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The Roots of Symbolic Racism II: Lee Atwater, 1981
Bob Herbert (9/25/07)
Quoting Lee Atwater from an interview with Alexander Lamis given in 1981:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.
Crossposted at StopDogWhistleRacism.com
Comments (2)
Anecdote from a friend in the CA schools:
School custodian told her she would have voted for Hillary but won't vote for Obama; she is scared that unruly Sect 8 residents in her neighborhood will be riled up and get more destructive with African-American in the White House. Absolutely floored my teacher friend, who had no idea such dynamic might exist.
October 3, 2008 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ugh. In a related expectations game, I think I read on the white supremacist website Stormfront that the neo-nazi types are gleeful over the recruiting opportunities they believe an Obama presidency will bring their way.
Good to see you're still here, Tom! I hope to take a more active role again after the election and the site revamp (I mean, here I am now, but I'm kind of shilling a product, I guess).
October 3, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
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