Race as a Cudgel, Cont'd
Adam Serwer and Jamelle Bouie disagree with my recent post on racism and the Tea Party movement as analyzed by Charles Blow.
Mr. Blow attended a Tea Party event in Texas, witnessed speeches by a black doctor, a Vietnamese immigrant, and a Hispanic immigrant, and wrote the following:
I found the imagery surreal and a bit sad: the minorities trying desperately to prove that they were “one of the good ones”; the organizers trying desperately to resolve any racial guilt among the crowd. The message was clear: How could we be intolerant if these multicolored faces feel the same way we do?
And later in the same piece:
Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused.
In response, I wrote:
In any context except a Tea Party, the vast majority of liberal writers would praise the act of highlighting the voices of “people of color” even if they aren’t particularly representative of a crowd or corporation or university class…
It’s this kind of piece that causes people on the right to think that on matters of race, they’re damned if they do, and they’re damned if they don’t — if they don’t make efforts to include non-whites they’re unenlightened propagators of privilege, and if they do make those efforts they’re the cynical managers of a minstrel show, but either way, race is used as a cudgel to discredit them in a way that would never be applied to a political movement on the left.
In his critique of my post, Mr. Serwer writes:
There are cultural and historical reasons for that, which Friedersdorf doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge.
There are, in fact, cultural and historical reasons for everything. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge all the culture and history related to race, politics, conservatism, and political opportunism. They don’t change the fact that in this case, race is unfairly used “as a cudgel to discredit them in a way that would never be applied to a political movement on the left.”
Mr. Serwer goes on:
More to the point though, Blow’s reaction, which I think was unfair, was a visceral one related to seeing people of color engage in what Bouie refers to as the “elaborate tribal rituals” necessary for them to gain acceptance in a conservative setting.
Yes, Mr. Blow was writing about his visceral reactions. But did he actually see the minorities at that rally engage in “elaborate tribal rituals”? I’d appreciate it if Mr. Serwer could specify what these elaborate tribal rituals were, because on reading the column, it seems to me that these people just stood on a stage, held a microphone, and complained about liberals.
Mr. Serwer continues:
This isn’t mere conjecture on Blow’s part. Think about Republican Congressional Candidate Corey Poitier calling Obama “buckwheat,” or Michael Steele assuring Republicans that Obama only won because he’s black, or Marco Rubio insisting the president is an idiot savant who just knows how to read from a teleprompter. Is it any surprise that black conservatives feel like they have to engage in baroque gestures of solidarity, considering that merely being a black stranger in a conservative crowd puts one at risk of being mistaken for a member of ACORN?
Actually, today’s populist conservatives basically demand “baroque gestures of solidarity” from white people too. If Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin were black, Mr. Serwer would be pointing to the former’s “let’s double Gitmo” comment and the latter’s whole oeuvre as evidence that movement conservatism rewards only those minorities who offer baroque gestures of solidarity.
Mr. Serwer writes:
The disturbing implication of these events is that many conservatives use skin color as a shorthand for identifying those who are “on their team,” and Friedersdorf seems uninterested in addressing this. White liberals can’t really do exactly this because the Democratic Party is much more diverse, but liberals also often make problematic assumptions about black people and their politics. If you think the old tribal instincts can’t be rekindled on the left, I would direct you to some of the liberal reactions to Prop 8’s passage in California. No party or ideology has a monopoly on racism, but let’s not pretend that there isn’t anything implicitly racial or problematic about a movement that claims the mantle of being “real Americans” and just happens to be overwhelmingly white.
Look, I do think some conservatives have a problematic tendency to see minorities as others — and that liberals, for their part, tend to assume that “people of color” must be “on their side” — but the right’s “real Americans” nonsense isn’t about race. Trust me, Sarah Palin is denigrating Ivy League colleges, the richest households in Manhattan, and coastal dwelling white liberals far more than, for example, black folks in Mississippi or Hmong in Wisconsin.
Mr. Serwer writes:
In any case, what conservative Tea Partiers are doing in Blow’s piece is not minstrelsy, which implies an active effort to harm other black people for personal gain by reinforcing long-held black stereotypes. The Tea Partiers of color here are instead trying to signal solidarity with a group of people who are suspicious of them because of their skin tones, and that’s both sad and frustrating.
