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A Dialogue on Race With President Clinton

What absolute silliness.
If you look at every comment looking for racism, you'll find it. You can spin every word someone says into a racial construct if you want. That's what the Obama campaign has done. Bill calls Obama's stance on Iraq a "fairy tale" and that's a racial comment, because the Obama campaign deems it so. Hillary says -- correctly -- that the civil rights legislation of the 1960s would not have been enacted without Lyndon Johnson, that Rev. King's speeches were not enough, that it take a politician to ge thngs accomplished in Washington, and that's not only a racial comment, it's racism. Bill says -- correctly -- Jesse Jackson won SC in 1984, and that's not only a racial comment, it's racism.
The Obama campaign made this election about race, because they did not reign in the surrogates. If there is a divide in the party, it's because the Obama campaign -- and its surrogates and supporters -- have villified the Clintons to the point where they have to swing back.
It is fair game to question a junior senator's, four years removed from the Ill state senate, qualifications and experience for the presidency, just as it is fair to questions hers. That's not racsim -- that's fair debate. But the Obama campaing and its loud supporters have famed the election about race, which will be enough to win the primary.
It won't fly in the GE, because most of American whites don't want to her about how racist they are, and they will see an Obama presidency as 4 years of hearing how racist they are.
Obama's campaign has constantly said they did not want to make the election about race. That's what they should have done -- ignored racism if they saw, shrugged off questions about Clinton's comments and focused on the big picture of winning in November. But they couldn't stop themselves (oops, racial gaff about .. something) and it's going to cost us the election.

There is a rumor that Harold Ickes is "whispering" the danger of wright to the Supers. If true, couldn't this backfire?

It is all they have left & with the underlying racism in this country, they may have found a firewall that works. This should terrify us all.

You probably won't get much traction. Most Clinton supporters have decided that the race-baiting comments from the Clinton's are actually the fault of Obama. Not that he actually called out all their comments as race-baiting, but in their reality, he did.

Those people think that the race-baiting I've documented is all in my head. They say bigoted things, then act huffy when I call them out on it, and tell me that I'm being sensitive. That's a classic racist tack. But once again, there's a lot of revised history here.

As I keep pounding, these race-baiting tactics of the Clinton's didn't start with South Carolina. That was just the first time it was blatant and the news ran with it. It had been going on for the entire month previous to that. It had been happening all last summer. Of course, they were nothing new then. Bill Clinton used race-baiting tactics in his '92 run and those same tactics were being used again last year.

As for this "first black president" crap. Please stop repeating that. The first time I heard it, I cringed and I've been denouncing that sentiment ever since. Bill Clinton is not black and has not ever done anything for black people (beside raise incarceration numbers). That's just an odd myth perpetuated by the media and regurgitated by the uninformed.

Clintons are willing to use racism against Obama. It isn't in the open, but anybody political gets it. The question one must ask is "would Obama use such a negative force in society to win the election?" Many people understand that he would not, hence are voting for him.

Thanks for sticking up for the honor of stereotypical, beer-drinking white unemployed steelworkers.

"Beware of the pat on the back.It just might, hold ya back."- Smiling Faces "The Undisputed Truth

Thanks, jcd. Excellent post. I appreciate it very, very much.

Yeah, thanks for the great post, jcd. I couldn't agree more.

I have no idea whether the Clintons are "racist" in a sense of subjectively hating or fearing black people -- and I don't care. (Frankly, it seems apparent that GW Bush isn't "racist" in that sense, either -- in fact, he appointed more black people to cabinet and other high administrative positions than the Clinton administration did. But that wouldn't have persuaded me to vote for him.)

But if the Clintons are running a campaign on the theme that "white voters [Latino voters, Asian voters or whoever] are too prejudiced to vote for a black man," they're working to make that statement true. And that is bad for the Democratic Party, bad for African-Americans, and bad for America. That's why I'm so glad their strategy is failing.

I'm sorry to say your argument falls apart, just like Sirota's article does.

See, Sirota has to manipulate the state demographic data to make his little graph work according to his theory, so it's a flawed argument that doesn't follow the actual facts. (For one thing, he must "erase" the "Latino factor" in order to discuss the black-white "racial divide" in this country. Sure, that makes sense.) He also lumps implausible states like Ohio and Oklahoma together (along with Massachusetts), calling them alike ("geographically diverse" were Sirota's words). Since you live in OH (and I used to myself), you know it is nothing like OK or MA: politically, geographically, demographically.

You have not proven by your own theory that the Clintons are racists. You call their "racism" a "strategy," to use on the unemployed drunk to reap power for themselves. This "racist strategy" of theirs, you think, is worse than the unemployed drunk's unapologetically public racism. You don't say how it's worse, however. We're just supposed to go along with that.

But besides that, you are really making a "class" argument here, not a "race" argument. Like the white drunk on the barstool, neither white Clinton comes from the monied class.

