In the first two diaries of this series, I've first reviewed the nature of colorblind racism and its role in facilitating other forms of racism today, and then applied that analysis to an earlier discussion here at Open Left. Now it's time to turn our attention to the recent conservative racist attacks on high-status minorities as "racists"-specifically, attacks against President Obama and Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor. Put simply, my argument is that colorblind racism serves as the scaffolding that enables white supremacists-such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, etc.--to project their racism onto the minority figures whose highly visible success puts the lie to their ideology of white superiority.
Racists have always projected the disowned, loathsome aspects of themselves onto racial others. Now that racism itself has come to be seen as socially unacceptable, it's only natural, in one sense, that racists should project their racism onto racial others as well-particularly onto individuals whose very existence refutes their worldview. Yet, the functional logic involved cannot dissipate the bizarre aspects of hearing Rush Limbaugh, such a well-confirmed racist, hurl that charge at prominent people of color, and not be roundly condemned as himself being a racist.
I've altered this diary significantly from my original intention, for a number of reasons, but the functional purpose remains the same-I want to illuminate the nature of racism today, it's relationship to racism's past, and how we may more effectively combat it.
One last thing to keep in mind before taking the jump: Although the old racism has largely passed away, just as slavery did after the Civil War, the new racism largely determines how we see race, just as the Southern segregationist view of race came to dominate racial understanding in America toward the close of the 19th Century.
Yes, we have a black President. But people are genuinely shocked when, in an unguarded moment, he acts like a normal black man. What's more, he knows it was a gaffe, in the Versailles sense: he accidentally told the truth.
Last weekend, in the discussion of my diary "More Than Gatesgate", a couple of troubling response patterns emerged. One was quite clearly an example of what's come to be known as "colorblind racism," as described in my previous diary, the other was something more subtle, the use of a legitimate caution about blindness to class privilege to attempt to sabotage a straightforward discussion about race, rather than enrich it. While we still have plain old-fashioned racists like Jeff Sessions walking around, by far the biggest problem we face in race relations lies with these sorts of attitudes, which in turn allow the racism of a Sessions, a Limbaugh, a Buchanan or a Beck to continue relatively unquestioned. It's for that reason that I want to devote some serious attention to what went on in that diary discussion.
Inevitably, the people who participated may feel picked upon-particularly since they seemed to have arrived with a victim mentality already intact (the former much more visibly than the later). But, then, heat, kitchen, yadda-yadda-yadda. It's precisely by dealing with what's right in front of us that we learn how to deal with what's right in front of us.
Before I begin with the analysis, I want to float a few proverbs or sayings to help guide our way:
(1) A struck pig squeals.
(2) What you see depends on where you stand.
(3) There are none so blind as those who will not see.
(4) A truth that's told with bad intent beats any lie you can invent. (William Blake)
Last weekend, in the discussion of my diary "More Than Gatesgate", a couple of troubling response patterns emerged. One was quite clearly an example of what's come to be known as "colorblind racism," the other was something more subtle. I want to discuss both those responses in some detail in a followup diary, as well as the much more virulent, in-your-face racism of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others, which I will look at in a third diary. But before plunging into that discussion, I think it's absolutely necessary to refresh people here on the nature of colorblind racism, since that is the centerpiece of my approach to understanding what was going on, and what was being misunderstood. Of course, what played out here at Open Left clearly pales in comparison to the outright racist attacks now being launched against President Obama, which I also want to address in terms of an integrated framework, where the relationship of colorblind racism to other factors it enables is substantially different. To do this, I'm going to heavily plariarize a diary of my own from earlier this year, "A Three-Ring Circus On Race This Week", while also bringing in additional material and setting up the discussion for the two diaries that follow.
