Captain Future's Log

Resurgent Racism

Apparently touched off by events surrounding the catastrophe in New Orleans, a sudden and alarming firestorm of resurgent racism is raging. Several prominent Republicans have made racist statements in just the past few days, and there is growing evidence that stories of violence in New Orleans were exaggerated, and apparently believed because of racist assumptions.

On Wednesday, the right wing morals czar Bill Bennett said on his radio show, , "I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime you could - if that were your sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." While this would be morally reprehensible, he added, it would have that effect.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal printed an oped piece by Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, which repeated racist stereotypes about African Americans as shiftless and criminal, “looters and thugs,” and referred to black women in New Orleans as “inert women doing nothing to help themselves or their children.”

But an oped that no one would print was by historian Rick Perlstein, which maintained that tales of rampant violence in New Orleans were inflated versions of the same racist tales that followed earlier hurricane disasters in that city. “That struck me as an important topic, the sort of thing we keep historians around for, but clearly the nation's op-ed page editors thought hysteria and reawakened racism were better for circulation,” says the American Prospect blog. (Blogger Atrios also weighed in on this story.)

Yet on Thursday, the New York Times printed a front page story headlined “Fear Exceeded Crime’s Reality in New Orleans.” The story said, “In an interview last week with The New York Times, Superintendent Compass said that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue. Asked about reports of rapes and murders, he said: ‘We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault.’

While there was some violence and some looting (some by police officers), the Times concluded as Louisiana papers had that rumor and the propensity to believe that blacks would engage in large-scale savagery fueled the rumors into gaudy stories that became accepted as fact by major news media.

The fact that in the early 21st century such racism is still so prominent is more than shocking. It is a threat to all of us. As African Americans know all too well, as long as other races are afraid and ready to believe that they are violent criminals, all African Americans are in danger of preemptive violence. Any violence invariably involves innocent bystanders and threatens the civic order.

That after decades of people of all races working side by side in every profession and job, the racial stereotypes propounded by Murray and his ilk are astonishing, but they also clearly threaten all of us. They drive a wedge between us---a politically useful wedge, because once We are separated from Them, then We are easy marks for contributions to candidates who will protect Us against Them.

The growing divide between rich and poor in America adds even more fear. The working poor are the service workers of the tourism and hotel industry in New Orleans, for example, but their lives outside of their smiling subservience are invisible to the likes of Murray and Bennett. Nor does it matter much to them or their theories that the majority of poor are white.

Last week, columnist Paul Krugman asked why every European country has provided health care for all its citizens, and the U.S. has not. His answer was startling: because the European countries are largely one race, and it is easier for them to identify with others who can’t afford expensive care---except for circumstances, they might be that person. But in America, the health care crisis is perceived to be a problem for primarily the poor, conceptualized by comparatively rich whites as black people, and therefore not people they identify with---not Us. But Them.

There are holes in his argument, but just enough substance to be striking and apt. Who gets to be one of Us is very important in America. And race is undoubtedly a factor.

Though it is not yet mentioned very much, it could well be a factor in Iraq. In Vietnam, the racial component was overt---The enemy were not only Communists, they were slopes, the 60s equivalent of slanty-eyes, or Asian. Now the term for the Evil Doers is “Muslim” but it’s clear from racial incidents that targeted anyone with dark hair and darker than fair skin after 9-11 that there is a racist component, even if coded this time.

Maybe that component is part of what makes it so apparently easy for American soldiers and mercenaries to objectify prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, to commit tortures and dehumanize people to produce the kind of pictures from Abu Ghirab that the U.S. government went to great lengths to suppress, but which a judge ruled Thursday must be made public.

There is no question of excusing violence, or evading reality. There is the revelation of hidden racism---the jumping to conclusions, giving credibility for stories of violence based on race-- that has now become public. That prominent Republicans are promulgating it now is perhaps a sign of their desperation, either losing their control or as a cynical exploitation of their true believers, making sure that although their support is diminishing, that the core supporters stay---that it’s very clear who is Us and who is Them.

We have a lot of work to do just to begin meeting the challenges of the future. But if we don't become truly We, if we can't accept diversity and deal with its ordinary or temporary difficulties, we will self-destruct, and lose the survival value of more perspectives, as well as much intelligence, strength, wisdom, beauty---so much of who We are.