Yet to you, the Clintons are different from the barstool drunk by becoming politicians (which, to you, elevates them into the old-fashioned "capitalist" class). They then exploit the racist "ideology" of the last 40 years (which includes "language" in the form of "race-baiting," I think) to get the Youngstown drunk to vote Hillary Clinton into power.

You don't say why the drunk votes for Clinton (instead of McCain, seeing as how his father voted for Reagan), but we have to assume you meant to explain that he is both a Democrat and he won't vote for a black guy because someone recently reminded him the black guy was Black. (I want to know how the racist drunk forgot that the black guy was black. Racists don't normally need reminding of such things.)

You don't say quite how racist ideology is "still deeply embedded in the American labor system and so in American society," what with unions and all. All we know is it has something to do with "big-money corporate interests."

In reality, however, the Clintons are the guy on the barstool. That's what Toni Morrison meant by calling Bill Clinton the first black president: She meant Bill is white trash. And like blacks, a white-trash man is not allowed to be president because he isn't of the privileged class of whites. Morrison predicted Bill would be run out of town like a dog by the privileged white men who didn't want him there. And that's exactly what happened:

"No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and--who knows?--maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us."

You claim that because the Clintons have money and power, they are now the guy who owns the brewery (who is a racist because he has money and power). But they are not the richest politicians in Washington.

Also, the Clintons are arguably not overt racists, not now and not ever in the past. Not like the drunk on the barstool and not like our ancestors who wrote the racist laws and not like the old-fashioned self-serving capitalists are. Somehow the Clintons are aligned with the racist elites, yet they do not live their lives as racists, as the other characters in your tale do.

This is important. Why? Probably because it means they are not racists at all.

I'm sorry, but you have a lot more work to do to convince me otherwise.

My opinion is....if the superdupers give the nomination to Clinton even though Obama has won most delegates, because they think he cannot win the General, he should run anyway as an Independent.

Great post. You nailed Billary for what they are: Pure Race-baiters. People kill me trying to say that the Clintons themselves aren't racist. If you're willing to use Dogwhistle Racial Politics against a member of your own party, you're WORSE than the GOP, because the GOP never pretended to be Black Folks' Friends.

The pair of ads used in Texas first convinced me of the strategy afoot. First, the 3am ad. Subliminal message: "black man is dangerous." Then, the has-not-held-a-hearing-on-Afganistan-yet ad. Subliminal message: "black man is lazy."

Obama has responded to all this with dignity and truth.

His speech: Both blacks and whites need to come together to defeat our common enemies. This is the one and only path to the real change this country so desperately needs.

But how to bring the barstool "racists" on board? I'll leave that to you, dear jcd. And I do believe it can be done.

I'm a little late to the fray and a little disorganized this morning (on my way to Cape Town), but to back you up jcd, look up the history of segregation. Segregation as a legal tactic didn't start with the end of reconstruction, it started with a (and this is from memory, so correct me if I'm wrong) law in Louisiana separating black train cars from white train cars, which forms the basis of Plessy v Ferguson.

The interesting thing is that the first segregated institution in the South, who I think we unfairly blame as the CAUSE of racism in this country, were the Reconstruction Public Schools set up by the Union Army because all or most northern states had segregated public schools and it was widely socially held that since non-whites weren't going to possibly be able to do as well as whites that you shouldn't hold back white students from succeeding at a faster rate.

Anyway, to get back to how this relates to your post, after the 1892 elections and the Populist party winning a mess of votes from poor whites and blacks together, there were mentions of a "back-room deal" between those parties in power and the Populists to never use the black vote against one another in future elections, and then all of the sudden segregation became popular.

Obviously I didn't quote anything here and this is off the top of my head, but it's out there.

Point is, you're absolutely right, the worst racism is the racism which comes from the power in shaping the system.

Awesome! So true. Racism isn't a personality trait. It's a dominance strategy, albeit one that can become entrenched. I have experienced racism from women who were competing for attention from men, from people who were trying to prove their intelligence, and from people who were trying to get money from me. It's pretty funny since a lot of the time they pick the wrong race since my race is pretty ambiguous non-white; i.e. Anti-Semitism and I'm not Jewish. The worst was my old boss who was cheating on his Organic certification and sought to discredit me in the community so that no one would ever believe me if I chose to rat him out.

A racist is called that because racism is their weapon of choice. Ditto for sexist & etc. Doesn't have to be ignorance that causes the choice. Even worse if it's an educated choice.

And the Clinton "race-baiting"...well, they didn't have to say the things they said, in that way...They're masters of parsing, they know what their statements suggested. It could have been a fight on the issues, but then Hillary would be farther behind now than she is. At the beginning of the nom race she stood on a stage with Obama, Richardson, and said "anyone who thinks that racism in America is over is dead wrong!" but as soon as she started losing they just wanted to subtly start highlighting his race. It was the political equivalent of the Victorian ladies' strategy of asking a guest of whom they were jealous to sit on a sofa that clashed with the color of her dress to unflattering effect. Except with much larger implications.

They just rocked the boat a teeny little bit. Probably they were counting on Obama to get scared and clam up on the issue, but what they got was just the opposite. Awesome.