Symbolic Racism

Today BooMan highlighted an interesting op-ed column by a conservative titled Don't call it racism. It ends with this:

One thing that is undeniably true is that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white in a country that is increasingly less so. As the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans has increased in coastal states like California, New York and New Jersey, many white Americans from these regions have moved inland or to the South. For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide.

When I saw that, I had just finished reading Chauncey DeVaga's piece about structural racism.

Because racism has evolved over time from the classic slavery, hood and sheets type known as dominative racism, to the more contemporary "colorblind" variety, the language and theory has had to shift as well. These types of White racism often overlap, and one does not necessarily preclude the other. I would suggest that as we unpack the hostility of the White Right and the Tea Party GOP to President Obama, symbolic racism, and its auxiliary white racial resentment, remain the most revealing and useful frameworks for making sense of the foolishness we are witnessing...

Symbolic racism is based upon the idea that the citizenship of blacks folks is always in question, our hard work suspect, and that we do not embody the intangibles of "Americanness." Moreover, Blacks defy the expectations of the Protestant Work Ethic, are morally suspect, complain too much about racism, and have received "special" benefits that have been denied to white people. This explains why the rhetoric of "take our America back" works so well for Right-wing populist thugs. Black Americans are the very definition of the anti-citizen and are imagined as both perpetually and existentially outside of the American mainstream.

This was the essence of the racism of the "birthers" and it reminded me of one of the most powerful reactions I heard the day after the 2008 election. Whoopi Goldberg talked about how she'd always thought of herself as an American. But finally that day she felt like she could put her suitcase down.

So no Mr. Salam, its quite fair to call a sentiment that denies the "Americanness" of people of color what it is...racist.