Obama to Liberals: Learn When to Let Race Go
If there's a page that Jimmy Carter and Frank Rich should have taken by now from Barack Obama's playbook, it's the one showing that righteous anti-racism is sometimes as counterproductive as racism itself -- not least in assessing the virulent opposition to health-care reform.
Yes, racism is a big, irresistible default option for whites whose hopes and homes have been stolen from them by consumer and finance capital but who are afraid to stand up to the system that's screwing them.
But pointing fingers at racism is an irresistible default option for whites who are still comfortable enough with that very system to be less-than serious about reconfiguring it enough to undo its deepest (and deepening) inequities.
These well-meaning upper-middle class whites don't defend the system wholeheartedly, of course. So -- as I showed in Liberal Racism apropos the otherwise estimable Mr. Rich -- they ease their discomfort with highly moralistic anti-racist gestures. These gestures make them feel better, but they obscure the deeper causes of dispossession, and the racialist measures they adopt therefore end up dividing blacks from blacks, while still dividing blacks from whites and (how easily we forget!) whites from whites.
Over the past two years, millions of whites have been thrown out of $28-an-hour jobs and have lost mortgages. They're frightened and angry. Yes, one of the things they're frightened and angry about is having to live more like poorer blacks nearby whom they've always looked down on. But that's not the only thing that makes them fodder for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. They've always been fodder, even if race wasn't much play, when their security has been jolted for demagogues like Howard Beale, the deranged newscaster in the amazing 1976 movie "Network," and, before that, Senator Joe McCarthy.
The only hope of reconfiguring the consumer-capitalist and financial juggernauts that are mowing down the American middle class and pushing ordinary working people of all races into what we used to call "Third World" conditions lies in working around the nastiest of the system's victims, not by pointing fingers at their racism.
Loud anti-racism sometimes even provides cover for a lot of defensive, destructive black hustling, up to and including that of the Congressional Black Caucus. I've seen and written about enough of this to feel a little bit like George Orwell did when he tried to tell the London left about what was really going on within the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
Health care reform is a big part of a better answer than all this moralizing. But, as Bob Reich and others are saying here on far greater authority than mine, jobs and homes are a bigger part, because they're the most rapidly crumbling part of foundation for frightened whites as well as blacks.
Whether the issue is racism, sexism, homophobia, or anti-Semitism, I am nothing if not consistent: Moralism about these matters has big strategic costs. As I said in September in the Washington Post and a dozen years earlier in Liberal Racism, this country's redemption has not and will not come through making race the central organizing principle of progressive politics, governance, or the civic culture. Liberals and the left must lead struggles against discrimination and abuse. But for those struggles to succeed, liberals and the left must know when to let race go.
Well-intended, impassioned efforts to broad-brush virulent opposition to health-care reform as "racist" are so doomed strategically that they will end up being wrong morally, too -- not because racism isn't real, but because fixating on it diverts everyone from the deeper, more powerful currents and challenges of this time.
This liberal has learned to let go of people who blame everything on liberals.
March 28, 2010 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yep bluebell. The D's like to call themselves liberal but if true they are self haters...
March 28, 2010 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why does every critique of the Left turn into a 'don't blame Liberals' argument? No where in this post did the author blame Liberals for everything.
March 28, 2010 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
And you are in denial that this is yet another blame the liberals/left campaign?
If the f**king centrists hadn't sold out to Wall Street and freely traded all those jobs overseas, we wouldn't be where we are on jobs and the jobless wouldn't need to blame the usual suspects. As Libertine says, race is the American original sin. Pretending not to see it, doesn't make it go away.
March 28, 2010 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you. May I urge everyone to scroll down about 20 comments or more and read the three or four entries by Emma Zahn?
She gets what I am saying in this post and says it with herself with great authority and clarity, based on her own direct experience. She understands why, as I said in my post, well-intended, impassioned efforts to broad-brush the virulent opposition to health-care reform as "racist" are so doomed strategically that they will end up being wrong morally, too -- not because racism isn't real and ubiquitous and grinding, but because fixating on it right now diverts everyone from the deeper, more powerful currents and challenges of this time.
It is not only Obama who understands this. Countless organizers like Emma Zahn throughout American history have learned that there are times to highlight the dangers and the outrage of racism and times to subordinate them to broader claims.
March 28, 2010 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
In response to this and some of other comments that follow, please scroll down below about 25 of them, and you'll find mine.
March 28, 2010 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is what I have said in this post that many will refuse to hear:
Well-intended, impassioned efforts to broad-brush the virulent opposition against health-care reform as "racist" are so doomed strategically that they will end up being wrong morally, too -- not because racism isn't real, but because fixating on it diverts everyone from the deeper, more powerful currents and challenges of the moment.
March 28, 2010 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dare say sir, that you haven't lived among or known many of the whites who have been losing their jobs by the millions for many years. Further, the idea that ignoring the obvious racist motivation of the teabaggers is an incredibly foolish and naive strategy. Obama, and you apparently,are wont to adopt such strategies as we saw in his absurd insistence on "bipartisanship" with a crowd of loonies who wouldn't cooperate with him if they had a gun pointed toward their heads. Just as in the extremely unwise and cowardly position of Obama of "looking forward and not backward" when it comes to the well known war crimes committed by US personnel reaching to ther very highest echelon of government, so too is the advice not to point out the obvious and none too subtle racist motivation and energy driving the teabaggers and much of the "conservative" hysteria against all things Obama so clearly being incited by the Republican Party, it's leaders and the bufoonish cadre of propto-fascist, extremist talk radio and televion cheerleaders.
Ignoring obvious problems like the racism propelling the teabaggers and their fellow travelers is unhealthy for our democracy and our society, it allows the cancer to continue to metastasize and only kicks the can down the road to be dealt with later when it has grown more dangerous and violent.
March 28, 2010 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ya know Mr. Sleeper we are being divided by race, and have been since the beginning of our republic, by the upper class. They have to keep us divided so we will never unite and come after them. So while I agree that racial equality isn't as big an issue as it was in the past it is still alive and well. And the usual suspects employed it as their favorite weapon to keep a yet to be unified lower and middle classes from coming after them in a class war these tough economic times...for the lower and middle classes. Of course no matter what how bad the economy is the upper class never does seem to suffer at all...even as their greed inspired malfeasance brings destruction, with no regard for race, to the rest of 'we the people'.
March 28, 2010 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Show me a country where race, tribe, religion, class aren't important in politics and I'll show you a country which doesn't exist.
Sleeper's point is that these things are only factors, not the only or over-riding factors. While I don't agree with his analysis I do agree that it's possible to find common interests...and that continual emphasis on divisions is often counterproductive and hypocritical.
March 28, 2010 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure they are important and I am not saying they aren't. Those differences occur naturally. But that doesn't change the fact that in the US, since its founding, that the upper class has intentionally employed racism as a weapon in a class war they are waging to keep all the power and wealth. And they are doing it again...
March 28, 2010 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's pretty close to a Marxist analysis and I don't agree with it. Members of different tribes dislike each other most where contact is greatest - typically at the lower end of the economic pile.
Also typically, attempts to instill tolerance come from the upper or middle, rather than the lower, classes...and everyone - not just the rich - is willing to hurt others in order to defend his or her wealth and power.
March 28, 2010 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are actually making the claim that the upper class tries to 'instill tolerence' in our society? This society? With our history of intolerence? Wow you must be residing in a different universe than me because it is just the opposite here...
March 28, 2010 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know where spider is coming from, but there's some truth to what he says--the upper class does like to instill "tolerance" for diversity. But by that they mean diversity that leaves the basic power imbalances between rich and poor in place. They want racial diversity in the upper classes, but they don't want uppity labor unions or an uppity working class demanding a bigger share of the pie. Of course that probably sounds "Marxist" to spider, so he probably doesn't mean that.
March 28, 2010 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, they want just enough 'diversity' so they can continue their myth that the American Dream is alive and well. "See how this person, or two, were able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and became successful." All the time they have one group of politicians saying "look how all those lazy dark skinned people want something, something that should be yours, for nothing." Playing the races against one another is a tried and true way to ensure that the worst of the inequalities in/of our society go unaddressed.
March 28, 2010 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the question of moment. There is no such thing as an "inherent" upper class strategy. It keeps shifting based on needs and on the kind of opposition they need. That is why we use the word "strategy." At different points in time, and in relation to different forms of opposition, upper classes promoted assimilation and integration, racial segregation, tolerance, multiculturalism, and genocide. You can only study these things by looking at the exact history. American racism was the product of an elite strategy of 1. separation between indentured servants and slaves in response of joint rebellions like the Bacon Rebellion of 1676, 2. creating a justification for slavery within a democratic system based on the tenet of the natural equality of all men. (not that this will help Spider, for whom all of human history is one big pile of mushed potatoes.) But in other times, upper classes, for example between 1945-1980, the upper classes in the US were generally invested in mitigation for racism (Afirmative Action for example).
March 28, 2010 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
But I'm willing to defend your characterization. Upper and middle class Americans actively promote tolerance but, cynically, don't live it. The lower classes are expected to live it and they strongly resist.
March 28, 2010 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please stop it. If the upper class really wanted equality there would be equality because in our society the upper class always gets what it wants.
March 28, 2010 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pathetic.
March 28, 2010 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pathetic - but true!
March 28, 2010 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Outside of a classless utopia, all societies stratify into upper and lower classes. The myth of some monolithic "Upper Class" is crazy. There is mobility into and out of the "upper class" and Marx is right to point out that it is class interests that shape individual members of a class not the individuals who shape the nature of her class. Is it inviolable that it is in the upper class interest to keep the lower classes divided? I’m not quite sure about that. If it turns out to be inviolable that there will always be stratification, and if class mobility is in no way impeded, it might be the case that eventually there will be a diminishment of class conflict: contempt by the upper classes for the lower, and resentment of the lower for the upper. Maybe there will be harmony after all even as we give up naive utopian dreams.
But I agree that there will be conflict for the foreseeable future until we reach some form of accommodation.
