Whom the Attacks on Obama Really Hurt
The more head-explodingly ridiculous the wingnut freakazoid attacks on President Obama get, the easier it is to dismiss them as the frustrated ravings of desperate losers enraged by Obama's success.
But editors at The Nation remind us that the real victims of anti-Obama racism don't live in the White House.
An ugly streak of racism stained the right wing's summer of hate. It is plain to see in the posters of Barack Obama dressed as an African witch doctor above the slogan Obamacare: Coming Soon to a Clinic Near You, and it is evident in conspiracy theories that question Obama's place of birth and presidential legitimacy. But did it prompt Congressman Joe Wilson to scream, "You lie!" when Obama said his healthcare plan would not cover illegal immigrants? Is it manifested in the paranoid rants against "death panels" and "Obama-style socialism"?
Of course it is.
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But racism also expresses itself as policy, from legal segregation to states' rights, and if racism does not constitute the totality of antigovernment populism, it is not incidental to it.
.... In the end, what matters is that after the outburst, Senator Max Baucus, at the request of the White House, tightened existing bars on illegal immigrants' buying health coverage in his proposed insurance exchange and established an immigration-status verification requirement that could make it harder for legal immigrants to get healthcare. That policy result is racist, even if no one involved in crafting it harbors a hatred of Latinos; it is also xenophobic, financially inefficient and a public health nightmare.
Whatever agendas lie behind the right wing's summer smears, one discernibly consistent goal has been to shrink the power of people of color and the organizations that represent them and to tar the pursuit of racial justice as anti-American, foreign and unconstitutional. It was not so much Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark that made her a target of the right; it was her moderate support for considering race as one factor in legal decisions, a principle Chief Justice John Roberts and right-wing legal groups like the Committee for Justice, which led the assault on Sotomayor, have done much to extinguish.
Likewise, although it was Van Jones's signature on a 9/11 Truth petition that brought him down, it was his work with Color of Change, an organization that "attempts to strengthen Black America's voice," that placed him in the cross hairs of Glenn Beck, whose Fox show has lost seventy-one advertisers in the wake of a Color of Change-led boycott. And although the witch hunt against ACORN has recently reached all the way to Congress, which voted to deny the group funding in the wake of a manufactured scandal (see Christopher Hayes, page 4), it was years ago that Karl Rove put ACORN on the GOP's enemies list. Why? Because ACORN's registration drives increase turnout of poor, black and brown voters.
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It might be impossible to divine the prejudice nursed by those mounting the recent attacks, but it is possible, and indeed urgent, to unmask and confront their motives and to stand strong for the rights of people of color to exercise and expand their power.
Read the whole thing.
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1 comment:
On this point you're wrong:
"Senator Max Baucus, at the request of the White House, tightened existing bars on illegal immigrants' buying health coverage in his proposed insurance exchange and established an immigration-status verification requirement that could make it harder for legal immigrants to get healthcare. That policy result is racist, even if no one involved in crafting it harbors a hatred of Latinos; ... "
In the strictest sense of the word - wrong. Excluding those in commission of a felony is appropriate policy. Because the nature of your criticism is an over-simplified knee-jerk sound bight, Any further discussion of my disagreement should be addressed within the totality of the issue.
Firstly: Illegals will still get medical attention at E.R.'s; your argument that this is inefficient falls on deaf ears. They get it. They also get deported; immediately, if they waive trial. No waiver; tried in the jurisdiction where apprehended, and if convicted, deported, in lieu of incarceration while appealing. It is not the function of any government to facilitate a felony. Period.
Now let's address the real problem - immigration. It's time to limit it. Not entirely because 'they' take jobs away from good ole white boyz, but because we've expatriated sooooo many jobs that 10% unemployment is now structural and we lack the social network to manage that high a level of unemployment. We don't need to import more structural unemployment. Total employment is not dynamic; each alien is unemployed as it crosses the International Boundary.
As for your premise that the crux of opposition toO'Bama is racial prejudice --- "Duhhhhhh". I was reared in the deep South and if there is one thing I learned, it was "how to treat the nigras". I never did as my parents and both sets of grandparents bade me do. But I learned. The racism is so prevalent it's disgusting. It's far greater than President Carter admits. It's gotten down to the streets and playing fields.
I see it on the football field 3 or 4 times each week; Personal Fouls, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Intimidation, Taunting, Grandiose Displays, Illegal Blocks, Interference and minor infractions to get advantage. It's terrible: cheap shots, late hits, chicken fighting, contact behind the ball, etc. The lack of respect begins with the parents' attitude towards minorities and their place in our society.
Your argument on the larger issue - racism - is poetically correct and practically accurate. This nation and its culture has a great deal of maturing to do.
In the Manchu tradition of the 9th Regiment, "Keep up the Fire"!
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