Is It Racism?

We had a wonderful dinner last night with wonderful friends (Happy Rosh Hashanah, everyone!). As our conversations usually do, we got around to talking about current events, and sharing our own perspectives on what has transpired.

And that gave me the impetus for this post, which I've been thinking about doing for several days, about the animus behind the wild-eyed frothing that is the conservative movement today: the Glenn Becks, the Rush Limbaughs, the pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor. I've found several articles I can recommend that offer different perspectives on the issue. They're all from the NY Times, and that's no accident. Despite the shortcomings of some of its political reporters, the Times is still the best place to look for informed commentary.

A week ago Maureen Dowd kicked off the discussion in the mainstream press with her September 12 NY Times column, the punch lines of which were:

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But [Rep. Joe] Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

Five days later, David Brooks offered an answering column, No, It's Not About Race. Brooks does not deny that racism is a part of how the foamers express themselves, but sees other historical movements as the motivation.

...I don’t have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama’s critics, so I can’t measure how much racism is in there. But my impression is that race is largely beside the point. There are other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.

For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government. Jefferson advocated “a wise and frugal government” that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Jefferson’s philosophy inspired Andrew Jackson, who led a movement of plain people against the cosmopolitan elites. Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States because he feared the fusion of federal and financial power.

This populist tendency continued through the centuries. Sometimes it took right-wing forms, sometimes left-wing ones. Sometimes it was agrarian. Sometimes it was more union-oriented. Often it was extreme, conspiratorial and rude

So two white NY Times columnists disagree. What about the Times' black columnists?

Bob Herbert weighed in yesterday:

Republicans have been openly feeding off of race hatred since the days of Dick Nixon. Today’s conservative activists are carrying that banner proudly. What does anybody think is going on when, as Anderson Cooper pointed out on CNN, one of the leaders of the so-called tea party movement, Mark Williams, refers to the president of the United States as an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug, and a racist in chief.

After all these years of race-baiting and stirring the pot of hatred for political gain, it’s too much to ask the leaders of the Republican Party to step forward and denounce this spreading stain of reprehensible conduct. Republicans are trying to ride that dependable steed of bigotry back to power.

Charles M. Blow is one of the least visible of the regular NY Times columnists, but he always offers a unique perspective. That's probably because his beat is "By the Numbers," examining data from polls, censuses, and elsewhere to see what they say about us. His column goes into detail, but his conclusion is this:

Racism is real. It is very likely an element of some people’s opposition to President Obama, but everyone who wants smaller government is not a racist.

Let’s stop talking about racism as if it’s black or white. There are many shades of gray.

My own thoughts about the issue are not as coherent as any of these folk's.

On the one hand, I take as established historical fact that the modern Republican Party was built on racism. When the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Republicans gave the defeated segregationists intellectual cover for their racism (it wasn't racism, you see, it was Brooks' Jacksonian opposition to the big, bad, federal government).

On the other hand, as insufficient as it is for life in the 21st century, the Jeffersonian view of the political world as a conflict between small-town virtues and urban decadence is still a strong descriptor, with adherents who are not just using it as cover for ugly souls. The problem with Brooks' perspective is that the Republicans so mixed the two that you can't neatly pull them apart now. You reap what you sow.