March 28, 2010 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Class is a tricky concept whose meaning requires analysis within the specific historical constellation. There are different notions of hierarchy (status, caste, income strata, race etc.) that are sometimes referred to as or included in class although are not the same as the pure objective class of Marxian political economy (but are used in Marxian historical analysis).
All societies with a division of labors have classes in the strict sense (different positions in relation to production). However, the full concept of class is unique to the historical constellation. That is, being a farmer in ancient Rome is not the same "class" as being a farmer in the modern US. The totality of the constellation is reflected in the way each class must be understood. For example, a modern US small farmer produces for a monetized market. The Roman counterpart mostly didn't.
It seems to me "divide and rule" is among the almost unique constants, but again, the issue is to look when it comes into play in what way. The key concept of Marxism is class struggle, but within a historical perspective the class is not a given object but is fashioned by the struggle itself. Because it is a struggle, it is also unpredictable. You have expectations of things shaping up the same way by studying history, but like with the tendency of bad general to always try to re-fight the last war, likewise here, the struggle is always new, and therefore the classes that it shapes are always different.
So I agree, there is no such thing as a universal upper class. But we can look at the way the US upper class shaped itself and was shaped by the struggle that made it the upper class of today. And racism is a very big part of it.
March 28, 2010 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
All societies with a division of labors have classes in the strict sense (different positions in relation to production).
It seems clear that the Republican party and the "class" they represent is ideologically bankrupt. They cannot come up with any positive ideas to assuage the economic hardships (which they are in part the direct cause of; from Ronald Reagan’s deregulations to eight years of Bush) people are feeling. Many white people who find themselves economically dislocated are vulnerable to instigation by rabble rousers who point to Barak Obama--the first African America president in our history--as the cause of all their miseries. Race baiting plain and simple is all the Republicans have left along with gay bashing, liberal demonizing and the like.
The problem that the confluence of these two events (The Great "recession", and the election of a black man as president) poses for progressive forces is that they have proven to be a highly volatile and explosive combination.
Rich is only partly right in his diagnosis. Sure race baiting is a factor, but race baiting has been around forever and until recently fairly subdued. It is THE ECONOMY that potentiates the whole thing into a dangerous mixture.
This is something we cannot ignore because the Republicans are not going to back down: it is the only thing they have left in their political bag of tricks. I don't agree with Sleeper that we should ignore it. We do so at our own peril. What exactly needs to be done is not clear to me at this time. Perhaps we should follow the advice of Robert Reich and come up with a massive jobs program
March 28, 2010 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
(replying here to prevent the text moving to far to the end of the column)
I agree in general, but with one caution. There is no such thing as the class that "Republicans represent". That isn't how it works. Parties are political institutions. classes are economic and social constructs. There is rarely, only perhaps in revolutionary conditions, a one to one relation between class and party. That is especially true in the US, where you have only two parties, and the political system is DESIGNED to prevent class from being represented. Both parties, the whole political system, is beholden to maintaining the class structure as a whole. In order to do so, both parties collaborate on delivering the results needed by the capitalist class, but fight over the allegiance of subordinate classes. That struggle takes place over delivering various pacifiers and goodies to subaltern classes in a differential form, and in particular in a form that denies class and focuses attention on other differentiating elements: for example, the Democratic Party tries to appeal to minorities, women, organized labor and upper middle class snobs, and the GOP tries to appeal to the rural vote, the christian vote, status losing white males, etc.
Through these differential appeals, both parties include significant sections of the society (about 50%) in the system and buy their allegiance to the continuation of the policies that keep the class structure in place.
March 29, 2010 6:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think that I maintained that there is a one to one correspondence between the interests of the Democratic or Republican Party and their respective constituents. However, I don't totally agree with you that the ultimate constituent of both parties is the status quo vis-à-vis the capitalist class. I'm willing to agree that both parties take the interests of the capitalist into consideration, but it is the Democrats and not the Republicans who tend to invest more political capital towards furthering the interests of the proletariat than Republicans. The evidence seems clear to me.
If it were all a puppet show there would not be so much visceral animosity between the two camps as is evidenced today.
I think what Marxists seem to miss is that capitalism has its own dialectic and it is not necessarily revolutionary so much as evolutionary.
As much as Marx was anxious to point out that his analysis was scientific, he seems to have ignored the great effect that science has had on the whole social evolutionary process.
Futurist foresee a future of increased leisure time, longevity, and health as the means of production become more and more automated and the sophistication of robotics increases. These rather than pointing to increased class divisions point to amelioration of class strife in my estimation.
March 30, 2010 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
except, not really.
March 29, 2010 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
(replying here to prevent the text moving to far to the end of the column)
I'm not inventing stuff; I respond to what you said. If you spoke carelessly, which we all do often, it helps to acknowledge it and move on.
Allow me again to be annoyed. I am speaking to you, and I prefer if you speak to me, not analyze me in the third person. I am not "Marxists," indeed no Marxist is "Marxists."Now let's move to the substance, shall we?
I don't think it is a puppet show. It is a complex system in which all elements exert pressure. The point of a good analysis is to read those pressures without exaggerating them or downplaying them. Sometimes, given the tendency of the mainstream analysis to vastly overstate constituent pressure and vastly underplay the pressure of capital, radicals would polemically go in the opposite direction, especially in short forms like a comment. However, a good full analysis will be totally in agreement with you that it isn't a puppet show.
The expression "take capital in consideration" however, is an example of the problem of weak analysis. Parties don't "take capital in cosideration." They live by the rules of a capitalist economy. They are judged and rated by a press owned by capitalists. They are ideologically breathing the language of capital, and they are paid and maintained mostly by capitalists or other organs that are themselves operating under significant capitalist pressure(including the AFL-CIO). Within these limits, the function of parties is to get voting majorities. To do their job parties seek to attract voters and activists by adapting platforms that appeal to various constituencies, and in doing so they often do things that, other things being equal, create local pain for capital and in rarer occasions also impose long term limits on capital. And it is true, and I agree with you, that the Democratic party does more of that pain than the GOP.
However, one should not describe these activities as "furthering the interests of the proletariat" from a number of reasons. First, the "proletariat" i.e., a destitute industrial working class that produces but barely consumes, doesn't exist significantly in advanced capitalist economies, which are based on consumerism.
Second, in furthering interests, parties not only serve constituencies but also participate in shaping their identity, and while the democratic party does try to bind the vote of working and sometimes even of poor Americans, it does so in ways that usually undermine class definition of these constituencies. Thus, for example, we get pro "middle class" policies, a demarcation that doesn't depend on class but in fact on consumption levels, or pro-minorities and pro women policies that are designed in ways that invisiblizes class.
For example, "working Americans" is a ideologeme that implies that a walmart greeter has more in common with the workoholic CEO of JP Morgan Chase than with a single mother on welfare. "Middle Class" implies that a business school professor, a roofing contractor, a bus driver and call center supervisor have aligned interests that the party can represent.
That is, before you can talk about the relation between the party and a class, you need to define the class, and defining the class is already a political struggle, because different definitions create room for different politics, and simultaneously you have to define the interests of that class.
In that light, the asserting of the Democratic Party that it stands for working Americans or for the "middle class" is not a matter of fact but a matter of a struggle of definitions and descriptions of political/economic reality. That doesn't mean that objectively, the party doesn't play a role in delivering some outcomes that benefit people I would put in the working class. It does.
March 31, 2010 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
You haven't earned the right to disagree with Marxist analysis. You still have to a) understand it. b) know some actual history.
Just say no to Truthiness!
March 28, 2010 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm ready to listen
March 28, 2010 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
sorry I thought that Evildoer was replying to me but he was replying to Spider. Still I would appreciate Evildoer's input on my thinking.
March 28, 2010 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't care about your faux learning and snobbery.
Racism was not a creation of the upper classes in America and was not a weapon which they - uniquely - used to gain or maintain power and wealth.
It was a natural outgrowth of observed difference in technology and power, in appearance and habits, and was violated at great peril, regardless of one's economic status.
March 28, 2010 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ignorance is bliss. Enjoy it while it lasts.
March 29, 2010 6:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
March 29, 2010 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're so dumb you think you're smart, a common failing among members of your tribe.
March 29, 2010 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
project much?
when you sneer at the very idea of bothering to understand something you wish to argue about, it is the very definition of ignorance. people who prize ignorance over knowledge are in no position to evaluate the merits of anyone else's intelligence.
said walter to donny: "you have no frame of reference here".
but please do continue with your rubber/glue routine.
March 31, 2010 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
News flash - Cold War's over. Drop the Marxism scare tactics.
March 28, 2010 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
not fucking true.
while increases in superficial interactions may increase ethnic conflict, ethnic conflict is least when contact is greatest.
(which is to say that it is important to distinguish between frequency of contact, breadth, and significance of contact, depth.)
March 29, 2010 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
You really are full of shit.
People who inhabit the same or nearby neighborhoods, go to the same schools, work for the same employer are generally considered to have intimate knowledge of each others habits and opinions.
You can't force them to be more intimate if they don't wish it...and, mostly, they don't. In fact they want less intimacy. That's why neighborhoods have been re-segregating rapidly.
$10 words don't lead to $10 ideas. You really ought to simplify.
March 29, 2010 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
and a bunch of blather does nothing to refute fact-based analysis.
you know nothing of human geography. nor can you tell a cause from an effect. you merely project your own anxieties and bigotry.
March 31, 2010 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
What facts? What human geography?
March 31, 2010 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
and i'd really like to know which of the words i used you would consider "$10 words".
'frequency'?
'significance'??
March 31, 2010 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
That would make perfect sense if it hadn't been Republican strategy from at least as far back as the Willie Horton ad to very deliberately insert race into every campaign as flagrantly as they can.
But blame liberals, blame liberals for seeing the racist elephant in the room. It will all go away if we pretend not to see the race baiting elephant.
March 28, 2010 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I am saying is that well-intended, impassioned efforts to broad-brush the virulent opposition to health-care reform as "racist" are so doomed strategically that they will end up being wrong morally, too -- not because racism isn't real and ubiquitous and grinding, but because fixating on it right now diverts everyone from the deeper, more powerful currents and challenges of this time. It is not only Obama who understands this. Countless organizers of political movements in American history have learned that there are times to highlight the dangers and the outrage of racism and times to subordinate them to broader claims.
