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White racism—or right reason?
In an article about incidents of anti-black racism that Obama campaign volunteers said they ran into in Pennsylvania and Indiana, the Washington Post reports:
Here’s the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”
That’s the worst? “I’ll never vote for a black person” is the worst of the white racism the Obama workers encountered? Then this supposed racism would appear not to be racism at all, but a defensible generalization based on experience. Considering that at the time of the Indiana primary campaign, the BEST that black America has to offer, the benign, eloquent, high-glossed Barack Obama-god, America’s transracial messiah, had just been revealed as a life-long follower of one of the vilest America haters and white haters that anyone’s ever seen in this country, would it not be reasonable for your average white person to conclude that anti-white racism and America hatred are endemic to and broadly accepted in the black community, and therefore that he’ll never vote for a black for president? And if this is a reasonable thing for your average white person to say, it’s not an immoral thing for him to say, since to think reasonably is to think morally; and if it’s not an immoral thing for him to say, it’s not a racist thing for him to say, since racism is by definition immoral.
Of course I’m not suggesting that all or even most black people actively identify with the radical leftist America-hatred of Jeremiah Wright, as detailed by Stanley Kurtz in a devastating article. But when the debonair symbol of “post-racial” America, the man whose claim to fame was that he seemed to be the very opposite of the racial resentment mongers, the Sharptons and the Jacksons, suddenly turns out to be a card carrying member of that part of the black community that proudly declares itself to be permanently hostile to America and whites, can you blame whites for thinking that if this is true of the BEST of black America, it’s got to be substantially true of the core of black America, and that it would be irresponsible in the extreme to allow any member of that hostile tribe to become the leader of this country?
I would make an exception for figures like Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, and even the occasionally brilliant but regrettably madcap Alan Keyes. But such men have virtually zero support among blacks. They are no more representative of the black community than I am of the Jewish community. Given the realities described above, it is a reasonable though rebuttable presumption that any black candidate for president who has the broad support of the black community is at least implicitly tied to black anti-American animus and will, if elected president, whether deliberately or not, help liberate and empower such animus.
- end of initial entry -
LA writes:
This blog entry could be filed under: “How Obama’s candidacy has set back racial relations in America by a generation.”
LA writes:
In this entry I give further reasons why white people have good reasons for opposing Obama.
Adela G. writes:
LA writes:
This blog entry could be filed under: “How Obama’s candidacy has set back racial relations in America by a generation.”
True. But it has also promoted racial understanding of blacks among whites. I leave it to the reader to determine whether that understanding is likely to increase or decrease racial harmony.
LA replies:
When I said that, I was being partly ironic, referring back to the blog article which began:
Commenting on Jeremiah Wright’s speech to the NAACP last night, Victor Davis Hanson, the liberal universalist with a gun, declares that “the Obama campaign and its appendages have set back racial relations a generation.”
Yay!
Make that two generations, to circa 1960, and we’d really have something to cheer about.
I went on to list some of the ways in which racial relations were far better in 1960 than at present.
Ken Hechtman writes:
Read the lead paragraphs again. Hearing “I’ll never vote for a black person” wasn’t the worst that happened to the campaign as a whole. It was the worst that happened to one particular volunteer.
For the record, I don’t think that’s a big deal. It’s a free country. People can vote any way they want for any reason they want. But the other incidents mentioned I would take seriously. I’ve worked on campaigns where our office got trashed and our volunteers got threatening phone calls. I take that stuff very seriously.
Also note that some of the quotes, the ones that aren’t true or reasonable (“I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office.” “He’s a half-breed and a Muslim. How can you trust that?”) come directly from anonymous email barrages that are suspected but not proven to come from Hillary’s campaign. These emails go far beyond what you’re saying is “reasonable” to believe. They claim Obama is a secret Muslim, that Farrakhan will be his vice-president, that he won’t salute the flag or stand for the national anthem, that he wants to change the national anthem, etc.