This presumes that the people at the rally were suspicious of the black, Vietnamese, and Hispanic speakers. Where is the evidence for that? Of course, the three were trying to signal solidarity with the Tea Partiers, but no more than white speakers, or white attendees holding political signs or adorning their cars with bumper stickers or whatever.
In his post, Mr. Bouie writes:
…the “minstrelsy” Blow decries doesn’t flow from the mere presence of minority voices at a conservative rally — which is what Friedersdorf seems to think — it flows from the fact that those voices are forced to engage in elaborate tribal rituals to show the white Tea Partiers that they’re on their side. And that’s precisely because there are so few people of color within the Tea Party Movement, and conservative circles more generally. From what I’ve seen, conservative activists have a habit of categorically defining people of color as ideologically hostile, so that their mere presence isn’t enough to convince organizers or attendants that their sympathies are shared. In turn, this suspicion requires those singular voices of color to “perform” and show their loyalty, in order to gain acceptance.
Had the column by Mr. Blow offered evidence for all these assumptions, its problematic elements might have been less egregious. But if we look at what Mr. Blow wrote, there is nothing to suggest that the folks at that Tea Party rally defined minorities as ideologically hostile, or that the minorities were “required” to “perform” to gain acceptance, or that they engaged in “elaborate tribal rituals” — perhaps there are “historical and cultural reasons” that cause Mr. Bouie to assume that all these things happened, but in fact, all we’re told is that “the speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea Party leader was God.”
Mr. Serwer writes:
Where Blow is reductive, Friedersdorf is oblivious. Friedersdorf writes that he is certain that the Tea Partiers Blow criticizes are “interesting people with honestly held convictions that are understandable outgrowths of their reason and experience.” Of course. But why is part of their experience having to try so hard to convince their ideological cohorts they’re on the same side? Instead of asking this question, Friedersdorf whines that conservatives are held to a different standard on issues of race than liberals, which is a funny question to ask during Confederate History Month.
Again, this assumption that the minorities at that rally had to “try so hard” to persuade ideological fellows they were on the same side. I am hardly blind to Confederate History Month, or the subset of Southern conservatives whose ideas about race in America are quite wrongheaded. I just think its nonsense to invoke those conservatives in order to defend a New York Times column that Mr. Serwer himself calls “unfair” and “reductive,” or to call someone oblivious because they don’t include in every blog post on race a paragraph that says, “To be sure, it is understandable for a writer to pen a wrongheaded, reductive column attacking conservatives as minstrel show managers given the fact that some other conservatives who are completely uninvolved in this particular controversy hold problematic views on the subject of race.”
You are simply taking the wrong POV on this.
Racial minorities can be part of the Tea Party….as long as they are christians.
“the speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea Party leader was God.”
nonono….sowwy Mr.Vietmanese Immigrant Person……the Tea Party Leader is Jesus.
The Unified Force Theory of Tea Party Jesus.
:)
— matoko_chan · Apr 19, 09:18 PM · #
1. “nonono….sowwy Mr.Vietmanese Immigrant Person” Not funny. Offensive.
2. I hate to break it to you, m_c, but repeating the same point over and over again will not convert non-believers. Maybe you should get out more and change your meds…..
3. For a bunch of what you view as Jesus freaks, there certainly are a lot of quasi-libertarian and Ayn Rand-referencing posters and signs at these events.
— JC39 · Apr 19, 10:42 PM · #
Not saying that……I am saying the unifying Tea Party identity is self-described christian.
The Tea Party is verified 83% christian at least which is >> 70% christian identification in American.
MY hypothesis is that nearly all Tea Party attendees will self-describe as christian, that the Tea Party movement is homogeneously christian.
Basically I just to watch you pivot from screaming “we are not racists the liberals are” to screaming “we are not christians the liberals are”.
Funtimes.
<3
— matoko_chan · Apr 19, 11:26 PM · #
I ask you one question, matoko_chan. What if the TPM is right?
What if out-of-control government spending is really going to cause a terminal financial breakdown for the USA and other OECD economies? Like the BIS warns?
What if the end result will have to be massively increased taxes for everyone, and large-scale government defaults on obligations? Like Greece. Or Iceland. Or Latvia. What it the collapse is already starting in the weaker sovereign states?