March 28, 2010 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republicans are using racist attitudes to attain power, just as the Democrats are. They aren't creating those attitudes.
March 30, 2010 1:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
And if we refuse to recognize what is being done to keep us divided, and refuse to put an end to it, we will remain divided and the powers that be win.
March 28, 2010 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Spider, I don't think you - or Jim Sleeper - fully appreciate the difference between the merely tribal form of racial consciousness that often prevails all around the world, including in America's northern cities, and the genuine racialism that is concentrated in parts of the United States.
Racism in our northern cities tends to be of that tribal nature. These cities have old neighborhoods divided up in various ways into Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latinos and Blacks, etc. People frequently take the side of their "people" - defined in clannish or tribal terms - against the others, when these frequently competing groups of peoples are felt to have conflicting interests.
But particularly in parts of the American South, one still finds of a far more pernicious and deep-rooted racism. It is based on doctrines of inherent biological orders or species of human types, of which blacks are believed to constitute one particularly odious, filthy and inferior type - if they can indeed the "black race" can be called "human" at all on the racialist's view. Keeping the races separate, along with their fundamental social and economic hierarchies, is seen as essential to prevent whites from being polluted, or "degenerating" or "devolving", as a result of their exposure to and excessive involvement with the black under-species.
This form of racism cannot be easily overcome by finding some basis for political or economic partnership among normally competing tribes, or the identification of a common enemy. Just as it would be hard to get people to join hands in solidarity with dogs and pigs against their fellow human masters, it is very hard to get the deeply racist white man to become a "race traitor", and advance the interests of black folk against those of fellow white folk, no matter how politically repugnant the latter might be.
There is no question that the prevalence of this form of racism is not as great as it was 40 or 50 years ago, but it is still a powerful current.
March 28, 2010 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Puke, gag, fuck!
Aside from this, seemingly unconscious, anti-Americanism your post is flawed in another way; blacks and Latins are capable of - and often display - the same virulent strains of bigotry and prejudice. Jews and Arabs, too.
Sure, I'm aware that complete assholes exist and have power. I'm also aware that human differences on every level - individual, group, cultural, genetic - exist to a significant degree and that their nature, cause, and exact importance remains unknown.
March 28, 2010 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Calm your nerves. I didn't say that the more more pernicious biological racialism doesn't occur outside the United States. I just said that it is different from the more commonplace tribalism that can be found everywhere.
March 28, 2010 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
You make some good points Jim, but so do Carter and Rich. I do know for sure that Palin and her peers are feeding off the fear and desperation of their supporters. If people were doing better, divisive figures like her wouldn't have a chance.
March 28, 2010 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
And here we agree.
March 28, 2010 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is most hilarious about this post on race, is the absence of a focus on African-Americans. Blacks were experiencing Depression level unemployment for a long time. Unemployment became a problem when it touched White lives. But let's not discuss race.
Similarly, the foreclosure rates in African-American community has been several times higher than Whites. Blacks are as frightened and concerned as Whites, perhaps even more.
The impact of current pressures on the economy of Black households does not rate a single mention.
The only mention of African-Americans comes when mention is made of the CBC Foundation. The Foundation has questions to answer about how much scholarship money is allocated. I doubt that the CBC is worse than organizations headed by White politicians. The actions or inaction of the CBC Foundation have nothing to do with the financial difficulties of the Black community. It was an unnecessary part of the article.
If you are only going to address Blacks in passing on an issue of race, at least don't take a pot shot.
Blacks did not make race an issue. White Liberals did not make race an issue. The actions of the Tea Party protesters made race an issue.
Address how the finances of all Americans can be improved, but don't think that not talking about racism is going to make racism go away.
March 28, 2010 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you!!!
March 28, 2010 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not aware of anyone here who has said that stopping talking about racism will make it go away. The post is not primarily about African-Americans because it is primarily about those who have been called racists, sometimes with more than ample justification, and yet to no good political effect.
To understand the difference, one must think not just morally or ideologically but strategically. that isn't accomplished by the broad-brush charges of racism that we've heard in response to the ugly manifestations of racism that are so rightly condemned.
These differences matter so greatly that it is sad to see well-meaning people digging themselves a big hole, and not for the first time. Obama has pointed us beyond such blundering. But, as I wrote in the Washington Post column that's linked at the end of the post, calling all the screamers racist is not just a moral blunder but, inevitably, a political one.
March 28, 2010 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're just dead wrong about this Mr. Sleeper. You have a very, very outdated viewpoint about this which is not only not strategically sound it is also not politically sound.
And Obama's approach comes mostly from the fact that he himself cannot take that tack without making everything about race. It isn't meant to be something applied in a broader context. You are applying his politically motivated strategy in an inappropriate way.
March 28, 2010 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for taking the time to respond. i think that the TeaParty is composed of small government people who will not budge from that position.
Calling out the racism will not alter their position.
We disagree, but again thanks for the response.
March 29, 2010 12:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Frankly, Rich's column did not strike me as moralistic. If his analysis is correct, then it is correct. Analysts (which sometimes may include journalists) analyze. Activists work with victims, except perhaps when those victims threaten the activists with violence.
March 28, 2010 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I must say I'm also slightly uncomfortable with the wole notion of accusing people of being "moralistic". I know what Sleeper is trying to say and it is a valid point. Many liberals--for complex psychological reasons--tend to overreact to actual or imagined acts of racism thus tending to escalate and highten tensions when it is not necessary. But that has nothing to do with morality per se.
March 30, 2010 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Moralism is the use of ethical percepts for the purpose of making oneself look good rather than as means for making the right call about what one ought to be doing.
March 31, 2010 6:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
here are the three lexical definitions of "moralism"
1. A conventional moral maxim or attitude.
2. The act or practice of moralizing.
3. Often undue concern for morality.
Only the third refers to your meaning.
Here is the use of "moralizing” (also rampantly used in the pejorative sense on this blog .
Moralizing
Transitive verb
1 : to explain or interpret morally
2 a : to give a moral quality or direction to b : to improve the morals of
for some reason it seems déclassé here at TPM to assert moral principles in support of political positions. That’s so post modernish!
April 1, 2010 12:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are more than one way to argue about ethics and moralism and I gave you mine. The dictionary is not my Bible. In my view, the relation between political positions and moral principles is a rhetorical abstraction. Ethics is the judgment of action. Divorcing ethics from the question of what to do open the door for moralism, that is, for using ethics as cosmetics. And the spectacle of condemnation of racism by people who chose to do close to nothing that might challenge the extreme conditions of racial discrimination in the US, or indeed who choose by their actions to defend racism in practice, is a fine example of that.
April 1, 2010 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ethics/Morality, as it is taught in philosophy classes all over the world does not divorce principles from action. Principles are meant to be guides to action. Not every possible situation or action can be enumerated in ethics. What ethics gives you is an answer to the very important question "what makes an action right or wrong?" If you have a grasp of this, then you can apply it to ANY situation that arises.
Political musings uninformed by ethical principles is blind (as we can see here in TPM where those allergic to taking moral principles into consideration in their political calculations shows a lack of understanding about what exactly it is that informs their thoughts).
The use of the pejorative "moralism" is usually uniformed twaddle by the morally blind.
What happens is that these people lacking a moral foundation wind up parroting ideologically "politically correct" mantras. It consists mainly of confused and empty verbiage because it is not anchored in anything substantive but floats in the air of mere political prejudice du jour.
In short, they wind up victims of professional opinion makers.
April 1, 2010 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem of people not translating their moral insights into action is a separate issue. The real problem is that most people are morally illiterate and have no moral insights at all, and because of that are wont to dismiss anyone who makes a moral point as being a "moralist"--a vague reference to someone who is a hypocrite in some way.
It goes without saying that all ethically informed people should operate by the maxim "Act so as to implement your moral values in the social/political environment you find yourself in".
April 1, 2010 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry. But I've listened to enough of these tea partiers, both real live ones I know and the many whose omnipresent words I have only read or heard, to decide that their common underlying theme boils down to this:
"Barack Obama is a militant black racist. He hates white people and wants to take their hard earned money away from them so that he can give it to black and brown people."
The only hope of reconfiguring the consumer-capitalist and financial juggernauts that are mowing down the American middle class lies in working around the nastiest of its victims, not by pointing fingers at their racism.
Haven't you noticed, Jim, that most of these folks on the tea party right, content entirely with their seething rage about the government, and government taxation and entitlement programs, do not express the slightest interest in reconfiguring the basic structures of American capitalism and the private economy? And that when they do venture into that territory, they incline toward radical libertarian doctrines designed to give private capital and private corporate barons even more autonomy?
The sad fact is that a lot of these people feel way more cultural solidarity with the wealthy white corporate leader, who is quite happy with the default laissez faire modes of distributing the wealth generated by our labors, than with the working class or unemployed black man or woman whose economic plight and station are virtually identical to their own. They would rather struggle and sink on their own in the every man for himself world of capitalism than see one redistributed dime go to those lazy black and brown dogs. Now what do you think explains that? I don't think its a generic concern with the "American middle class", at least not unless the American middle class is defined in their minds as the broad white middle class us opposed to the dark and nefarious conspiracy of wrong-colored people along with their race-traitor white liberal allies.
Now, will sanctimonious moralism and white liberal political correctness solve this problem? No. But neither will pretending it isn't there. If you've got a real strategy for tearing down this wall of obstreperous racial solidarity and blinding white-hot hatred, I'd like to hear it. So far, it looks well nigh impregnable.
Do you think it is just some coincidence that the only pace Obama was unable to break through among hard-pressed working class whites was in Appalachia and the Old South, where race-based identity and solidarity still trump all else? What is it going to take before you stop blaming white liberals and a few crooked black legislators for the persistence of deep, hideous, old school racial hatred among tens of millions of white Americans? Some 21st century Kristalnacht, where the victims this time are the black and brown people?