LA replies:
Mr. Hechtman is incorrect. What’s being described in the first three pragraphs of the article is not the worst of one person’s experience, but the worst of what happened to the entire team of Obama volunteers as they campaigned in “at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot” in Muncie, Indiana. Read it again:
Here’s the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”
So we’re told that here is “the worst.” Then we’re told about about the entire effort of the Obama team in Muncie, where they ran into all kinds of unspecified bad things, characterized as a “horrible response.” And then just one example of this horrible response is given: “I’ll never vote for a black person.” According to what the story itself is telling us, this was “worst” that was experienced by Obama team in Muncie. And this was the culmination of the three first paragraphs of the story. Evidentlly the reporter, Kevin Merida, believed that this was the strongest and most representative example of the supposed racism that he could find.
Second, I was not commenting on all the reported incidents in the Post story, only on that one incident.
But what about those incidents? Let’s go through the rest the article, with my comments bolded and bracketed:
For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed—and unreported—this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president. [Note that there are no specifics in this paragraph. Does anyone believe that if such shocking behavior occurred, it would only come out a week after the primary, and only in vague generalities?]
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!” [There’s the only second specific statement quoted. And why wasn’t it put at the beginning of the article? Because America is filled with low-level people who say all kinds of things and they are not representative of anything. Also Mr. Hechtman mentioned e-mails, which I don’t see any e-mails referenced in the article. However, nasty e-mails are so common. What about all the e-mails Michelle Malkin has received calling her a Filipina whore”? Was the Washington Post bent out of shape about that? ]
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across “a lot of racism” when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: “White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.”
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive. [So, deep, deep into the article, the reporter admits that even according to Obama officials, the supposed racism, which is touted and played up in the headline and throughout the article, was not representative and the incidents were isolated.]
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: “After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama’s view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest.” [No we find this out. Yet the first half of the article has all the whining about unspecified incidents.]
Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers. [Now, it that’s true, that’s a more serious incident. But why did the reporter wait so long to bring it out?]
Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had “a lot of doors slammed” in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? “I was very shocked at first,” Murrell said. “Then again, I wasn’t, because we have a lot of racism here.”
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: “Hamas votes BHO” and “We don’t cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright.” [What’s racist about these messages? Hamas does support Obama, and Obama’s pastor is a vicious anti-American.]
Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. “I thought, this is a big deal.” But he was told Obama campaign officials didn’t want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.
“The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming,” he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.
Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. [Right, like when he described his grandmother as a “typical white person” who has an uncontrollable negative response to nonwhite people on the street.] He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don’t fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president….
For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. “We’ve grown up in a different world,” says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions—state director, regional field director, field organizer—that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.
Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn’t exactly Obama country. There would be others.
In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: “Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don’t know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can’t convince me that some of that didn’t rub off on him.
“No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office.”
Obama’s campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate’s supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.
Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. “I trust him,” Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama’s face on Seifert’s T-shirt and said: “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”
* * *
The article goes on with a general discussion about the race issue. But as for the incidents of racism that are the main subject of the piece, what do they add up to? One anonymous caller saying “Hang that darky from a tree!” A couple of people saying they would never vote for a black for president. Some drivers yelling the “N” word at black Obama volunteers on the side of a highway. (A story I tend to doubt, but we’ll include it.) Someone saying that whites look after whites, and blacks look after blacks. And that’s it. Given the racial, ethnic, and political animosities in this country, given the extreme language that is common today, in their totality these incidents (apart from the “N” word incident, if it happened), do not seem like a big deal. As for “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”, given that we have a black man born of a African Muslim father running for president of the United States, the news is not that such statements have been made, but that so few of them have been made.
Ken Hechtman replies:
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: “Hamas votes BHO” and “We don’t cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright.” [What’s racist about these messages? Hamas does support Obama, and Obama’s pastor is a vicious anti-American.]
You know better than this.
If a sentiment like this is expressed in a strongly-worded letter to the editor, you can engage it on its merits.
If it’s expressed in spraypaint on your front window at 2 AM, you’re not in a debate anymore.
LA replies:
1. Your implication is correct that I should have been more judgmental and pointed out that this was wrongful vandalism.
2. Your statement that this was racist is baseless. By your logic, if the office of a black Communist was vandalized and the front window spray-painted, “Commie bastard,” that would be a racist act.
You know better than this.
Ken H. replies:
I didn’t say it was racist. I don’t care if it was racist or not. It’s an attack on the campaign one way or the other.
If it was motivated by something other than racism, that doesn’t make it any less bad.
LA replies:
Come on. You were specifically challenging my statement, “What’s racist about this”?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 13, 2008 10:32 PM | Send
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