the whole chain of events, I'd like to propose a reading list for anyone (certainly including Ms. Ferraro) who is still a bit hazy as to the history of racism and slavery in this country. I do not claim that the list below is anywhere near exhaustive; time limitations preclude comprehensiveness, I'm afraid. What follows therefore, is a list of some of the most powerful and influential books on the subject. Please feel free to add your own suggestions in Comments.
A parade of evidence and book titles ran through my mind when I read and heard Ferraro's comments--facts and titles of which, I'm certain, Ferraro is (amazingly, at this point in our history) unaware.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Among those books are The Peculiar Institution, by Kenneth Stampp, a meticulously researched and dispassionately written explanation of the conditions and practices of slavery in the United States. This book (written in 1955) demolished the long existing pattern of rationalizations in defense of slavery within the American history profession. After this book was released, no knowledgeable person could honestly claim that slavery had been anything but an extraordinarily cynical economic enterprise dependent on the thoroughgoing dehumanization of one group of people by another.
Nor did emancipation eradicate the physical, social, political or psychological conditions of slavery. In fact, Reconstruction at best temporarily interrupted some of those factors in specific locations. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner, is a magisterial account of the gradual unraveling (under relentless pressure of unreconstructed former slaveholders and other bigots and opportunists) of efforts to establish legal and social equality for African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War.
After the secret bargain between Republicans and Democrats in the 1876 election, Rutherford B. Hayes became president and formally ended Reconstruction. What followed, a series of laws formalizing the legalized racial oppression of African Americans throughout the south know as Jim Crow, is outlined in C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow. This was the system that remained in place until the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965.
It is amazing to consider that only 45 years ago, black and white citizens of this country could not drink from the same water fountains, go to the same schools, ride the same buses, or live in the same neighborhoods; nor could black Americans even vote in many states. Nor has the bigotry underlying such laws disappeared from our society, although its expression continues to bubble, usually under the surface. If you doubt that, please try to explain honestly the obvious success of GOP campaign tactics such as the Willie Horton ad, and claims in the 2000 South Carolina primary that John McCain had supposedly fathered a black child. Then consider the murder of James Byrd a few years ago in Texas, and the consistent study results, year after year, showing clear evidence that black mortgage applicants and renters with the same credentials as white applicants are steered to "black" areas and "black" neighborhoods. See also the consistent study results showing that black job applicants with credentials identical to those of whites have their applications rejected at a much higher rate than the latter. And while we're at it, consider the various efforts by the GOP to repeal or limit the civil rights laws and their (allegedly) principled opposition to affirmative action.
Consider all of the above and try to convince me that Geraldine Ferraro's statements were not ignorant and/or perverse.
A parade of evidence and book titles ran through my mind when I read and heard Ferraro's comments--facts and titles of which, I'm certain, Ferraro is (amazingly, at this point in our history) unaware.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Among those books are The Peculiar Institution, by Kenneth Stampp, a meticulously researched and dispassionately written explanation of the conditions and practices of slavery in the United States. This book (written in 1955) demolished the long existing pattern of rationalizations in defense of slavery within the American history profession. After this book was released, no knowledgeable person could honestly claim that slavery had been anything but an extraordinarily cynical economic enterprise dependent on the thoroughgoing dehumanization of one group of people by another.
Nor did emancipation eradicate the physical, social, political or psychological conditions of slavery. In fact, Reconstruction at best temporarily interrupted some of those factors in specific locations. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner, is a magisterial account of the gradual unraveling (under relentless pressure of unreconstructed former slaveholders and other bigots and opportunists) of efforts to establish legal and social equality for African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War.
After the secret bargain between Republicans and Democrats in the 1876 election, Rutherford B. Hayes became president and formally ended Reconstruction. What followed, a series of laws formalizing the legalized racial oppression of African Americans throughout the south know as Jim Crow, is outlined in C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow. This was the system that remained in place until the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965.
It is amazing to consider that only 45 years ago, black and white citizens of this country could not drink from the same water fountains, go to the same schools, ride the same buses, or live in the same neighborhoods; nor could black Americans even vote in many states. Nor has the bigotry underlying such laws disappeared from our society, although its expression continues to bubble, usually under the surface. If you doubt that, please try to explain honestly the obvious success of GOP campaign tactics such as the Willie Horton ad, and claims in the 2000 South Carolina primary that John McCain had supposedly fathered a black child. Then consider the murder of James Byrd a few years ago in Texas, and the consistent study results, year after year, showing clear evidence that black mortgage applicants and renters with the same credentials as white applicants are steered to "black" areas and "black" neighborhoods. See also the consistent study results showing that black job applicants with credentials identical to those of whites have their applications rejected at a much higher rate than the latter. And while we're at it, consider the various efforts by the GOP to repeal or limit the civil rights laws and their (allegedly) principled opposition to affirmative action.
Consider all of the above and try to convince me that Geraldine Ferraro's statements were not ignorant and/or perverse.
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