Racism Unchained

On Saturday there was a march in Washington (see photo above) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  I've written a reminiscence of that day in 1963 from the point of view of a 17 year old participant, which has been published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (I lived in western Pennsylvania at the time.) It will also appear in this week's Arcata Eye (which is where I live now.)  I will post that piece here on the actual anniversary day, which is Wednesday.

Today I note the flood of racist activity that seemed aimed at a kind of crescendo as the anniversary approaches.  I have no idea if it's related, even psychologically, and I don't intend it as an evaluation of the March's legacy, which I still believe remains positive.

But it seems pretty clearly related to the fact that the first African American to serve as President of the United States is in the White House.  I think it was about a decade ago that Thomas Franks wrote about the secret racism that remained in the supposedly post-racial society--never overt, expressed in neutral-sounding code words, or even by adopting the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement against the people that movement was chiefly about.  But these days even that discretion has been discarded. Racism is not so secret anymore.

There was the anti-Obama demonstration in Arizona as he was speaking there in support of an economically viable middle class.  Singing "ba ba black sheep" and carrying racist signs, calling the President "47% Negro," it seemed in part a direct response to Obama speaking about race in connection with the Trayvon Martin case.  Demonstrators insisted that by speaking about race, Obama was creating racial divide.  Apparently he couldn't keep the secret.  The Governor of Maine was quoted as saying the thought behind this out loud: that Obama hates white people. He later denied saying it.

At about the same time, racial slurs were painted on a statue of Jackie Robinson, who was the first African American major league baseball player, thus paving the way for...President Obama, I guess.  A rodeo clown  in an Obama mask as the victim to be gored by a bull was just part of a display at the Missouri State Fair that led one (white) observer to react. "They mentioned the president's name, I don't know, 100 times. It was sickening," Beam said. "It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you'd see on TV."

The rabid right and its most powerful media instruments used their own twisted logic to accuse President Obama of a double standard for not defending the white victim of assault by alleged perpetrators who are black, as he had spoken about Trayvon Martin--despite the obvious differences in the case, such as the fact that the alleged perpetrators were arrested and jailed.  It got so bad that the rabid right muttered darkly about the addition of yet another black dog to the White House--but no white dog at all.

The frenzied hatred leads to predictable craziness, as when more Republican citizens of Louisiana blame Obama for the poor response to hurricane Katrina than blame Bush, despite the evident fact that Bush was in office but Obama was not. Or the reflexive hatred of Obamacare changes to approval of its provisions if the name isn't attached to it.

Given that extreme charges of a similarly crazed tone were often aimed at FDR, as well as JFK and RFK (though some of the hate against them was related to support for racial justice), race is probably not the whole Obama psychosis story.  But it is clearly a big part of it.  Big enough for no less than the Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid to bring it out in the open.  Of GOPers even in Congress he said  "It's been obvious that they're doing everything they can to make him fail," Reid said. "And I hope, I hope -- and I say this seriously -- I hope that's based on substance and not the fact that he's African-American."  

Much of this was on the minds of speakers at the anniversary march on Saturday, as was the political beneficiary of overt racism, the naked attempt to restrict voting rights in the states--the most substantive and most open challenge to those rights since the Voting Rights act almost 50 years ago.  This is why this resurgent racism is more than a scary psychological response, or melancholy evidence of the depth of racism in America.  Racism is being used to weaken and discredit the presidency of Barack Obama (which is of course not to say that anyone who opposes his policies or even believes he's not a good president is racist.)  Racism is also being used to deny Americans their votes.

  All of this shows what a powerful and incendiary tool racism remains, with those who harbor it and those who cynically employ it, or both.  The Republican party in particular is further discrediting itself and demeaning America by employing it.  But it is perhaps a measure of that party's desperation as well as its resurgent hatred that it is so obvious.