March 28, 2010 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just read the Frank Rich column to which Jim linked, and I have to say he is estimable indeed, and completely gets the thing Jim is so loathe to recognize.
March 28, 2010 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim,
You are one of my favorite bloggers and I hate to disagree with you about anything, but I've just put up a great hairy beast of a post, which maintains that attacking racial divisions is now the top priority for progressives:
Here is the link:
March 28, 2010 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've read all of the comments posted as of 3:05 pm Eastern Time, and I respect the moral passions and social insights driving some and brush off those that pretend to know where I have lived and what I have done. But I don't see any actual reason to change what I said in the post or what 10 years of living and working among (and writing to and about) inner-city blacks and white ethnics in Brooklyn taught me, even before I became more broadly engaged in writing The Closest of Strangers and Liberal Racism.
Two quick points:
1. No commenter observes (although it's implicit in David Seaton's interesting column, and Frank Rich in his) that had Hillary Clinton won the presidency and passed health-care reform, few of you would be writing about the virulent racism that Jimmy Carter and many of you claim is the mainspring of the protests. You'd all be writing about sexism. And you'd still be missing my point.
2. Dan K chides me for not recognizing that "M]ost of these folks on the tea party right, content entirely with their seething rage about the government, and government taxation and entitlement programs, do not express the slightest interest in reconfiguring the basic structures of American capitalism and the private economy."
But I open the post by stating that "Yes, racism is a big, irresistible default option for whites whose hopes and homes have been stolen from them by consumer and finance capital but who are afraid to stand up to the system that's screwing them."
For anyone whose ability think remains clogged by moralistic passion, here's what this passage means:
1. Yes, Many of these people are racists.
2. Calling racists makes it less likely that they will ever help to change the system that's screwing them.
As an East Texan, Lyndon Johnson understood this. As a black man who has won the presidency and, now, started to win some substantive victories, Barack Obama understands it.
As I learned long ago in Brooklyn, you can say things that make you feel better, or you can get things done in the real world.
March 28, 2010 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another point about LBJ: to his everlasting credit, and thanks, indeed, to his intimate understanding of the problem, he did frontally challenge American racism, including the racism of many of his own erstwhile supporters. As I say in Liberal Racism. Few of us who saw it will ever forget the moment he stood before Congress (on the eve of its passing the Voting Rights Act) and said, "We shall overcome" -- a gesture that brought tears to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s eyes for the first time in John Lewis' memory.
But neither will some of us ever forget how realistic Johnson was about what his brave and necessary stand against racism would cost him and the Democrats. He was right to walk through that fire, and, as I say at the end of my post, liberals and the left must continue to lead struggles against discrimination and abuse. But in many other respects, they must let race go. I wrote Liberal Racism to explain why and how.
To sum up, it wasn't just racist (and increasingly Republican) reaction to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts that set this country back on the larger terms I mention in my post; it was also the curse of color-coded racial identity politics and policies that were tactically dumb and essentially wrong but morally satisfying to impose.
March 28, 2010 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I wrote,
Now, will sanctimonious moralism and white liberal political correctness solve this problem? No. But neither will pretending it isn't there. If you've got a real strategy for tearing down this wall of obstreperous racial solidarity and blinding white-hot hatred, I'd like to hear it. So far, it looks well nigh impregnable.
So what's your strategy for accomplishing the restructuring of capitalism you're always talking about, Jim?
My suggestion is that intense racial animus among many of the tea partiers is not just some kind of nettlesome and complicating side issue clouding their "real" concern - the predatory and exploitative behavior of the "system". Racial and cultural hatred is the very core of what they are mad about. The system they are agitated about the most is what they see as a nefarious conspiracy of subversive white liberals and black and hispanic welfare parasites to steal their money and threaten white anglo supremacy in the US.
They want smarty-pants white liberals like me and the black and brown foot soldiers of the evil communist Generalissimo Obama swinging at the end of a rope. And they will be happy to join arm-in-arm with the white capitalist rulers of America and sing songs of triumph while they watch our feet twitch.
Is that what is driving all of them? No. But it's a much bigger phenomenon than you want to admit, and it can't be defeated by "letting race go" and just wishing ourselves into a "post-racial" society.
Yes, Barack Obama cannot possibly take the lead in calling attention to this race war business. If he did, then all hell would break loose. And I think Obama is smart to take on the immigration challenge next. But that doesn't mean that the rest of us should shut up about the truly terrifying rise of brownshirt insanity and the almost unfathomably unhinged hatred that is raging throughout this country.
And you're wrong if you think speaking out is having no effect. There are deep fissures opening in the Republican party. And part of the reason for that is that, partly as a result of the people who are not afraid to speak out, many decent Republicans increasingly want nothing to do with the contemptible demagogues and minions of hatred that have taken over their party.
And Jim, when they come for you too, you should know that they might not be so impressed that you wrote the book on liberal racism and are a noted critic of the Congressional Black Caucus. As you might have noticed lately, the rabid right is not particularly disposed toward fine intellectual distinctions, or even elementary knowledge of actual history. They might be more impressed by the fact that you are a member of the despised tribe of college professors - just another member of the tribe of heretics to be thrown on the auto-da-fe, and that God can sort out later.
March 28, 2010 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
March 28, 2010 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I rest my case. Jim: behold exhibit A.
March 28, 2010 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
What exactly are you resting on?
That you've correctly identified a core issue for tea party people...or that the tea party people have correctly identified liberals?
March 28, 2010 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The spiders are for the spiders, eh?
Well, I daresay DNA really IS thicker than water.
Healthy days.
March 28, 2010 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes it's better to be clear rather than "clever". This is one of those times. If you have a point to make, then make it in an understandable, direct way. If not, remain silent.
March 28, 2010 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
This has been the whole enchilada from the get go. These people absolutely hate the idea that Their tax dollars are going to support these good-for-nothing-lazy-people...in other words any non-WASP.
As I have said before..all these nice progressive programs would sail through congress with plenty of republican support...so long as they said Whites Only on them.
C
C
March 28, 2010 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
You miss the point of your critics I'm afraid and that is that you must take this problem on directly in order to stop the teabaggers in their tracks and not allow them to grow in power and that your approach is ineffective to that end as well as your more lofty goal of somehow calming their racist tendencies by fixing the economic woes of the nation. That's only a way of smoothing over a problem and not dealing with it, particularly since our economic problems are going to remain with us for many years since our government is doing nothing about fixing the causes of our current depression and our ruling classes, corrupt and incompetent as they are, have no plans on changing anything about the way this country operates.
March 28, 2010 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why are the reactions by white and black people so divergent? Black people have lost heavily in this economy nightmare but the tea party seems to be populated mostly by white Americans.
March 28, 2010 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's because black Americans who have been dispossessed (and it's important to realize that a few have escaped dispossession, or tell themselves that they have)really, deeply want to join with whites who are also being dispossessed to lift some of the burden off their backs. They do not want to do try to do it through a politics organized primarily around dramatizing racial grievances. Only people like Dan K have that luxury and don't care about alienating the very people whom most blacks wish they could join with for the purpose of changing the system.
Tearing down the walls of racism is one thing; reconfiguring the system is a related but much larger project. I am not an expert on the latter, as some other regular TPM contributors certainly are, but I do know a lot about race walls and how they work and how they are lowered, and I've written two books about that. Everyone is welcome to read them, but not to expect me to reprise them in handy blog bites.
March 28, 2010 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, tell me about all my "luxuries" jerk. My own family is being torn apart by this tea party madness, to the extent that I have had to isolate myself from several of them to escape the abuse, hatred and rejection, and their poisonous climate of fear, rage and ignorance.
Sure, sure. Maybe if the Jews had just avoided "alienating" the Nazi thugs gathering around them, they all would have been OK. Maybe we need to avoid "alienating" poor old beleaguered Ted Nugent when he gets a platform on Fox News to talk about hunting down his enemies like animals.
These folks are packing away guns and preaching revolution every day. Do you think that if some spark ignites their revolution, these goons are going to go for a "restructuring of capitalism" or a new dawn of "civic republicanism"? But no worries. You'll probably be able to get a flight out while they are busy lynching the Congressional Black Caucus.
How many times do people have to threaten to shoot their enemies before you are willing to denounce them as thugs? How often do you have to be confronted by sheer hatred before you recognize that what you are dealing with is red, raw hatred of flesh and blood people, and not just diffuse resentment toward "the system"?
But again, I'm waiting for your brilliant ideas about how to pull off the great realignment that is going to make the lion of racial hatred lie down with the lamb of economic suffering.
March 28, 2010 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, In your earlier message you confused two major projects -- lowering the intensity and brutality of racism, and reconfiguring capitalism.
The purpose of my post is straightforward and limited: to signal that among many liberal pundits and activists there is a continuing strategic "disconnect" between these two projects rather than a coordinated approach. There are some synapses missing.
I'm sorry for your troubles, as you allude to them above, but your several messages here don't exactly promise much of a contribution to addressing this problem I've posed.
March 28, 2010 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
March 28, 2010 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why would they do that? Israeli thugs kill a lot more innocent people than Palestinian thugs, partly due to our support.
March 29, 2010 11:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
That might be true but they don't go around making loud threats...which was the point of the post.
March 30, 2010 1:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
How do you prefer the can of worms you've opened here? Raw or stewed?
Antiracism has the been a keystone of American progressivism for a long, long time, and it has been one of the most potent for fueling change. So much so, in fact, that almost any topic or intiative proposed by the Left is tied, somehow, to the struggle against racism, regardless of their background or context. Now, most of the time, this connection is unapparent to most Americans untouched by such political rectitude and delusional high-mindedness. And it has made the Left an unheeded voice prattling on in the deep, deep background.
March 28, 2010 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
OMG. End times must be nigh. Both my sister, a prime potential Tea Partier who normally hates talking about things political and Dan K are freaking out. What to do?
Don't Panic! Sound advice from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. Hard to follow.
Dan K asks what to do when someone says things like, "Barack Obama is a militant black racist. He hates white people and wants to take their hard earned money away from them so that he can give it to black and brown people."
