Among the many great fears I have of an Obama victory is that once he takes office, his supporters, including those in the media, will try to describe certain criticism of his actions as racist. Just in the past few weeks, we’ve heard someone accuse those who call Obama’s policies socialist of being racist while others contend that raising his association with William Ayers similarly reeks of racism.
It seems those who level such accusations have their own prejudices against Republicans, believing we’re all racist and our criticisms are merely code words concealing our racial animus. As we have detailed on this blog, there are many, many reasons to vote against Barack Obama. None of them involve his race.
What does it say about the readiness of so many on the left to invoke racism when there is no evidence of racial animus? It is just that they harbor a prejudice against Republicans or is there something else at play?
Little late to the party here, GPW. For the past 20 years, squealing ‘racist!’ has been the left-wing “Get Out of Jail Free” card whenever they’re losing an argument.
Democrats are often racist. Racists are people who believe that racial distinctions matter; people who see the world in racial categories. I don’t. I’m into science and from the standpoint of science, race is a totally false categorization. But the Democratic Party is the party of people who think in racial categories. It was in the day of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Jefferson Davis. After Republicans emancipated the slaves, Democrats created Jim Crow, and fought for it into the 1960s. Today, they are still the party of people who uphold racial distinctions and divisions; they just reverse it and call it “affirmative action”.
Because Democrats think most naturally in racial categories, they assume others do. And, they want to blame others for their party’s past sins. Aka projection, scapegoating, etc.
Furthermore, people of good will have too often permitted the accusation “Racist!” as a cheap way for Democrats to stifling dissent and debate. In other words: crying racist has worked, for them.
For the record: I oppose Barack Obama because of (1) the vapidity of his so-called intellect, (2) his socialist policies and background, (3) his dishonesty in trying to deny and disguise his socialist policies and background. I would oppose him no differently if he were another race. Proof: I opposed John Kerry exactly the same way, and for approximately the same reasons, in 2004. I didn’t care that Kerry was white.
Again, #1 is right. Time to hit the books: David Horowitz’s Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, any Shelby Steele title.
OTOH, as Advocatus Diaboili: when an openly-gay candidate runs for president, how will you counsel LGBT people when they are tempted to look for the anti-gay animus in criticism of that candidate? How will you speak to exaggerated resentment and fear that informs the knee-jerk presumption of anti-gay animus? How will you acknowledge real, cautious, discriminating resentment and fear?
Once again, V the K said it perfectly. We will see lots of “racism” screeds from the Marxists…..indeed, they used it on Bill Clinton and it worked like a charm. It will keep working, combined with their Marxist tactics and they use those well…what we are witnessing with the press (and where the heck is the rest of the Press not screaming suppression of the First Amendment…they would be screaming bloody murder if it were McCain/Palin or any other Republican doing what Nobama did)
The Marxist in Chief has only just begun and it will be getting a lot worse if The Chosen One is elected President, along with his Stooge, Old Man Biden.
Yes they think Republicans are racist, because thats what theyve been brainwashed to believe, the reason they invoke the “r” word has little to do with that, however, and everything to do with Saul Alinsky. They just want to shut you up.
Remember the harpies, remember Cindy Sheehan, remember Max Cleland — liberals always try to put forth messengers that cant be criticized. And if they cant shut down by crying racism, or insensitivity, or what have you, they’ll try to destroy you, shut you down, or — coming soon to a theater near you — prosecute you.
It is incontrovertable evidence of the fascistic nature of liberalism.
They use this ugly, hot button label because it tarnishes their enemy and deflects from themselves. When you shout “racist” at someone, they are forced to defend from the terrible charge. Then, the original attack (“Obama’s a socialist”) just fades away in the background.
Unfortunately, in way too many cases it’s working. On top of it, I do believe that McCain has been forced to be constrained in some legitimate criticisms of Obama. He knows that if he dares stick a toe into some topics, the calls of “racist” will be levied even louder.
As Peg said, it works! Bigotry is a guilty until proven innocent charge, and it is quite effective at sliming both the messenger and the message. And the best form of defense is a good offense. If your attacker has to defend themselves against false charges of bigotry, at the absolute worst you have breathing room to construct a defense. Pieces of the Right use the same tactics, but they accuse people of being unpatriotic, un-American, or Communist. Again, because they do work.
Ultimately, false accusations of bigotry are a crutch. It’s much easier – and less risky – to attack your attacker than to construct a sound and reasoned argument in defense of your position. And as a society – both left and right – we’ve accepted that as the way things should be.
The end result is that charges of racism, sexism, homophobia and many other forms of bigotry have been seriously devalued. We’re not quite at the point where they’re dismissed out of hand, but we’re on that path. Norman Freidman argues in The Fifty-Year War that McCarthy’s blatantly false charges of communism against people like Eisenhower and Marshall so swayed public opinion that charges of Communism became a joke. That result destroyed the philosophical anti-Communist argument for a generation. We may get to the point where we dismiss real charges of racism because we’ve been so desensitized by indiscriminate abuse of the term.