Do the middle class (white, christian, non-white, non-christian) have a right to argue their interests or not?
You attribute to racism and religion, to what is seen by the middle class, as an existential threat to their economic survival.
What if they are right, and the USA (not to mention the global financial system) cannot survive on the present course?
— Keid A · Apr 20, 12:41 AM · #
…then taxcuts and supply side economics aren’t going to help, are they Spock?
Conservative ideology drove this country off an economic cliff.
They could admit that and propose fresh solutions to the unregulated invisible hand of the market punching working families in the face.
But they don’t …..they propose the same bubble/bust survival-of-the-greediest that they delivered the last time they were in power.
— matoko_chan · Apr 20, 12:48 AM · #
What is the mechanism by which that would be the case? Please answer without recourse to models only sophisticated enough to model the finances of a small family.
— Chet · Apr 20, 01:07 AM · #
Chet, I refer you to the BIS report. (pdf file)
— Keid A · Apr 20, 01:29 AM · #
matoko,
Conservative ideology drove this country off an economic cliff
I have spent the last couple of years reading intensely about the GFC, and I have nowhere near the certainty that you do that I understand what happened.
I can see many independent factors that contributed.
Part of it, undoubtedly, would be lack of financial supervision in the context of a credit currency.
But there are many other factors.
There are the credit-pumping roles played by the two major central banks, the Fed and the PBoC. The Fed reflating after every bubble pops, the PBoC holding down the RMB in the pursuit of its mad, unsustainable mercantilist schemes.
There is the influence of the oil-price spike, that may or may not be the first sign of peak-oil
Part of it is long-term distortions in US credit markets, institutions like Fannie and Freddie that gave unreasonable credence to the “Shadow Banking System”. Institutional and taxation policies that favored real estate speculation over other, more productive forms of investment.
There is a very important effect that we are in the middle of a huge transfer of economic power from the West to Asia. This is a market-driven phenomenon that seems to be the end phase of a cycle that started 500-years ago: Wealth transferred to the West after the enlightenment gave the West unprecedented global power; but it is now returning to Asia as scientific modernity spreads there. I don’t believe this can be or should be stopped.
— Keid A · Apr 20, 01:53 AM · #
Matoko,
…then taxcuts and supply side economics aren’t going to help, are they Spock?
Probably not.
My advice is the same now as it has always been: Learn Mandarin.
— Keid A · Apr 20, 02:02 AM · #
“Trust me, Sarah Palin is denigrating Ivy League colleges, the richest households in Manhattan, and coastal dwelling white liberals far more than, for example, black folks in Mississippi or Hmong in Wisconsin”
Why exactly do Palin and those Tea Partiers distrust liberals of this type. Only because they are viewed as “favoring” blacks and other minorities (as the NYT poll suggested). If the Tea Partiers could be sure that those ivy league liberals in Manhattan wouldn’t “favor” minorities, in the Tea Party mind they’d be welcomed back into real America. Tea Partiers can’t go to a rally complaining about minorities, and yelling I want my country back. It’s 2010. So they displace their anger on ivy league coastal liberals. To be sure, some of the complaints of the Tea party are real and have basis, but to deny that the broader movement has absolutely nothing to do with race…not likely
— HioCin · Apr 20, 06:12 AM · #
You know I’d be a lot more impressed with the anti-TPM position if they would actually convince me that the TPM is wrong, rather than endless ad hominems about racism, and religion.
What worries me is that sovereign debt default is the next phase of this economic crisis, and hardly anyone in America, except the TPM, is paying any attention to the worsening danger.
Newsflash: OK now the IMF is saying the same thing .
Cool, can we stop obsessing about race and religion now?
— Keid A · Apr 20, 02:47 PM · #
m_c, responding to the multiple erroneous critiques of the TPM is not “pivoting.” Get a dictionary, and look it up.
In my initial comments some days ago about your silly viewpoint, I noted that you are obssessed with identity politics, which includes race and religion. The TPM is motivated by policy issues. As with much of the media, you want to focus on anything but the actual issues – anything like race, religion, age or the kind of clothes they wear.
