The New Racisim

I'd like to take as my text for today's sermon an item from the newspaper. Columnist Maureen Dowd was fulminating on a fairly small incident. Seems a person had shouted at President Obama during a speech, "You lie." Dowd reports that she distinctly heard, "You lie, boy." That, she says is clear evidence of racism. It's not that she's basing her tirade on a non-existent subtext which she only, like dogs with whistles I guess, can hear (No, I'm not calling her a dog. Pay attention). It's that she heard a racist slur. Now, if her mind heard the "boy," it's still a little stretch to make it racist, unless -- here's the kicker -- she is inclined to view all comments as racist.
What I get from this is that Dowd, like many people, cannot view Obama as a person. They can only see him as an African-American. Which is racist, isn't it.
I admire President Obama, and I feel for him as he gets sucked into the reality show that is Presidential Politics. On the other hand, I think he has an extra layer of protection around him that former presidents haven't had, and that's the inclination of people like Dowd to view any criticism of him as racist. I've mentioned this before. I call it the Spike Lee defense (You dare criticize my movies you racist?)
It wouldn't be so bad if Dowd were writing for Mother Jones, National Review, or some other rag that has predictable content. It's that she gets coverage for her rants in national syndication. Envy alert here.

Color blindness

I've had a series of interesting (to me anyway) experiences in the past few weeks. It started when, as a result of a class exercise, one of my students came up with a figure of Barack Obama hanging in effigy. It was not, I thought, a tasteful example of what we were dealing with, but beyond that I didn't think much of it. I did suggest that we needed, for fairness sake, all the other figures in the presidential contest to be hanging there too. We needed a McCain effigy, a Palin effigy, a Bush effigy, a Biden effigy, and so on.
It wasn't long before I got my chain yanked. Someone complained about images of lynchings of African-Americans, and as soon as I heard that, I know that I was in the soup (DEPARTMENT OF MIXED METAPHORS).
See, I didn't even think of Obama as an African American. I thought of him as a presidential candidate. Silly, naive me. And it is right that someone should have reminded me of the fact that he is African American and that the US has a woeful history of hanging such people out of hand and turning the whole thing into a picnic. If you don't believe me, google the words "Negro lynching" and see what you come up with. It's grim.
But, that's not my point today. It's that I was really, truly, colorblind. That's what Martin Luther King wanted, and I'm actually proud that I didn't see the African American part of it.
The problem is that people don't want me to be colorblind. Not really. They want me to always keep the memory of the lynchings in the back of my mind, so that "such things won't happen again." They seem to want to keep the sore open.
I'm not sure why this is. For one thing, there is no danger that we'll go back to lynching people. For another, it really gets in the way of the things that King and others were working for. It's a puzzler, and reminds me again how complicated people are, and how little you can trust what they say up front.

Race and the race

Some years back, I remember reading a book by A. Drury, I believe, called Advise and Consent. Memory being the shaky thing that it is, I may have gotten both the author and the title wrong, but it's the thought that counts. Anyway -- one scene in this book was set at a reception for an African diplomat, who showed up in full traditional tribal regalia (This was the 60's, when things like that were cool). Anyway, one of the socialites at the reception remarked to a friend that the African was dignified and clearly intelligent, "Not," she opined, "Like ours."
Shazaam! What an insight. In the imagination of the intelligentsia, the exotic is always preferred to the homegrown. It's somehow, well, somehow, well.....better, don'cha know.
I have remarked before that Barack Obama is an African-American in the truest sense of the word. His father was African, his mother American. His genealogy does not include sons and daughters of slaves. He is outside the herd. He is exotic for this reason.
I'm convinced that this is one of the things that makes him so acceptable to the elites of this country, who are as racist (in a convoluted way) as any Klansman.
I think that this is unfortunate for two reasons:
First, we have many home-grown African-Americans who would make wonderful presidents (my vote goes to Morgan Freeman). Think of the panoply of leaders that the African-American community has generated in the last century, almost any of which would represent the country well (I'll make an exception for Adam Clayton Powell).
Second, it turns out that Barack Obama is really nothing more than a run-of-the-mill politician after all. His record is undistinguished, and he seems to have been a party lap dog for most of his tenure.
Still, he's the president, and more than one party-liner (Truman) has come on strong as president. Here's hoping that Obama does it too.

