Colour remains a political taboo in US
Monday, August 25, 2008
ON A short flight to New York recently, I was sitting behind two white, well-dressed twentysomethings chattering loudly about going to clubs and travel plans and the possibility of living in New Jersey. Then came the question: "So who are you voting for?" "I was for Hillary, but now... I'm kind of undecided," volunteered the first woman. "Are you a Democrat?" asked the second. "Yeah. But I think I might go with McCain. It's just that, well, I don't know." Her voice dropped. I leant forward to hear. "You kind of hate to say it aloud, but..." Her voice dropped again, lost in the roar of the jet engines, and I missed whatever came next.
Let's start with this concession: I have no idea what that young woman actually said. In a perfect world, I suppose that would be the end of the story and I would go back to minding my own business. In the context of contemporary political discourse, however, it did cross my mind that, if this conversation was presented on one of those "finish the sentence" cultural-literacy tests, then pretty much every American, of whatever creed, colour, or class, would have exactly the same guess as to how the woman completed her thought.
There's some consensus, in other words, about the one thing in America we really "hate to say" aloud. Yet by refraining from saying audibly that-which-must-not-be-spoken, was the young woman's political choice rendered rational, neutral, pure? Conversely, if I were to spell it out here, would I be the one accused of "playing the race card"? Barack Obama predicted this phenomenon and attempted to expose it to the anodyne of common sense: "They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"
The not altogether surprising backlash from John McCain's campaign is a deflection, an expression of deep discomfort. The reflexive accusation that Obama was playing the race card has a certain resemblance to the juvenile retort one gets when the science teacher tries to explain the human reproductive system: "Oh! He said a dirty word!" In this way, the opportunity for thoughtful public analysis sinks, once again, below the sound of the audible. Yet the fear of race rolls on, pantomimed in palpably influential and consequential ways.
At the same time the civil rights movement has given us a moral conscience that was not as prevalent when The Birth of a Nation was made. Today it's fair to say that the overwhelming majority of white Americans "hate to say it aloud" because they also hate to think of themselves as racists.
Yet the tendency to turn the commitment to racial liberalism into sheer denial is strong. "I don't see race" becomes "I don't see racism". While some of us are listening to the soothing tones of National Public Radio, a far larger audience is listening to the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh singing about subterranean fears of "Barack, the magic Negro", or to shock jocks cackling about "jigaboos". Not that any of them mean it in a racist way. Hey, lighten up. Don't you have a sense of humour? Then there are the very real disparities that burden the lives of the majority of blacks, people of colour and the poor in this country: from the still unrepaired wake of Hurricane Katrina to the greater infant mortality rate and lesser life span, to near double-digit rates of unemployment, to the fact that blacks in New York are eight times more likely than whites to be stopped for marijuana possession, to disproportionately high rates of foreclosures and homelessness among blacks, Native Americans and Latinos, to the almost complete resegregation of schools across the land, to a war on drugs so shockingly racialised and so aggressively executed that our rates of incarceration place us first in the world.
We rejoice in the warm symbolism of interracial bliss, particularly in the idealised and thoroughly mythic sphere of celebrity existence. At the same time, there is a terrible ambivalence on the ground. Does one really want "the race card" living next door, or being your boss? Do you really want your child marrying outside his race? I've had conversations with white friends who are rattled when a black pupil has bested their child in the class rankings and can't let go of the feeling that the mere presence of blacks in the school must be bringing down the test scores.
Similarly, it's interesting to review the evolution of media commentary, from TV to the blogosphere, trying to fit the thoroughly unfamiliar Obama into familiar boxes. For a while, he was depicted as not having any "racial baggage". Then, in the blink of an eye, he was transformed into someone who could be demonised with all the well-practised repertoire of insults reserved for the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan and armed revolutionaries.
Obama's comeback, his eloquent speech about race, showed that he wasn't exactly the same person, not by any means. So in yet another twist, he is now so uppity he needs bringing down, defamed as too famous, categorised as uncategorisable, displaced as unplaceable. Yet the truth is that more is on the record about every step of Obama's life than possibly any candidate on the planet, and so this particular brand of demonisation has been accomplished by the insinuations of erasure.
