The All-White Elephant in the Room

From the New York Times, an op-ed piece by resident culture critic Frank Rich:

There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party’s South Carolina primary of 2000.

More here.

I've said it here before, and it's well worth saying again: the Republican Party is racist.

Qualifier: I know well that there are many individual Republicans who are most definitely not racist. However, the Party is an organization, with specific values and norms to which individual members may or may not adhere. That is, there is a big difference between the organization and the people who comprise that organization. Indeed, individual membership in no way affects what the party does at the local, state, or national level. I'm talking about the Party, not you or your equal opportunity GOP pals.

With that in mind, I'll say it again. The Republican Party is racist.

The well known Southern Strategy, if anything, makes the GOP's racism obvious for all to see. But it is also obvious in the day-to-day actions of Republican office holders. They appoint judges and pass laws that put a much higher percentage of the Black population in prison than whites. Their pro-business and anti-poor rhetoric, their bogus "welfare queen" mythology, as with the criminal justice system, affects a much higher percentage of the Black population. More recently, their zealous anti-immigrant rhetoric has deeply disturbed the US Hispanic community.

But this racism isn't like the old school stuff. No robes or burning crosses for the GOP: the national party's public relations panic back during the early 90s over former KKK leader David Duke running for governor of Louisiana as a Republican led to the GOP's endorsement of his Democratic opponent, convicted criminal Edwin Edwards--on the other hand, it is interesting that Duke had so much support in the first place. At any rate, my understanding of current Republican racism is that it is about power and indifference. That is, I don't think Republicans hate African-Americans so much as that they are willing to use them as political pawns, and couldn't care less what happens to them as a result of their pro-wealthy policies.

In short, the Republican Party doesn't care about Black people. They know African-Americans aren't going to vote for them, so they just don't give a shit. And it's completely obvious. But, as Rich observes, the political and media establishments just go nuts when anybody actually says it, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because Republicans are so good at freaking out on particular subjects they insist are taboo.

Remember how everybody freaked out on this one?



Thing is, as impolite as the suits in Washington believed it to be, Kanye West was absolutely right. George Bush doesn't care about Black people. I mean, I'm sure he's cool enough to have a beer with whatever Black acquaintances he has, but he clearly doesn't care about Black people. People plural. And I think that's a big part of the problem, ideologically speaking. Republicans simply don't acknowledge any validity to the notion of various groups within society. Everybody's an individual to them, with the freedom to exploit the masses, or to be victimized by power, just like everybody else. I mean, we are all individuals, but we're also parts of various groups--I'm white, and I definitely have some privilege because of that, especially when a cop pulls me over, or doesn't pull me over as the case usually is. This intense focus on individuality, to the exclusion of ethnic status, allows the GOP to pretend that their policies and ideas don't have racist consequences.

So the Republican Party is definitely racist, even if they don't think so.

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