I suggest following Sleeper's advice -- move beyond it. What I do here deep in the Newt Gingrich's former district is deflect that as best I can and with humor when possible. Dan and many others here would think it outrageous that I point out that Obama is half-white and since he is black on the outside... but it works. Then I can steer the conversation to things economic.
This usually leads to some angry statement about the government taking over General Motors. Since there are a lot of GM retirees in the area, I take the opportunity to explain how GM executives basically robbed them of the deferred compensation they were promised.
I try to redeem the government by pointing out that we, the people, are supposed to be the government which leads revelations of anger at both major political parties and on to talk about electoral reform.
I point out that most workers, around 60% by one conservative economist's estimate, work for the government at some level.
I have other arguments I use to challenge the implied premises of the talking heads but you get the gist of them. No doubt many of you think what I say is simplistic but so are the arguments I try to counter.
It doesn't always work. People who like being mad just get madder. No one has had a 'come to Jesus' moment from my arguments but more often than not we have at least had a conversation about important things and are still on speaking terms.
March 28, 2010 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Emma Zahn, for pointing us further in the direction I tried to gesture toward in my brief post. Too many remain so stuck in moralizing and emoting to see as far ahead as you do, let alone to go there.
March 28, 2010 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my opinion, the way to win the hearts that you are trying to win is not with general arguments, but with this:
You can't win everybody, but some people will join and learn to work together. It won't happen in a day, but I don't see any other way.
If there is a real struggle that anti-racist and is promising and people feel that it addresses something they need and allow then to both express their frustration and ACT on them, some will join, and the more it works more will join.
If the only space for white people to express their frustration is through racism, and the alternative offered by "the left" is sitting in front of the TV, eating quality cheese crackers and cheering Rachel Maddow, then racism will win out.
So I agree with Sleeper that moralizing about racism is not helpful. And I agree with Dan and others that actually giving racism a pass is totally unacceptable. But not giving racism a pass means more than just emoting about it while cheering the President's agenda de jour.
March 28, 2010 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
The people I am talking to and about are not that far along yet. They've never been politically or economically engaged before. They have been whipped into a frenzy by talking heads and economic uncertainty. More than anything else these people are frightened. They have such simple dreams and yet cannot realize them despite believing in and doing all the 'right' things. Just being able to vent seems to help and I like to think some of the seeds I am planting among them will manage to grow. I really wish the New Left included a new Huey Long, someone who at least speaks their language.
March 28, 2010 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
March 28, 2010 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
you get that a LOT don't you, spider?
March 29, 2010 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
You've nailed it on this one. Common interests, decency, courage, and individual merit will trump bigotry much of the time.
March 28, 2010 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe I deserved that for trying to explain myself. The thing is that when I end up in these conversations I am not talking down. I am scared too. I am not a pseudonymous screen name spouting off. The people I am talking with know who I am. They know where I live. They know my family. Some are family. The danger isn't so much physical as social. It is hard to win hearts and minds if you are ostracized.
March 28, 2010 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody deserves Spider, but unfortunately life is unfair. Take heart and move on.
I understand what you are saying, and I didn't intend it as a direct recipe for you. I really am no position to offer direct recipes. What I'm trying to illustrate is the larger point that "you don't win if you don't show up", and the liberal left is missing in action on organizing against the neo-liberal policies of the Obama administration. When the only voice against these policies comes from racists, racism is going to make advances, and moralizing against it won't help. What is missing is organizing efforts that offer a real alternative for mobilizing and channeling anger into political struggles that are anti-racist as well as opposed to neo-liberalism. Even if these existed it would be an uphill struggle, but at least it would be an uphill struggle with a chance.
March 29, 2010 6:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
When the only voice against these policies comes from racists, racism is going to make advances, and moralizing against it won't help.
Anyone ever tell you how perceptive you are? Nice way with words, too.
March 29, 2010 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you!
March 29, 2010 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Feel better, do you? Ever look at that man's avatar? What kind of organizing do you think he's proposing?
March 29, 2010 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ever look at that man's avatar?
I noticed. So?
Notice mine? Tell me what it is and/or represents.
March 29, 2010 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
So he's advocating a failed ideology of equality. If you want to talk to Tea Party people you'll have to understand that they are absolutely, fundamentally opposed to such as ideology. Start posting at Free Republic if you truly want to engage in dialogue with them. When you've mastered that, then come back to your family and friends. You'll have much greater success.
I didn't notice your avatar and have no idea what it means. But since you asked me I discovered you got the image from amazonaws and that you post to a lot of forums. Care to enlighten me further?
March 29, 2010 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry. You didn't get the image from amazonaws.
March 29, 2010 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
So he's advocating a failed ideology of equality.
Is he now? So am I to assume you disagree with Jefferson and all the other signers of the Declaration of Independence as well?
I have visited the Free Republic. Not really my cup of tea.:) What makes you think that they and you are not also advocating a failing ideology?
Have you given any thought to what the fundamental purpose of human society and its economy is. If a society/economy does not provide for the basic needs and wants of too many of its members, it fails. We are dangerously close and kneeling at the altar of any ideology will not solve the problem. We need to "think in new categories".
I didn't notice your avatar and have no idea what it means. But since you asked me I discovered you got the image from amazonaws and that you post to a lot of forums. Care to enlighten me further?
Enlighten you. How punny. It is a prism. sometimes used symbolically by Perennialist. There are many paths along the Way.
I tend to read much more than post. I am more what is known as a drive by commenter. I tend to regret posting/commenting as it often draws me back when what I really want to do is keeping moving ahead.
Now tell me why 'spider'? Is everyone a fly to you?
March 29, 2010 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you really think Jefferson et al believed that all men were equal (even evildoer is not that dumb)? Hamilton explains what they meant in the Federalist Papers. You ought to try reading them...or is that also not your cup of tea?
You'll have to step outside your comfort zone if you truly want to engage with your ideological opponents. I suggested Free Republic because it's probably the preeminent Tea Party site. You do want to speak to them, don't you? Or was that just a pose?
Of course, their ideology - laissez faire capitalism - failed. That, and the election of a black President, completely overwhelmed them. That's why they descended into incoherent madness for awhile...but they're doing better now. Why would you think I'm one of them?
Asking about the ultimate purpose of a society is like asking about the ultimate purpose of life - it's a complete waste of time. Societies are constructed by people who have the power to do so...and are maintained for similar reasons. That's all.
Why Spider? Why not?
There's a story told about Stalin to illustrate the depth of his depravity. Following the execution of some of his generals and fellow comrades a foreign reporter inquired of one of his aides
I can understand why X, Y, and Z where killed, but why Chernikov, who was a friend of Stalin.
The aide replied
Why not?
March 29, 2010 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
You oversimplified Marx so I oversimplified Jefferson. Why the sneer?
Sorry I mistook you for a Tea Partier and laisser-faire capitalist. Not that I mind laisser-faire at a certain level. So. What sort of world do you want to make?
March 29, 2010 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
One which has 1/3 the number of people but is not destroyed in the process of getting there.
March 29, 2010 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
That would be about 1930-1950 levels. Yeah, things were much calmer then.
March 29, 2010 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
A good method to begin any dialog is not assuming any party is so "simple" and backward that they can't understand their dilemma or what's happening around them. A consistent problem of the Left is its assumption it has all the answers. For more than a century the Left fronted a silly pseudoreligion that proved itself an utter, murderous failure as template for government and economics. We get the best answers by listening, not by sticking to our own absurd delusions of genius.
March 29, 2010 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the record, I said their dreams were simple, not them. Dreams like a home, a decent education for their children....
Truthfully, they are some of the canniest people I have ever met but only recently have they become politically and economically engaged to the point of bringing up the subjects when no elections are imminent.
Anyway I aspire to simplicity, tis a gift, you know.
March 29, 2010 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
You've nailed it on this one. Common interests, decency, courage, and individual merit will trump bigotry much of the time...at least in cowboy country.
March 28, 2010 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
My briefest comment ever. I'm with Rich on this one.
I think I'll make it my second briefest, and wish, profoundly or not, that liberals would take less glee in self-slaughter. Can we leave that to the American Enterprise Institute, and weep tears when they fire David Frum for being not right enough?
March 28, 2010 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I may agree with liberals on a few things, but I'm not a liberal. Can I slaughter? Pleeeeease!
March 28, 2010 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The word I used was "self-slaughter"... I'd prefer you didn't do that, agree with you or not.
March 28, 2010 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Professor Sleeper, you're work on this topic has been admirable and I owe it to myself to crack one of your books. One quibble, though I doubt you'll take it as such: racism is still definitely at work in our economy. A higher percentage of minority home borrowers got subprime loans for example, than should have. Indeed, minority borrowers who would have qualified for standard mortgages had they been properly advised by a fiduciary, were pushed into subprime loans.
No white guy said "Let's foist rotten loans with teaser rates and resets on the blacks." It's more like a bunch of people working at banks saw these loans mount in these communities and thought nothing of it.
Just saying there's still systemic problems lingering, mostly of assumption and ignorance.
March 28, 2010 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not only is racism definitely at work in our economy, it is still ubiquitous and routine, even though not at all as it was even 20 years ago. What I am saying in this post is that some people's well-intended, impassioned efforts to broad-brush the virulent opposition to health-care reform as primarily "racist" are so doomed strategically that they will end up being wrong morally, too -- not because racism isn't real and ubiquitous and grinding, but because fixating on it right now diverts everyone from the deeper, more powerful currents and challenges of this time.
It is not only Obama who understands this. Countless organizers of political movements in American history have learned that there are times to highlight the dangers and the outrage of racism and times to subordinate them to broader claims.
March 28, 2010 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is never a politically convenient time to address the racial question directly. It wasn't convenient for Eisenhower to send troops to Little Rock or for Kennedy to nationalize the Alabama national guard. But sometimes the issue grows so large it can't be avoided any longer, and "let it go" is just not an option.
I hope I am wrong, but I suspect we are on the verge of seeing some serious violence and seditious mayhem break out. Shaming and calling people out for provoking blood in the streets certainly risks alienating them. Pointing a finger at hatred is uncomfortable and risky. But so is looking the other way and hoping the problem will just go away, or be subsumed by a more unifying politics of biracial middle class solidarity.