— JC39 · Apr 20, 02:58 PM · #
Liberals use race as a cudgel against conservatives because they’ve earned the right to do so. It is liberals who have done most of the hard and bloody work advancing equality for minorities in the country, usually over the venomous opposition of conservatives. That’s why they get to wave the bloody shirt.
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 20, 03:05 PM · #
Spare me the “GWB ruined the economy” fantasy…After 9/11 and the Bush tax rebates, our economy hummed along for several years.
Until the Democrats took back control of Congress, that is.
THAT is when the economy started to tank…that’s when gas prices shot through the roof…that is when things really started to go sour.
You can look it up…
GWB + GOP congress = strong growth, low unemployment, prosperity, job creation.
Democrat congress = econonmic shrinkage, high unemployment, job losses, out-of-control debt, foreclosure crisis.
— tomaig · Apr 20, 03:24 PM · #
“Until the Democrats took back control of Congress, that is.”
Oh, for pete’s sake. What did the Democrats actually do in Congress to cause all the trouble all by themselves?
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 20, 03:51 PM · #
“Liberals use race as a cudgel against conservatives because they’ve earned the right to do so.”
Too funny. Is that “liberals” as a group that have earned the right to demonize and to make blanket assertions without regard to any evidence? Or do individual liberals have to personally earn that right? Most liberals I know (under the age of 40) have done nada for civil rights. And by using race in this manner, modern liberals are surrendering any moral authority on the issue.
The entire establishment (GOP and Dem), is responsible for the current economic mess. Except for a few lone voices here and there, neither side proposed policies that would have averted the melt down.
— JC39 · Apr 20, 04:29 PM · #
“Is that “liberals” as a group that have earned the right to demonize and to make blanket assertions without regard to any evidence? Or do individual liberals have to personally earn that right? Most liberals I know (under the age of 40) have done nada for civil rights. And by using race in this manner, modern liberals are surrendering any moral authority on the issue.”
I’m not even going to go into the list of evidence on the subject of conservatism and racism. If somebody needs to read it all again, it’s not going to make any difference to them.
I’m sure most liberals you know have voted for politicians that have at least not actively worked against protecting the civil rights of minorities. That’s more than most conservatives can claim.
And I’d address the whole question of race and “moral authority”, except I can’t stop laughing at the idea of a right winger bringing it up.
Mike
— MBunge · Apr 20, 05:12 PM · #
The problem with the tea party movement as a response to “out-of-control government spending” is that the tea party movement isn’t interested in “stopping out-of-control government spending.” They’re only interested in stopping spending on things they don’t like.
So we get a movement that demonizes illegal immigrants (who, in reality, contribute significantly more in taxes than they receive in government services) and attacks any attempt at providing social welfare, while willfully ignoring or outright supporting the waste of billions and trillions of taxpayer dollars on needless foreign wars and corporate subsidies.
This is why the tea partiers are treated with mockery and contempt.
— Travis Mason-Bushman · Apr 20, 06:42 PM · #
MBunge, I don’t know where JC39 falls on the political spectrum, but I’m not a right-winger and I had much the same reaction as s/he did. The way you phrased your statement makes it sound like you agree that the charges of racism in this case are unjustified — is that correct? If so, how does one “earn the right” to falsely accuse someone of racism? Or are you just saying that it’s understandable?
Seems to me that facile charges of racism are actually detrimental to the fight against racism and thus should be discouraged regardless of who’s on the giving or receiving end.
— kenB · Apr 21, 03:25 AM · #
Part of the problematic relationship between conservatives and race is that conservatives view any charge of racism as facile, especially when a conservative is the one being charged.
To us liberals, it seems like conservatives care far more about not being called racists than they do about almost anything else, like, you know, racism. “Sure, he sent out an email with the First Family’s faces photoshopped onto gorillas, eating watermelons, wearing turbans, drinking malt liquor, all with a caption that called the president a ‘Kenyan Marxo-monkey’, but that doesn’t mean he’s a racist! Some of his best friends are blacks, for god’s sake! How dare you weaken the fight against real racism with these phoney charges.”
You know what else weakens the fight against racism? Pretending like racism doesn’t exist.
“This case”, I guess, means the teabaggers, but again – we already know they’re racists because they’re telling us they are. That guy is the founder of the Tea Party movement, by the way.
