George Will Gets His White On
06/26/07 07:17 AM
In his July 2 Newsweek column, George Will describes George Wallace, notorious segregationist and racist, as having given an "aggrieved minority a voice" during his 1968 presidential run. That aggrieved minority was white racists--whites who could not abide the idea of equal rights for the blacks. He says his "aggrieved minority" was "furious about the '60s tumults."
In that last statement, Will unwittingly encapsulates the conservative mindset when it comes to race. It's sad, really. One can't help but pity them when you consider that all of their race-baiting, all of their contempt for American blacks... it's all about them. It has nothing to do with us. It's about their self-image. They will never forgive Afro-Americans for destroying their idea of themselves as the embodiment of Christian purity, their idea of their Republic as perfect.
To them, our very black faces are a rebuke and a repudiation of all they hold dear. They try desperately, and often unsuccessfully, to hide a hatred for us. A hatred as deep as they come, because it's a hatred against those who, by their very existence, deny them what they most desire--their preferred self-image as "colorblind" and pure in heart. Nevermind history (as blacks are constantly told to do). Our black American skin is a constant reminder that this country contemptuously pissed on its own ideals for most of its history. Our black skin says that we had to fight in the streets to gain what this country's ideals had granted us--by birthright--more than a century earlier. And now, having done that, we have the gall to walk the streets and show those faces that remind them of this country's wrongs--that their beloved self image is a lie. I will quote myself here from "Wake Me From King's Dream:"
Americans have been soothed throughout our history by the refrain that we are an inherently “good” people. We pioneered democratic governance. We delivered during the Second World War. We are a Christian nation, with Christian ideals, and therefore better than other nations. Commemorating the life of Ronald Reagan, Jon Meacham wrote in Newsweek, “Reagan was doing what he did best: making us believe in a vision of America as a beacon of light in a world of darkness, as the home of an essentially brave and good people.” It is for this that many Americans still revere Reagan.
That insistence blends into the historical assertion that America has a god-given destiny to lead. In defending the annexation of the Philippines, U.S. Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in 1900:
… And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and Thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.
In 1954 Free Trader Clarence Randall wrote, “The whole world is throbbing with new life and vitality. It is America’s destiny to lead this new world for the betterment of all mankind.” In 2004 Senator Sam Brownback said, in response to George Bush’s enunciation of his vision for space exploration, “It is America’s destiny to lead – to lead the world in science, technology and space, to lead in economic development and to lead humanity to other worlds.”
This notion is woven throughout American history and Americans react to it with Pavlovian certainty; George Bush wielded it like a lion tamer’s whip during the run-up to the Iraq war. The entire War on Terror is predicated on the good/evil dichotomy he delineated in his State of the Union speech, with Americans on the side of good. Anyone taking a stance against Bush (and thereby America) is evil. Anything the good do in the service of self-preservation is also good. Thus, acts such as torture or secret imprisonment are tolerable, even laudable. These are positions largely associated with self-described political conservatives.
To maintain the idea that a divinely fed spring of goodness informs America’s actions, crimes of hatred simultaneously wending their way through American history must be expunged, ignored, or explained away. In 2007, Republican Virginia state legislator Frank D. Hargrove said that blacks should “get over” slavery. He was speaking against a bill to offer an apology for that state’s slave past. To apologize is to admit wrongdoing. As a nation, America has never officially apologized for enslaving a group of people, or the subsequent denial of those peoples’ human rights. [In 2007, Virginia became the first state to offer its “profound regret” for its role in slavery and Jim Crow.]
Another way to reduce the impact of those crimes on America’s self-image is to insist that they were precipitated by the victim’s inherent inferiority. The book “The Bell Curve” became a cause celebre among conservatives, who greeted its thesis of genetic black inferiority with a sense of glee. “You see,” they practically shouted, “They ARE inferior, and here’s very thick book full of charts and numbers that PROVES it. They deserve second-class status. We are blameless and pure.” The other method is to deny. The Thernstrom’s America in Black and White makes that case.
