The Talented Mr. Ripley (Revisited): More On Tea Parties And Race

I do very much love this song.

It's an ugly song, but a good one. An important one. It's a beautiful-ugly reminder of what things were like, here, not so terribly long ago. Not a lifetime ago.


I lifted lines from this song for a story I wrote a few years back, something I called "Anchor Bar." An important story, to me. I wrote a post about that same incident on here a few years back (and lifted lines from another, also-very-good song, for that one). But probably I'll talk more about that later. Not now. For now I just wanted that song to set the tone.


A couple of posts ago, I wrote about Tea Parties. Or, more accurately, I wrote about the sometimes very angry, even vicious, opposition to Barack Obama and his proposed reforms that has been embodied, from time to time, in the behavior at Tea Parties. I didn't mean to limit myself to those Tea Parties. I didn't mean to imply that all of the people at Tea Parties were guilty of poor behavior, nor that all of the people guilty of bad behavior were acting out at Tea Parties. My comments, my criticism, my theories, were meant for some folks at Tea Parties, some folks at Town Hall meetings, some folks hosting radio programs, some folks blogging, some folks holding elected offices, and so on.


In that post I claimed-- and I very much stand by that claim-- that in a fair amount of that ugliness and opposition, racism plays a factor. I claimed that acknowledging the presence of racism explains things that would otherwise not make much sense. This sign, for instance, carried at Tea Parties and forwarded from the offices of one conservative activist to another:













It's hard to attribute something like that to "spirited debate" or, really, to anything at all other than an ugly, blatant sort of racism. I gave other examples like this, examples for which I could find no other explanation but racism.

I also gave examples of things that could be explained in other ways, but in which there was an eerie familiarity. Jim Greer, for instance, the head of the Florida GOP, stating that he would not send his kids to school on the day Obama spoke wasn't explicitly, blatantly racist... but neither was George Wallace standing in a school house door, refusing to allow black children to be integrated into the white school system. Wallace didn't appeal to racism, but to state's rights and high ideals and the need to keep Washington out of the affairs of regular people.

In the discussions that followed that post, John of The Zeray Gazette disagreed with my assessment. Not just disagreed but, from what I could see, disapproved. He claimed that comments like mine were an attempt to "shut up" people who disagreed with Obama's agenda, suggested that the racists in the movement were limited to a "small fringe," and told me that "Obama's supporters should directly or implicitly call half of America racist," noting that that "will play out marvelously in 2010 and 2012."

Others joined the conversation, I argued back, but, for the most part, it didn't go anywhere.

I can't comment much on the issue of how things will play out in 2010 and 2012. Most likely, it will not play out well. As far as I can tell, though, that has little or no bearing on the truth of the issue. In politics, honesty is often a very bad strategy. People very often would prefer to not hear the truth.

John's objections are consistent with the outcry that's been heard from many conservative politicians and pundits over the past week or two. Radio hosts and elected officials and conservative activists have been seemingly horrified that liberals would dare to use the "race card," that they would make such shockingly unkind and unfounded accusations. John's comments were essentially rational, though I disagree with them. The backlash from others has not consistently been so. The mock outrage, the puffed up self-righteousness of the Becks and the Limbaughs and their sort has been a little over the top.

I find it a little funny, of course. I find it strange that conservatives (of course, not all conservatives) have been throwing "race cards" on the table almost daily since Obama became a viable candidate. Turn on your AM radio, and you'll hear a steady stream of claims that Barack Obama was never fully vetted because he is a black man, that Sonya Sotomayor is a racist (a sexist too!), that Obama hates white people, that Van Jones hates white people, that liberal Democrats want to keep black people on a "plantation" through hand outs and empty promises, that liberals opposed Clarence Thomas' nomination because he was a black man, liberals hated Condoleeza Rice because she was a black woman. So on, so forth, ad nauseum.

The message in the mock outrage over the past couple of weeks seems to be, then, that it's okay to talk about racism if you're referring to something that happens to white people, and only to white people; or, you're using "racism" as a something like a synonym for the "liberal hypocrisy."