March 28, 2010 11:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
March 28, 2010 11:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK I admit it I amn guilty of 'horrendous name calling'. But liberal violence and mayhem? Bullshit. Not any that I know of. I do know us liberals went through 7 years of being called 'enemies of the state' for daring to even question the president in 'war time', though for most of the time nobody who insisted it was a 'war' could indicate what sovereign state we were at war with. Please learn me on the acts of 'violence and mayhem' that the left is guilty of.
March 29, 2010 12:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sleeper makes two claims in one mix that need to be distinguished because one is right and one is wrong. First, he claims that Obama's denial of race is the right things to do, as race focuses us away from the "real" problems. Second, he claims that moralizing about race risks producing the opposite of what one wants, i.e. more racism. The second point is right. The first point is wrong.
Obama denies race precisely because he is committed to NOT addressing "real" problems but to pepper them over. Unfortunately, a lot of the liberal moralizing about race is doing the same thing with the opposite tactics.
Racism has to be opposed as part of a struggle over inequality. Within the context of such a struggle, silence about racism in totally unacceptable. Outside the context of such a struggle, moralizing about the racism of the tea-baggers is nothing other than the defense of the political system and therefore the defense of inequality. That kind of defense will only strengthen racism.
When one talks about race in the context of the crisis the point of entry should be the differential impact of the crisis along the race divide, and therefore one must begin with analyzing the institutional racism inherent in the way the Obama administration's handled the crisis, and only AFTER that one can talk about the racism that manifests itself within the populist right.
March 29, 2010 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've found it useful to point out that the present system sucks, that it's bankrupting the country, forcing emergency rooms to close, delivering very expensive, often not very good, services, with byzantine and arbitrary billing practices.
The question to ask about the new reform is not whether its a good bill, but whether its an improvement. Not whether the white middle and lower classes are being asked to pay for the unwashed - they already are - but whether they will ultimately be asked to pay less. I don't answer my own questions because I don't know the answers.
I also like to point out that the current Chinese system is far less costly; you are asked to pay upfront. No payee, no treetee. Die in the streetee.
March 28, 2010 11:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
sorry, jim. but i feel compelled to point out that spider is a vile bigot. does that run counter to your argument?
March 29, 2010 6:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, poor baby. Your religion turns out to be crap like all other religions. So sorry.
March 29, 2010 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
what the fuck are you blathering about??
March 31, 2010 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I ask you the same question.
The Chinese system is just as I described; Pretty fucking cruel. The part about dying in the street is literally true - I asked that question of the Chinese immigrant who told me about it. So I used pidgin to describe it.
And you charge "bigot" as a response! Fuck you.
March 31, 2010 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, if the racists will stop being racist this liberal will let race go - but not until!
March 28, 2010 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did anybody see the Beware of Dog teabag posterp posted the other day with a pic of Obama with monster-sized African lips and the body of a dog?
March 28, 2010 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
My bottom line is racism that goes unaddressed is wrong. Torture that goes unaddressed is wrong. Corporate malfeasance that harms the economy and ruins the lives of many American which goes unaddressed is wrong. Past abuses of power by people in our government that goes unaddressed is wrong. Because by not addressing the wrongs it is giving tacit support and encouragement to the wrongs which mean those wrongs will probably occur in the future and probably more frequently.
It seems like our current president doesn't want to address any of the wrongs that happened, and still are occurring. That is his choice, but not mine, nor will it ever be...
March 29, 2010 12:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Honestly, I seriously doubt that many Tea Partiers read Frank Rich or the New York Times.
March 29, 2010 1:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
So you
while Libertine wants me to
But when I went to Free Republic I found this article featured in the sidebar
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2482074/posts
It not only mentions Frank Rich's article but virtually every liberal charge leveled at the Tea Baggers...and the poster list various acts which, in their minds, constitute proof of liberal hypocrisy.
Whether or not the posters are right is beside the point. What is incontrovertible is that you and Libertine are pretentious ignoramouses.
March 29, 2010 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
. . . whites whose hopes and homes have been stolen from them by consumer and finance capital . . . . Jim Sleeper
Is there any evidence that "whites," as so defined, make up more than a tiny percentage of Tea Party membership? If not, then, the claim that Tea Partiers suffer from fear and anxiety is unwarranted.
The Tea Partiers I know are angry over the fact that the government in bailing out the banks, insurance companies, and irresponsible home owners is treating responsible Americans as chumps and breaching the implied contract it made with them (you know -- work hard, save your money, be responsible, etc.).
Injustice does tend to make people angry.
Tea Partiers are flailing about looking for explanations of why this injustice is being visited upon them and, being an unsophisticated and not particularly eloquent bunch, are falling back on earlier explanations some of which are "racist."
But if we liberals want to change the government's response to the financial disaster it would be better that we offered Tea Partiers sounder explanations than that we throw accusations of racism at them.
March 29, 2010 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Take a look at this
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/28/AR2010032802353.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Samuelson is hardly a Tea Party type.
I would also dispute your characterization of Tea Partiers as "an unsophisticated and not particularly eloquent bunch".
March 29, 2010 3:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
As for Samuelson, who relies on Douglas Holtz-Eakin, I think I'll go with Krugman's response.
And if Tea Partiers are, also, relying on Douglas Holtz-Eakin's foolishness (dishonesty?), they're in need of an education in economics and statistics -- which I'm hopeful sensible liberals (not Obamabots and Summers-Geithner bankster-types) can provide.
March 29, 2010 3:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://cuttingthroughthefog.blogspot.com/2010/03/good-bad-and-uglyof-health-care-reform.html
This is how the Tea Party types see Obama's health care reform. Except for the concluding paragraph, quite clear and sensible.
March 29, 2010 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seems to me that most of Cranky George's list of costly horribles would occur in the absence of HCR, too.
Hard to tell what he's upset about other than the entire structure of the health care payment system which was in place on December 31, 2009 -- or for that matter on December 31, 2006.
March 29, 2010 4:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cranky George is quite clear about how bad the current system is - for example, he points out that the current unbearable pressure on emergency rooms will be relieved.
He is also quite clear about the nature of his objections to Obama's reform; it's a bullshit wealth redistribution scheme which is no reform at all. For example - the pressure on emergency rooms is not really removed but rather transferred to family practitioners who are even less capable of handling it since their numbers are declining while the reform will vastly increase their workload.
I think he's right about all the specifics. Where I can't follow him is his decent into conspiracy theories in his last paragraph.
March 29, 2010 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would say that sound explanations are only worth something if they come bundled with a body that is ready to hold the line. both are missing on the liberal side, but the second one is what makes the difference. Even people who are poor judges of economic theory are good judges of character.
March 29, 2010 5:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
“If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore,” Mr. Grimes said.
March 29, 2010 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's too bad that this thread has diverted into the usual battles over class and Marxist analysis.
When I read Rich's column yesterday, I had two reactions.
One was that it was useful, in that it starts -- starts -- to see the Tea Party reaction as connected to real feelings of alienation and fear. Whether you agree that those people SHOULD have those feelings is really irrelevant. You can't talk to them, and they wouldn't listen if you tried as long as you didn't acknowledge the validity, for them, of their sense of impending doom. I think they're wrong, that there is not all that much to be afraid of in the ongoing demographic shift, but that isn't a way to talk to them.
The second reaction was that I really hoped that this wouldn't decay into yet another 60's-like screaming match about race alone, where the only ones doing the screaming are white people.
So much for that one.
If race, as a concept of some sort of inherent condition or imposition of predetermined fate, rather than as a rather superficial construct that's belied by all of the DNA evidence that we're essentially all the same, aside from melatonin levels, then we might have a prayer of finally letting go of destructive and, ultimately, stupid arguments.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
I'm with Sleeper on this one, and hope we can stop fighting battles that reflect more on our own prejudices and biases and favorite miseries, than on seeing the current phenomenon as an opportunity to treat all of our citizens as having worth, even if they dress up in silly tri-cornered hats and get all the history wrong.
Nothing will make an enemy so implacable as attacking their dignity.
March 29, 2010 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Goshen. When I made very similar arguments last fall in the Washington Post (please read the column, which is linked at the end of my post above), the reaction from a broader public was much more constructive than it has been in this thread. The Washington Post held an online chat session in which people from all over the country participated. I don't have the link to that session handy, but it is probably linked with the Post's online presentation of my column.
March 29, 2010 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
To be published by Fred Hiatt is to suffer an indignity best left unremarked.
Time, after all, heals all wounds -- even self-imposed ones.
March 29, 2010 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The column was not published by Fred Hiatt. It was published by the Sunday Outlook section, which he does not edit or have any part in controlling. Once again, the pitter-patter of Ellen's constant comments, which try to value irony over substance, is less than helpful, or even truthful.
March 29, 2010 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm.
I'm not sure getting published by John Pomfret -- erstwhile editor of We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get? -- is a step up from getting published by Hiatt.
March 29, 2010 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Pomfret has not been the editor of Outlook for many months, nor was the the editor of my column.
March 29, 2010 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me that there are some myths and misconceptions floating around about just what kind of people make up the tea party movement.
Quinnipiac did a study of this question recently. And you know what term best describes the tea partiers? "Republicans"! And not just any Republicans, but the most ideologically intense and dyed-in-the-wool among them.
Something like three quarters of the tea partiers self-identify as Republicans. There aren't many independents and they aren't many Democrats. This idea that the tea partiers are a cross-section of put-upon working class voters driven crazy by the recession, and who are desperately scrambling for any practical solution, possibly even an activist government solution, is daft. They are ideologues. They were ideologues before the recession, and they have the same ideology now that they had then. The only thing that has driven them crazy is that a black Democrat was elected president, and that pushed their sensitive Crazy Button.
Tea partiers are traditional, though more intensely fanatical, small government conservatives who want the government to get off their backs. They hate taxes; they hate Democrats; and they hate liberals, progressives and socialists of all kinds. They hate anything that smells like redistribution, especially when it redistributes wealth from black to white, but even if it were to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to them. They don't want the government to solve their problems. They think the government is the problem; that it should be drowned in a bathtub; and that people should fend for themselves.
