Click for Radio Podcast: Degrees of Separation ‑ Still the Same Old Racism (6:41)
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Transcript:
Conservatism was so much simpler when I was a kid. Conservatives just didn’t much like black people.
Some were outspoken about it. Black people had all sorts of new privileges. Too many. They could vote. In fact, they could vote for the first time in some parts of the country. Lynching was now against the law. Segregation was still pretty strong, but it was technically against the law. Same with discrimination in housing and hiring. It was still going on, but it was against the law.
What more did they want?
The fact that, with the leadership of a Democratic President, some form of civil rights had become the law enraged enough conservatives that a migration of sorts had already begun. Lyndon Johnson remarked privately that new laws respecting the rights of black people would ensure that Democrats would lose the South for many decades. Conservatives left the Democratic party and became Republicans.
Even back then, outright racism, the kind spoken out loud, was confined to a vocal minority. Most commonly, the some-of-my-best-friends denial was a preface to each expression white resentment.
There was talk of whites organizing to counter newly enfranchised black voters.
Later, as overt racism became associated with pure evil, conservatives began using euphemisms. The wink and nod story was that black folks were too dim to vote for their own interests. So, someone was telling them how to vote. Organizing against black voters evolved into organizing against block voters. No kidding, that’s what some politicians campaigned on. Stand up against the “block vote.”
After a while, the “block vote” became too identifiable. Political language changed again. The “urban vote” came to represent for conservatives the enemy of all that was good and American and White.
In New York State, a liberal Republican – liberal by virtue of supporting civil rights – pushed for urban renewal. A conservative Republican legislature refused to allow bonds to fund Nelson Rockefeller’s hopes for building up New York State’s cities. After all, hadn’t urban folks already been given enough, what with civil rights laws?
Then Rockefeller enraged conservatives by issuing unofficial “moral bonds.” They weren’t backed by law, but investors were told the state government – specifically Governor Rockefeller – would regard repayment with interest as a sacred moral obligation.
Conservatives regarded that end run as one more unearned benefit given to black people – excuse me, urban people: a minority that had already been provided the gifts of voting rights, anti-discrimination laws, and anti-lynching protection by an overly generous government.
As time went on, spoken-out-loud racism became too much for polite company. It was no longer something to be voiced at your grandmother’s book and coffee club. Racism became a matter of degrees of separation.
The effort to maintain mental caution and verbal self-editing produced a kind of active resentment among conservatives.
Bill Clinton and, later on, Barack Obama came to be hated. That they do not have the same skin color is obvious. What they have shared is that conservatives regarded both with fear and loathing. Conservatives suspected President Clinton, and now suspect President Obama, of harboring sympathy for what one conservative calls “America’s pampered minorities.”
This is a character flaw that some black public conservatives do not have. This makes such politicians especially attractive to some conservative voters. These candidates do not sympathize with black people, and they offer a modern substitute for yesterday’s worn out cliché of some-of-my-best-friends: I may get laughed at for some-of-my-best-friends, but I can proudly get by with I-voted-for-Herman-Cain. So don’t call me racist.
Still the charge of racism, even the implication, still stings. It produces endless clarifications and occasional anger.
When Congressman Paul Ryan talked about the faltering work ethic of urban youth, we all paid attention. He later clarified. He had misspoken. He was not singling out African American young people. He should have applied his criticism to rural culture as well.
Recently, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) suggested that some Republican obstruction of President Obama was motivated by Obama’s race. “For some, it’s just we don’t want anything good to happen under this President because he’s the wrong color.” A Republican colleague went ballistic, charging Rockefeller with “playing the race card.”
“Please, don’t assume, don’t make implications of what I’m thinking and what I would really support,” said Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). You have no idea.”
Rockefeller stood by his criticism. “I actually do. God help you.”
“No senator,” said Johnson, “God help you for implying I’m a racist.”
It is an understandable reaction, one shared by most conservatives, in or out of government.
Soon after that, conservatives in the House of Representatives considered keeping up a pilot project that had been helping feed little kids from families struggling to get out of poverty. The project was an experiment to figure out how to feed hungry kids during summer months when they are out of school. It was pointed at “urban and rural areas.”
Hard to argue with a program designed so explicitly to help both white and non-white little kids in off-school months: “urban and rural.”
The House passed the bill. But only after the program was redirected by the Republican majority.
Only rural kids will be allowed to participate.
It’s possible that some brave soul in the House or Senate will offer an honest appraisal of Republican motivations at explicitly excluding urban kids.
That honest voice will provoke more angry indignation from Senator Johnson.
If you get my drift.