According to University of North Carolina political scientist James Stimson, Americans label themselves conservative by a two-to-one margin, even when they hold socially liberal positions on the issues. He credits this to acceptance of the term “conservative” as synonymous with positive attributes such as “hard work, strong family life, and patriotism.” The majority of Americans seem to identify with the conservative idea of America, even if they don’t agree with its political policies.
This infiltration of conservative propaganda within even non-conservative American political minds helps prove the resiliency of our human tendencies toward tribal prejudices, particularly when combined with a self-aggrandizing national impulse. Treasured American myths have now been successfully tied to the idea of conservatism. Conservative prejudices, which are now ubiquitous and particularly over-represented on airwaves, on television and in news media, continue to promote, albeit in more respectable form, the ideas more vulgarly represented by the Republican “southern strategy,” which, according to former Republican National Committee Chief Ken Mehlman, helped the Republican party ”benefit politically from racial polarization.” Examples the white tribal impulse in conservatism are innumerable:
• Trent Lott in 2002 praising segregationist Strom Thurmond with the words: “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't of had all these problems over all these years, either.”
• Conservative American Enterprise Institute Fellow Dinesh D’Souza writing in his 2003 book, The End of Racism: "What we need is a long-term strategy that holds the government to a rigorous standard of race neutrality while allowing private actors to be free to discriminate as they wish… individuals and companies would be allowed to discriminate in private transactions such as renting an apartment or hiring for a job… Am I calling for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Actually, yes."
• Ronald Reagan opposed the civil rights act of 1964, a stance he never repudiated.
• In 1980 Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign with a ringing endorsement to “States’ Rights,” well-understood code for resistance to black civil rights, in Philadelphia Mississippi—the place where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered by racist whites in 1964.
• Reagan supported welfare reform with apocryphal stories of full of iconic images of “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks and a wealthy “welfare queen.”
• Ronald Reagan supported tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University, a school that practiced overtly racist policies such as outlawing interracial dating.
• Reagan opposed the 1964 Open Housing Act, which would have barred discrimination in home sales and rentals.
By the time of Reagan, Republicans had learned the art of what Roger Wilkins called “smiling racism:” One day you’re subtly exploiting the murder of civil rights workers to attract racist white southerners—the next day you’re speaking before the Urban League. You oppose anti-discrimination legislations until it becomes constitutionally impossible to do so, and then boast the passage of such legislation under your watch.
I focus on Reagan because he venerated as the quintessential conservative, and, more than any other, introduced the idea of the “American Past Perfect”—the idea that all America had to do to “heal” the wrongs of today, was to return to yesterday. In describing the Reagan narrative, writer Bill Troy broke it into four parts. “The first part,” Troy writes, “tells the sad tale of America in the 1960s and 1970s, a country demoralized… betrayed by its best education and most affluent youth.” According to Troy, “Reagan wanted to confront the legacy of the 1960s.”
Only a blind man or a fool would not acknowledge the civil rights movement as a cornerstone of the 1960s that Reagan wanted to confront. The oft-unspoken “yesterday” to which Reagan promised to return America tacitly included omission of black Americans from equal rights and access; it was, by definition, a yesterday in which white males were the primary voice in every sphere; a yesterday in which there were no doubts as to who constituted the superior race. In short, Reagan ran and won by calling for rejection of the 60s rights movements in favor of an older, more comforting America—at least to his principal constituents: whites.
Reagan is also revered for his “optimism.” “The warm, sunny face that Reagan brought to politics made his conservative philosophy appealing to the broad, middle swath of the electorate,” wrote former Reagan advisor David Gergen. “The Irishman came out as he recalled tales that reminded people of their heritage and tried to inspire them to reclaim it.” In a 1974 speech, Reagan said:
You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage… Call it chauvinistic, but our heritage does set us apart… Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere….