An mention of the old-fashioned sort of racism-- the "Strange Fruit" kind, the really ugly stuff of the past and the more subtle stuff that has followed-- is off limits. Is just an attempt to stifle legitimate debate.

I understand the objections of people like John (and Bob, who also commented on that post), even though I disagree with them.

In order to continue that conversation, I figured I wanted to sort of start it over, approach it differently, take a step back from some of the more pointed, accusatory comments and begin again.
So, to start this off, I have a very basic question:

Does racism exist in America today?

And to clarify the question, there are two things I don't mean here when I say "racism."

First of all, I don't mean something on the fringe. Because of course then the answer would and always would be without a doubt "yes." The fringe is the fringe. You can find anything on the fringe, no matter how sick, twisted, immoral, or just plain weird. When I ask if racism exists, I mean does it exist in a meaningful way, beyond something a few whackos in tinfoil hats and swastika t-shirts talk about in their mother's basements?

Second, by "racism" here, I really, truly am not talking about the stuff that happens to white people. I'm talking about the old fashioned stuff. It's not that I want to discount the anti-white strain of racism that exists out there. I don't think it's irrelevant. But I think it's pretty much irrelevant to this conversation, because it's something of a very, very different nature than what we're talking about. As much as some of my poor victimized white friends might complain about they've been held down because of the color of their skin, the truth is, no, really, they haven't. Feeling disliked, being the butt of a comedian's jokes, not getting a ten point curve on a civil service test, is not similar in any way to the kind of institutionalized, brutal racism that existed in this land for hundreds of years, is not the same as systematic oppression, Jim Crow laws, segregated schools, lynchings, marriage laws, white only water fountains, and the rest. Sorry, but these are different things. Completely.

So, with those qualifications, does racism exist in America today?

We can look at all the progress that has been made, and we can be really happy about that. We can call it a tribute to people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy and to the millions of basically decent people in this country, and be very glad that the brute ugliness of the past is the past. We should never forget that as segregated as schools are today, they are not segregated in the same sense that they were in the past; as segregated as my city is today, there is no law that keeps me from having lunch in a restaurant with a black friend, no law that keeps my white and black neighbors from marrying each other. This is good stuff. This is a better world, in many ways, than it was 60 years ago, or 50, or 40, or even 30.

But, in the relatively short time since racism was institutionalized, was the law of the land, have we become "post-racist?"

The answer, I think, is clearly no. The evidence of racial tension in America is everywhere.

From the Jena 6 (remember, nooses hung at a school after black students sat under a "whites only" tree, followed by incredibly stiff sentences for the black teens involved in the fights that followed), to black cops in Georgia being denied a pension equal to that of white cops, to gubernatorial candidates in South Carolina trying to outdo each other in support of keeping that Confederate Flag flying over the capital building (at the very least, a sign of gross and widespread racial insensitivity; equivalent, one would think, to Germans flying swastikas over government buildings to celebrate national heritage-- we would expect some Jews to maybe be a little offended). From Michael Richards absolutely losing his mind during a stand up routine, to the unarmed Amadou Diallo being shot by cops 41 times, to the studies that have shown that applicants with "black sounding names" are 50% likely to get called in for interviews, even when their resumes are identical to those with "white sounding names" in every other way. From the reality that the poorest part of my own city is almost devoid of white faces, to the waitress who would not serve my sister's date in a Texas Denny's (he was the only black person in a group of 8, was there in the close company of a white woman, and was the only person not to be served; even after he complained, he there was no apology, and diners at other tables who came in after him were served the very thing he ordered; but we can't call this "racism," we can't assume we know what was on the waitress' mind, right?), to the liberal use of racist slurs among more than a few of my schoolmates all through junior high, high school, college.

Things have changed. Things are better. But racism has not gone away. Racism is still there, and while not nearly as ugly as it once was, it is a reality in our lives, it is an influence, conscious or not, on the decisions we make. This, I think, is just about undeniable. To argue otherwise is to pretend that you've never heard that cruel joke, never received that email forward, never instinctively checked your wallet when a black man passed you on the street.

I said, in my first post on this, that

To say that the opposition to Obama and his proposals is due to his race would be unfair and untrue.