That socialist, liberal, communist, American-hating, yet national socialist, fascist, Muslim, terrorist, community organizing, ghetto dwelling and stuck up elite guy? He doesn’t see America the way us white folks do. He’s dangerous. Tell everyone!!
(And be sure to bring a stuffed monkey to the next McCain/Palin event.)
#4. “The Marxist in Chief”! LMAO. Obama’s a dialectical materialist now, too? Damn, he’s got so much ideology up in that head of his! (Always a good time….)
OTOH, as Advocatus Diaboili: when an openly-gay candidate runs for president, how will you counsel LGBT people when they are tempted to look for the anti-gay animus in criticism of that candidate? How will you speak to exaggerated resentment and fear that informs the knee-jerk presumption of anti-gay animus? How will you acknowledge real, cautious, discriminating resentment and fear?
Hopefully by the time we have an openly gay presidential candidate, our lobbies will have grown up to the point where they are willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and separate legitimate criticism from actual bigotry and act accordingly. It’s the only way we’re going to make equality work.
Jimmy, once again you try to equate un-supportable charges with entirely supportable charges.
Is Obama a socialist? What else do you call a person who wants to redistribute wealth?
Is he a communist? His mentor growing up was. Bill Ayers is. Bernadine Dorn is. “Black liberation theology” , the theology of his chuch of 20 years is deeply rooted in Marxism.
Does he hate America? absolutely, he has just been caught decrying the constraints of the Constitution. his wife says America is a fundamentally mean country, and she has never been proud of it before it paid attention to her husband. He claims he wants to “fundamentally change” America. His past is riddled with associations and advancement of Marxist causes. Yes, if you hate the constitution and want to promote marxism, you hate America.
Is he a fascist? Lets see, he wants to make government more dictatorial, seize control of major sectors of the economy, and he has already shown alarmingly fascistic predilections for using government to silence opposition. Woodrow Wilson was the closest thing America has known to fascism, Obama shows disturbing signs that he would put Wilson to shame. He hangs out with people from a group who openly advocated ‘eliminating” approximately 25 million Americans for crying out loud.
Muslim. No, and I dont know anyone of any sort of leadership position who claims he is.
Terrorist. No, but he has no problem hanging out and working with them.
Community organizing. Yes, spend years doing so, much of which was spent with ACORN, and which we just learned Obama sees as the key to overturning restrictions placed in the Constitution by the founding fathers.
Ghetto Dwelling? No, Ive never heard anyone claim this. Everyone knows he lives in a mansion he got in a corrupt land deal with convicted felon Tony Rezko.
Stuck up elite? Blatantly.
Doesn’t see America the way us “white folks” do? No one ever said that. Sarah Palin said he doesn’t see America the way WE do, and she was addressing a multi-ethnic audience. And he clearly doesn’t. He sees the constitution as an impediment to what he wants to do to this country. He is marxist, America is not.
Dangerous? Very! To anyone who values the Constitution and our founding principles.
Racist.
Know how it ain’t racism?
Because by the left’s bastardized definition, the Justice Brothers are guilty.
‘Racist’ is a magic word, an emotional word. Most who wield it know they’re using it without basis, but know how powerful it is. They know they have their targets in a bad position because denying it requires defining it and then explaining how the accusation doesn’t fit the particular situation. Way too difficult and time-consuming in our split-second culture because thinking takes time whereas emoting takes none. It’s easier to walk away from an accusation than to deny it because it’s too much trouble to reason with someone who isn’t reasonable and has every intention of laughing at you as you try. As society modernizes and becomes ever faster, freedom is sacrificed to impulse politics. Whoever controls the discourse controls the country, eventually.
At some point (soon, I hope) the term “racist” will lose its power. It is grossly overused.
I am truly sick of hearing about race. The only racism I see in the political arena is on the left… it is the left that has pushed a hateful and self-destructive ideology on generations of people who, until the libs decided to “help”, were well on the way to participating fully in America.
What do conservatives have to gain by keeping blacks down? Answer: nothing.
What to liberals have to gain by keeping blacks down? Answer: an ever-growing group of welfare-state clients that justify growing armies of gubmint workers and voters who tie their to survival to their ostensible helpers.
Unless conservatives start challenging people who claim “racism”, I think the next four years are going to be bad news.
#3: did you actually manage to read “Hating Whitey”? I couldn’t make it to the end… a few chapters in, I found myself enraged and physically ill. It’s been on the shelf ever since.
Hmmm … just this week I overheard this very thing happen. I was with a group of people and one person said that they were afraid of what was going to happen with healthcare under Obama. Another person immediately accused them of racism! No one else said anything, including me. I guess I wouldn’t be the brave one in police state either.
I am also expecting that no matter what Obama does, no matter how badly things turn out, he will get a pass and it will be explained away as due to something or somebody else. People do no invest so much emotional energy into voting for a President and then readily accept the idea that maybe they made a mistake.