Reagan was the champion of the message that Americans were not typical humans, who composed of good and bad, dark and light, but special—wholly good, and that all we had to do to expose that goodness was reach back to the fundamentals of yesteryear—back, quite obviously, before “the blacks,” and those other 60s upstarts started telling us otherwise.
In that last statement, Will unwittingly encapsulates the conservative mindset when it comes to race. It's sad, really. One can't help but pity them when you consider that all of their race-baiting, all of their contempt for American blacks... it's all about them. It has nothing to do with us. It's about their self-image. They will never forgive Afro-Americans for destroying their idea of themselves as the embodiment of Christian purity, their idea of their Republic as perfect.
To them, our very black faces are a rebuke and a repudiation of all they hold dear. They try desperately, and often unsuccessfully, to hide a hatred for us. A hatred as deep as they come, because it's a hatred against those who, by their very existence, deny them what they most desire--their preferred self-image as "colorblind" and pure in heart. Nevermind history (as blacks are constantly told to do). Our black American skin is a constant reminder that this country contemptuously pissed on its own ideals for most of its history. Our black skin says that we had to fight in the streets to gain what this country's ideals had granted us--by birthright--more than a century earlier. And now, having done that, we have the gall to walk the streets and show those faces that remind them of this country's wrongs--that their beloved self image is a lie. I will quote myself here from "Wake Me From King's Dream:"
Americans have been soothed throughout our history by the refrain that we are an inherently “good” people. We pioneered democratic governance. We delivered during the Second World War. We are a Christian nation, with Christian ideals, and therefore better than other nations. Commemorating the life of Ronald Reagan, Jon Meacham wrote in Newsweek, “Reagan was doing what he did best: making us believe in a vision of America as a beacon of light in a world of darkness, as the home of an essentially brave and good people.” It is for this that many Americans still revere Reagan.
That insistence blends into the historical assertion that America has a god-given destiny to lead. In defending the annexation of the Philippines, U.S. Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in 1900:
… And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and Thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.
In 1954 Free Trader Clarence Randall wrote, “The whole world is throbbing with new life and vitality. It is America’s destiny to lead this new world for the betterment of all mankind.” In 2004 Senator Sam Brownback said, in response to George Bush’s enunciation of his vision for space exploration, “It is America’s destiny to lead – to lead the world in science, technology and space, to lead in economic development and to lead humanity to other worlds.”
This notion is woven throughout American history and Americans react to it with Pavlovian certainty; George Bush wielded it like a lion tamer’s whip during the run-up to the Iraq war. The entire War on Terror is predicated on the good/evil dichotomy he delineated in his State of the Union speech, with Americans on the side of good. Anyone taking a stance against Bush (and thereby America) is evil. Anything the good do in the service of self-preservation is also good. Thus, acts such as torture or secret imprisonment are tolerable, even laudable. These are positions largely associated with self-described political conservatives.
To maintain the idea that a divinely fed spring of goodness informs America’s actions, crimes of hatred simultaneously wending their way through American history must be expunged, ignored, or explained away. In 2007, Republican Virginia state legislator Frank D. Hargrove said that blacks should “get over” slavery. He was speaking against a bill to offer an apology for that state’s slave past. To apologize is to admit wrongdoing. As a nation, America has never officially apologized for enslaving a group of people, or the subsequent denial of those peoples’ human rights. [In 2007, Virginia became the first state to offer its “profound regret” for its role in slavery and Jim Crow.]
Another way to reduce the impact of those crimes on America’s self-image is to insist that they were precipitated by the victim’s inherent inferiority. The book “The Bell Curve” became a cause celebre among conservatives, who greeted its thesis of genetic black inferiority with a sense of glee. “You see,” they practically shouted, “They ARE inferior, and here’s very thick book full of charts and numbers that PROVES it. They deserve second-class status. We are blameless and pure.” The other method is to deny. The Thernstrom’s America in Black and White makes that case.