There are many, many reasons one might oppose Obama, oppose his ideas. I would probably not agree with most of those reasons. But there are those whose opposition is sincere, decent, and legitimate. And there are those whose opposition is stupid and mean, but not racist, who would scream "liberal!" and "socialist!" and refuse to engage in constructive dialogue with any Democrat elected to office.

When I say that, I mean that. I didn't, and won't, claim that racism is behind the the majority of anti-Obama sentiment, that is the sole factor or even a contributing factor for most or all of the people waving signs, speaking up at Town Hall meetings, calling radio talk show hosts, or refusing to give their support to health care reform, cap and trade, etc.

But it is a factor. It goes beyond the fringe of the opposition, because racism in this country goes beyond the fringe.

If we're going to have any kind of honest conversation about race in this country-- and, yeah, I know that "honest conversation about race" is probably not something that the majority is eager to have-- we've got to get past the notion that racism is something that is only an influence on fringe nuts, something only those "really bad people" are affected by.

Sure, the ugliest, cruelest, most blatant forms of bigotry are perpetrated by the fringe. The undeniable, in your face, no-apologies promotion of hate is not exactly mainstream. As a society, we have moved to a place where the vast majority can acknowledge that racism is wrong, or at the very least "impolite," something you shouldn't do or want to be caught doing. It's sort of like lying. Only a fringe would actually stand up and say "screw it, I like lying, you can all go to hell if you don't." Only a fringe flaunt their racism. Only a fringe revel in it, promote it. Only a fringe burn black churches. Only a fringe (a too-large fringe, one that includes high-profile lunks like Rusty DePass and Mike Green) wear their bigotry on their sleeves, put it on their websites for all to see.

But more than the fringe feel it in their lives. More than a fringe in the Republican Party, more than a fringe in all of us.

I wrote a post a while back called "The Talented Mr. Ripley." In it, I quoted Matt Damon's best line from a bad movie:

Well, whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful, it all makes sense doesn't it, in your head. You never meet anybody that thinks they're a bad person.

I wrote that post after reading this letter, which I came across in Kai Wright's great big book The African American Archive:

On this Occasion every Breast was filled with Concern. Evil brought Home to us within our very Doors awakened the Attention of the most Unthinking. Every one that had any Relation, any Tie of Nature; every one that had a Life to lose were in the most sensible Manner shocked at such Danger daily hanging over their Heads. With Regret we bewailed our peculiar Case, that we could not enjoy the Benefits of Peace like the rest of Mankind and that our own Industry should be the Means of taking from us all the Sweets of Life and of rendering us liable to the Loss of our Lives and Fortunes. With Indignation we looked at St. Augustine (like another Sallee) that Den of Thieves and Ruffians! Receptacle of Debtors, Servants and Slaves! Bane of Industry and Society! And revolved in our Minds all the Injuries this Province had received from thence ever since its first Settlement, that they had from first to last, in Times of profoundest Peace, both publickly and privately, by themselves and Indians and Negroes, in every Shape molested us not without some Instances of uncommon Cruelty.

The South Carolina Assembly, you see, was horrified that the Spanish had given refuge to runaway slaves. They considered themselves to be victims of the utmost cruelty, put in grave danger.

I quoted this letter too, written after the execution of more than 30 slaves who were (falsely) accused of conspiring to set fires:

Gentlemen, the monstrous ingratitude of this black tribe, is what exceedingly aggravated their guilt. Their slavery among us is generally softened with great indulgence; they live without care, and are commonly better fed and clothed, and put to less labour, than the poor of most Christian countries. They are indeed slaves, but under the protection of the law, none can hurt them with impunity: they are really more happy in this place, than in the midst of the continual plunder, cruelty, and rapine of their native countries; but notwithstanding all the kindness and tenderness with which they have been treated amongst us, yet this is the second attempt of the same kind, that this brutish and bloody species of mankind have made within one age.


"No one ever thinks they're a bad person," I wrote. "Those who torture, abuse and enslave can cry out with genuine shock and righteous indignation when their freedom to torture, abuse and enslave is threatened."

