Bob Herbert (9/25/07)

The Ugly Side of the GOP

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

In Clarendon, NC, a letter was recently mailed to residents saying “a friend has recommended that I reach out to you about a problem that you may be having but may not be aware of.”  Signed “A Clarendon Neighbor,” it made a novel argument: the intention to vote for Barack Obama may be a sign of latent white supremacy.

 

The letter goes on to say:

 

Racism comes in many forms, and there is a significant possibility that your sponsorship of Senator Obama is really an obsessive compulsion to prove to yourself, and to others, that you are not a racist. Have you looked within yourself and examined your motives?

 

… Isn’t making a big deal out of Obama’s skin color just another form of racism?

Unfortunately, Senator Obama and his team have approached this question in a very cynical way. Can anyone really brand former President Bill Clinton a racist? After all he had done for Black people? Well, the Obama campaign did. Can anyone accuse the Rev. Jesse Jackson of being a racist against Blacks? The Obama campaign almost did.

You should be absolutely certain that you are not being carried over to the voting booth upon a guilt trip. You should take this opportunity to look deeply within yourself and ask, “Why did I fall for Obama? Why am I, after all that we have accomplished on racial issues, still feeling guilty? Am I an unconscious racist? Am I any better than those who pretend not to stare at an inter-racial couple?”

I’m sorry to tell you that voting for Obama does not absolve you of racism, it may even confirm it.

 

I think this is a novel entry into the annals of voter suppression: don’t let your white guilt drive you out of your home and into the polling booth…

 

News of the letter, and a scan of the hard-copy original, was first posted on The Grove Project on Wednesday, 10/1.  That same day, it was pasted into a comment at StopDogWhistleRacism.com.  Is it going viral?

 

If you have seen this message, please let me know by leaving a comment here.  Thanks.

In the research that led up to The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips helped to orchestrate the development of a Southern Strategy to exploit white resentment of the Civil Rights Movement.  Here is an excellent New York Times profile of Phillips from May 1970:  Nixon’s Southern Strategy ‘It’s All in the Charts’

The highlight, for present purposes, is this:

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are.

Crossposted at StopDogWhistleRacism.com