Sunday, October 16, 2011

The current face of racism in Republican politics

The fact that we currently have an African American president and the flavor-of-the-month candidate for the Republican nomination is African American deserves note. For all Cain's faults, there is some modicum of success in the reality of his life and candidacy.

But the truth is that the ugly face of racism has simply changed course these days. Leonard Pitts does a wonderful job today of describing that.

Modern social conservatives, in my experience, do not hate black people en masse. To the contrary, there are two kinds of blacks they love. The first is those, like [Condoleezza] Rice, who are mainly mute on the subject of race, seldom so impolite as to say or do anything that might remind people they are black. The second is those who will engage on race, but only to lecture other blacks for their failures as conservatives conceive them. And that, friends and neighbors, is Herman Cain all over...

One of the least-discussed impacts of the black experience in America is its emotional toll. African Americans were psychologically maimed by this country, the expression of which can still be seen in the visceral self-loathing that afflicts too many.

Meaning the black child who equates doing well in school with “acting white.” Meaning the famous black man who bleaches his skin. Meaning the famous black woman who rationalizes her use of a certain soul-killing racial epithet. Meaning Herman Cain.

The dis-ease of racism continues to affect us all - black and white. Some of us work to overcome it. Self-loathing is a sure sign that Herman Cain has not. That is exactly what conservatives love about him.

3 comments:

  1. And here I was thinking that for republicants,blacks,women were just interchangeable.We had Hillary and they unleashed Sarah. We had Obama and they gave us Michael Steele.Republicants actually ran a black man in Chicago named Isaac Hayes because us dumb black folk might not know the real Mr. Hayes had passed.Besides we all look alike.
    Has anyone other than me noticed how much Cain looks like Clarence Thomas??? LOL

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, don't you just know that a uterus or a little melanin is all it takes. That they believe that is the biggest insult.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I see merit to Mr. Pitts' identification of the Repubs favourite blacks, because the identification shows what I think is their inability to see beneath the surface.

    In addition to RS' ideas above, IMO, Repubs' actions also show that they have no original ideas (somewhat in the nature of Willard following PBO around earlier in the year), and they are, I'm sorry, very simplistic in their thinking. If we do something, they try to ape it, because after all, all theirs has to do is look like ours to be taken seriously by the media. As well as RS' examples, look at the Jobs bill. They had more than 10 months to craft something, but they wait till the AJA is presented then cobble a few pages together, slap a name on the cover, hold a press conference and believe they are in business. Come to think of it, didn't they pull a similar scenario with their health care proposal? Sadly, instead of calling them out for an apparent lack of seriousness in the business of governing, the media facilitate their behaviour.

    ReplyDelete

Why Christian nationalists fear freedom

For years now a lot of us have been trying to understand why white evangelical voters remain so loyal to Donald Trump. I believe that the an...