The Political Universe 12.13.05
Posted by Jason Easley on 12.13.2005
In tribute to the late, great Richard Pryor, today’s column is dedicated to the topic of race in America.
“When I was in Africa, this voice came to me and said, "Richard, what do you see?" I said, I see all types of people." The voice said, "But do you see any niggers?" I said, "No." It said, "Do you know why? 'Cause there aren't any."- Richard Pryor “Live on the Sunset Strip” (1982) there are no two ways about it, people either loved or hated Richard Pryor. His routines contained massive doses of the f-word and the n-word. He removed the dreaded n-word from his act after his trip to Africa.
People in the United States are taught not to talk about race. Conservatives like to believe that there are no racial problems in this country. The left has learned to hide from this issue less they be tarred with the scarlet L of liberal by their conservative critics. The end result of this cultural conspiracy to suppress our darker side is that many people believe that it is wrong to talk about race.
McCain’s black baby
However, in politics race is still used as a powerful political weapon. John McCain’s 2000 campaign manager Richard C. Davis wrote about the racial smear campaign the Bush team used against McCain during the South Carolina primary. The story, as told by Davis, is from a March 21, 2004 Boston Globe article.
“In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam War record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and
McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.”
“It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCain’s: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.”
“Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.”
“Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.”
“Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"
“Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But "if you're responding, you're losing." Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.”
“We chose to address the attacks by trying to get the media to focus on the dishonesty of the allegations and to find out who was making them. We also pledged to raise the level of debate by refusing to run any further negative ads -- a promise we kept, though it probably cost us the race. We never did find out who perpetrated these smears, but they worked: We lost South Carolina by a wide margin.”
Nowhere in Davis’ telling of the story does he name the Bush campaign as responsible, but there can be little doubt whose supporters were behind the smear campaign. The worst part about this is that the smear campaign worked. It wasn’t enough to spread the whispers that McCain had an illegitimate child, but the child also had to be black.
You might be thinking to yourself, but that was in the South, surely things aren’t like that in the rest of America. Things are different in other parts of the country. Racism has become much more subtle. Those who discriminate do so much more quietly. They speak in softer tones and carry out their bias in a much more indirect way.
It is a frame of mind
“I went to Zimbabwe... I know how white people feel in America now, relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!” – Richard Pryor
Have you ever been the only white person in a room full of African Americans? How about the only person of color in a room full of whites? You may think you have no prejudice, but did being in that situation make you feel ill at ease or uncomfortable? I know lots of people who claim to not have a racist bone in their body but yet when talking about one of their friends; they say something like Bob my African-American friend, or gay friend, or Japanese friend. Isn’t referring to Bob as your friend, good enough? Why do I have to know that Bob is foreign, not white, or gay?
We as people do this everyday. You probably have never given it a thought until I mentioned it. Americans feel the need to classify people. Politicians make careers out of our desire to divide and classify. We classify people based on race, nationality, occupation, wealth, sexual orientation, and many other characteristics. A Marxist may argue that the root of our classification obsession is the competition created by capitalism. A communitarian may say that it is just an individual’s way of trying to psychologically organize an ever globalizing world.
I think we do it because we are still conscious of the racial and economic barriers that divide us. As Americans we can’t escape from our overt racist past. It has left scars on our cultural psyche. Many political leaders discovered the issue to be too complicated and divisive to discuss, while at the same time after a turbulent 30 years, by the 1980’s, it seemed that the American public also wanted a break from the discussion.
Through out the 1990’s incidents the LA riots and Simpson trial, temporarily brought the racial issue back to the for front, but in the era of political correctness, no one seemed willing to have a frank discussion about race. If politicians learned anything from the last decade, it was the less said about race the better. It was ok to spread a positive message about race relations for political gain, but there are many in the country that prefer to believe that everything is just fine. Most politicians saw no need to rock the boat.
I don’t know if we will ever be able to wash away the subtle, but foul scent of racism. Racism is a state of mind. As long as people classify and recognize each other based on their differences, instead of their similarities, things will never change. We are all different, and we should be proud of our differences because they make us who we are, but we all only truly be able to stand together when we recognize what we have in common.
”There are black people and there are…..”
"Are there any niggers here tonight? What did he say? 'Are there any niggers here tonight?' Jesus Christ! Is that cruel. Does he have to get that low for laughs? Wow! Have I ever talked about the schwarzes when the schwarzes had gone home? Or spoken about the Moulonjohns when they'd left? Or placated some Southerner by absence of voice when he ranted and raved about nigger nigger nigger?”
"The point? That the word's suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness, If President Kennedy got on television and said, "Tonight I'd like to introduce the niggers in my cabinet," and he yelled "niggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernigger" at every nigger he saw, "boogeyboogeyboogeyboogeyboogey, niggerniggerniggernigger" till nigger didn't mean anything any more, till nigger lost its meaning - you'd never make any four-year-old nigger cry when he came home from school. Screw "Negro!" Oh, it's so good to say, "Nigger! Boy!" "Hello, Mr. Nigger, how're you?"- Lenny Bruce
Was Lenny Bruce correct? Can the key to dismantling racism be found in defanging the terms of hate? I would like to think it is that easy, but it isn’t. Living in rural Pennsylvania, I heard more than a few white people explain their views of race to me this way, there are black people and there are niggers. I then them ask what the difference is. How do you decide which is which? From what I have been able to gather Bill Cosby is a black man. Chris Rock is a nigger. R&B singers are black. Rappers are niggers. The man who owns the sports team is black. The men who play on the team are niggers.
Of course, it is the white man who decides which is which. Apparently a person of color gets to be black by being rich, non-threatening, and assimilated. This is quite an ingenious explanation for their racism. Not all people of color are bad, just those who they view as a threat. It can be implied that as long as non-whites know “their place,” then there is no problem. These are the same attitudes that slavery and Jim Crow were based on.
I don’t have a problem with hip-hop culture giving a new meaning to such a racially charged term, to me this is just a logical extension of what Lenny Bruce talked about over 40 years ago. However, I do think that today’s young people are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t understand where the word comes from and what it means. The physical battle against the institutions of racism was won long ago, but the psychological war continues.
I have always chosen to look beneath skin color when I meet people. Even though I am white, I know all too well what it is like to be judged or stereotyped by others because you look different. Most of all today, I wanted to have an honest discussion about race. I know I may have broken a few social taboos with the discussion, but sometimes you have to knock down a few walls, before you build the new house.
“I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that.”
“I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life.”
“You have to have lived some life. You've got to have paid some dues.”- Richard Pryor
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