I started thinking abou that old post after reading through George Wallace's school house speech.

As I pointed out above, Wallace made no mention in his speech of hatred, of racial superiority, of ugly bigotry. He spoke of the sanctity of the Constitution, "the rights of life, liberty, and property," of big, noble, pretty things.

The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama today of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government. This intrusion results solely from force, or threat of force, undignified by any reasonable application of the principle of law, reason and justice. It is important that the people of this State and nation understand that this action is in violation of rights reserved to the State by the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Alabama. While some few may applaud these acts, millions of Americans will gaze in sorrow upon the situation existing at this great institution of learning.

And:

I stand before you here today in place of thousands of other Alabamians whose presence would have confronted you had I been derelict and neglected to fulfill the responsibilities of my office. It is the right of every citizen, however humble he may be, through his chosen officials of representative government to stand courageously against whatever he believes to be the exercise of power beyond the Constitutional rights conferred upon our Federal Government. It is this right which I assert for the people of Alabama by my presence here today.

Good stuff. Sure.

And yet, we can't look back on this history and think that this guy, this man who tried to stop equality and integration with his very body, was somehow not motivated by race when he made that touching speech. We can't think, truly, that he was not a racist.

No one ever thinks they're a bad person.

It's easy to lie to ourselves. It's easy to believe those lies. It's easy to not look at what is driving us, what is motivating us.

It's never us. We're never the ones. Never the racists, never the bad guys. None of us. Not me, for sure. And not you.

And then we get a little perspective, can look back over history, even very recent history, and say "wow." In a country with no liars, with no bigots, with not bad guys, there sure was an awful lot of lying, bitorying, and badness.

My friend Andy? Yes, he's a racist.

It sucks to say that, because in just about every other way Andy is an outstanding person. Andy is pretty much the closest friend I have, one of my very favorite people, an all around decent, hard working, honest guy. Although I didn't have a "best man" at my wedding, it was Andy who stood with me in the back of the building calming my nerves and getting me ready, making sure I didn't look too silly in my tux. Now that I live an hour away from my mother's house, it is Andy, who lives just blocks away from her, who goes to her house in the middle of the night to catch bats who have come in through the attic. A few years my senior, Andy has always been sort of a big brother to me. He helped me install my first car stereo (and my second, and my third). He fixes my computer when it's not acting as it should. For years, I decorated my house with his hand-me-down furniture. He's a good friend. A good father to his children. A good husband to his wife.

If you ask him at the right time, though, Andy will readily admit to you that he's a racist. He's admitted it to me on a number of occasions, and has admitted that he knows it is wrong.

Andy's dad, also a very good guy, was a racist, and Andy will admit that that shaped his own views to some degree. Then Andy went and got a job working in the prison system. He spends most of his days surrounded by people who have done very, very bad things, most of whom are black. That job hasn't improved his outlook, hasn't lead him to rebel against the ideas he learned early on.

Andy's racism comes out in a number of ways. For years, every time we got together, I heard a new race joke. Just jokes. Mean jokes, jokes that wouldn't be told in mixed company, but just jokes. For a long time, until I asked for them to stop, I got some pretty rough emails forwarded to my Inbox. I've listened to Andy complain over the years about "affirmative action cases" at work, or black families in his neighborhood, or incompetent black bosses, with a vehemence that just isn't there when he's venting any other complaint. 9/11 gave Andy the excuse he needed to add "towel heads" to his last of untouchables, to start carrying his gun, and to start tuning into O'Reilly and Beck and others on a daily basis.

Andy, god love him, good friend that he is, is a racist.

For all that, though, I can say this: were I to bring a black friend to Andy's house, he would treat him no differently than any other friend. Andy has actually liked every black person who has been in our wider circle of friends. Were his daughter to start dating a black or brown guy at college, I imagine he wouldn't be thrilled, that he might pick up on more "character flaws" than he would in a white guy, that his already very protective fatherly instincts would kick up a notch. But I also imagine that in the end he'd deal with it, figure out a way to be fine with it. Because he's a decent person, because he loves his kids.

Andy went to his first Tea Party on 9/12.

