This is the insidious beauty of the corrosive approach Lamborn’s Tea Party fellows have to partisan politics. The only thing I am certain of is that Mr. Lamborn has inherited the wind: If he truly did not intend a racist slur flung over the White House fence, his association with those who do, with those who created this evil, has earned him the suspicion that he did. It is not necessarily Mr. Lamborn’s comment that has now branded him a racist in the hearts of millions of American people, it is the evil and insidious political environment his conservative friends helped create. And now he’s stuck with it.
I believe it’s time that America, all of America, white and black,
stopped seeing Barack Obama as a black man. First and foremost
because Obama is biracial. His life is as middle-American apple
pie as any Norman Rockwell painting. If they replaced every inch
of the president’s skin with clear silicone, in word and deed
and thought he would be not unlike any of your neighbors, any of
your friends. This is what makes racism aimed at this president
so insidious: it really does have absolutely nothing whatsoever
to do with the man’s character or how “American” he is or is
not. It begins and ends with the color of his skin. Beyond that,
he’s a man raised in Kansas by white people.
There has been more time wasted, more money spent, more tempers
flared, more feelings hurt, more divisions caused, over the
literal pigment in this man’s skin than virtually any other
issue facing America today. Almost none of it has been
constructive. The literal color of the president’s skin has, in
fact, been a terrible distraction for the nation. White
conservatives have never liked and never respected liberal
Democrat presidents. They disliked JFK (and attacked his
religion) and despised Bill Clinton. But the
venom targeting Barack Obama descends through a cloud of racial
suspicion. Critics of the president have to tip-toe around,
according this liberal Democrat a disproportionate level of
propriety not because he’s president but because he’s a black
president. This, in fact, delegitimizes Obama because we’re not
allowing the political process to work the way it’s supposed to.
It is not only the Republicans who treat Obama as “The Other,”
it is the black community holding this man in a unique place of
honor and demanding the political right—who would be going after
Hillary Clinton at least as hard if not much, much harder—treat
our president differently. We are demanding the right handle
Obama with kid gloves if not salad tongs because their usual
slate of hard-nosed political attacks can and routinely are
interpreted as racist slurs.
Are they? Certainly some are. Nixon had a big nose. Nixon’s nose
(and Nixon’s lying) were the main hooks his critics used to
caricature him. And they called him “Nixon” or “Tricky Dick.”
They called Clinton, “Slick Willie.” That’s the name of the game.
President Obama’s most notable physical attribute are his ears.
The man has huge ears. But it is not the president’s ears his
critics caricature in their foment, but his race. Some of the
most creative thinking going n in America is over on the
political right, where there is a concerted effort to use
Obama’s race as their political hook for caricaturing him. This
must be done carefully, like juggling live grenades. The trick
is to do it and not get caught. If your timing is off, this
strategy will destroy you politically.
Fair Game? The president's religion, painting him as "The Other.".
The right has gotten very good at playing this particular game
and, in so doing, dividing America. Dividing America is what the
right does. Democrats, stupidly, love plurality, discourse and
free thought. Conservatives trend toward hegemony: a robust,
manifold theme and set of guidelines they follow in lock-step. A
political religion. The ferocious unity of conservatism makes
the right a powerful machine to be reckoned with. Their message
is disciplined, their soldiers are dedicated, and they routinely
overrun the Elysian fields of pot-smoking, gay-marrying,
do-nothing liberals who can’t organize to save their lives.
In this effort, the president’s race has been, thus far, the big
hammer to divide and sort out the American voting public. By
using a semi racist voice with semi racist tones
falling just a hair short of being overtly racist, conservatives
have forged this genius safe zone where they are in a perpetual
crouch, underdogs, indignant at having been falsely accused.
“You’re calling me a racist? Me? How dare you! I’m just
criticizing the president’s policies! I’m damned if I do and
damned if I don’t!” The brilliance and power of this approach is
it unites white people in a common experience of reflexive anger
at having been so accused—even if no one is actually accusing
them. But they behave like a suspect class, now venting anger
and hostility not only toward the president but the president’s
supporters if not blacks in general. Many conservative political
tactics have been clearly and objectively racist. They know it.
But rather than call conservative leaders and candidates to
account, the first instinct is cowardice: to embrace the lie
that the conservative fringe is not advocating racism or that
mainstream Republicans aren’t turning a blind eye and deaf ear
to this heinous practice.
If you want to make fun of the president’s ears, that’s fine.
The president’s ears are fair game. But nobody in
politics—liberal or conservative—plays fair these days. Racism
in America has never been more popular, more energized, than
now, where it is packaged and sold as a product.
|
It is in this environment that Congressman Doug Lamborn regrettably uttered the words “Tar Baby.” As a career politician, he should be keenly aware of the racially-charged atmosphere created by his friends in the Tea Party caucus. This lends reasonable suspicion that Mr. Lamborn’s remark was a deliberate political ploy intend- |
ed to do what it has done: get
us talking about him and raise his political profile. But the
clumsiness with which the remark was delivered suggested either
hesitation on Mr. Lamborn’s part or a genuine off-the-cuff free
association, which is troubling on two levels: (1) that, in
reaching for a metaphor, his mind went to things black or, (2)
in the run-up to a deliberate entry into the racist slur arena,
he’d had second thoughts.
We will never know, for certain, which it was. This is the
insidious beauty of the corrosive approach Lamborn’s Tea Party
fellows have to partisan politics. The only thing I am certain
of is that Mr. Lamborn has inherited the wind: If he truly did
not intend a racist slur flung over the White House fence, his
association with those who do, with those who created this evil,
has earned him the suspicion that he did. It is not necessarily
Mr. Lamborn’s comment that has now branded him a racist in the
hearts of millions of American people, it is the evil and
insidious political environment his conservative friends helped
create.
And now he’s stuck with it. CONTINUED
Christopher J. Priest
21 August 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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