For at least six years, I have written about the Republican Party's racial hostility towards Barack Obama.
Such an obligation to truth-telling has caused me no small amount of melancholy. I do wish that an alternate reality existed in which Obama's election slayed white supremacy and white bigotry. Alas, I deal with the world as it is; I do not lie to myself and bend the world into something that I prefer it would be.
Here on We Are Respectable Negroes, in my writings on Salon and Alternet, as well as interviews on Ring of Fire, Thom Hartmann, the BBC, and the Ed Schultz Radio Show, I have detailed in a clear and direct way how President Barack Obama is smeared by the White Right as an "uppity" black man who does not "know his place".
Republicans and their mouthpieces in the media have publicly used such racially provocative language on multiple occasions.
For example and as I argued here, Boehner's lawsuit against Obama for "abuses of power" is motivated by racism. There is no empirically grounded or factual basis for Boehner's claims that Obama is "abusing" the Executive Powers granted to him by the Constitution.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking in support of Boehner's specious lawsuit, and piggybacking on the Supreme Court's recent decision striking down the President's efforts to circumvent Republican obstructionism, said that Obama needs to be "humbled".
The Imperial Presidency is a fixture of American politics, one that has been accepted as the status quo ante for several decades when white men, Democrats and Republicans, were the Chief Executives of the United States of America.
Now, such a precedent is a crisis and overreach of power? Why? A black man happens to be President of the United States of America.
Blackness constitutes a category of personhood that by definition deems African-Americans to be a people apart and outside of the normal standards and rules for what constitutes excellent or just "acceptable" behavior.
By comparison, white privilege gives white folks a lower set of standards for their behavior; white privilege raises the bar and standards for those Others who are not part of the club.
Boehner and McConnell are clumsy and transparent. But then again, one of the day-to-day advantages that comes with white privilege is the luxury to be mediocre while still over-achieving relative to one's innate abilities, talents, or intelligence.
In all, the Age of Obama has reinforced how American politics is desperately in need of a better class of white supremacists and white racists.
White supremacy hides in plain sight in the Age of Obama. Unfortunately, too few Americans--white folks especially--are willing to call out its moral rot and lazy double standard thinking and behavior. The United States is suffering because of that cowardice.
15 comments:
In all, the Age of Obama has
reinforced how American politics is desperately in need of a better class of
white supremacists and white racists. – CDV
Beautifully summed up
brother!
Bomber-O has placed himself in
a dubious situation. On one hand, O has the right to make recess appointments.
However, the Senate wasn’t in full recess. Furthermore the Senate wasn’t in
full operation to say Yay or Nay with the required amount of votes.
The US Constitution is silent
on the Senate’s voting authority when not in full capacity. This is in fact
white racism in plain sight!
'Boehner and McConnell are clumsy and transparent. But then again, one of the day-to-day advantages that comes with white privilege is the luxury to be mediocre while still over-achieving relative to one's innate abilities, talents, or intelligence.'
I love this. Great summation!
To consume the conservative dish requires a privileged degree of credulity that most folks lack. Boehner and McConnell have sunk from mediocrity to pathology. I can imagine the majority responding with a resounding "yeah right."
By virtue of being President, Obama is being "uppity" in the eyes of these bigots. This is why he "must be humbled."
Media talking heads don't mention the practical aspect of Obama's recess appointments; the GOP is doing nothing, and the President is at least trying to keep the wheels and levers of government moving.
If politics and governing is the purpose and goal of political parties, then why aren't the democrats calling this out for what it is, a race-obsessed and driven GOP so consumed it cannot contribute to governance, and thus the President is taking needed action.
With this action the GOP has thrown down the gauntlet: we are the party of white supremacy who's sole purpose is restoring that false sense of superiority upset by virtue of a black man being president.
It is the very fact of his winning an election twice that has put the White Right into a state of fever fits. African-American citizenship has always been questions and demeaned as secondary. See the language that somehow black votes are inferior and not of the same quality as those from white voters that drives this voter disenfranchisement Jim Crow 2.0 mess of the White Right.
Conservatism at present is a crystallized politics of cruelty. Well put. On point.
That is what white privilege is at its heart--unearned advantages and mediocrity.
This is no surprise. The last two presidential campaigns against Obama have been the most overtly racist since Reconstruction. There has been nothing but high intensity bigotry from the GOP since Obama's election. They aren't even using the dog whistle anymore. The election of.Obama has torn the lid off of.America's Hell. These people would be laughed off the screen in a civilized nation. This country is clearly not one.
Few people are talking about how Obama tried to get gov't to work in the face of clear and direct efforts by the Republicans to circumvent their responsibilities as public servants. I have said for some time that a citizen should bring a lawsuit against the Republicans for betraying the Constitution and their oaths of office.
"African-American citizenship has always been questions and demeaned as secondary."
Hence, the birther nonsense, that no President or candidate has ever been subjected to, e.g. how can a black man legitimately be president of a "white" country??
Instead of Obama's election as President both times being signs of a "post racial America," it turned out to be a reboot of Jim Crow, with additional features installed. The idea of going forward with what could be seen as the achievement of the election of an African American President was utterly wiped out, starting with the media pretending that it was legitimate to question whether someone born in a US State -- Hawaii, could rightfully be president. Its been game on for the upholders of white supremacy from there.
This entire thing is like a Roadrunner cartoon, with the Wile E. Coyote republicans foolishly falling into their own traps and exposing themselves as they desperately try to "get" the President. In the end only a fool or fellow traveler could not see what the motive is.
I've been reading up a lot recently on the history of the conservative movement, and if they could get away with the Willie Horton ad and embracing out and out segregationists like Strom Thurmond, it's hardly surprising that the media won't explore the radicalized nature of many of the attacks on Obama. Once the racism gets cloaked in the right language ("states rights," "local control of schools," "illegitimate") and denials/dodges ("hey! look over here, Ben Carson is on our side"), the media protests feebly, or not at all.
Nixonland? Feldman's books?
Yes the citizenship thing sure hits home for me. We can all see how black people who are clearly immigrants will often be accepted versus we black citizens (the exception being Haitians who are vigorously kept out of the USA). I've experienced on multiple occasions when I talk about all of the different places I've been from Norway to Egypt to Korea, etc. and my language skills in Japanese, Russian, et al - people will just assume that I am not an American! I guess they think that we black citizens cannot possibly achieve anything "legitimately".
You certainly have that definition right. It's like I keep pointing out, the Republican Great Recession has really exposed the level of white privilege in this country and how it is no longer an advantage in this globalized world.
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