Some friends and I have been
discussing an opinion column from the Washington
Post on Facebook on the context of the recent events in Ferguson, MO.
The author’s argument that racism is the context of the death of young Michael
Brown and the grand jury’s absolution of his killer this week seems to this observer
to be rather obvious.
And yet, as Gunnar Myrdal
observed nearly 70 years ago in his landmark study An American Dilemma: The
Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, racism is America’s original sin, an
existential stain on our national character and a powerful element in our
nation’s psyche. In a nation that prides itself on being the “home of the free
and the land of the brave,” racism serves as a limitation if not refutation of
our vaunted freedom (with liberty and justice for whom?) and a festering sore
of denial that belies our self-congratulatory bravery.
Many Headed Hydra
Racism is a hydra with many
heads. Some of the more obvious ones have been cut off. We don't see signs that
read "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" in restaurants
anymore that were common in my youth in Central Florida, code language for
Whites Only. And we don't see white and colored waiting rooms at the bus
station and white and colored restrooms and water fountains. Those more obvious
manifestations of racism were long ago dealt with through legislation and court
decisions.
But the less obvious heads
of the hydra are still alive and even more toxic than ever. Our schools are
actually more segregated than in the mid-1960s when court ordered desegregation
dismantled dual school systems. This de facto resegregation has been
accomplished by virtue of the combination of test-driven grading of schools and
diversion of public moneys to private and charter schools with selective
admissions.
Race also remains the
primary correlate to poverty and the determinant of who recovered from the
ongoing recession and who got left behind. Race figures largely in voter
suppression laws and gerrymandered redistricting effectively shutting people of
color out of any meaningful role in electoral politics. This virtually assures
explosions of rage like that of Ferguson.
These aspects of race are
subtle. They are the refutations of the self-congratulatory persona that
Americans wish to maintain that we have somehow dealt with our race problem.
They have deep roots that run back 400 years to the Middle Passage and the
chattel slavery that awaited those who survived it. And their ongoing presence
in our culture is insured largely by the intentional denial of those of us who
refuse to recognize racism where it exists and, even more powerfully, in the
unconscious racism that virtually all of us are subject to as products of a
historically racist culture.
As my classmate from
seminary said, "In America, we breathe racist air." We don't have to
like that assessment, in fact we shouldn't, but we must make a good faith
effort to come to grips with it if we value the ongoing existence of the
American experiment.
Unrecognized Racism and the Mixed Race
President
The subtleties of racism are
particularly difficult to see – and thus the most powerful in effect – in the
case of President Obama. The backlash against this mixed race man’s election
was fast and furious. It has also largely been both consciously and
unconsciously racist.
The ongoing non-controversy
about his birth status and his religion were the first indicators of this.
Obama wasn’t a true American because his father was Kenyan (and thus, black). Thus
he couldn’t have been born in America, he must have been born in Africa (and
thus, black). Even the production of his Hawaiian birth certificate failed to
end this non-debate, particularly on the infotainment Fox channel and the echo
chambers of the Limbaughs and Becks of the right wing bubble. (Besides, we all
know Hawaiians aren’t really white).
Moreover, his middle name
was Hussein! That’s a Muslim name (and thus, not white,
here conflated with Christian)! Never mind that his church, a UCC congregation
in Chicago, is quintessentially American, the progeny of the Puritan colonists
of New England. His pastor, outspoken about racism in America, has been branded
everything from a communist to a terrorist precisely because he dares to speak pointedly
about racism (and he’s black!). Thus, Obama must be a Muslim terrorist by association
(and he’s black!).
In all these cases,
Americans perhaps unconsciously conflated notions of being American with being
white and Christian (more specifically Protestant). But this is only the tip of
the iceberg of the many ways race is exploited in talking about Barrack Obama. The
most powerful aspect of racism in constructing Obama in the imaginations of
white Americans is not who he is (because after all, he’s half white like us)
but rather what he represents.
Republican strategies to
exploit race in electoral politics have been thinly veiled since Nixon’s Southern
Strategy of the 1960s and Reagan’s Welfare Queen of the 1980s. Obama was
elected in 2008 on a tide of multicultural and multigenerational diversity.
Obama represents the future of an America which will be minority/majority by
mid-century (Florida should attain that status next year) and thus an America in
which WASP hegemony is no longer the foregone conclusion.
The backlash we saw in the
elections the first of this month reflects the fears of a white America that
sees its dominance slipping away. That’s who came to the polls, in part because
of a highly effective campaign to depress voter turnout in non-white voters
through voter repression laws and the most expensive campaign in history which
pounded the electorate with negative advertising. It was an election in which
the name Obama became an epithet that stood in for Ebola Fever (that African
disease) and illegal immigrants (who aren’t white). In effect, for many
Americans, “Obama” became the socially respectable shorthand for any number of
bogeymen not the least of which was “nigger.”
Unfinished Business
Of course, it is neither
fair nor accurate to suggest that any and all opposition to Barrack Obama is
based in racism, either conscious or unconscious. Like all presidents, he has
made mistakes and while he has the potential to be a far-sighted visionary, he
has too often proven to be a naïve strategist and a lousy politician in a
Washington that has devolved into a Machiavellian free-for-all with little time
for or interest in the common good (What a quaint notion!). Worse yet, his
administration has evinced some of the same suzerainty to Wall Street corporate
interests that defined his predecessor.
It is quite possible to
oppose the President’s politics and not do so solely or even predominately out
of a racist animus, conscious or otherwise. Given the power of the culture
industry to construct both people and their politics, Obama is seen by many to
be liberal even as many of his policies have proven to be quite conservative
(drones pounding countries with which we are not at war, deporter-in-chief of
undocumented immigrants, bailout of Wall Street but not Main Street). In an
electorate which repeatedly reveals itself to be poorly informed consumers waiting
for constructed choices to be provided them rather than well informed
responsible citizens actively engaging the electoral process, it’s not hard to
see how largely meaningless ideological constructions like this could have
staying power.
On the other hand, the construction
of Obama into various caricatures by his opponents has been, from the very
beginning, tinged with a palpable racism. The effectiveness of those
caricatures and their ability to motivate voters by fear is borne out by the
exit polling data of the last election. It is there for those who have ears to
hear, eyes to see and the courage to face the reality.
The question is not whether
racism continues to play a major role in American politics. Rather it is simply
whether we are willing to confront our demons, the sickness of the American
soul that Gunnar Myrdal diagnosed seven decades ago.
The events of Ferguson
suggest the answer is “Not yet.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry
Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
Osceola Campus, University of Central Florida, Kissimmee
If the unexamined
life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious
or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of
value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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