Identity Politics and Anti-White Racism
By Bud White on May 1, 2008 at 6:18 PM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Clinton, Hate Speech, Hillary Clinton, North Carolina, Obamedia, Race, Race Card, Superdelegates, White People
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
Recent polls show that approximately 30% of Hillary voters could defect to McCain if Obama is the nominee. That such a large swath of Democratic voters might defect should be disconcerting to superdelegates, to say the least. I’ve been reflecting for several weeks on my own unease with Obama, a man who was once my second choice for president.
Last month I attended a Passover dinner and the conversation predictably turned to politics. (For those who don’t know, a Passover Seder is perhaps the first liberation theology ceremony, celebrating the Jewish people’s Exodus from slavery in Egypt).
One of my dinner companions was a computer salesman from New Jersey and an avid Obama supporter. I told him that Obama’s (largely) successful effort to paint the Clintons as racists had me doubting if I could vote for him if he were the nominee. He responded by saying that it was good politics and showed that Obama was willing to do whatever it took to win.
His acknowledging that Obama has been playing racial politics has me rethinking the idea of a racial dog-whistle, the notion that only African Americans, for example, understand that when Obama says “hoodwink, okie-doke, bamboozled,” he means that the Clintons are treating them like fools, attempting to undermine the Clintons’ hard-earned reputations as advocates for all Americans.
Most Americans who are paying attention, I suggest, understand Obama’s use of race. Obama’s problems with Bitter-gate and Rev. Wright underscore that Obama is not the uniter he claims to be, but rather a shrewd practitioner of identity politics.
I think most Americans are more culturally literate and less racist than the neo-liberals think (and perhaps as some neo-liberals are), regardless of their income bracket. Hillary voters understand that Obama, in cahoots with the Obamablogs and much of the media, has been willing to do whatever it takes to derail Hillary, and this includes smearing the Clintons as racists.
Randi Rhodes epitomized the venom against the Clintons and the Obama supporters use of anti-white racism when she said: “The Clinton campaign describes Hillary’s voters as older, white, and undereducated. Or as we called them in my neighborhood: white trash.” No wonder white voters are turning off to Obama.
Sean Wilentz, contributing editor at The New Republic, has been one of the few observers to honestly report on Obama’s use of racial politics. Wilentz has posted a new piece on the Huffington Post which further examines Obama’s effort to paint the Clintons as racists:
Once again, the Barack Obama campaign and its supporters, fresh from a stinging defeat, are trying to stir up false accusations that Hillary Clinton and her campaign have cynically injected racial animosities into the campaign.
The latest round of charges about the Clintons have come from a familiar source, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black leader in Congress. In January, after the Obama campaign suffered stunning defeats in New Hampshire and Nevada, Rep. Clyburn, although nominally uncommitted, joined a chorus of concerted complaint about Hillary Clinton’s supposed denigration of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his contributions to the 1964 Civil Rights Act because of her observation that President Lyndon Johnson had played a crucial part in guiding its passage. (Clinton’s actual remarks, rarely reported, praised King enormously and were historically accurate.)
Wilentz details again Obama and his surrogates’ depressing use of race: Jesse Jackson Jr.’s words about Katrina and Hillary’s tears, Clyburn insinuating that WJC’s “fairy tale” remark was racist, the infamous South Carolina memo, and the false accusation that Hillary had insulted the legacy of Martin Lurther King:
It may strike some as ironic that the racializing should be coming from a black candidate’s campaign and its supporters. But this is an American presidential campaign–and there is a long history of candidates who are willing to inflame the most deadly passions in our national life in order to get elected. Sadly, it is what Barack Obama and his campaign gurus have been doing for months–with the aid of their media helpers on the news and op-ed pages and on cable television, mocked by “SNL” as in the tank for Obama. They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary.
Regarding the class war in the Party and Bitter-gate, Anglachel writes that:
Obama is projecting his own bitterness at being denied a win, attributing hateful and defamatory intentions to those who will not provide him what he believes he deserves. I’m sure there are people out there who won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin. I know a few. They are all Republicans. Empirical evidence does not support his claims about those who won’t vote for him, no matter how loud GKJM and Kos scream about the horrible racists supporting the horrible Hillary Mommy Monster.
Blue-collar whites know that the most important color in America is green, and they don’t feel particularly privileged themselves. They have listened as elite Obama supporters insult their lives (“It appears that Appalachia has an Obama problem,” sniffed a DailyKos diarist). They have watched as Obama has smeared the Clintons, defended his anti-white mentor and then had the audacity to lecture them on race, called his loving grandmother a “typical white person,” and insulted their culture, religion, and concerns to a group of San Francisco billionaires.
It’s not clear if Obama’s break with Rev. Wright will allow him to regain momentum. The one thing that is clear, however, is that many voters who gave Obama a serious look and were inspired by his post-racial message now believe that he drank deeply from the well of Rev. Wright’s teachings and unless Senator Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, Senator McCain is seen as an appealing alternative.
As Rabbi Hetch writes regarding Passover, “whether you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Agnostic, atheist, or a no label, Let’s all appreciate being liberated from being labeled and stereotyped.” I’ll drink to that.
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