In that earlier diary, I discussed two different theoretical constructs. The first, Social Dominance Theory (SDT), is more general, a theory of group dominance in hierarchically organized societies that is entirely general in nature. The second is Colorblind Racism. SDT was initially developed as a way of describing how hierarchical societies are organized, not how they change, but it does provide ready insight into how change can come about, as various elements are replaced or reprioritized even while overall functional relationships remain largely intact, as I will discuss below. Colorblind Racism should be seen in terms of SDT as a replacement ideology. It took the place of pre-Civil Rights Era racism, which took somewhat different forms in the North and South, but in both places involved assumptions of racial inferiority which were backed up in custom and law.
While it presented itself as a break from the racism of the past-which in some respects it certainly was-it nonetheless continues to function as a means for maintaining the same system of group dominance-blacks over whites, with other races taking on a middling position. This formulation does, however, allow for exceptional individuals to rise above the general condition of their racial group, but (a) this individual success does not translate back into fundamental change in group status, and (b) neither does individual success guarantee that one will be treated commensurate with that success in any given situation-as, for example, when you're a black Harvard professor who has trouble getting into your house, and someone-however innocently--calls the cops on you.
The essence of political power is the ability to define. The ability to define "us" and "them". The ability to define what is "good" and "evil". The ability to define what is and is not a political problem. The ability to define political ideals, and the meanings of words. Hegemonic power is the ability to define without even trying, without anyone even noticing, much less objecting. And the first order of business of oppositional politics is to contest-not just a single definition, but the very ability to define.
"Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."
That's what the NY Post did this week with its cartoon portraying President Obama as a murdered chimpanzee. First, the Post asserted its hegemonic capacity to define by publishing the cartoon. Then, when an uproar ensued, it asserted that capacity again, by denying what it had done. And then it asserted that capacity a third time, by defining itself as apologizing, when it was actually doing the exact opposite-continuing to attack those who called for the apology.
Hegemony matters, because, quite frankly, without challenging hegemony, Obama's presidency and the Democratic trifecta are ultimately doomed to fail. Hegemony is all-encompassing, touching on every aspect of politics, indeed, touching on every aspect of our culture, from which our politics comes. By proclaiming himself a "pragmatist" and eschewing ideological confrontation, Obama has placed himself at a distinct disadvantage. Arguably, he lacks a fundamental grasp of hegemony works. Either that, or he fails to appreciate how fundamentally it limits his options. Or he's playing 111-dimensional chess and he's getting all the rest of us to do his work for him. But any way you look at it, the response to the Post's cartoon is taking up the mantel of counter-hegemonic struggle, and raising it to the highest level.
I had been planning all along to write something about race this weekend, if only to play some catch-up. But then the circus came to town. In one ring, we have the NY Post's ("Let's pretend it's really not"-) racist cartoon ("Let's pretend it's really not"-) threatening the life of the President. In the second ring, we have Attorney General Eric Holder daring to speak the truth about race relations (always dangerous when a black man does that in mixed company)-that we're a nation of cowards when it comes to dealing honestly about race, and it's time to get over it-and the ensuing hissy-fits. In the third ring, we have Congressman James Clyburn, pushing back hard against the hypocritical grandstanding Southern governors who were trumpeting their toothless intentions to refuse money from the economic stimulus.
What all these events had in common was the age-old welter of confusion that surrounds all matters racial in our unfortunately-still-white supremacist society. And so before I address any one of them in any depth, I want to write about something I intended to deal with before any of them blew up into high-profile cable news fodder. And that would be the ongoing economic realities of race and class as reviewed, analyzed and discussed in the "State of the Dream 2009" Report, discussed by co-author Dedrick Muhammad on Democracy Now! this week.
But since all these other stories popped up this week, it seemed to me, for clarity's sake, that I should first take a step back and talk about the larger framework of race and white supremacism in America. My perspective is informed by two related theoretical perspectives. ("Theoretical" in the scientific sense: an organizing framework of causal mechanisms that explains a significant realm of empirical data.) One is a general theory of group dominance across societies and across time. The other is a specific theory of how white supremacy has reconfigured itself in America following the Civil Rights revolution. Together with the underlying empirical data surveyed in the "State of the Dream" report, these theories allow us to gain a clear-eyed perspective on racial matters in America and the world today.