In spite of his vegetarianism, his generally decent taste in music, and his willingness to entertain hippies like me in his home, Andy is a conservative. He likes to call himself a moderate, but he also calls O'Reilly a moderate, and we know that's silly.

So, sure, there's a pretty good chance that Andy would be opposing Obama even if he was a white guy and his name was Billy Jenkins. But Andy himself has told me that he's never been this worked up about the issues before, has never stood in a crowd and angrily protested anything.

Does he hate Obama because Obama is black? I can't say that.

Knowing him as I do, knowing his history and his views, can I say that I think race is not in the mix, is not an element? Nope. I can't say that either.

It's there. It's stirred in with everything else.

And Andy isn't part of the fringe.

So let's quickly look at another case. A suddenly famous South Carolina congressman.

Joe Wilson worked for Strom Thurmond, that staunch segregationist. He has supported the flying of the Confederate Flag (you know, the flag that was flown by the people who split off from the Union and committed treason because they wanted to keep on keeping slaves) over the state building. He thought it was a "smear" when Strom Thurmond's black daughter admitted to being his daughter, even after it was clearly true (once it was determined to be true, what would make it a "smear" for a woman to admit to being someone's daughter, if not in this case the fact that Strom was a segregationist, the woman's mother was black, there was some mingling of the races, etc?).

When a guy with this history sits in a joint session and yells at the nation's first black president-- and later, after his "apology," wears his bad behavior like a badge of honor, uses it as a fundraising gimmick-- is it entirely outside the realm of fair discussion to suggest that maybe race had something to do with it? To at least ask that question? Isn't that behavior entirely consistent with what you might expect from someone with a history of some racial bias?

We can't know for sure what is in the heart or mind of any other person. But we konw that racism is out there, that to some degree it is a part of our culture. And I think that it's not a stretch to say that keeping your kids home from school on the day when the black president speaks, shouting at the president during his speech, standing outside presidential speaking events with guns on display, associating the first black First Lady with a gorilla and so on are the kind of things we might expect to see if someone was on some (possibly unconscious) level just a little bit racist.

And we're seeing lots of this stuff. From much more than the fringe.

This isn't a Republican issue, though I would say that the boldest, most out there stuff these days seems to be coming from within the Republican party. But that's to be expected, because right now it's the Republicans who are threatened by the black president. Had the first black president been voted in on the GOP line, it would be wise-ass, entitled liberal activists, fundraisers and shit heads posting the "coon" jokes on eachother's Facebook pages. Don't doubt it.

Racism isn't a Republican issue.

And it's not a good person/bad person thing.

It's in us.

I've acknowledged my own often enough.

I won't call myself a "racist." But I won't pretend that racism hasn't affected the way I look at things from time to time.

I've posted before about my first trip to The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, the guy who approached five entitled, self-involved college kids in the parking lot asking for a little help, the tone we struck when we ignored him, moved on. The fear or whatever that was involved. I can honestly say that I don't know if we would have acted quite the same if the guy had been white. I can say that I think probably we wouldn't have.

I could, if you wanted me to, talk about the night in high school, walking home from my girlfriend's house quite late at night, when I first noticed that I reacted differently when a small group of black guys walked toward me on the sidewalk than I did when a small group of white guys came my way. A little more tension, a little more awareness of my surroundings.

I could talk about how nervous a friend and I got when, hopelessly lost in a big city hours from home, we took a wrong turn and some how ended up stopped in traffic in the heart of what appeared to be a Nation of Islam rally or parade. It's safe to say we would have reacted differently had we taken a wrong left and ended up in a St. Patrick's Day parade in the Irish part of town.

And I could go on and on.

We are fooling ourselves if we think that we are in a post-racial society, that the awfulness and ugliness and horror of the past doesn't affect today.

Things have gotten better, sure. Wounds are healing. They are not healed.

We need to be honest. We need to be able to talk about race-- and racism-- without immediately being accused of playing the "race card."

"Denial," my friend Tim (one of the guys who froze up at The Anchor Bar that night; he had his "racial awakening" in law school a few years later) used to say, "is more than a river in Egypt."