Veep

Well, it's official. Joseph Motormouth Biden is Obama's vice presidential choice. I don't really have too much to say about his politics -- he's been around long enough to have plenty of experience -- but he's a cheat. Remember what derailed his presidential bid a few years back? Plagiarism. So now we have a disappointed presidential wannabe willing to steal ideas as second banana. That's what I call poetic justice. Let him sit just out of the limelight for eight years and then he's too old for the brass ring (Courtesy of the department of mixed metaphors)
Actually, I've been thinking that Obama should have chosen Condaleezza Rice as his running mate. Think of it. Obama would be balancing the ticket in a number of ways: gender, party affiliation, experience. In addition, and this is the clincher, she'd be able to tell him he was talking like an idiot and not be accused of racism.

Barack's big chance

A racist is someone who attributes a negative characteristic to a person solely on the basis of his or her race. If I note that Coby Bryant is African American and suggest that this might have something to do with his phenomenal ability at basketball, that’s not racist. Is it? Actually, according to the PC folks, it is. It doesn’t matter that the data might bear out my assertion. The very fact that I’ve linked any characteristic and race is enough to get me branded a racist.
So I won’t. What I will do is comment on the persons I consider the real racists: those people who see slurs in everything and believe, deep down inside themselves, that other races can’t defend themselves and that they, the heroes of the hour, have to do it for them.
Case in point. Some people in Utah want to market a sock doll and call it some version of the Obama Doll (I forget the real name). These same people have a version of the doll for John McCain too. Now, the Obama doll isn’t black, it’s a simple red-toed sock doll, the kind you’ve seen a million times. The rub comes when you remember that this sock doll is sometimes a monkey. So, one of our beloved Salt Lake Tribune writers hopped in and started calling the sock manufacturers racist, saying, “They just don’t get it” (That’s a dead giveaway, by the way).
Why is this writer racist? Because she hooks Obama, the sock doll, and monkeys together in her mind. That is, she’s the one who sees the insidious threat when all we see is a funny doll. And she’s the one who has to speak out and protect pore ol’ Barack. She’s the superior mind in her mind. Ergo, racist.
If my reasoning is too subtle for you, consider this: every act of protection is an assertion of superiority. I think Barack Obama is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and I’m willing to give him a little advice. Want to get elected? Buy one of those Obama sock dolls and carry it around with you. Show it to people and tell them you think it’s cute and that you like it much better than the McCain doll.

Hillary's dilemma

I watched the Clinton/Obama debate then listened to the media nitpicking about it. At one time during the debate, Hillary got quite sharp and referred to plagiarism. Is this what it has come to? Plagiarism? An academic hothouse concept that doesn't really exist outside the musty halls of academe? I mean, who really cares? And what does plagiarism mean anyway? It means taking another person's words without giving them credit. Actually, most definitions say another person's ideas, but substantiating an actual theft of an idea is very difficult. Einstein wasn't the first person to come up with E=mC2 (imagine a superscript there). Joe Biden and Martin Luther King have had charges of plagiarism leveled against them. What you can prove is that person A used the same words that person B did, and that implies theft. Wow! Right up there with child molestation. But, plagiarism, when it occurs, is a rending of the moral fabric, not a crime. Actually, it's not a rending; it's more of a snag in the sweater of consciousness.
Hillary's dilemma is that she can't really get nasty with Obama. This for a couple of reasons. For one thing, she might need him later on. For another, he's higher up the protected status ladder than she is. If Hillary is fighting a white male, she can blast away at will, saying any old thing that she wants. Any attacks against her can be attributed to sexism (The Anita Hill defense). With Obama, anything she says against him can be attributed to racism (The Spike Lee defense: "You don't like my last movie? You're racist.") The racist defense trumps the sexist defense. Please note that I am not saying that either Clinton or Obama (Why do we refer to Clinton by her first name and Obama by his last?) will use these defenses. I'm sure both Hillary and Barak (doesn't sound right) are aware of them, and are also aware that they can be used. But the defensive offenses will not come from the candidates themselves, or even from their handlers, but from the media. Clinton and Obama (still doesn't sound right) know that, and they can both count on it. "A wheel within within a wheel, way in the middle of the air." If I don't say where I got that, is it plagiarism?