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Watching Rachel Maddow's interview of Jon Steward last night, I was struck by how reasonable both of them were trying to be. It's just too bad that neither of them--and none of us for that matter--live in a reasonable world. At times, such reasonableness in an unreasonable world itself became quite unreasonable--as when Stewart tried to explain that it was wrong to call Bush a war criminal, even though "technically" he is. It makes him sound like Pol Pot, Stewart explained.
Yes. Exactly.
If we want our presidents to not be war criminals, we need to make it sound like a bad thing. No, make that a really bad thing.
It's a conversation-stopper, not a conversation-starter, Stewart explained. Not a problem, I say. Arrest first, then converse. You see, Jon, It really wasn't cable news that started the Iraq War. It was George Bush & the neocons. They're the ones we should take of first. There are laws you know?
But that's just the tip of the iceberg of what's wrong with Stewart's understanding of the world. At his "Rally to Restore Sanity", Stewart's closing speech included a warning not to call folks like the tea baggers (another term he doesn't like, even though it was it their own) racists. Racists, apparently means folks in white robes. But the problem, of course, is today's "Racism without Racists" (aka "Colorblind Racism) as Eduaro Bonilla-Silva explains it in Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States--a new form of racism that has an explicit disavowal of individual racism built into its very core (as in "equal opportunity, not equal results), and yet serves very neatly to keep perpetuating a hierarchy of white racial privilege in our society, even while allowing specific blacks and other minorities to succeed individually.
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva identifies four central frames at the core of colorblind racism: "The central component of any dominant racial ideology is its frames or set paths for interpreting information," Bonilla-Silva writes. These four are:
(1) Abstract liberalism.
The frame of abstract liberalism involves using ideas associated with political liberalism (e.g. "equal opportunity," the idea that force should not be used to achieve social policy) and economic liberalism (e.g., choice, individualism) in an abstract manner to explain racial matters.
(2) Naturalization.
Naturalization is a frame that allows whites to explain away racial phenomena by suggesting they are natural occurrences.
(3) Cultural Racism.
Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments such as "Mexicans do not put much emphasis on education" or "blacks have too many babies" to explain the standing of minorities in society.
(4) Minimization of Racism
Minimization of racism is a frame that suggests discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities' life chances ("It's better now than in the past" or "There is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there).
Abstract liberalism is what allows colorblind racists to interpret themselves as "post-racial" and anyone who keeps talking about race (such as those who actually experience racial discrimination) as "the real racists".
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