If you took away his "pretty words", he'd be nothing. If you took away his race, he'd be nothing. If only he didn't have a brain, he'd be nothing, nothing, nothing. It's a circular, nonsensical mantra - magical thinking, wrapped in the fiction of "but really, I never see race". This kind of denial masquerading as colour-blind idealism cannot be our compass at this exciting and potentially transformative moment.
Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University and a regular columnist for the Nation magazine
Observer
Let's start with this concession: I have no idea what that young woman actually said. In a perfect world, I suppose that would be the end of the story and I would go back to minding my own business. In the context of contemporary political discourse, however, it did cross my mind that, if this conversation was presented on one of those "finish the sentence" cultural-literacy tests, then pretty much every American, of whatever creed, colour, or class, would have exactly the same guess as to how the woman completed her thought.
There's some consensus, in other words, about the one thing in America we really "hate to say" aloud. Yet by refraining from saying audibly that-which-must-not-be-spoken, was the young woman's political choice rendered rational, neutral, pure? Conversely, if I were to spell it out here, would I be the one accused of "playing the race card"? Barack Obama predicted this phenomenon and attempted to expose it to the anodyne of common sense: "They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"
The not altogether surprising backlash from John McCain's campaign is a deflection, an expression of deep discomfort. The reflexive accusation that Obama was playing the race card has a certain resemblance to the juvenile retort one gets when the science teacher tries to explain the human reproductive system: "Oh! He said a dirty word!" In this way, the opportunity for thoughtful public analysis sinks, once again, below the sound of the audible. Yet the fear of race rolls on, pantomimed in palpably influential and consequential ways.
At the same time the civil rights movement has given us a moral conscience that was not as prevalent when The Birth of a Nation was made. Today it's fair to say that the overwhelming majority of white Americans "hate to say it aloud" because they also hate to think of themselves as racists.
Yet the tendency to turn the commitment to racial liberalism into sheer denial is strong. "I don't see race" becomes "I don't see racism". While some of us are listening to the soothing tones of National Public Radio, a far larger audience is listening to the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh singing about subterranean fears of "Barack, the magic Negro", or to shock jocks cackling about "jigaboos". Not that any of them mean it in a racist way. Hey, lighten up. Don't you have a sense of humour? Then there are the very real disparities that burden the lives of the majority of blacks, people of colour and the poor in this country: from the still unrepaired wake of Hurricane Katrina to the greater infant mortality rate and lesser life span, to near double-digit rates of unemployment, to the fact that blacks in New York are eight times more likely than whites to be stopped for marijuana possession, to disproportionately high rates of foreclosures and homelessness among blacks, Native Americans and Latinos, to the almost complete resegregation of schools across the land, to a war on drugs so shockingly racialised and so aggressively executed that our rates of incarceration place us first in the world.
We rejoice in the warm symbolism of interracial bliss, particularly in the idealised and thoroughly mythic sphere of celebrity existence. At the same time, there is a terrible ambivalence on the ground. Does one really want "the race card" living next door, or being your boss? Do you really want your child marrying outside his race? I've had conversations with white friends who are rattled when a black pupil has bested their child in the class rankings and can't let go of the feeling that the mere presence of blacks in the school must be bringing down the test scores.
Similarly, it's interesting to review the evolution of media commentary, from TV to the blogosphere, trying to fit the thoroughly unfamiliar Obama into familiar boxes. For a while, he was depicted as not having any "racial baggage". Then, in the blink of an eye, he was transformed into someone who could be demonised with all the well-practised repertoire of insults reserved for the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan and armed revolutionaries.
Obama's comeback, his eloquent speech about race, showed that he wasn't exactly the same person, not by any means. So in yet another twist, he is now so uppity he needs bringing down, defamed as too famous, categorised as uncategorisable, displaced as unplaceable. Yet the truth is that more is on the record about every step of Obama's life than possibly any candidate on the planet, and so this particular brand of demonisation has been accomplished by the insinuations of erasure.
If you took away his "pretty words", he'd be nothing. If you took away his race, he'd be nothing. If only he didn't have a brain, he'd be nothing, nothing, nothing. It's a circular, nonsensical mantra - magical thinking, wrapped in the fiction of "but really, I never see race". This kind of denial masquerading as colour-blind idealism cannot be our compass at this exciting and potentially transformative moment.
Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University and a regular columnist for the Nation magazine
Observer
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