According to University of North Carolina political scientist James Stimson, Americans label themselves conservative by a two-to-one margin, even when they hold socially liberal positions on the issues. He credits this to acceptance of the term “conservative” as synonymous with positive attributes such as “hard work, strong family life, and patriotism.” The majority of Americans seem to identify with the conservative idea of America, even if they don’t agree with its political policies.
This infiltration of conservative propaganda within even non-conservative American political minds helps prove the resiliency of our human tendencies toward tribal prejudices, particularly when combined with a self-aggrandizing national impulse. Treasured American myths have now been successfully tied to the idea of conservatism. Conservative prejudices, which are now ubiquitous and particularly over-represented on airwaves, on television and in news media, continue to promote, albeit in more respectable form, the ideas more vulgarly represented by the Republican “southern strategy,” which, according to former Republican National Committee Chief Ken Mehlman, helped the Republican party ”benefit politically from racial polarization.” Examples the white tribal impulse in conservatism are innumerable:
• Trent Lott in 2002 praising segregationist Strom Thurmond with the words: “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't of had all these problems over all these years, either.”
• Conservative American Enterprise Institute Fellow Dinesh D’Souza writing in his 2003 book, The End of Racism: "What we need is a long-term strategy that holds the government to a rigorous standard of race neutrality while allowing private actors to be free to discriminate as they wish… individuals and companies would be allowed to discriminate in private transactions such as renting an apartment or hiring for a job… Am I calling for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Actually, yes."
• Ronald Reagan opposed the civil rights act of 1964, a stance he never repudiated.
• In 1980 Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign with a ringing endorsement to “States’ Rights,” well-understood code for resistance to black civil rights, in Philadelphia Mississippi—the place where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered by racist whites in 1964.
• Reagan supported welfare reform with apocryphal stories of full of iconic images of “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks and a wealthy “welfare queen.”
• Ronald Reagan supported tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University, a school that practiced overtly racist policies such as outlawing interracial dating.
• Reagan opposed the 1964 Open Housing Act, which would have barred discrimination in home sales and rentals.
By the time of Reagan, Republicans had learned the art of what Roger Wilkins called “smiling racism:” One day you’re subtly exploiting the murder of civil rights workers to attract racist white southerners—the next day you’re speaking before the Urban League. You oppose anti-discrimination legislations until it becomes constitutionally impossible to do so, and then boast the passage of such legislation under your watch.
I focus on Reagan because he venerated as the quintessential conservative, and, more than any other, introduced the idea of the “American Past Perfect”—the idea that all America had to do to “heal” the wrongs of today, was to return to yesterday. In describing the Reagan narrative, writer Bill Troy broke it into four parts. “The first part,” Troy writes, “tells the sad tale of America in the 1960s and 1970s, a country demoralized… betrayed by its best education and most affluent youth.” According to Troy, “Reagan wanted to confront the legacy of the 1960s.”
Only a blind man or a fool would not acknowledge the civil rights movement as a cornerstone of the 1960s that Reagan wanted to confront. The oft-unspoken “yesterday” to which Reagan promised to return America tacitly included omission of black Americans from equal rights and access; it was, by definition, a yesterday in which white males were the primary voice in every sphere; a yesterday in which there were no doubts as to who constituted the superior race. In short, Reagan ran and won by calling for rejection of the 60s rights movements in favor of an older, more comforting America—at least to his principal constituents: whites.
Reagan is also revered for his “optimism.” “The warm, sunny face that Reagan brought to politics made his conservative philosophy appealing to the broad, middle swath of the electorate,” wrote former Reagan advisor David Gergen. “The Irishman came out as he recalled tales that reminded people of their heritage and tried to inspire them to reclaim it.” In a 1974 speech, Reagan said:
You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage… Call it chauvinistic, but our heritage does set us apart… Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere….
Reagan was the champion of the message that Americans were not typical humans, who composed of good and bad, dark and light, but special—wholly good, and that all we had to do to expose that goodness was reach back to the fundamentals of yesteryear—back, quite obviously, before “the blacks,” and those other 60s upstarts started telling us otherwise.