— Chet · Apr 21, 05:07 AM · #
“conservatives view any charge of racism as facile, especially when a conservative is the one being charged.” Unsupported generalization.
“conservatives care far more about not being called racists than they do about almost anything else, like, you know, racism.” Unsupported generalization, followed by an entirely made-up scenario.
“That guy is the founder of the Tea Party movement.” You got me here. I didn’t know that is what Dick Armey looks like. Or is that Rick Santelli? Or maybe it’s Zack Christenson or Mark Williams. Or maybe Diana Reimer is having a very bad hair day. Oh, wait, I see that his name is Dale Robertson. Who, exactly, is this “founder” of the Tea Party movement: Ah, I see.
— ROI · Apr 21, 05:37 PM · #
Chet, you hit it on the head. I might be more sympathetic to the idea that tea partiers should not be assumed to have racist tendencies if they didn’t walk about carrying horrifically racist signs. If I share your views about small government and low taxes, and you are holding a sign comparing Obama to an ape, at the very least I’m not going to let you stand anywhere near me. One doesn’t quite get the impression that people with racist signs are reacted to this way at tea party events. To me, that says it all.
— Lulu · Apr 21, 07:53 PM · #
What is disheartening (and minstrelsy) is that the minority participants are so aware of the racism of the rest of their tea party cohorts that they have to speak to their stereotypes and reassure them that they are different from the rest of the people in their ethnic group. If those people of color on the stage really believed that their tea party white cohorts were not racists, they would not feel it necessary to declare their innocence of the stereotypical “sins” of their ethnic group. The black man would not have to say he does not blame racism, the Hispanic would not have to say he had not received any benefits of government programs. They could speak to their beliefs with having to state their special credentials that set them apart in the eyes of their racist audience from the rest of their race.
— Kija · Apr 21, 08:07 PM · #
Not so much “made-up” as conflated from actual incidents. The truth is, you guys get caught doing that stuff all the time.
— Chet · Apr 21, 09:07 PM · #
Conor, are you paying any attention to the Tea Party Movement other than treating this Blow column as something that exists in a vacuum? Have you not noticed that the TPM is 99% white? Have you not noticed that protesters have carried around signs depicting Obama as a monkey or witch doctor (not to mention Hitler)? Have you not noticed that Tea Pary icons like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh routinely denigrate black people? That most Tea Baggers believe Obama is a secret Muslim schooled in Madrassas?
Get off your whiteness, dude. These are racists who can’t stand the idea that a black man is president.
— dubiousraves · Apr 22, 02:42 AM · #
You know Conor…..it is just unbearable to me how wilfully dishonest the conservative intelligentsia has become.
OBVIOUSLY by empirical observation the two sub-populations are DIFFERENT.
Tea Party SUPPORTERS do likely conform to the CNN poll in demographic makeup.
However Tea Party ATTENDEES and ACTIVISTS selfselect for rabid enthusiasm.
Tea Party ATTENDEES are probably 99% non-hispanic cauc and 99% conservative christian or “tea party christian.”
Tea Party christians apparently endorse Palin, DeMint, and the establishment of a theocracy composed of white southern conservative christians.
Surely you are aware of this Conor….you are a bright guy.
Why throw chaff? The only people you are fooling is your low-information (read low-IQ) base.
The media is not misrepresenting tea party attendees.
Neither are Palin or DeMint.
And black citizens, jewish citizens, hispanic citizens, college educated citizens, young citizens, intellectual citizens and elites are going to avoid the the tea party rallies exactly like minorities avoided Weimar rallies.
We aren’t fooled….you can only fool your base anymore.
That is why Goldberg’s book is such a joke.
White christian conservatism has degenerated into religious fascism.
— matoko_chan · Apr 22, 02:34 PM · #
C’mon Conor.
I’m right even if ima rude scene kid that won’t leave you alone.
This is the problem……there are two tea parties.
It’s just that the one that shows up for rallies (and on the terebi) is the Palin/DeMint Christian Fascist Party of the Confederacy……
selfselection by crazy? or selfselection by rage.
you pick.
The reason you conservatives think this might work is that you were able to assimilate libertarians by drugging them with free market fantasies and distributed jesusland federalism.
Don’t be a retard, Conor.
It won’t work this time.
— matoko_chan · Apr 22, 07:04 PM · #