Now they also don't like bankers and Wall Street much. Their solution to that problem? Definitely not more government involvement in the financial sector. Instead: kill the Fed, stop regulation in its tracks, and get the government out of the financial sector altogether! They blame the financial crisis entirely on bad loans to lazy, wrong-colored low income Americans, and blame the government for bringing that situation about.
And now my more the anecdotal part, based on some of the tea party folks I and my friends have actually run across: Despite the fact that several of them have spotty and dissolute employment records, they are convinced that they represent the hard-working white salt of the earth, and that their problems are all due to their victimization by the evil cabal of liberal government, liberal media, illegal immigrants and colored people.
The above represents the parts of the "movement" that one can even make sense of. But have you tried having a "conversation" with one? of them. The term "echo chamber" doesn't begin to describe the oblivious isolation, mental incoherence and jaw-dropping misinformation that has infected their minds. Even some relatively well-educated folks among them now live in a tiny cult-like box of almost zero-information from the outside world, and believe everything that a ill-informed cult leaders, like Glenn Beck, pour into their suggestible minds: wild black helicopter conspiracy theories about the communist takeover of the entire health care system and economy, etc. Their alienation from the culture of non-Fox and non-Beck information is total.
They also describe Glenn Beck as some kind prophetic saint, sounding in the process like Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now. I have been present at least twice when a tea partier burst into tears during his lionization of the sainted Beck, and the latter's heroic and lonely stand against all that is evil, communistic, fascistic and unholy.
This isn't a "movement". It is a perverted cult led by some prominent mentally deranged individuals. We should worry about "alienating" them? Their alienation couldn't possibly get more profound. They need treatment; not some ill-advised and dead-on-arrival effort to find common ground with crazy.
March 29, 2010 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent comment. To pretend these people have a coherent, principled opposition top current government policy is to engage in the most determined denial of reality.
March 29, 2010 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
This comment by Dan K comes closer to the nub of the problem, which is not primarily about racism but about something so deep that charges of racism, however well justified morally (and they are!) only distract us from facing and actually dealing with the bigger challenge.
March 29, 2010 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps that's true. And the question is, when a large mass of people have gone rip-roaring crazy, how do you get them to go un-crazy? When that many people have fallen into a cult, how do you get them out of the cult?
I would suggest that responsible leadership from the top of the Republican party would be a step in the right direction. But so many of those leaders appear to be either too cynical, too opportunistic or too afraid themselves to rein in the monster they have let loose.
March 29, 2010 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an interesting development:
http://www.patriotmajoritypac.us/
March 29, 2010 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unemployed auto parts salesman, Jeff McQueen, blames the government for his unemployment.
“Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
Well, what else would you expect these goddamn leftie Tea Partiers to say!
March 29, 2010 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
You started out well but....
Well, you also could benefit from reading Free Republic. These people are far less isolated than you think. You might also get out more. You'll find that out in red country they are the hard-working salt of the earth...but that doesn't insulate then from the problems which affect everyone else - drug abuse, lazy worthless kids, etc. They blame much of it - not unreasonably - on leftist '60s pop culture perpetuated by Hollywood.
March 29, 2010 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your post is a critique of the left's approach to its enemies. I agree with you on that.
But there are comments on substantial issues where I disagree
Many of the tea party people are country folk who are distressed by the encroachment of cities. They can't really connect the dots but they're right to be distressed.
Changing demographics mean changing values and losses as well as gains of power and wealth. Again they're right to be distressed, just as those who opposed immigration more than a century ago were right to be distressed - they lost and the immigrants gained. It's a battle, a fight, and liberal schmucks who try to disguise that with morality are usually angry losers.
If you can see that, you can also see how phoney most liberals are. So why are you still one?
Spare me the phoney science. No one understands DNA well enough to know its effect on behavior and intelligence, and performance tests of various kinds - consistently - show substantial racial differences.
You'll never get anywhere with this kind of stupid condescension. It shows that you have no familiarity with these people, their abilities and arguments. Nothing more.
March 29, 2010 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, this is brilliant:
...Although it won't win you any friends among the Rose' Proletariat...
March 29, 2010 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you. The original post above, from which you've excerpted this, has a link to the pages in Liberal Racism where I criticized Rich, years ago, for resorting to charging racism at the drop of a hat, in ways that are morally and theatrically very satisfying but strategically useless in confronting the Tea Partiers.
March 29, 2010 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not gonna happen. some white liberals love to manufacture racism where it isn't. It makes them feel cool. Thus, when Hillary Clinton says that LBJ helped MLK make civil rights legislation a reality, she was racist.
The Daily Kos is THE ultimate source for fake racism. The independent website Factcheck.org once had to rebuke a Daily Kos diarist for saying that Hillary had darkened Obama's image in a video, when in fact there was no basis to conclude so.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/did_clinton_darken_obamas_skin.html
March 29, 2010 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
oh, the horror!
March 29, 2010 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Jim Sleeper.
LBJ created new institutions and changed the then existing insitutions. And until Obama does the same, I will keep his "remarks" on Race where they belong and that being in the trash can. I am reminded that Clinton called for a 'debate' on race, and Obama will do so as well, and Clinton found to his amazement that no one bothered to show up.
I am expert on labels, and that's because I carry the three-parter and to wit:
"Native American/Chicano/Military Veteran"
And from this precipice that is my Moral Mountain, changing institutions, is not Obama's forte.
Since I live in Phoenix, Arizona, I am subjected to "racial profiling" on a daily basis. This 'regimen' all came about because the institution known as the Arizona State Legislature, did knowingly appropriate tax dollars and made these dollars solely and exclusively available to our County Sheriff, he of the infamous pink underwear. He was charged with the Responsibility and Duty to establish a legal regimen for this "racial profiling".
And this institutional "morphing" continues as I write. Today, this Republican-led Legislature is preparing to pass Senate Bill 1070 and House Bill 2632 and with the Republican Governor's legal blessing, and which would among other things, change existing civil law into a criminal felony should an Undocumented Immigrant bring a child with him or her when they enter the United States via a seven-day trek through the Sonoran Desert. And the likilihood is considerable that these immigrants had to drink their own urine during this trek since, it's neigh to impossible to carry this much water for a seven-day period. Hell, even the Army Rangers and the Seals are incapable of this identical feat.
Consequently, the Republicans are taking their perceived "anger and angst" and concretizing or for the "actualization" of their Hate of Brown People and putting this hatred into the Rule of Law.
And they are the majority. If you're white and a blue-eyed descendent from Chicago, you can bet you're bottom dollar that you will not be stopped and asked for your citizenship papers. And for me, it's only a matter of time that I will be stopped and asked to show my citizenship papers.
Thus, Liberals letting go of racism, is a virtuous and noble sentiment, but alas, I don't have the "luxury" or the "choice". It's been made for me and enacted into Law by the Law Givers. Therefore, in my defensive crouch, I have to appeal to my Brothers and Sisters of Shared Experience, to come to my defense in defending this Moral Mountain of Ours. Regardless, I will continue to patrol the perimeter until such time as I am called upon to present my citizenship papers in court if necessary.
Jaango
March 29, 2010 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem could be solved by the introduction of some sort of DNA based ID. Everyone could and should be stopped to check for such. There's no other way if one believes in borders...and I do.
March 29, 2010 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
As to the Meta-Conversation, and with far more precision, permit me to posit the following:
Should President Obama ever get around to advocating for and insisting that Congress pass legislation that prohibts the acceptance by the political parties of any membership applications by the bigots and the racists, would prove to me that Obama has the appropriate political intuition for changing the Democratic Party from the Status Quo and into the Party of Equality.
It's not going to happen and I won't hold my breath.
Jaango
March 29, 2010 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
And would you advise the ADL to just ignore Antisemitism?
March 29, 2010 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
And an Admonition to the blue-eyed descendents from Chicago.
Should you come to Arizona and inadvertently give a ride to a Brown Person, you can have your automobile confiscated should your passenger not be carrying his or her citizeship papers. Of course, you will not be asked for your "papers". This too is in the legislation.
Jaango
March 29, 2010 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
There goes hitchhiking...
March 29, 2010 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Curt,
As to your hitchhiking, I feel your pain.
As a third grader, I and my older brother by two years, hitchhiked daily to attend school from Peetz, Colorado to Sidney, Nebraska. And it's where I learned English, and my primer was Laura Ingall's "Little House on the Prairie". Thus, it was the proverbial "decendent from Chicago with the blue-eyes" that 'adopted' us when she gave us a daily ride so we wouldn't run the risk that comes from hitchhiking. And to this day, I am eternally grateful for her kindness. Thus, character is accomplished when no one is looking, seems about right, to me. Of course, she was a Teacher.
Jaango
March 29, 2010 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course there's such a thing as liberal racism- to the extent that liberals are too lazy to know the difference between sympathy and pity. And pity is cheaper. The push back against the Great Society didn't begin with Reagan but with Carter. Where's Max Sawicky to explain this all... again.
Sleeper's knee-jerk simplicity does no more than mirror others'.
To say that racism is not in play here is absurd. Equally absurd would be to ignore that some of the anger is a response to Obama's idiotic support for the banksters, and that some of the teaparty populism could still spin around.
And then there's there's Israel and the Israeli "White Man's Burden": the Palestinians. You want liberal racism, there it is in spades. With Jim Sleeper front and center.
Rich's piece deserved a one paragraph response: a counterweight. Instead it's used as an excuse by a bloviating self-important pedant to get on a hobby-horse and push a 10 year old book complete with links!
More than anything this post is about Jim Sleeper. Somewhere in there he makes a small but important point. It's a shame some people won't bother to make the effort to find it.
March 29, 2010 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I NEVER get it. Never. People ALWAYS either respect my opinions...or fear them.
March 29, 2010 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
a reply to flake no something or other.
March 29, 2010 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ Spider
Spider, I hate to have to explain this to you, but one sidebar at Free Republic that mentions the Frank Rich column in no way proves that a majority of Tea Partiers read either the New York Times or Frank Rich.
