As friends and fans of the site know, I love to share some of the angry, bitter, grumpy, and at times funny emails I receive from white supremacists and conservatives (to the degree they are different in today's American political culture).
The Right-wing sewer Twitchy is upset about my recent essay at Salon where I state in plain and direct terms that the GOP and its candidates should finally call Obama the racial slur that they have publicly spoken around for years. Apparently, for me to say such a thing has given some conservatives a case of the sads. The truth hurts.
I am sharing the following email for purposes of analysis, mockery, and laughter. What follows is an ideal typical example of "polite" white supremacy where racism and bigotry is somehow justified if people do not treat a given racially resentful white (or white identified) conservative in a manner that satisfies them. There is also lots going on here with the cognitive map and life worlds that are created and nurtured by the Right-wing news entertainment hate media among those who are stuck in its epistemically sealed chamber.
The mouth-bloviating and raging conservative is a beast to be avoided, made fun of, and shamed. The sincere Right-winger--one whose tone seems sincere--is a more pitiable and pathetic soul. I would not call them "victims" per se, but there is something sad about them. And in many ways their sincerity (and more likely than not decent behavior in other areas of life) make them the most dangerous foes of the Common Good. "Kind" and "reasonable" movement conservatives are Fox News' "little Eichmanns". Be very wary of them.
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First off, you claim that referring to him as a child or being childish is racist, but yet the article you linked to did not say that. It clearly stated that the term boy was used as a racist insult and I am thinking we all can agree on that. Those candidates did not refer to Obama as "boy"-they said he acted childish. How is this racist? Can one not refer to how a black person acts as childish without being perceived as racist? We are all capable of acting childish and it has nothing to do with one's race.
Second, I'm no birther but I am fairly certain that the origins of birtherism had to do with his father being Kenyan and the fact that up until well after Obama was elected he offered no proof of his country of birth. In 1991, one of his publishers stated that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia-and nothing was ever done to correct this claim. In addition, Ted Cruz is now subject to attacks about his status as a natural born citizen. So how is this line of attack only meant as an attack against blacks to show they aren't "real Americans"? Is Ted Cruz black?
If you don't know it, there are a fair amount of white Americans who'd like nothing better to get along with all of our peers no matter what color their skin is or what religious background they hail from. And yes, some of us are Republicans who don't like Obama much at all. Whether you believe it has anything or nothing to do with his ethnicity is up to you; I know why I don't care for him and don't have to prove it to anyone.
With that said, it makes it REALLY hard to get along and treat each other well when some people throw out blanket accusations against people they don't know based only on specious reasoning and a feeling that someone means something other than what they say. Perhaps less rush to judgment and more intellectual honesty on your part would help us all to find some common ground. That is, if that's what you want in life. If not, don't be surprised by how people react to you.
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