By your logic, if an article in the New York Times mentions a book, then everyone (or are you claiming just a majority) of Times' readers have read the book.
It is too bad that you have these problems with logic and the use of evidence. Perhaps if you try hard, with the right help, you will learn how to use both.
March 29, 2010 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
The same criticism applies to liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, whatever. Most people are far less focused on political issues than the wonks and misfits who post to political sites. The point is that those Tea Partyers who ARE focused on politics are at least as informed as their ideological opponents.
Take your own advice and get an education...and stop trying to talk down to your betters. It just makes you look stupid.
March 29, 2010 10:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
What does this have to do with me. I didn't even read anything you wrote until now. I'd read some of Sleeper's crap and jumped to the end.
"The point is that those Tea Partyers who ARE focused on politics are at least as informed as their ideological opponents."
What can you say to that? The teabaggers love Palin as they loved Bush. From tragedy to farce.
I fear you only as much as I fear the stupidity of the human race."
------
Glenn Reynolds smells a politically-motivated conspiracy.
THE TIMING APPEARS CONVENIENT: FBI stages domestic raids.
So does American Power.
Hey, is the administration taking after Christian militias to get in good with CAIR and the neo-communist left?
Dan Riehl finds something about the terrorists to praise.
Just three days ago, members of the group were assisting LE in a rescue search. Must be some really evil people there, what?
Classical Values sees nothing illegal going on.
Last time I looked, wanting to start a civil war (insane as it is) was not a crime.
You can hear echoes of “black helicopters” and “Ruby Ridge” and “Waco” in Confederate Yankee’s lament.
I question the wisdom of using such heavy forces (including armored vehicles and helicopters according to witness reports), when light, fast and quiet raids would have been at least as effective. More than the timing, I question the leadership.
And Roy Edroso flagged this reader’s comment at NRO.
We have to take a stand against creeping totalitarianism. I’ll take the risk that the regime will somehow get the NRO donation list and use it to round up the freedom-loving counterrevolutionaries.
Compare these reactions with the comments at Free Republic and you’ll find absolutely no discernible differences.
They’re all Freepers now.
----
March 30, 2010 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
March 30, 2010 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Since I've responded to many of the comments above that merit a response (and to a few that don't), I'll close with an observation about this thread:
My post above is only 550 words long because I wrote it as a footnote to an old, wearisome debate. I wrote it because a few recent columns, like Frank Rich's, are reviving a counter-productive liberal way of dealing with Tea Partiers and other enraged protesters. So I said, in effect, "Liberals, in cases like health-care reform, should let race go and respond differently to the protesters -- even when some of them are trying to make their protests 'racial'."
It's sadly telling that that simple reminder prompted a deluge of more than 150 comments proving that liberals CAN'T let race go even when they need to.
A few posts below this one is another that I did two days earlier, on religion in politics -- mentioning the Catholic Church scandals and the danger of the Israeli religious right -- that is much more substantive and consequential for our political crisis. As of now, it has received a grand total of 12 comments.
I'd hate to think that readers of this site are missing some swift, powerful undercurrents that are driving the crisis because they're too stuck in the racial default position to notice them. But, sadly it's not surprising; it's why I wrote two books on the subject that few of the commenters above have read.
March 30, 2010 2:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rich was right. Sleeper's sensible. I don't have to choose between them and I won't.
March 30, 2010 5:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I oversimplified Sleeper's argument, I read too quickly.
He overplays his hand, that's all. The fear of demographic change is racist, the reasons behind it are often economic, Better to fight racism by undermining it. But Gingrich compared health care legislation to the civil rights act and it makes no sense not to respond which is why Rich deserved a short paragraph in answer and that's all.
In Israel the fear of demographic change is just as racist, and based not based in economics. It's based on a memory of living nightmare but it's still racism and defended with racist logic by self-described liberals there and here.
Israeli Jews want to live in a Jewish state, and their nativism is defended as morality, never mind how they came to own the land the live on and how many are camped in limbo around it.
Racism as racism is an issue that is not dealt with well. It needs to be dealt with both indirectly and head on.
March 30, 2010 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Given two millenia of pogroms capped by the Holocaust I agree the Jewish people have a right to a Jewish State. And in Palestine.
But not necessarily in every inch of Biblical Palestine.
March 30, 2010 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given that that state was the result of the expulsion of extant population, no, the Jews have no "right" to an ethnocracy on that land.
Outside the Rhineland Jews have no more right to an ethnically pure homeland than Germans or the rest of us. Why weren't 750,000 Germans shipped to Austria in 1946?
Most Israelis want the arabs to leave as a good percentage of Germans want the Turks to go. The Turks have 40 years in Germany. The Palestinians are Jews who never left.
It's the 21st century and I'm a multi-ethnic product of a multi-ethnic state. I will not defend any other as ideal and certainly not as liberal or modern. And I feel something more than indifference to those who sense a an imperative to mate within their tribe. I'm suspicious.
Zionism in the middle east is a horrendous crime. Israel is a state founded on racism still defending itself through racial, racist, ideology. "A Jewish State" by definition can not be a democratic one. The only way to mitigate that crime is to dissolve the state which in its existence is the opposite of everything this country stands for. Zionist moderates are the intellectual and moral equivalent of the middling European right.
The most powerful country in the history of the planet is a country of half-breeds and mutts.
You don't like it, get out.
March 30, 2010 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ Spider
In your last comment addressed to me, you wrote: “The same criticism applies to liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, whatever.” Therefore, you have conceded my original point that not many Tea Partiers read either Frank Rich or the New York Times. That supports my view of your problems with logic and evidence – unless you always knew that my original point was correct, but you hoped to mislead readers of this thread with your initial response.
Oddly enough, it did not take long to demonstrate the problems with your argument. Perhaps that is the reason you consistently turn to name calling, you realize that you have nothing else to work with.
March 30, 2010 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's the matter with you?
The argument on this thread has been that Tea Party people are less informed and more insular than liberals and progressives. They are only if you compare liberal wonks to ordinary Tea Party people. Otherwise they're not.
That's been the thrust of my argument all along - for example in my Cranky George reply to Ellen. It's a simple argument...so why the fuck can't you understand it?
March 31, 2010 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ Spider
I am amused at your belief that you can unilaterally declare what this thread is about. My initial comments were adderred to Jim Sleeper's points, which is a legitimate.
You responded with a false statement, caused by either a problem with your thinking (a difficulty with logic and a misunderstanding of what constitutes evidence) or simple dishonesty (claiming evidence supports your position when it does not).
Similarly, your "Cranky George " reply only defends statements made by Cranky George. You never made any broader claims about other "informed" Tea partiers.
Nevertheless, you once again made an assertion without evidence which you expect to be accepted without objection. It may impress your friends, but it will not impress many others.
March 31, 2010 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should have said "An argument on this thread" instead of "the argument on this thread". But if you don't wish to understand, no amount of clarification can force you to.
March 31, 2010 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
You responded with a false statement, caused by either a problem with your thinking (a difficulty with logic and a misunderstanding of what constitutes evidence) or simple dishonesty (claiming evidence supports your position when it does not).
Divorce Attorneys New York City
February 14, 2011 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
problem with your thinking (a difficulty with logic and a misunderstanding of what constitutes evidence) or simple dishonesty (claiming evidence supports your position when it does not).
desperate housewives
February 24, 2011 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it is very unethical to call out a particular culture group as he has done.
degree in sports
March 12, 2011 7:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
false statement, caused by either a problem with your thinking (a difficulty with logic and a misunderstanding of what constitutes evidence) or simple dishonesty (claiming evidence supports your position when it does not).criminal justice masters
March 20, 2011 6:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is wrong with these people. No wonder people stop watching the network. The political bias is extremely blatant as well. There is nothing good about them. CBS is definitly the best network.
casino en ligne
March 24, 2011 2:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
its good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource.
online doctorate degree
nursing degree
March 29, 2011 5:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for this very useful information.
online university
phd degree
March 29, 2011 5:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for sharing. i really appreciate it that you shared with us such a informative post..
work experience degree
March 29, 2011 5:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Its good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource.
healthcare administration
March 29, 2011 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll still advise you to borrow one of the books in the Positive Discipline series by Jane Nelsen from the library. You will learn how to address situations like the one you describe.
auto insurance companies
April 1, 2011 7:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I really like following your blog as the articles are so simple to read and follow. Excellent. Please keep up the good work. Thanks a lot!
penny auctions
April 4, 2011 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
While snowboarding has been a source of style and swagger since its inception, skiing is slowly rekindling its fame thanks to professionals who risk it all for the love of the sport.
masters of special education
April 6, 2011 7:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. auto insurance quotes online
April 7, 2011 6:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practice perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice. buy insurance Mohandas Gandhi submit articles
April 7, 2011 7:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten. online games to play for free John F. Kennedy imobiliare
April 7, 2011 7:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a fantastic website and I can not recommend you guys enough. Full of useful resource and great layout very easy on the eyes. Please do keep up this great work. fat burning furnace scam
April 7, 2011 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Post is nicely written and it contains many good things for me. I am glad to find your impressive way of writing the post. Now it become easy for me to understand and implement the concept. Thanks for sharing the post.
Riverside Self Storage
April 11, 2011 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very interesting article. Content has been written in very nice manner. I enjoy reading this kind of stuff. Thanks for sharing good knowledge.
The Krup Law Group
April 15, 2011 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very interesting article. Content has been written in very nice manner. I enjoy reading this kind of stuff. Thanks for sharing good knowledge.
text messages
April 16, 2011 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll still advise you to borrow one of the books in the Positive Discipline series by Jane Nelsen from the library. You will learn how to address situations like the one you describe.
NY bankruptcy lawyer
April 17, 2011 2:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
It really helps your mind and body. If people have not done you need to.
humankind
April 20, 2011 4:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
auto transport, car shipping, car transport, car transportation, vehicle shipping, auto transport.
May 1, 2011 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
auto transport, car shipping, car transport, car transportation, vehicle shipping, auto transport.
May 1, 2011 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink