THIS WEEK IN RACE

NCA Preview: New Research Related to Race and Political Communication

2009-11-04T23:09:00.009-05:00

THIS WEEK, the National Communication Association will meet in Chicago, Illinois for its annual conference. As we did prior to the American Political Science Association meeting in September, we scoured the program and put together a schedule of the panels that will most likely be of interest to our readers.

If you are attending the meeting, we very much encourage you to search through the online program to see what panels most interest you (we're good, but not perfect!). If you are not planning to attend (or if you are going to "attend" but will spend more time at the South Loop Club than at conference sessions), we hope you will find this list interesting, as it represents some of the most cutting edge research relating to race and political communication.

Thursday November, 12
8:00am to 9:15am
	I Felt This Thrill Running Up My Leg: An Examination of Barack Obama’s Campaign Oratory
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4L While many applaud Obama on his oratory during the campaign, with the campaign over, rhetoric scholars can now reflect, analyze, and examine what made Obama’s oratory so special. This is what this panel attempts to do. How does Obama’s oratory draw from other sources and models? How does Obama articulate stories (anecdotes) throughout the campaign? How does Obama define the “moment” of his campaign as the right time for his presidency? What role did faith play in Obama’s oratory? By drawing upon a diversity of rhetorical approaches, we attempt to answer these and other questions that emerge from our research.

	Post-Racial Rhetoric in Contemporary U.S. Public Culture
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: PDR 5 Presenters on this panel worry about the discourses that claim America is post-racial. Hence our discussion interrogates a host of visual and verbal post-racial rhetorics, from the recent Inaugural benediction to a cover of Vogue magazine, from Obama’s Presidential campaign materials to popular blogs. Using critical race theory, Derridean deconstruction, and Lacan psychoanalysis, panelists not only question the legitimacy of claiming “we” are now “beyond race,” they also explore its social, political, and cultural entailments.

9:30am to 10:45am
	Whose News Is It Any Way? Reporting and Race in a Mediated World
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: PDR 2 Using varied methodologies, this panel interrogates the ways in which media frame political and social events. Analyses also advance the understanding of how cultural frameworks from diverse theoretical perspectives are integral part of this communicative process.

12:30pm to 1:45pm
	Listening to the Beats that Bind and the Messages that Result in Change: Exploring and Questioning the Beats, Culture, and Politics of Hip Hop
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4D This panel explores and questions the dialogue between hip hop beats, culture and politics as a means to provide a stable site for social critique and expression of our voices. The beat making performance of Wanderlust and paper presentations probe how the issues of creating or performing beats and identities, one’s race and or gender, sociopolitical consciousness, reality and politics intersect, engage and inform one another.

	Pedagogies of Whiteness
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4I On the most fundamental level, this paper panel comprises a variety of approaches of how whiteness research has found a home in our university classes. From introductory courses in communication to doctoral seminars, this panel offers reflections and analysis of how whiteness studies has been taught and engaged in communication classes. Participants span the academic ranks from an MA graduate student and teaching assistant to a Full Professor.

2:00pm to 3:15pm
	The More Things Change…: Economic Disparity, Power, and the Changing Electoral Landscape in the African American Community
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: PDR 7 This panel will provide a critical, contemporary examination of the interconnections and changing dynamics of power, economic equality, and culture as it relates to African Americans’ identity as citizens of this nation.

Friday November, 13
8:00am to 9:15am
	The Content and Effect of Television News
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: International Ballroom South [No abstract available]

	What is this 'post' in post-racial/feminist/…(fill in the blank)?
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: PDR 3 The events of the 2008 election continue to spark prognostications that we live in a post-racial/feminist, etc. world. How should communication scholars respond? Scholars from a wide range of NCA's divisions will discuss how to approach questions of identity and communication over the next five years. Participants will suggest ways to be critical of assertions of "post-" and elaborate ways to encounter new dimensions of identification in an era of immense socio-political challenges.

9:30am to 10:45am
	Complex Rights: Latinas/os, Citizenship, and Law
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4L [No abstract available]

12:30pm to 1:45pm
	Whiteness beyond Classroom Walls
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: International Ballroom South A growing area of research within intercultural communication centers around both stable and changing discourses of power in relation to race and Whiteness. Much of this research has critiqued classroom discourses. In this round-table discussion, panelists will engage in dialogue about the possibilities for research using innovative methods, in unusual settings, and/or involving atypical participants. The hope is that cultivating research and theories in non-academic spaces will extend and amplify the value of Whiteness studies.

	Race, Whiteness and Culture
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 5G [No abstract available]

3:30pm to 4:45pm
	Performing Race in a 'Post Racial World': Discourses of Stability and Change
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4J This panel explores diverse critical perspectives concerning performances of race in what some term a ‘post racial’ America. The scholarship featured on this panel explores various critical treatments of the question of 'post-racialism' and/or race neutrality in ways that interrogate, explore, and/or problematize discourses of stability vs. change in relation to race in America. The contexts and various intersections that produce particular kinds of performances of race will also be explored.

5:00pm to 6:15pm
	'A Change Is Gonna Come': Reflecting on the Voices and Strategies of Change Agents from the Civil Rights Movement
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4F The presenters on this competitive paper panel will provide a contemporary examination of the rhetorical choices utilized by a few of the well-known voices of the Civil Rights Movement. Presenters will analyze the effectiveness, commonality, and differences of the communication messages that helped to shape various aspects and ideologies associated with the Civil Rights Movement.

Saturday November, 14
12:30pm to 1:45pm
	How Sound Bites BITE! A Critical Analysis of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Political Hegemony in the Mass Media
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Grand Ballroom The use of sound bites in television media and the Internet gained unprecedented attention during the 2008 Presidential election. With the use of new media in the 21st century, individuals around the world were able to upload sound bites which impacted philosophical, political and cultural views. The panel will focus on public interest groups and their use of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversial sound bites as a strategy to maintain political hegemony.

	Regarding Health, Representation, and Discourse in Asian/Pacific American Communication Studies
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4A [No abstract available]

Sunday November, 15
8:00am to 9:15am
	In Defense and in Remembrance: Asian Americans Reframe their Collective Identity
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Boulevard Room B Historically in the United States, Asian Americans have had little control of their collective identity beyond their own geographical and cultural communities. This panel explores situations in which Asian Americans -- with others who identify with them, such as spouses of other ethnicities -- have reframed their collective identity through public mediums ranging from World War II internment memorials in community spaces to an English-language newspaper for a readership beyond Japantown.

	Political Advertising: Content and Effects
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4B [No abstract available]

	Meet the Authors: Race and News (A Critical Perspective)
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4I This panel explores the core dimensions of how issues related to race and racism are represented in contemporary news coverage in the United States. Reflecting on a variety of research approaches that will be used to qualify the discussion in the forthcoming book Race and News, the panel will address the coverage of specific contemporary news topics and examine how that coverage either directly or indirectly addresses race and cultural diversity in this country.

9:30am to 10:45am
	Change is Gonna Come/Change is Here: Scholarly Perspectives and Everyday Politics in the Communication of Black Masculinity
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4I A change is gonna come. Sam Cooke's (1964) timeless anthem continues to exemplify internal and external transformation for people of the African Diaspora, and Black men in particular. Presumably, the inauguration of President Barack Obama suggests that change is already here. Indeed, a new day demands a new exploration of the ways Black men live, think, and perform race and gender in the 21st century. This panel works to engage the social, cultural and political landscape of black masculinity in the Obama era. Our objective is met primarily through three theoretical approaches. First, we foreground changing interpretations of black manhood, black love and black family. Second, we emphasize ways in which Black men's voices constitute change within Black communities and U.S. society. Third, we illustrate change in the body politics of Black manhood. Concurrently, the panel presents original arguments concerning why, when, where and how the communication of Black masculinity remains relevant, within our discipline and beyond.

	Unchartered Waters: Discourses of Stability and Change in the Rhetoric of Michelle Obama
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: PDR 6 This panel will analyze the rhetoric of Michelle Obama, and discuss the identity of African women of the Diaspora in U S public life. Panelists seek to expose a counter narrative to dominant notions of otherizing and marginalization projected onto African American women. Whether perceived as mammies, mistresses, tragic mulattoes, whores, tokens, elitists or phenomenal role models, African American female narratives challenge the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

	Attitudes, Attitude Change, and Resistance to Attitude Change
		Building: Palmer House Hilton, Room: Salon 4 [No abstract available]

11:00am to 12:15pm
	Chameleons Are at a Premium: Examining the Sociopolitical Implications of Racial Transcendence
		Building: Hilton Chicago, Room: Meeting Room 4I The papers on this competitive paper panel contribute to our scholarly understanding of President Barack Obama’s presence and his skillful oratory. In addition, this panel highlights the constant challenges of and realities associated with the negotiation of our tedious and racially-charged terrain.

Note: You can follow NCA on Twitter (@NatComm)

Teaching Tool: The Advantages and Limitations of a Race-Themed Political Cartoon

2009-10-31T20:06:00.008-04:00

Humor can be an effective vehicle for delivering a serious message. Whether it is in the form of satire, parody or simple ridicule, the most powerful statements are sometimes delivered in a way that makes us laugh before we think.

On the RaceProject Facebook page THIS WEEK, we reposted (from a tweet from SocProf) a link to a book review that contains a political cartoon by Barry Deutsch titled "A Concise History of Black-White Relations in the United States." It is a simple, six-panel strip that conveys a clear, accurate message of contemporary misunderstandings about White privilege and progressive strategies for achieving racial justice. But, as we note in this space every week, these issues are never as simple as they seem. We offer a "concise" analysis of the advantages and limitations of using this cartoon in the classroom to help students understand the complex history of Black-White relations in the United States.

Advantages

The primary advantage of using humor is that it can be disarming. More and more teachers are using clips from Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show or The Colbert Report to stimulate conversation about current events. Students like to laugh, and they appreciate when teachers deviate from the course readings. So the first advantage is that a comic strip can get students to pay attention and to be engaged.

Substantively, there are several advantages, as well. The strip is an accurate overview of American history in this regard: Slavery was a way for Whites to gain advantage disproportionate to what they could have without it (panes 1 through 3), African Americans fought hard for legal emancipation and won it (pane 4), Whites feel guilty about slavery and the history of oppression and are (genuinely) sorry about it (pane 5), and many Whites are reluctant to support any effort to rectify those past wrongs that involves violation of the meritocracy principle (pane 6).

The final pane actually contains two narratives. The first centers on the refusal to embrace approaches that involve a perceived disadvantage to Whites, but the smaller image and print in the lower right-hand corner of the pane invokes the idea that Whites' view these issues as being individualistic rather than systemic. The White character says "[I]f I got up here myself, why can't you?," even though it was only a few panes ago (seconds in the time that it takes someone to read the strip) that he 1) clearly does not get up there himself (panes 1 through 4) and 2) acknowledges as much with his apology (pane 5). This friction between fact and myth is an advantage in the classroom because it forces students to confront the reasons behind the character's social amnesia and the degree to which it accurately reflects the reality of Black-White relations in the United States today.

Limitations

For all its benefits, Deutsch would likely admit that there are dangers to this. After all, part of the reason that the humor works is that it is patently silly to believe that such a simple story can accurately capture the nuance of 400 years of history. By titling the strip "A Concise History. . ." the artist is giving us a wink, acknowledging that while there is nothing substantively astray here overall, it is a deliberate, recognized oversimplification.

That oversimplification will be recognized by sophisticated, thoughtful readers, but it may be lost on folks who do not have a strong knowledge base with respect to the complexities of race relations in America. If one believes, for instance, that "racism" ended with the signing of the landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s, that Brown v. the Board of Education integrated public schools in the U.S., and that affirmative action means quotas, this cartoon is unlikely to be an effective tool to combat those inaccuracies.

The "problem" is not solvable because the core of the limitation is also central to the strip's advantages. That is, by allowing individual characters to stand in for power systems, the artist is able to simply and effectively capture the reality of race relations while he intentionally fundamentally misrepresents the problem in a way that is likely to perpetuate it.

As is indicated in the final exchange in pane 6, Deutsch clearly understands that Whites' insistence on personalization is foolish because it decontextualizes the issue. The White character is the foil because he either refuses to or is unable to recognize that he has benefited from racism and continues to do so by opposing an action that would help to make things more fair (helping the Black man whom he used to gain his advantage). Because the strip accelerates history, the same characters appear in all six panes to reflect a time period, which, in reality, spans generations. White students will likely (and appropriately) note that while they may be the White character in the final pane, their situation is different because unlike the character, they were not present in the first four panes (the familiar "I never owned a slave" defense). They might argue that they arrived in the fifth pane, in fact, which shows that their entire lives have been spent feeling guilty about and "apologizing" for America's racist history.

The truth, of course, is that Whites who are living today have very much been present in those first few panes in some ways. While there has not been formal slavery of African Americans (of the kind depicted by the ball and chain) in our lifetime, Whites as a group are provided a "lift up" on the backs of persons of color. But that lift is not visible, it is not universally true on an individual basis, it is certainly not literal, and most Whites do not feel as if such a statement is accurate at all. Indeed, it takes a lot of reading, thinking and guidance for most Whites to understand the power and pervasiveness of the relatively invisible concept of White privilege. It is likely impossible for that story to be understood through a "concise" narrative of any kind.

The Black character in the strip is sympathetic; the White character is not. In the meta-narrative of race relations, this is probably fair, but at the individual level, it certainly is not. Individual White people have not, on the whole, acted in ways that are detrimental to Blacks. They do not consciously refuse to accept responsibility for their privilege and, it should be noted, are not directly responsible for that privilege the way that the White character in the strip is. In short, while the White character in the strip was aware of what he was doing when he took advantage of privilege and then adds insult to injury by not rectifying the situation once he realized it was inappropriate, the lived experiences of White individuals in America today cannot be captured by that dynamic.

There is a great deal of defensiveness on the part of Whites to any suggestion to the contrary, and this strip may evoke those feelings in Whites who encounter it. As those who are involved in the struggle for social justice know all too well, cutting through folks' defenses is a fundamental step toward consciousness raising.

The Verdict

We think that the advantages of this strip outweigh the limitations for college-age students (adults), which is the population with which we work. Because it can stimulate discussion and help to generate the type of analysis that we briefly offer here, we think it is a good way to explore some of the underlying constructs that hide below the surface of our contemporary political discourse on race.

On the other hand, we would be concerned about this strip being included in learning materials without the benefit critical discussion led by someone who has a sophisticated understanding of these issues. Under those circumstances, there is danger of misunderstanding the artist's intent and of a perpetuation of myths about the centrality of individualism in race relations in America.

As always, we look forward to your thoughts. What is the overall usefulness of a cartoon like this to help students to understand concepts such as White privilege, systemic power and hegemony? We especially want to hear from elementary school teachers and secondary education teachers: Is this appropriate for your classes? What advantages and limitations are these contexts?

The Limits of Racial Optimism

2009-10-24T15:16:00.009-04:00

It is no surprise that the nation's first president of color has been a lightning rod for discussion of race and racism in America. For those who struggle for racial justice, this inevitability has had positive and negative components. For a nation that often wishes to ignore the deep racial problems that permeate society, Barack Obama's election has forced us to confront, on a regular basis, the ugly truth that Martin Luther King's dream has not been realized. On the other hand, President Obama has had unrealistic expectations placed on him with respect to his ability to mend the country's racial wounds. We argued back in March that he would have a difficult time dealing with racism while in office, an analysis we felt compelled to offer as a result of what we saw as a dangerously and unrealistically optimistic frame employed in the mainstream media and, to a lesser extent, adopted by racially progressive thinkers, writers and activists. There was considerable evidence that the mass public also felt quite hopeful in this regard.

USA Today released results of a poll they conducted jointly with Gallup THIS WEEK that was similarly framed in terms of American optimism with respect to improvements in race relations. While President Obama's approval ratings hover at around 50%, the pol reveals that six in ten Americans say that race relations will improve under his presidency; just 13% think race relations will get worse. Further, 40% of Americans believe things are already better in this regard; 22% think things have gotten worse.

Of course, examining differences in these attitudes with respect to the race of the respondents is important. According to Susan Page's story reporting on the poll:

Blacks are much more likely than whites to say that racism against blacks persists -- 72% of blacks say it is widespread, compared with 49% of whites -- but they are also more optimistic that Obama's election will improve that.

A 53% majority of African Americans say race relations already have gotten better as a result.

In other words, while Whites are more likely than Blacks to think there is not persistent racism against African Americans, they are less likely than Blacks to think that Obama's election (and presidency) has improved race relations already or will improve it in the future.

Compared with attitudes nearly a year ago (right after the election), there has been an understandable (and perhaps predictable) tempering of optimism, though the percentage of Americans who believe that race relations would one day no longer be an issue in America is still slightly higher than before Obama secured the Democratic nomination.

In many ways, the framing of these data in terms of "optimism" is quite curious. For instance, consider this statement:

Over the past year, the percentage who say blacks have as good a chance as whites in their community to get a job for which they are qualified has risen by 8 percentage points. That's the biggest one-year jump since Gallup began regularly asking the question 20 years ago.

That's your cue to ask, "So what?" Without a breakdown by race for this question, and knowing that the poll is (appropriately, since it is a random national sample) dominated by Whites (there is no Black oversample or weighting of Black responses reported), this simply appears to reaffirm our understanding that Whites are more likely than ever to believe that we are in a post-racial society. If these attitudes are, indeed, an accurate reflection of reality (that is, if Blacks in their communities actually DO have as good a chance as Whites to get a job for which they are qualified), then that certainly is a reason for optimism. If it is just what folks think, then this is actually a reason to be quite pessimistic because such attitudes mask the true state of racial injustice and render more difficult the struggle to move toward equality.

An interesting finding that is not discussed in the story (but is presented in the graphs that accompany the story) involves respondents' degree of satisfaction with "the way things are going in the United States": 47% of Blacks and 22% of Whites report satisfaction. Even with the larger margin of error among African Americans in the sample (due to the smaller number of Blacks in the sample), this finding is remarkable and, perhaps, speaks to the important symbolic power -- at least, we suppose, if these numbers are correct, for African Americans -- of having a person of color in the White House.

Question and response option wording and the order in which questions are presented to respondents is important to know. We are not able to ascertain much of that information because the USA Today article does not provide it, and there is no link to the survey instrument. Specifically, we are concerned about the conflation of "race relations" and "racism against African Americans." These terms might prime very different underlying constructs among respondents, but they are somewhat carelessly used interchangeably (or at least alternately) in the article. One might imagine, for instance, someone believing that racism as a systemic force is still persistent against Blacks but that our collective ability to address it ("race relations") has improved. Or, one could imagine the exact opposite (e.g., someone who does not think racism is a problem anyway and sees more racial animosity reflected in the media since Obama's election). Further, we could learn much more if we could statistically control for other important factors that are known to be related to racial attitudes such as self-identified partisanship and ideology, geography, age, and gender. Perhaps most helpful would be measures designed to tap attitudes toward racism, such as Henry and Sears's "symbolic racism" scale for Whites and either the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity by Sellers or questions designed to tap Dawson's concept of "linked fate" for Blacks.

In other words, we can learn very little from this poll to help us meaningfully understand people's real attitudes about race relations and racism in America today. Add to that the fact the our conscious attitudes about race may not be as predictive of our behavior as our subconscious beliefs, and the poll (and corresponding story) is darn near useless in its current form. Certainly the headline -- "Poll: Hopes Buoyed on Race Relations" -- is not warranted and serves only to reinforce the wishful (and under-informed and misguided and blissful) notion that Obama's election either signaled or has ushered in a post-racial era in America.

Does It Still "Take a Village?": Multiple Perspectives on a Chicago Encounter

2009-10-14T11:14:00.021-04:00

Updated 10/19/09 at 10:20 a.m. CDT (added Jessie Daniels's response)

We look to our children as promises for the future, to progress beyond previous generations' limitations, failures and injustices. We recognize and dream about "their world" -- the one we'll live in when we are seniors, the one that embodies some of our wishes and the fruits of our labor and energy. But we also know that for these goals to be reached, there must be a context within which our young people can learn, grow and thrive. We agonize over how we can improve conditions for young Americans whose future is so instrumental to ours, and we worry about kids who seem to be heading in a direction that can undermine those aspirations.

THIS WEEK, we have assembled a small panel of thoughtful folks who are thinkers, writers and social justice advocates to discuss a confrontation that Stephen had with three young men who were vandalizing a subway station on Tuesday evening. We offer these perspectives in the spirit (and with the hope) of instigating positive, thoughtful discussion. Stephen's story is below, followed immediately by Charlton's response and then the responses of our guests.

Stephen

My wife and I were climbing down into the Harrison Red Line subway station in our neighborhood in Chicago when we happened upon three young Black boys -- maybe 13 years old -- tagging the station walls with spray paint. It was particularly surprising because there are security cameras down there, yet the kids were dancing around and acting as if they didn't care if anyone saw what they were doing. I thought about it for a second or two and decided to let them know that I saw what they did. Rather than express disappointment or anger (I figured at that age, irrespective of race, they wouldn't care -- I wouldn't have!), I simply wanted them to know that they were not as quick or careful as they though they were. Even now, I'm not sure if I was trying to scare them or warn them that they could easily be caught, or if I was trying to discourage them from doing it again. In any case, they all denied having done anything wrong, and as we boarded the train, one of the boys stuck his head in the door before it closed, called me some names, and flipped me his middle finger while another boy spray painted on the window of the train as it pulled out of the station.

I spent the rest of the night thinking about whether there was anything I could have done to meaningfully intervene in those boys' lives. Since I am a White ally, I am very conscious about not wanting to be act like, feel like or be perceived as though I need to "save" (Dangerous Minds-style) persons of color. On the other hand, as an adult who wants to see all children succeed and who knows that sometimes getting in trouble is the best thing that can happen to turn someone's life around, I wonder if I should have tried to call a CTA employee or otherwise "bust" the kids. Further complicating the issue is the fact that with all the youth violence and gang activity in the area, saying anything to kids that age at all -- particularly while they are engaging in an illegal act -- probably isn't a particularly smart thing to do. Would I have felt the same or acted in the same way if I were Black (a man or a woman -- and would that matter) or if the kids were White? Would the kids have reacted to me differently? Did I act appropriately (do enough, do too much)?

Charlton

There's no easy answer to this question. I suppose like many people my response to what the kids were doing would fluctuate depending on the day, my mood, and my immediate attitude about the actions these youths were engaged in. On one day, no doubt, I'd be apt to say that I would approach them and say something like, "No wonder why some people see kids like you as nothing more than ignorant thugs." It's the kind of thing that comes to mind when you are looking at someone from your own racial group reinforcing the dark shadow of prejudice on those of us who have tried so hard to overcome those perceptions.

But I've also noticed recently that I seem to be getting older. As I do, I find myself distanced from young Black teens not so much because they are Black, but because they are adolescents -- adolescents who seem to attempt more today than I would have ever thought possible to get away with when I was their age. And I admit part of me would have stood silently with my wife, not uttering a word to the kids -- in fear of their potential volatility and need to remain and keep my loved ones safe from potential harm.

If I were wearing my charitable, racially and socially conscious hat that day, I may have spent a moment not only contemplating acting -- confronting the young men -- but thinking through the implications of my actions. If I report them to the authorities ("authorities" -- I feel like I'm in a 1970s Japanese monster film) then these youth will probably be swept into a criminal justice system likely to impact them more negatively than the subway wall they were tagging. So no, don't report them; they probably deserve a chance that they probably won't get if the cops get a hold of them.

If I were to say anything -- not wanting to incur the wrath of some pent up anger, or send them on a one-way trip through the American criminal and judicial process -- I may have just asked them why. "Hey -- why are you guys doing this?" I've always found that if you ask someone a question he or she will do one of two things. Some will ignore you, and others will answer the question. If they answer the question, you've taken the first step to engaging in some form of meaningful dialogue. This, I think, would be the best possible outcome -- and opportunity -- I could imagine in this situation.

Jessie Daniels

The encounter that Stephen describes is a vexing situation for those of us who count ourselves as white allies for racial equality. As he describes the exchange, it is one bound up with white racial privilege (and, one suspects, class privilege). The image of the white professor chastising the young, black grafitti artists (or merely vandals) and their understandably angry response, seems like a reenactment of larger scripts about race and class in the culture.

I think it's also important to bring up the issue of gender and sexuality in the dissecting of this story. If I had been in that situation, and I had seen those young men while I (also a white professor, and a woman) had been with my partner (also a woman), I would not have said anything to a group of adolescent boys - whatever their race - for fear of retaliation that was more aggressive than a raised middle-finger. As lesbian-identified woman, groups of adolescent boys raise the possibility of a different kind of threat for me.

So, for me, the fact that Stephen feels he can call out these young men is completely bound up in his own position of privilege at the intersection of race and class, as well as gender and (hetero)sexuality.

If the underlying issue here is about how to intervene in the lives of young, black youth who may have gone astray on the path toward adulthood, full citizenship and participation in the broader society, I would echo what others have said here about community engagement. I wonder if Stephen knew the names of these young men? He doesn't say, but my guess is that he did not. Did he ever have a conversation with them prior to the exchange around the graffiti? Without a personal connection in which you at least know the young men's names or have had a conversation once before, an encounter such as this one is doomed to replay hierarchies of race and class.

And, just so you know that this not all theoretical for me, I'll close with a story from my own life. I attend a multi-racial, queer church called Metropolitan Community Church of New York (MCCNY). MCCNY has for 8 or so years run a shelter for LGBTQ homeless teens. The shelter is open 365 nights a year, and operates in the basement of the church building. The kids who reside there come from all over, are predominantly black and latino, and are mostly homeless because they have 'come out' to their families and been rejected by them. These young people are struggling - often heroically - to survive in difficult circumstances. They are also teenagers. As such, they not infrequently act out in ways that are just not acceptable. If I see unacceptable behavior by one of the teens and act in ways to correct it, I am in a similar position to the one that Stephen was in. I am white and a professor, and thus have racial and class privilege in relation to these young people. All of our interactions are always going to be inflected by those differences. However, that does not mean that I look the other way when I see a young person putting themselves in harm's way. I intercede when I can, and I'm mostly likely to take action - and to be effective - when I know a young person's name, I've talked with them before in some non-confrontational exchange, and they have a sense that I care about them beyond the interaction in which I'm telling them that they've messed up.

Dr. Jessie Daniels is an Associate Professor at Hunter College. She is cofounder and a frequent blogger at RacismReview; you can follow her on Twitter.

Tami Winfrey Harris

It is easy to see the implications of race and class all over an interaction between a white, male, college professor and three, young, black, inner-city males in the city of Chicago. We are trained to think that way, especially those of us who are committed to anti-racism and the exploration of privilege and power. But in this case, I wonder if those things--race and class--are distractions.

Let me explain. Race and class play a tremendous role in the marginalization of young, black males. And there may be no better illustration of that fact than Chicago, where 36 young men of color have died violently this year, and the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" in the highly-segregated city grows ever wider. So, it is safe to say that race and class likely played a significant role in these youths' seeming disaffection. But I am not convinced that it colored their interaction with you, Stephen.

I witnessed similar scenarios play out during my years in the Windy City with similar results. Adults, old enough to remember the time not so long ago when grown ups were expected to chasten ill-behaved young people and the young people generally obliged out of a sense of respect for age and authority, attempting to correct a raucous or anti-social group of teens only to be met with verbal or physical aggression. The races of the adults who embraced the notion of "it takes a village" varied, the infractions did also--loud cursing on the No. 6 bus, jimmying locks to make a short cut through private property--the outcome of their actions usually did not.

What is happening to our children? Well, in the case of black males (and there are certainly many troubled youth of other races, but young black men are particularly at risk), Anti-Racist Parent columnist Liz Dwyer said, in a post about the murder of Derrion Albert, that we are faced with "chickens coming home to roost."

As a society, we have chosen to not uphold desegregation laws. We have chosen to allow low income children of color to receive a substandard education, simply because they live in a different zip code. We have chosen to not pay a living wage so that people can actually have the means to pursue life, liberty and happiness, so they can move out of dangerous neighborhoods if they see fit. And we have chosen to allow gangs and narcotic trafficking to run rampant, as long as it stays controlled on the “bad” side of town.
As for having some sort of moral or spiritual “center” where today’s teens know not to beat one of their peers to death, that sort of center doesn’t just fall out of the sky and infect kids like Swine Flu. Yes, children and teens should know better, but we live in a do-whatever-you-wanna-do culture. Self-control is in no way a part of our world these days.
I’m not saying this to excuse what these teenagers did. But hello, didn’t you read Lord of the Flies as part of your education?

THIS is where race and class come in. Society has surely created an environment where anti-social behavior will fester in disenfranchised youth, including children of color and the poor. And because we broke it, it is our job to fix it. It is good that you intervened, Stephen--not as a white savior, but as a concerned adult. What most of us, including me, are far more likely to do is look away and say nothing, to tsk tsk about the kids and the mamas and daddies who are raising them, to give the children in question up for lost. We look away from the loud and aggressive behavior. We look away from the loitering. We look away from the vandalism. We look away...until a teenaged boy is beaten to death on camera...and then it seems people cannot look away. And we wonder how we got here.

Tami Winfrey Harris blogs at What Tami Said and is the editor of Anti-Racist Parent. Follow her on Twitter.

Alvin Herring

It would be all too easy for me as an African American male to categorize the angst my White brother felt over this incident as just another example of the privilege Whites enjoy – as it relates to race - to stand at a distance from the dirty work of confronting the tough realities racism creates and retreat to the sidelines where behaviors, motives and choices can be safely analyzed and timidly dissected. For sure, that is the choice of many White liberals, intending to sound like allies and then losing their voice when situations and circumstances call for a more vigorous assertion of solidarity.

But in the real world of race, no one gets a pass. Racism exists to systematically rob of us our humanity and psychically prepare us for the dirty work of denying to those deemed “less than” or “other than” opportunity, access, power, wealth and the very essentials of life itself. And racism doesn’t ever stand alone as a single issue but pulls in every other societal structure in around it, forcing us to contend with unholy combinations of race and other social dimensions such as class, gender or sexual orientation.

What has to be remembered is that race is the predicate, the root. Indeed, a racist system will never truly let you forget it. In the encounter with the boys making mischief on the train, the scenario is as it seems. No matter of intent, goodwill or progressive racial sentiment can alter the reality that a White man has stepped into foreign territory and entered the world of these Black boys without invitation. Their response is neither novel nor unexpected. They rebuke him and put him “in his place.” His angst is also part of the “script.” Was he right to express his displeasure at the boys or was his behavior based on race? Did they reject his correction because he was an adult censoring youth rebellion or did they interpret his actions as racist?

In a better world a grown-up should be able to confront misbehaving juveniles and have his intent be seen if not as helpful and corrective at least benign. But this is not a better world. It is the world that racism has created. In that world –our world – racism is an idol that must be worshipped and our desire for community is the sacrificial lamb.

How do we ever get past this? How do we meaningfully enter each other’s worlds and build real connections across race lines? The answers are not simple ones but they begin with a need for a universal recognition of what racism is and how it distorts the human heart and mind. It begins with Blacks and Whites each speaking to the ways our lives have been wounded by racism. Whites must summon the courage to acknowledge how they have been privileged by the oppression of people of color and undertake the work of dismantling that privilege by working for justice. Blacks must come to grips with centuries of rage and bitter resentment (much of which has been focused internally) and become earnest partners in forging a more just society.

Real community ought to be our goal, but to get there we are going to have to have the courage to step up to situations such as this and confront how incomplete our lives are in the shadow of structural racism. We’re going to have to finally reach that place where justice demands that we stop business as usual and get down to the real business of confronting racism.

Alvin Herring is the CEO and lead facilitator of Side by Side. Follow him on Twitter.

Mikhail Lyubansky

This is a no-win situation. That was my immediate reaction to reading about Stephen’s encounter. But I didn’t want to write that. It was pessimistic and, more importantly, not at all useful, helpful, or constructive. I try to approach my analysis of race and racial dynamics constructively. So, I didn’t write anything, hoping that that something more constructive would come to me. Nothing has.

It’s a no-win situation even without the racial layer, at least from my perspective as a White ally (I’m in full agreement with Stephen’s take on it). That is, I don’t see a productive way to respond to this specific encounter, even if the boys in question are also white. The reason is that, given the situation, the boys are likely to distrust me and, therefore, perceive anything I do or say with suspicion. The remedy – the only remedy, in my opinion – is to earn their trust, to convince them that I had their interests and their needs in mind. As a clinical psychologist, I have some ideas about how to do this: I’d try to guess at their underlying motivations and needs (these might include self-expression, autonomy, fun, and even justice (e.g., payback for perceived systemic oppression) and respond to any expression (even if hostile) of such needs with statements expressing empathy and my desire to understand their motivations and experiences. Not always, but quite often, if it really comes from the heart (true empathy is hard to fake), this method is effective in building trust. But it takes time, sometimes a lot of time, and in this particular situation, the time is just not available. Stephen is waiting to get on a train, which could arrive at any moment, and even if he is willing to talk to forget the train and talk to the boys as long as necessary (unlikely since he is traveling with his wife), it is, at best, doubtful that the boys would be willing to engage with him long enough to be convinced of his good intentions.

And to this, we add the racial layer, because there is no way that this encounter is not, in part, racial in nature. In Spike Lee’s classic Do The Right Thing, the local African American community, furious about Radio Raheem’s needless death at the hands of the police and despondent over the certainty that the city would not care, take out their frustration on Sal’s Famous Pizzeria – not because Sal deserved it but because as a White person in the Black community he represented not just whiteness but white power and oppression. The destruction of Sal’s Famous was not a personal attack on Sal. In some ways, it had nothing to do with Sal the person, who, the incident with Radio’s radio aside, was generally well-liked by most of the people in the neighborhood. I recall Do The Right Thing, because, I think that, on some level (possibly an unconscious one), the boys in the subway station are acting out the same kind of frustration with the (white) “system” as the residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Do The Right Thing (or not – they could be middle-class kids just having “fun” – the truth is there is no way to know). As such, until he proves otherwise, Stephen represents the “system” and white oppression. It has nothing to do with Stephen the person. And it may not even be something that the boys have a conscious awareness of. But the moment that Stephen initiates a conversation, this racial history and symbolism come into play. His words and actions become transformed by who he is racially and who he represents on a racial level, pushing the possibility of trust even further out of reach. These racial dynamics can be overcome. In another context, I think Stephen could do it. I’m sure he has done it and will do it again in the future. But in this particular case, I just don’t think the opportunity for establishing a relationship is there. In this case, an engagement with the boys is a no-win situation. Allies need to know when to lead, when to play a supporting role, and when to stay out of the way. It makes me sad to say this, but I think this is a situation we have to stay out of.

Dr. Mikhail Lyubansky is a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a managing editor at the progressive media site OpEdNews.com and blogs at Psychology Today. Follow him on Twitter.

No Peace for Obama: How the Prize Might Harm His Image

2009-10-10T09:57:00.018-04:00

The collective groan you heard Friday morning came from the West Wing of the White House. As it was announced that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, his advisers scrambled to figure out, ironically, how they could possibly spin the news to minimize the negative effects. For his part, the president was appropriately reserved, noting essentially that he did not deserve the award. That may be an accurate assessment, but what is more important than the decision of the prize committee are the potential negative political effects. In our assessment, President Obama is in deep trouble on this one.

We are certainly not unique in this assessment, of course. Several thoughtful ideas have been put forth in the past two days about the negative side of this honor (see here and here for just two examples). From our perspective, though, the trouble is not about whether the award was "deserved" or "earned," and it does not really stem from the attacks of folks like Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin (both of whom thumped the president for his award on Friday). The trouble is not with the AM talk radio/Fox News crowd. There is no political ground to be lost to those folks because there is likely nothing that the president could do to win those folks over. David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel do not lose any sleep over the direct effect of what those folks think or say.

The trouble is with the indirect effects of such attacks, and the president's advisers know it. Specifically, there must be concern about the degree to which winning this award plays into the frame of Barack Obama as "other."

We have written about framing in this space before (see here and here and here, for example). Along with agenda setting and priming, it is is one of the most notable theoretical advancement in media effects research in the past two decades. At its most basic level, framing involves putting information into context (and recognizing that information is processed contextually). And while much time has been spent arguing over what frames have been employed in given political contexts, one need not get hung up on the intent of persons to construct frames to understand their effects.

Even though dozens (hundreds?) of framing studies have been published in the last 25 years, perhaps the most clear examples of framing effects comes from one of the earlier studies. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman reported results of some framing studies in a 1981 issue of the journal Science. They presented alternate versions of a problem to participants who were randomly assigned to one of two the groups. The exact factual elements of the choices presented to participants was the same, but the way that the choices were framed differed. The results were striking (well beyond conventional levels of statistical significance).

Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows:

If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.

If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved.

Which of the two programs would you favor?

Nearly three-quarters of the participants who were presented with this program (72%) chose Program A.

The other group got the problem with the same description, but the program response options were as follows:

If Program [A] is adopted 400 people will die.

If Program [B] is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will die.

Participants who got this formulation had a near reversal of the other group: 22% of them chose Program A, while 78% chose program B.

The only difference between the options, of course, is the way that they were presented. For both, Program B is the riskier choice, so when folks first read that they can "save" 200 people (a positively framed certainty), they are more likely to avoid the risk, but when the first option is worded as a certain negative ("400 people will die"), there is a greater likelihood to gamble and try to save everyone, even if the odds are poor.

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize?

Much (certainly not all) of the persistent criticism of President Obama over the last two years (beginning in the Democratic primaries, lest you think Republicans invented this) has centered on his "otherness." As we have noted a number of times in this space, this certainly cannot be considered to be race neutral. But even if the intent is rooted in bigotry or racial resentment, it is easier for Americans to accept a theme of "otherness" about a person of color or a White woman than a White man because of the way we were (and are) socialized.

So while Limbaugh, Beck and the rest of the president's most vocal opponents are largely irrelevant to the base of support that the president and his Democratic allies need to govern and win reelection, their language and imagery depicting Obama as "not one of us" has a great potential to take hold tacitly and shape the way that subsequent information about him is processed.

Because President George W. Bush was often depicted as not being very bright, every verbal gaffe, no matter how small, became exaggerated in the American imagination and served to reinforce that image of him in a way that such a mistake would not function with, for instance, this president, who is almost universally recognized as very bright, even by his opponents. Similar characteristics are true of other notable public figures: John Kerry as flip-flopper, Al Gore as boring, Bill Clinton as manipulative, John McCain as out-of-touch, etc. When Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, he was not widely criticized or suspected of pandering to the communists because there was no existing frame in place that would facilitate such a "reading" of the event. A president who was not such a staunch anti-communist would likely not have fared nearly as well.

So when Barack Obama is honored by "foreigners," particularly those rooted in democratic socialist nations like those in Scandinavia, it provides additional "evidence" of his otherness to those who are predisposed to believe that he "hates America" or, at least, is not proud to be American. While there are only a minority of Americans who consciously hold those attitudes, there is a real potential for the frame to take hold subconsciously because it is so often and persistently employed.

Worse for Obama and his supporters is the fact that the president is planning to go to the ceremony to accept the award in December. The video and still imagery that will emerge from that event also has the potential to contribute to the reinforcement of the "otherness" frame.

Supporters of the president will understandably argue that this is not "fair," or that it is a function of an overly simplistic binary model of "patriotism" that holds that anything Europeans like must be bad for America. But the power of framing lies in the fact that it is not at all reliant upon "logic" or meaningful empirical evidence to function. Quite to the contrary -- frames may be developed intentionally, but their effects wholly rely on subconscious processing of information within their parameters.

Think about it this way: If Tversky and Kahneman would have presented participants with both types of response options, there would have been no framing effects. It is likely that the results would have been closer to 50% because then participants would reason through the more objective options (i.e., Is it worth taking a risk to try to save everyone, or should we go with the definite plan that saves 200, even though 400 will still die?). Since each participant was only presented with one pairing, though, the framing mattered (a lot).

Much like racist messages, when frames are exposed and brought to consciousness they lose much of their potential for effectiveness. But so long as the connections between the attacks on President Obama as having a fake birth certificate, refusing to wear a lapel pin, being a socialist (or fascist or Muslim or Black liberation theology Christian), preferring "czars," paling around with terrorists, etc. are not connected as being part of an "otherness" frame, seemingly benign or even positive events like receiving an international award for peace can very much work to reinforce and perpetuate negative attitudes about the president.

In this context, it is likely that the president would have preferred to have gotten out of bed Friday morning to find that he had to make a choice about possible responses to combat an unusual Asian disease.

White Friends, Black Friends: The Personal Nature of Racial Politics

2009-10-04T20:40:00.009-04:00

We have been working together for over eight years now. We come from different backgrounds (personally and professionally), but we share a common vision for advancing racial justice by learning (and sharing) through employing the most contemporary social science research theories and methods to the study of race, politics and communication. As regular TWIR readers know, we try to provide a unified perspective on current events in this space each week. That is, except in very rare circumstances, we put forth analysis here that is a representation of our collective thoughts and application of social science research. Occasionally, however, we write separately, either because we disagree with one another (see here and here, for instance) or because the topic is primarily relevant from one of our perspectives (see here or here).

THIS WEEK, Charlton provides his unique perspective on interracial friendships in this era of heightened awareness of race and racism. It's not that Stephen has nothing to offer to this discussion (after all, he has interracial friendships – Charlton being the most valued – as well), but as you will discover, what Charlton has to say represents a perspective that we decided is best presented from his voice alone. As always, we look forward to your thoughtful comments.

***

Race. Politics. Race politics. The politics of race. Identity politics.

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill is perhaps most famous for popularizing the phrase, “all politics is local.” Those of us who venture into that tangled web where race and politics intersect are especially reminded that all politics is also, personal. In fact, no politics are more personal than racial politics (and the politics of gender and sexual orientation are equally so).

Today’s electoral politics are – in the words of Thomas Hobbes – nasty, brutish and short. But at the end of the day, there is a winner and a loser. Life goes on as the thrill of victory eventually ebbs for the former as the sting of defeat does for the latter. Members of Congress do legislative battle with competing bills, ingenious maneuvers, pointed hearings where they skewer opposing colleagues and roast them with fiery floor speeches meant to paint their adversaries as the worst among us – from heartless baby killers to Machiavellian demagogues and all else in between. Still, they emerge able to shake each other’s hands, extol the virtues of bipartisanship, and then share slippery oysters and a sip of whiskey at Old Ebbitt’s.

Those of us who willfully surround ourselves with the critical minutiae that race bring to everyday life sometimes like to think we are playing the same game.

From the verbal beat-downs we apply to modern racial rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin or Glenn Beck (I specify “verbal,” lest any of these folks mistake me for just some Black thug like Barack Obama who inspires Black violence against White people), to the daily debates we engage in over controversial race-based social policies like affirmative action, school desegregation or health care. From our heated discussions on national television designed to convince the public of the folly and fallacies of post-racialism, colorblind ideology and the like to our attempts to get youthful undergraduates to understand the subtleties of modern racism, persistent discrimination, and notions of White privilege, we (more a personal projection than a factual generalization) often like to think that we can immerse ourselves in these murky waters and emerge unsullied and unaffected. We sometimes fool ourselves into believing that our engagement with the stuff of racial politics is a wholly intellectual enterprise – participation in a kind of rational discourse from which we can simply redirect our attention when we wish not to talk about it anymore. We sometimes like to think that what we do and what we talk about exists primarily in that mystical abstract world of ideas.

Then sometimes, we are reminded that the political is the personal when it comes to talking about race. Sometimes we are reminded that despite the hordes of protesters hurling racial insults while the whole world watches, despite all of the “liberal media’s” talk of racism replete in today’s conservative rhetoric, despite our penchant to talk about the broad, statistical realities of racial inequality, skyrocketing incidences of racial violence, increased accusations of workplace discrimination and the like – our discussion about race often comes down to those most basic features of everyday conversation: two people, face-to-face (or what passes for it in our electronic age), talking about something that matters to them – personally.

* * *

Thanks to Facebook, I have recently been back in touch with people from what seems like a different life – particularly, folks from the conservative, Baptist, predominantly White college I attended and from which I graduated nearly twenty years ago. In that much time, some things – some people – change, and some things and people remain the same.

For me, college was a continuation of high school, where learning and learning to be liked alternated and competed for top billing on my life’s marquee of personal goals. (I completed college with a 2.7 GPA, so it is clear which one prevailed.) Where I grew up – on military bases in a city with a large minority population – racial diversity was as ubiquitous as MTV . My schools ranged from being 98% Mexican-origin to highly diverse, though slightly majority-White. So when I showed up for college in the middle of Oklahoma, on a campus where I could count the number of people who looked like me on two – okay, maybe three or four hands – I was a bit taken aback.

But I knew one thing: you do not make friends talking about race, racism, racial discrimination and the like. So I did not (talk about it, much), and I did (make friends). When a few of the women from the campus’s small Black Student Union asked me to join them at one of their meetings, I smiled, said okay, and quickly forgot about the fact that I never intended to go. Who wants to be part of the militant crowd when there are parties to go to, fun to be had, women to meet?

The reality, of course, was that I was not always able to avoid difficult discussion about race. But those are different stories for a different time. For the most part, I became a model for all our colorblind dreams. I even had one of those red, yellow, green “Love Sees No Color” t-shirts that were popular in the early nineties and wore it with pride, hoping forever to avoid those uncomfortable moments having to confront the issue of race.

Fast forward almost two decades. Facebook. Becoming new friends with old ones, eager to see how everyone turned out, these friends and acquaintances – many of whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since we walked across the graduation stage.

In the heat of the moment – post 2008 election, the beginning of the nastiness of the health care debate, amidst the discussion surrounding Henry Louis Gates’s run in with Cambridge cops, surrounded by birthers, hordes of “I want my country back,” protesters, yelling "communist, communist, communist" in the streets about everyone from Barack Obama on down to almost every Black person in or nominated for cabinet posts – I just could not help turning my personal Facebook page (not to be confused with the RaceProject Facebook page) into a site for political warfare. I posted articles of interest about race. I posted my own published or on-air commentary. I responded to comments made by my some of my new and old friends.

At some point, I looked over at my running count of friends. 666. Hmmmm. I could have sworn I was up close to the 850 mark. Seems that some of my friends were steadily peeling away, and I began to notice how I – like everyone else – had begun to take this race talk very personally.

"With the possibility of a recited "I pledge myself to President Obama" being in there, you're damn right I'm concerned. Bush never asked that. Clinton never asked that. Regan never asked that. There are three acceptable entities to which one may pledge oneself: God, Country, Family. To ease the confusion, Obama is NOT country."

An old friend – a college friend and post-college roommate actually – threw this my way when I explained my utter disbelief that anyone would question the President of the United States talking to children in a televised address. I brushed it off without delving further into the matter. The following came a few days later, when I questioned Conservative attacks against Van Jones and his eventual resignation, saying that I thought it was shame when good people are victims of such witch-hunt-style political rhetoric.

"It's a shame when good, intelligent people are willfully blind to or willfully ignorant of what's right in front of them."

I jumped further into the conversation on this one. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me: Willfully blind or ignorant. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt that you were talking about some other group of unknown and unspecified folks, not me.

Him: Sorry, my friend. I may not be able to debate the topics well, but I've never shied away from anything. I've watched Mr. Jones on CSPAN a few times (reruns, you know) and didn't have much issue with him other than all the green stuff. Nice as he seems to be, after his history coming to light, you have to be willfully *something* to think he's good for the country.

Me: Oh, well then. Please do let me know the next time this ignorant fool can be the beneficiary of your infallible wisdom! I'd hate to think I can actually think a reasonable thought and come up with a reasonable conclusion on my own!

Him: Don't play the passive aggressive game. It doesn't suit you. If you think a guy who signs things without reading them, who is an admitted communist and who really thinks green jobs are a viable way to save our nation... if you truely [sic] believe he's good for our nation, then do your best to educate me. Otherwise, the race card is an easy and obvious dismissal of the thoughts and opinions of people who disagree with you. I love reasonable thoughts and I love a good discussion. Bring it on. Make me do some work.

Me: I'm big, I'm Black and I'm overeducated. Many in your camp would say that aggression suits me just fine! Whether it does or doesn't won't get me to back down from the mote in the eye of folks like you who will cry that folks like me played the race card when you folks seem to always refuse to admit that race is ever a factor, that race may possibly . . . be a factor in any kind of political action, decision, personal preference or the like. That you can dismiss anything like me says anytime we venture to point out the possibility - however glaringly explicit or implicit it may be. So then, why don't you tell me which of the following you would consider to be an example of me NOT playing the race card?

What followed was a list of about 20 things that I challenged him to tell me whether I was – as I am and we are so often accused of – seeing race and racism in everything. He rose to the challenge. I have yet to respond. But the point of it all is simply that with all my talk of “conservatives this, and conservatives, that,” my friend was hearing all of my accusations and claims of conservative insolence as a personal affront. My talk of conservative racism was heard as, “you, my friend, are a racist, a bigot, etc.” and much of our conversation didn’t get beyond that. (Stephen and I wrote more about this a few weeks ago in this space when we talked of the idea of “racism fatigue.”)

I say all of this to remind us – myself really – that all conversation comes down to two people addressing each other. Good conversation is risky, sometimes difficult, sometimes painful, but often productive. On the one hand I WISH I could be like another old college friend of mine who regularly says things to me like, “I look at the values of the people and truly could care less about,” or, “I am sick of race being used...isn't this a Post Racial president...I talk about [race] more now than I ever have in my entire life!" or who sends me articles by Black people with titles such as “American Thinker: Why I am no longer an African American.”

While I am frustrated (both personally and professionally) by what I have been observing on the landscape of racial discourse in America today, I am also saddened because I cannot help but think that these White friends from years past were able to enjoy my company because we spent our time talking about football or music; I was not "acting so Black" back then. My ideas about race and racism have not changed, though, and my guess is that theirs have not either. The suggestion that I am somehow "different now" is predicated on a willingness on all of our parts to ignore the obvious, which was an arrangement that served all of our interests then. In that way, these friendships serve as a metaphor for America's collective relationship with racism. While I have no doubt that their friendship was genuine, I have to wonder whether, at least on a subconscious level, these folks were able to soothe themselves about their own deep-seated racial predispositions (which we all have) through my friendship. In other words, my presence in their lives enabled them to say, "I have a Black friend," which, for many, is as powerful evidence of not being racist as one needs (right alongside avoidance of the "n-word"). Did I (ironically) function as a racial quota, and am I less valuable now that I am active in pointing out that racism is more complicated that individual-level bigotry? Does their White privilege allow them to believe that since I think this way that they are correct and I am "wrong" (overly-sensitive, radical, out-of-touch with "real" America)?

I, too, sometimes wish that race was not such a necessary part of American social and political life. But people of color do not have the luxury of willing it to be so. On the other hand, I am reminded almost daily of the reality that when one talks about race with some folks, they will always hear – no matter how impersonal one tries to pitch the conversation – themselves being labeled and denigrated for being "a racist." Feelings are hurt, misunderstandings occur, time has to be spent easing bruised feelings. It is difficult, it is messy, it is – very personal.

Patient. . . and Radical

2009-09-18T10:57:00.014-04:00

In sending out a recommendation for our blog last week, one of our Twitter friends, the very thoughtful @readingmachine, described us as "patient," which we took as a high compliment because we try to be measured and thoughtful about our offerings. It led us to consider the degree to which it is difficult to be both radical and patient in this political climate.

It is an appropriate time for us to be a little reflective, as we have just begun our fourth year of us writing this weekly blog. (Interestingly, it was at about this time last year when we felt it necessary to "defin[e] our role.") Of course, much has changed in America since we wrote about the start of the first season of Survivor in 2006, when the "tribes" were divided by race. Much has stayed the same, too. While we were by no means the first online writers to dedicate our space to race and politics, we were among only a small handful of such sites. Now the blogosphere is crowded with smart, thoughtful offerings on the subject. Back then, we had only a handful of readers, most of whom either knew us personally or were former students. We had the odd reader who thought we were full of it, but for the most part, the comments were civil and respectful; folks appreciated what we were doing, even if they disagreed with what we wrote.

But things today are much more heated with respect to our topic. Drew Westen, who is working on the cutting edge of political psychology research, wrote a must-read piece for Huffington Post this week where he explains how race has a way of leading to incivility in the way we communicate with one another. Joe Gerstandt wrote a thoughtful piece about how to find "sweetness," and the White House, which has wisely tried to deescalate the anger all summer by downplaying the role race has played, stayed on message this week, as President Obama suggested that race was not an issue in the opposition to his policies because he "was Black before the election."

To be fair, the overall political climate is probably not, overall, more hostile than it was in the fall of 2006, when progressives were outraged over some of President Bush's policies, but the hostility much more directly centers on race today. So when @readingmachine offered that we were "patient" and @Maevesmom, later in the week, advocated for "relentless etiquette," we were encouraged to reflect on THIS WEEK's events through that lens.

We have taken a bit of heat over the years from folks who are not familiar with (or simply disagree with) the goals and practices of folks who work in higher education. Specifically, we have been accused of being arrogant and elitist because we have consistently argued that it is the responsibility of scholars to be able to see the "big picture." While we cannot dismiss out of hand charges that we are -- individually or as a pair -- arrogant, we would like to offer that most folks in academia (including us) make a fraction of the money that people who went to school half as long make. Perhaps we are sensitive about it, but far from being reflective of self-importance, this fact is either a testament to our dedication to our profession or to our abject stupidity. Our guess is that whichever choice you prefer depends greatly on the degree to which you think we are on the mark with our analysis most weeks.

In any case, we put ourselves out there each week, which makes us a target for criticism, so we understand that withstanding those jabs is part of what we must expect. We explain to our family members who are troubled by such remarks that the attacks are not really personal, but that it is difficult to separate what we are doing from who we are; it is difficult for our critics, and it is difficult for us.

We are expected to be "patient" and to engage in "relentless etiquette"; our critics are not. Those who defend the status quo have always been, by definition, resistant to change. From flat earth defenders to slavery supporters to school integration resisters, there is a perpetual struggle between those pushing for more progress and those who think that we have made enough progress (and that any more would be "reverse discrimination"). But progress is not the same as equality, and while it is uncomfortable for many, those who fight for equality do not and cannot stop at each stage where progress has been made. Intellectual growth, like all growth, requires a tearing down before building back up. In this case, we need to tear down the myths of White supremacy and American meritocracy to expose systemic racism and help folks to understand that the precise use of language related to race is an important factor in determining whether we will continue to move forward or whether we have reached a nadir.

There is a name for such a push: radicalism. Those who seek fundamental changes to the system that created and perpetuates inequality (based on race, sex, etc.) understand that we need radical change. To most Americans, "radical" is synonymous with "extreme," but like "racism" the term has been (perhaps intentionally) diluted by those who wish for it to lose its power. By conflating the term "radical," the etymology of which is "by the root," with "extreme," defenders of the status quo have been able to push advocates for radical social justice to the margins of American political discourse. But if we use a metaphor of weeds, the difference is that we can continue to mow over or "weed whack" those little pesky buggers, or we can get down on our hands and knees, get a little bit dirty, and pull them out by the root so that they never grow back. That's radical, and that's what is needed to bring about social justice. (What that means in policy terms, however, is subject to debate and beyond the scope of this article.)

So is it possible to be patient and radical?

We hope so.

For the past eight years, we have engaged in social science research to help others (and ourselves) more fully understand the complexities of racism in American politics, particularly the ways that it is reflected in and moved along by language. But we started The Project on Race in Political Communication as a "project" because we always had a vision for our work that transcended the confines of the narrow academic communities within which we work. Part of our mission is to "share [scholarly] information with the mass public in an accessible way," which we do each week in this space.

Beginning this past summer, we also began to provide a place for folks to gather and discuss these issues (on our Facebook page and via our Twitter feed). In all of these endeavors, we have tried to create online space with an academic atmosphere that is a departure from most of the other politically-oriented online environments. To be fair, we have had some problems getting folks to appreciate that one must adjust one's behavior to the context. Just like we would not welcome the sort of screaming matches that characterize cable television news in our classrooms, we expect civil and respectful exchanges of ideas in our online learning communities. The physical space and power differentials that occur naturally in our classrooms make such expectations relatively easy to manage; online, however, it is much more difficult. Just this week, we were forced to issue a call for civility on our Facebook page because we began to notice that the sarcasm and "gotcha" comments that are so prominent in other online settings were starting to seep in. There are nearly 1,000 teacher-learners who look to that page for information and commentary on issues relating to race, politics and language, and we want to be sure to provide a safe environment for the thoughtful and respectful exchange of ideas without fear of bullying.

So while we appreciate that passions are running high, it is important to point out that academics do, in fact, have commitments and responsibilities that differ from non-academics, and that among them, being at once patient and radical is important.

Academics must view the world differently than journalists, who in turn must view the world differently from those who have no training in journalism. Just this week, Talking Points Memo writer Glenn Thrush had to apologize for taking a document sent to him by a political operative and including it in one of his columns without carefully checking the content. He appropriately noted that the responsibility did not rest with the party leader who sent him the information; that person's job is to spin, persuade and manipulate. While we can argue that everyone has a responsibility to be "truthful," the art of politics is about constructing reality, so we probably won't get too far with that argument. Journalists, however, have a responsibility of pulling back, checking sources, and striving for objectivity (which should not be confused with neutrality).

Academics have yet a different set of expectations. First, with respect to our research, the (often double-blind) peer review process is the step of the scientific method that is designed to ensure that the rigor that is expected in terms of methodology and theoretical development is reflected in our publications. Not long ago, one of our online critics rhetorically asked of a blog entry, "so this passes for academic rigor?" Certainly not! There is less editorial oversight for blogs than there is for media publications, let along academic publications. The work we do here does not significantly contribute to the professional evaluation of our work or promotion at our respective institutions, and it certainly would not pass for "scholarship" at either North Central College or New York University. What we offer here is an application of social scientific scholarship to current events. The peer review process moves (by design) much more slowly. Part of the challenge of teaching students in the 21st century is helping them to weigh information appropriately. If one of our blogs was listed as a scholarly source on a paper, we would certainly deduct points.

Second, as teachers we have a different set of expectations than those who are not teachers. Mark Edmundson wrote an excellent piece for the New York Times this week wherein he very eloquently explains why teachers must view the world differently from others:

Because really good teaching is about not seeing the world the way that everyone else does. Teaching is about being what people are now prone to call “counterintuitive” but to the teacher means simply being honest. The historian sees the election not through the latest news blast but in the context of presidential politics from George Washington to the present. The biologist sees a natural world that’s not calmly picturesque but a jostling, striving, evolving contest of creatures in quest of reproduction and survival. The literature professor won’t accept the current run of standard clichés but demands bursting metaphors and ironies of an insinuatingly serpentine sort. The philosopher demands an argument as escapeproof as an iron box: what currently passes for logic makes him want to grasp himself by the hair and yank himself out of his seat.

[. . . ]

Good teachers know that now, in what’s called the civilized world, the great enemy of knowledge isn’t ignorance, though ignorance will do in a pinch. The great enemy of knowledge is knowingness. It’s the feeling encouraged by TV and movies and the Internet that you’re on top of things and in charge. You’re hip and always know what’s up. Cool — James Dean-style cool — was once the sign of the rebel. But the tables have turned: conformity and cool have merged. The cool character now is the knowing one; even when he’s unconventional, he’s never surprising — and most of all, he’s never surprised. Good teachers, by contrast, are constantly fighting against knowingness by asking questions, creating difficulties, raising perplexities. And they’re constantly dramatizing their own aversion to knowingness in the way they walk and talk and dress — in their willingness to go the Lester Bangs route.

To be clear: we do not believe that Rachel Maddow, Glenn Beck, Keith Olberman or Rush Limbaugh have to adhere to any of the standards that we have explained herein. They are not scholars in the formal sense (though they are all quite bright), and they are not even journalists in their current roles. They can choose to be radical, or they can choose not to be. They can choose to be patient, or they can choose not to be. Their decisions on these elements must be driven by their personal preferences and motivations, not by any external standards that should be applied to them. That is not the case with us.

Like anyone who cares, we get angry, too. We just do not feel as if it is appropriate to bring that personal anger into any of the Race Project spaces without filtering it through our training and "the big picture." That is one of the reasons that, despite calls to publish here more frequently, we have resisted. We think that the ability to step back and not write quickly contributes to our ability to be patient. What we personally think -- as citizens -- is important, but it is only equally important to the thoughts of every other American. Our degrees and training and the fact that we have an audience does not translate into advanced moral worth or importance. To be sure, if we thought that way, we would, indeed, be quite arrogant. What we do is not "better" than what Lou Dobbs does; it is, however, different.

Of course, as someone pointed out on Twitter a few weeks ago, only those who have relative privilege have the luxury of "patience"; for many Americans who are on the business end of systemic oppression, real justice has been far too long in coming. Further, those who feel as if the power and relatively privilege that they have always knows is being threatened are also understandably impatient and anxious. In our middle-class positions, we can be patient with those who are not patient with us, even as we are impatient with how slowly progress is being made. It is a luxury we do not take for granted.

At the end of the day, folks who like the heat of battle and engaging in arguments rather than productive discourse can find literally thousands of such places online and, most recently, at town hall meetings. We hope, however, that folks who are looking for radical ideas that are presented with patience, will find a comfortable and supportive environment with us in the spaces we provide.

Racial Narcissism

2009-09-18T08:09:00.006-04:00

As we are sure you are well aware, it was a very busy week in race. From President Carter's comments about Joe Wilson's outburst being reflective of racism (and Bill Cosby's support of that statement) to Rush Limbaugh's accusation that a White student being beaten by a group of Black teens on a school bus in Belleville, IL as a natural result of "Obama's America," there is much to discuss.

A lot of thoughtful analysis has already been put forth (see our Facebook page for an archive), so we will, as we generally do, try to step back and put the entire week into some context.

To do so, we offer an analogy in an attempt to capture the collective mindset of Whites who are understandably frustrated that they have been continually referred to as "racist." Last week, of course, we addressed their frustration with a concept we called "racism fatigue." THIS WEEK, we dig just a bit deeper to offer a look at "racial narcissism." This "disorder" is, we argue, a natural occurrence of being socialized into accepting a battery of (largely unspoken) "truths" about Whites and non-Whites.

We want to be very clear here that we are not using the term "narcissism" literally (i.e., in a clinical sense). That is, we are not saying that White people are all narcissists. Rather, we offering an extended metaphor to help characterize the way that Whites who are not bigots have collectively reacted to accusations of racism. This is not a diagnosis, and it is most definitely not designed to be an attack of any sort. To the contrary, our overarching argument is that until we understand that being referred to as "racist" is not an insult but a statement of fact about the internalized, largely subconscious acceptance of White supremacy that is applicable to everyone (irrespective of race) who is socialized in a racist culture, we cannot move forward. That is why we advocate using "racist" only as an adjective -- it describes all of us but does not define any of us. (It is what we are, not who we are.) We should reserve the word "bigot" for those who engage in overt displays of racist animosity (and who are not coy or embarrassed about those feelings). No one should ever be called "a racist," as using the term this way detracts greatly from the importance of the word as a marker of systemic power and institutionalized oppression.

According to the most current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), a personality disorder is defined as "[a]n eduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectation of the individual's culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment." Without belaboring the individual points too much, this nicely characterizes much of White America in the Obama era.

The difficulty of helping folks to understand systemic racism is reflective of the enduring quality of racial narcissism. Because non-bigoted Whites do not believe that they or people like them are racist but rather operate under the assumption of equality, there is clear deviation from the expectation of our culture. We expect that everyone is equal, so when our (or others') racist behavior deviates from that expectation, there is a violation of norms (what Tali Mendelberg has called "the norm of racial equality"). This behavior is pervasive in the sense that it characterizes all Americans (not just White Americans -- see the oft-cited Kenneth Clark "dolls" experiment for just one vivid example). Racism is certainly stable over time. Bigotry, however, is not. While no one can deny the progress that has been made from the 1600s to the 1800s to the 1960s to today, it is important to remember that progress is not the same as equality. White folks in America are still much more likely to "succeed" on any number of indicators than people of color because of systemic racism. Racial narcissism clearly leads to distress and/or impairment for Whites and persons of color. The one element of the definition that strains the analogy is the fact that an individual personality disorder has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, whereas recent developmental psychology literature suggests that racism is learned much earlier (conservatives flipped over the most recent Newsweek cover story on this issues).

So far, however, we have only explained how racism can be conceptualized as a collective personality disorder (to the extent that we collectively have a cultural "personality"). Narcissism is but one personality disorder, and its specific characteristics are similarly applicable.

From the DSM IV:

Someone who suffers from Narcissistic Personality disorder (NPD) has at least 5 of the following characteristics:

has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
requires excessive admiration
has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

We will not go through each of these (you're welcome). Some of them are self-evident, and at this point, we are confident that you get the idea. We will leave it to your comments to elaborate or refute individual points, but while no analogy is ever perfect, we hope that this one works as analogies should -- to make a point by activating understanding of something more salient (in this case, individual behavior) to something somewhat less familiar (systemic racism).

Part of the reason that systemic racism is so unfamiliar (in thought -- it's quite familiar in experience, we just aren't always aware of the name for it) is that our primary reference text for language, the dictionary, does not generally distinguish between individual-level bigotry and systemic racism. Indeed, on a number of occasions folks have argued against our argument to disentangle the terms because "racism" is listed in a power-neutral way in most dictionaries.

Harry Allan, the "media assassin," ran into this issue THIS WEEK as he was criticized for his take on the Kanye West controversy from the MTV Video Music Awards. Allan responded to a critic in a follow-up post titled, "'Why Can't Black People Be Racist?': A Brief Primer on White Supremacy." It's a thoughtful piece (as usual) that would be largely unnecessary if dictionaries would accurately describe racism as having a power component to it.

Similarly, Jesse Washington wrote a piece for the Associated Press that centers on the all-too-common "cry wolf" allusion. Washington wisely ask, "if everyone is racist, is anyone?" If the appropriate conceptualization of the term is adopted (i.e., "racism" refers to systemic and internalized, subconscious White supremacy), the answer is "yes." By the colloquial (and dictionary) definition, however, the answer is more complicated. Everyone is not a bigot, but some folks are. Folks who are not bigots, however, are racist, too, and have the same burden (irrespective of race) as everyone else to honestly, meaningfully and radically deal with racism. The "cry wolf" criticism only holds if racism is conceptualized as individual-level rather than systemic. If it is appropriately conceptualized as systemic, it is impossible to "cry wolf" because the wolf, indeed, is always actually there!

A fair question at this point would be, "Hey RaceProject guys: who the hell do you think you are, trying to change the dictionary?!" Our response would be, "Who else?"

We are not suggesting, of course, that we alone are best qualified to influence such an important reference book. But who, if not scholars in their respective areas, should be influential on shaping the denotation of complicated constructs that lexicographers consider as they go about their work? And, we must add, we did not (by a long shot) invent the conceptual difference between these terms. The distinction is understood so well by academics who study race and ethnicity that it is virtually assumed in those conversations. But as race has moved back into the forefront of White consciousness over the past few years and the Internet has provided more material about the topic, we have been persistent in our demand for the language to catch up with the concept.

This is an important point. Folks like us who argue that "racism" and "bigotry" should be distinct terms are not arguing that the concepts should be distinct. They already are distinct. That is not a point of contention. What is being advocated here is that our language must be precise enough to capture the conceptual differences. Part of getting treatment for a disorder involves recognizing that one has the disorder. If non-bigoted Whites do not feel as if they are racist because they understand the term to mean conscious resentment for persons of color, they are not likely to seek the much-needed "treatment." This, too, is reflective of collective racial narcissism.

To that point, Joanna Ashmun notes that "[n]arcissists rarely enter treatment and, once in treatment, progress very slowly. . . .It's difficult to keep narcissists in treatment long enough for improvement to be made -- and few people, narcissists or not, have the motivation . . . to pursue treatment that produces so little so late."

The "treatment" in our analogy is reflection about the power and complexity of racism and our inability to fully come to terms with it so that we can dismantle it. Well-meaning White folks have spent the last couple of decades stomping their feet and covering their ears while screaming that everyone is equal, that we/they are color blind, and that we/they have Black friends. There is a steadfast refusal for us to get treatment for our collective disorder.

Like personality disorders, however, racism is not the "fault" of the culture who suffer from it. As Whites are quick to point out, no one in America today ever owned a slave, and few have even engaged in conscious discrimination of a person of color. Much of our resistance to our own racism comes from an unwillingness to take responsibility for its existence. But we do not have to take such responsibility. We do have to recognize, however, that once it is revealed to us, we must deal with it with honesty, focus and persistence. We cannot continue to ignore the uncomfortable reality of our collective ignorance. There has never been a more opportune time to seek treatment. We can leave our guilt at the therapist's doorstep and work together (not against one another) to better understand our collective condition so that we can move forward.

Racism Fatigue

2009-09-12T09:24:00.010-04:00

In 1998, Susan Moeller published Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, in which she explains that media coverage of these types of stories contributes to the tendency of Americans to divert our attention from worldwide human suffering. Moeller helps us to understand that the ways issues are presented determines the degree to which folks will continue to be responsive. As we work our way through the administration of the nation's first Black president, it is important to consider whether Americans are experiencing "racism fatigue."

THIS WEEK, we wrote an article for OpEdNews wherein we explained the racial context for Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst during the president's health care address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. If you are interested, we encourage you to jump over there and give it a read. Essentially, we explained that the persistent characterization of Barack Obama as "other" by his opponents has established a context within which behavioral norms can be dismissed. Just this week, it meant that Joe Wilson could hurl an insult during a formal address and that some parents could pull their kids out of school rather than have them listen to the president give a speech (the contents of which were released in advance) about working hard and getting an education.

The response to our article surprised us a bit. Some folks were frustrated that we stopped short of calling Wilson's actions racially motivated (TWIR readers know that we almost never speculate on intent) while others chastised us for invoking race at all. There was a lot of Internet chatter about Wilson's past behavior regarding race since his outburst, and that may be of interest to South Carolina voters or others who are determined to expose him as a bigot (we have chosen to not even link to that material here). We read that material and appreciate its value; it is just not central to what we think matters most.

In fact, we believe that the "gotcha" practice of trying to out bigots can be counterproductive because it tacitly reinforces the notion that "racism" is primarily about individual hatred of persons of color. While those who are bold enough to be open about their resentment of persons of color ought to be recognized as having conscious attitudes that set them apart from most of the American public, overt bigotry represents only a fraction of racial inequality in 21st century America. We ought not lose sight of bigoted occurrences, but we think it is most important to draw attention to the racial underpinnings in contemporary political discourse because that represents a more widespread and powerful current that is carrying along our centuries-old tradition of White supremacy.

But it can be quite tiring, indeed, for racially progressive folks, the millions who are genuinely trying to understand the roots of discrimination and White privilege. The more we folks who do this sort of work write, speak and advance sophisticated ideas about systemic racism, the more (and louder) defenders of the status quo put forth overly simplistic snippets that are easier to understand and, thus, believe.

Such reactions were on display this weekend as millions of (overwhelmingly) White folks gathered at rallies organized by political groups who oppose Barack Obama and/or his policy preferences. Joe Wilson was heralded as a hero at many of these gatherings as many noted that his outrage Wednesday night was justified because they, too, believe Obama is a liar. Further, the outburst was related to and consistent with their desire to keep "aliens" from having access to health care. They see no racism in labeling millions of Brown folks as "other" and subsequently (and angrily) preventing them from having access to what many believe to be a fundamental human right. Despite the fact that they have chosen to speak out so forcefully against government spending during the administration of the first Black president when two of their heroes -- Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush -- greatly contributed to the deficit during their presidencies, they see no racism in their position. Despite the fact that similar groups of Obama's opponents just a year ago brought stuffed monkeys, claimed that Obama was a Muslim and an Arab (which suggests that he is both a terrorist and a liar), yelled that he should go back to Africa, and engaged in myriad other bigoted behaviors, they see no racism in their position.

To the contrary, these folks, when asked about such underpinnings, become quite agitated, noting that the minuscule number of persons of color who agree with them is a coincidence, that they have a Black friend (seriously, this is often used as an alibi against any suggestion of internalized racism), and that it is Obama's supporters who are the real "racists." They are fatigued -- tired of always being called "racists."

This is also where the fatigue begins to surface on the part of advocates for racial justice. In the context of such anger and hostility, is it possible to explain to someone that "racism" is a systemic concept tied to White supremacy, not simply individual-level prejudice? Can one help a sign-waving, screaming, scared middle class White person to understand, in that moment, that 98% of their brain's activity takes place outside their consciousness, so ruling out racism as a factor is impossible? When fear and hostility are in full bloom, it is neither the time nor place to try to explain the complexities of human thought and behavior broadly, let alone neuroscience.

But where is the space for such discussion? All the world has become a tea party or town hall meeting for those who oppose President Obama.

That's why Joe Wilson screamed out. When Congressman Wilson apologized, he said, "I let my emotions get the best of me." At the end of this summer of anger, we are seeing the manifestation of a rhetorical climate that has painted Barack Obama as an "alien" himself. "I want my country back!" is heard at many of these gatherings. One wonders, from whom? From the "other" who has taken it, of course. From the man who does not look like other presidents looked. From the man who doesn't look like "us," like "America." From the man who is not really even American (so say "the birthers") and, therefore, is not even legitimately the president. From the man who will take care of people "like him" and seek retribution and/or reparations for slavery against Whites. From the Marxist/communist/socialist/fascist/terrorist man who used his Hitler-like oratory skills to fool Americans into electing him.

It is exhausting in its intensity and, quite frankly, its effectiveness.

White conservatives are genuinely tired, and while many of their criticisms of the president are not legitimate, we think that their fatigue is understandable. They are tired of being told that they are "racists" because they oppose a man who happens to be the nation's first Black president. They are tired of knowing, with all of their being, that they are not, in fact, "racist," even if they cannot always explain why they are so angry about this particular president. Most of them have worked for generations to use the appropriate term to describe Black Americans, moving from "colored" to "Black" to "African American" and now just resorting to just speaking the word more quietly than the rest of the sentence to avoid any perception of bigotry. They taught their children never to use the n-word, to give everyone an equal chance, irrespective of race or ethnicity, and they genuinely appreciate the diversity that has come to characterize their work spaces. For heaven's sake, some of these folks marched in the 1960s to end legalized segregation of schools and to bring about social justice in our laws! "What more," one can hear them shout, "are we supposed to do?! We have a Black president! That's not equal enough for you?! What more do 'you people' want!"

They're so damn tired.

But they are tired precisely because there is so much about racism that they do not understand. It is difficult for humans to understand that we cannot know what we do not know. It feels ("logically") that we are in control of our own brains. We are not. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that while we have made so much progress with respect to individual-level prejudice (even considering the backlash we are seeing now), we have much more work to do to help folks understand the complexity of systemic racism. It is very hard work -- not just to facilitate such discussion, but to engage in it. It is hurtful to realize that racism internalized from our culture is more powerful than explicit teachings to the contrary by our parents (or to our children). It is frustrating to think that we are on the right track, only to catch ourselves reaching for the door locks or feeling a tinge of fear or at least suspicion when a Black man approaches (this isn't just Whites, by the way). And it sure as hell is exhausting to worry about whether someone will call us "a racist" when we feel certain that our attitudes are not at all rooted in racism.

Racism fatigue is not new, but we are seeing a widespread outbreak in 2009.

Joe Wilson's emotions got the best of him. Indeed, much of the political psychology research has revealed the false dichotomy between emotion and reason that Enlightenment-era philosophers put forth (privileging the latter over the former, of course). It is unrealistic (and, we would argue, unwise) to ask folks to take emotion out of their political decision-making. After all, we tend to appreciate emotions that lead to outcomes that we embrace. (Progressives want folks to feel empathy, for instance, so that more socially just policies are adopted.) We find nothing wrong with the fact that Joe Wilson feels strong emotions about making preventative health care available to those who cannot afford it, even if our emotions on the subject are quite different from his.

Further, we find the tangential discussions surrounding his act to be distractions from the primary point (health care reform) and our point (the racial context for the outburst). That is, we do not particularly care whether the action was consistent with practices of the British House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions or whether the president was actually lying. Those are fair items to consider in a broad discussion of the incident, but shouting insults has not been and is not the custom in the U.S. Congress -- whether the president is there or not -- even if the he was not telling the truth.

The folks at the rallies this weekend hold anti-reform attitudes that are similar to those held by folks who opposed civil rights reform a half century ago. White Southerners were tired of being told that they were "bad people" for expecting Blacks to live their lives separately from Whites. They were tired of uppity Blacks telling them anything, in fact. And they were tired of White Northerners talking about them like they were unenlightened bumpkins. They knew the truth, and they were tired of being told otherwise. They wanted their country back. The parallels to the current fight for civil rights (of which the extension of health care to all is but one part) are striking.

So how do we overcome racism fatigue? The first step, we propose, is to do our best to continue to be persistent about the effects of systemic racism but also continue to be diligent about explaining that pointing it out is not an insult. "Racist" is an adjective; it ought not be used as a noun because doing so drains it of its power. Here's why: First, calling someone "a racist" (noun) suggests that he or she is aware of his or her racist attitudes; that may or may not be the case. We can almost never prove intent because those who are intentionally bigoted know how to maintain plausible deniability. It is a no-win situation. Second, using the word as a noun permits defenders of the status quo to turn it around and use it to describe anti-White attitudes (see the sign from this weekend's rally in Washington, DC, above, for example), which rhetorically forces the concept into the neutral position. Anti-White prejudice exists (and, we believe, should be vigorously opposed), but is not nearly as dangerous as racist attitudes because it carries with it no systemic power. When "racism" becomes understood simply as any resentment based on skin color, the true power and effect of racism is lost. It is possible to identify racism without tying that concept to the intent of one or more individuals. When people stop feeling as if they are being called "racists," they may be more open to understanding the way racism really works.

Even so, it may be too late, or the context might be wrong. White folks of all political persuasions, by and large, want to believe that Barack Obama's election signaled the end of American racism -- Dr. King's dream realized. If we are in a "post-racial" period, it is not appropriate to bring race into the discussion; those who do are "playing the race card." So, in effect, there has been a cruel shift in culture such that those fighting for racial justice are accused of actually perpetuating injustice. Who wins in such a circumstance? Defenders of the status quo, of course, because no further progress can be made.

The problem, though, with arguing that this may not the right time to be pushing harder is that White folks are not the only ones with racism fatigue -- those who have been on the receiving end of American racism for generations are quite tired, too, and have been for some time. We have to push, and we have to push wisely, not just strategically. We have to raise consciousness and understanding about the complexities and destruction of systemic racism. We understand that conservative Whites are tired and that progressives are feeling tired, too, but now is not the time to rest. The stakes remain high for those who are harmed by racism: all of us.

Don't Talk to Strangers: Obama as Other

2009-09-06T21:50:00.011-04:00

It is wise advice for parents to tell their children not to talk to strangers. It was not until THIS WEEK, however, that such an admonishment was applied to listening to a speech by the president of the United States.

Barack Obama plans to give a "back to school" address on Tuesday "about the need to work hard and stay in school." In such a polarized political context, it is refreshing to have a visible leader speak about something on which folks from every political persuasion can agree. Except that with this president, in this context, conservatives are suspicious about the content, demanding to see the text of the address in advance.

One-time Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer called the speech an "unprecedented" use of power." He was not making a cheeky reference to President George W. Bush's surveillance of U.S. citizens, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus or any of the invasions of sovereign nations that the U.S. has undertaken over the years. He was being completely sincere, and so was the chairman of the Florida Republican Party in a memo that accused the president of using "taxpayer dollars . . . to spread President Obama's socialist ideology." A Republican state lawmaker from Oklahoma is quoted as saying, "As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

Of course, such an argument is wholly without merit. There is certainly a "cult of personality" around the U.S. president for school children, and there always has been. Fred Greenstein's groundbreaking work with children in the 1960s revealed that presidents are perceived as "benevolent leaders" to children, irrespective of their parents' political beliefs. There have always been portraits of the current president hanging in schools, courthouses, post offices and other public spaces. Portraits do not invite "a critical approach" to presidents, as the Arizona state schools superintendent said should happen; indeed, they invite "worship" of our nation's top leader in the name of patriotism.

Is this paranoia racially driven? A solid case could probably be made for that, but we are not going to make it. What we will do, however, is explain how these accusations work to erode Obama's image as part of a larger push to portray him as "other." As we always do, we will take the social science approach and focus on the effects of this communication rather than the intent of the folks who are crafting and delivering the message.

Social science research reveals that racist messages in political campaign communication almost never occur as a result of a candidate using direct ("explicit") racist language. Rather, there is a combination of images and code words that are effective because they activate deeply-held racist predispositions in the minds of voters (not just White voters). Again, this work speaks to the way that such messages have the potential to affect voters; it makes no claims as to whether such appeals were intended by the candidates or their campaign teams. In some case (like the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988), we can know intent because the architect (in that case, Lee Atwater), admitted as much (in that case, after he knew that he was dying -- far too young -- of cancer), but for the most part, we cannot, as President George W. Bush used to say, know what is in their hearts.

In our most recent work, we found that there is a tendency to use in-group/out-group language to indicate "otherness," a tactic which has the potential to be greatly exacerbated when the "other" is a member of a racial or ethnic minority group. Such language often comes by way of the choice of first person pronouns in combination with images that suggest the race of the in group. For instance, if a White candidate is running against a Black candidate in a district that is majority-White, he or she might run an ad that includes only White citizens, with language about "our values" or "our priorities," signaling that those priorities are different than those of a candidate of color. There is nothing inherently racist about candidates trying to convince voters that they are more "relatable" than their opponents; as a result of the way race has worked in America, however, the priming of group identity with images in combination with such language can work to the advantage of a candidate who employs such a strategy.

We can see this very clearly in Barack Obama's opponents over the past two and a half years. From the Democratic primaries through the election through the first six months of his presidency, detractors from all political persuasions have used language that pushes Obama into the category of "other." The specific elements on which Obama is accused of being different change (quite frequently, in fact): He has been labeled as un-American in at least these ways by political elites: communist/socialist/Marxist, elitist, corrupt, terrorist sympathizer, foreign-born, a thug, fascist and racist (ironically, this is considered to be un-American). None of these labels are racist in and of themselves (even "racist"), but when leveled against a person of color, the dynamic is inherently different.

Does that mean that any attack against a person of color is racist? Certainly not (though Obama's opponents have used that argument, as well). First, even if the messages are racist by these scholarly definitions, that does not mean that those who crafted the message did so intentionally (did we mention this already?). Second, there are all sorts of ways that a person of color can be criticized on political grounds without playing into preexisting negative stereotypes about that person's race or ethnicity. Suggesting that Barack Obama is trying to deceive people has a racist effect because African Americans are presumed to be shifty, dishonest and criminal. To argue that Barack Obama's health care proposal is bad for America because small businesses would have a difficult time with the provisions, for instance, is wholly non-racial. Some progressives have argued that all of Obama's opponents are playing on race because the overwhelming visible criticism of him has been based on fear appeals related to negative stereotypes about African Americans.

This latest criticism over the education speech is no different. The argument is that Obama is trying to play a shell game with the American people, to "get at" our children, and to be dishonest about his true intentions. Such a criticism aimed at a White president (or official or candidate) carries no racist associations, as Whites are not, as a group, commonly assumed to have such characteristics. Since such stereotypes do exist about Blacks, however, the effect of this charge is different.

Former Republican Speaker of the House (and likely 2012 presidential hopeful) Newt Gingrich came out in support of the president's speech on Sunday, but implied that his support was related to the fact that he believed that the text of the speech would be made available so that parents could choose whether to allow their children to be exposed to the message. This is consistent with the calls from many of those who have criticized the speech, suggesting that Obama is trying to hide the content from parents. We do not know how common it is for presidents to release the text of their speeches weeks or days ahead of time (though it is quite common for text to be released to the press hours ahead of time for publication assistance), but in the larger context of conservative attacks on Obama over the past year or so, the request is troubling, as it signals that Black folks -- even the president -- cannot be trusted to talk directly to our students without parents having the chance to censor.

Adults talk to our children everyday without our input: teachers, firefighters, police officers, other children's parents on "career days," etc. Presumably there is no opposition to such speakers because those folks are not "strangers" -- they are members of our community. In the past, presidents of the United States were very much considered to be members of our community -- even largely in communities of color.

But this president will never be accepted as "family" or even as legitimate to many Whites. Once that is understood, it is not surprising that parents would not want their children to hear what he has to say unless and until they approve the content ahead of time. If you are not "one of us," you do not get to talk to our children.

Update (9/7/09, 12:39pm CDT): The text of the president's speech to children can be found here.

APSA Preview: New Research on Race and Political Communication

2009-08-28T03:13:00.024-04:00

We are currently assembling our team of volunteer research assistants for the fall. If you are interested in helping with the Race Project (or if you know someone who might be), please scroll to the bottom of this entry to see the formal notice.

The mission of The Project on Race in Political Communication is to "contribute to the state of knowledge in the field of political communication and [to] share that information with the mass public in an accessible way." This blog is one part of our effort to do that, as is the RaceProject.org "resources" page and our public lectures. Our Facebook Page, which we launched two months ago, is yet another (more than 800 "fans" now -- thanks to all for the great postings and discussion!), and THIS WEEK, we expanded our online presence to Twitter. If you tweet, follow us @PRPC for information and commentary related to race and political communication.

Also consistent with our mission, we are offering a preview of the research on race, politics and language that is scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in Toronto, September 3-6.

Academic conferences are opportunities for researchers in the various subfields of a discipline to get together, share their most recent work (and receive comments and criticism), meet with publishers and potential publishers, and network with colleagues and friends from around the world. As you know, we work in a research area (political communication) that spans (at least) three disciplines: political science, communication and psychology, and our specific work involves the interdisciplinary area of race and ethnicity/culture studies. Attending professional conferences in these fields affords us the opportunity to get critical feedback from other researchers and keep abreast of the most current work in which others are engaged.

Furthermore, because we live 800 miles apart, these meetings provide a chance to have some quality face time with one another to get re-centered with our work.

The research that we are presenting at this conference is a draft of a chapter from our book Race Appeal, which will be published next year. The paper is called "Racial Discourse in Political Advertisements: An Historical View," and it will be presented on a panel titled "Communicating and Framing Political Identities" at 8:00 a.m. Saturday, September 5. (You can download a copy of the paper here, or, like all of our papers, at the RaceProject.org "Studies & Data" page.) The panel is chaired by Hyun Jung Yun (Texas State University); Daniel C. Hallin (University of California, San Diego) will serve as the respondent. The other presenters on the panel are as follows:

Racial Framing in Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Election
Kimberly A. Gross, George Washington University

Johanna Harvey, George Washington University

Claire Low, George Washington University

The Impact of Political Campaigns on the Nascent Partisanship of Mexican Immigrants in the United States: Evidence from Two Mobilization Experiments

James A. McCann, Purdue University

Katsuo A. Nishikawa, Trinity University

Stacey L. Connaughton, Purdue University

Like Parents, Like Citizens: Mexican Children’s Political Socialization

Juan Enrique Huerta, ITESM

Young Voters in the U.S. and Turkey: The Changing Landscape of Political Attitudes, Media Use and Individual Traits.

M. Selcan Kaynak, Bogazici University

We have selected about three dozen additional papers (in no particular order) that caught our attention. (You can view the list of panels and papers for all of the organized sections, including political psychology, political communication and race, ethnicity and politics on the conference online program website.) To date, we are only privy to the title and authors, but you should be able to download and read any of these papers at some point during the week (or shortly thereafter) by searching Google Scholar or by navigating to the Social Science Research Network's APSA 2009 page. In any case, just reading through the titles will give an idea about what top researchers and young scholars in the field are working on, which we hope you will enjoy.

Polemics, Political Racism, and Misrecognition: Naming and Analyzing Prejudice Against Arab-Americans

Emily Wills, New School University

Racial Bias by Another Name: Anti-Muslim Attitudes and Voting Against Barack Obama

David P. Redlawsk, University of Iowa

Will Barack Obama be Black in 2012? Stereotypes, Strategies, and Changing Views of a President

Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan

The Effect of Social Networks on the Quality of Thinking about Policies

Elif Erisen, Cal Poly State University

Cengiz Erisen, SUNY, Stony Brook

A Group-Based Approach to Understanding Deliberation: The Deliberative Justice Experiment

Christopher F. Karpowitz, Brigham Young University

Tali Mendelberg, Princeton University

Truth, Relevance and Motivated Processing in Perceptions of Political Advertising

Daniel Stevens, University of Exeter

Barbara Allen, Carleton College

John L. Sullivan, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis

Thinking about Immigration: A Multi-Method Study of Individual Differences in Political Cognition

Shawn W. Rosenberg, University of California, Irvine

Leah A. Hemze, University of California, Irvine

Why Do We Use Race and Gender When Policy Information Is Available?

Nathan A. Collins, Santa Fe Institute

Does Affective Contagion Promote Coherent Political Thinking?

Cengiz Erisen, SUNY, Stony Brook

Milton Lodge, SUNY, Stony Brook

Charles S. Taber, SUNY, Stony Brook

Public Responses to Global Threats: A Racial Divide?

Ted Brader, University of Michigan

Nicholas A. Valentino, University of Michigan

Black Elite Rhetoric and System Justification Ideology

Byron D'Andra Orey, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Hyung Lae Park, Jackson State University

Lester Kenyatta Spence, Johns Hopkins University

Where Race Matters: The Effects of Space and Neighborhood on Voting Behavior

Thomas K. Ogorzalek, Columbia University

Black and White Americans and Latino Immigrants: A Preliminary Look at Attitudes in Three Southern Cities

Paula D. McClain, Duke University, et al.

Multicultural Multiracialism, Multiracial Multiculturalism: Race, Mixed-Race and Diversity in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Debra Thompson, University of Toronto

The Obama and the Clinton Factors: How Race and Gender Factor into Blacks’, Whites’, and Latinos’ Trust in the Representation of Group Interests

Shayla C. Nunnally, University of Connecticut

Shifting the Gender Gaze: The Intersection of Race and Gender in the Obama Candidacy

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, University of Rochester

Food Politics: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Food Access

Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, Princeton University

The Rise of Indirect Affirmative Action: New Strategies for Promoting "Diversity" in Selective Institutions of Higher Education in the United States and France

Daniel Sabbagh, Centre d`Etudes et de Recherches Internationales

A History of Black Presidential Candidates: 1872-2008

Christina M. Greer, Smith College

Race, Class and Education Policy: Second-Generation Discrimination in the 21st Century

Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University

Meredith Brooke Loudd Walker, Texas A&M University

Sadé Walker, Texas A&M University

Nationalism, Race and the Obama Victory

Joseph Bafumi, Dartmouth College

Michael C. Herron, Dartmouth College

An Experimental Exploration of Political Knowledge Acquisition from The Daily Show Versus CNN Student News

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, University of Delaware

Lindsay Hoffman, University of Delaware

Do Preconceptions Drive Voter Perception of Campaign Negativity?

Stephen C. Brooks, University of Akron

Rick D. Farmer, Oklahoma House of Representatives

The Role of Race and Age in 2008: A Series of List Experiments

Simon D. Jackman, Stanford University

Lynn Vavreck, University of California

Geo-Ethnic Political Dialogue: Multi-Color Skins with Blue, Red, and Purple Mindsets

Hyun Jung Yun, Texas State University

Lynda Lee Kaid, University of Florida

‘Whites Oppose, Blacks Support, Latinos Divided’: Making Sense of the Racialized Discourse Surrounding California’s Proposition 8

Victoria Wilson, University of California, Irvine

The Exceptional Electoral Style of Barack Obama

Roderick P. Hart, University of Texas, Austin

What is the Best Way to Measure the Bradley Effect? Lessons from the 2008 Election
Reuben Kline, University of California, Irvine

The Impact of Racism on Votes in the 2008 Presidential Election: Results from the Associated Press/Yahoo News!/Stanford Survey, the Standford MRI Survey, and the American National Election Studies
Jon A. Krosnick, Stanford University, et al.

Absence of Prejudice or Political Correctness? Comparing Survey-Based Indicators of Racial Bias with the Implicit Association Test
Shanto Iyengar, Stanford University
Kyu S. Hahn, University of California, Los Angeles and Yonsei University

Advancing Beyond the Local and Congressional Level: Under Which Conditions are Blacks Nominated for High Profile State-Wide Office
Christopher Stout, University of California, Irvine

Elections in Black and White: Race, Perceptions, and Voting Behavior in the U.S. House Elections
Matthew L. Jacobsmeier, University of New Orleans

The Effect of African-American Proximity on Latino Choice in the 2008 Presidential Primary
Ryan Donald Enos, University of California, Los Angeles

Turn Out or Burn Out? How Negative Ads Affect Latino and non-Latino Voting
Jennifer L. Merolla, Claremont Graduate University, et al.

Do Majority-Minority Districts and Reserved Seats for Minorities Undermine the Election of Women?
Robert G. Moser, University of Texas, Austin
Stephanie S. Holmsten, University of Texas, Austin

How Do We Get Along? Linked Fate, Political Allies, and Issue Coalitions
Dianne M. Pinderhughes, University of Notre Dame, et al.

Equality, Inferiority and Electoral Competition: Black-Brown Partnerships in Newark, New Jersey
Andra N. Gillespie, Emory University

Fall Research Opportunities

The Project on Race in Political Communication has volunteer research opportunities for anyone who would like to be involved. While students (all levels) are a natural constituency in this regard, anyone is welcome to help. We are in the midst of the most labor-intensive phase of a very exciting element of the Project that will have implications far more widespread than the study of race and political communication.

We are compiling data and constructing a database that will be made available to researchers (in the form of a spreadsheet appropriate for quantitative analysis) and the public (in the form of a Web-interfaced search engine) that contains information about candidates for federal office (U.S. House and U.S. Senate) since 1970, including the candidate's race, gender, party affiliation, number of votes received, amount of money raised and spent, and other variables of interest. Research assistants are responsible for collecting information from a variety of sources (most of which are online) to compete the dataset. This is an important contribution that has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of elections, as this information is not currently available in one place.

The work requires no prior research experience and can be done from any location and at any time of the day (we can work around work schedules). For students, working as a Race Project research assistant affords the opportunity to gain experience with social science research for the purposes of CV building, instigating an original research project, and/or working toward a better understanding of racial inequality and injustice.

If you are interested, please Facebook message or email Senior Research Assistant Sidra Hamidi (sidra.hamidi@RaceProject.org). If you know someone who might be interested (or if you are a faculty member who has students who might be interested), please do not hesitate to pass this information along.

Beyond White Guilt: The Role of Allies in the Struggle for Racial Equality

2009-08-18T02:43:00.014-04:00

We do not normally take requests, but THIS WEEK, Ludovic Blain, formerly of Stop Dog Whistle Racism (and now with the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative), asked us to comment on "why white liberals are unable to grasp and take action to expose, challenge and provide alternatives to the racism spouted from the right." We think it is an important question and one that we may not have squarely addressed in this space over the past three years, so here we go.

First, it is important to be clear that we are limiting our discussion of what Blain referred to as "white liberals" to White folks who are progressive with respect to issues of race. Some of those folks may be politically conservative in other areas or would otherwise reject the label of "liberal" altogether. Still, we feel as if the root of the question is about Whites who 1) understand that there are significant problems with respect to racial inequality that are systemic and 2) are interested in seeing those problems addressed and eventually solved. There are many Whites, of course, who may be wonderful people in general, but are convinced that ending "racism" means getting folks to quit using the n-word or joining the Ku Klux Klan. These folks believe that we have progressed to the point where there is now equality among races in America and that the election of Barack Obama is further proof of such progress. We are not addressing those folks here; rather, we are addressing the role of what scholars refer to as "allies" in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.

Broadly speaking, allies are folks who have privilege in a given category but work alongside those who do not to bring about more equality. So an ally for LGBT rights would be heterosexual, for instance. Feminist men are allies. Able-bodied folks can be allies in the struggle to bring attention to and remedy discrimination against those with physical challenges. Whites are allies in the struggle for racial justice. (See Dr. John Raible's "Checklist for Allies Against Racism" for examples of what this might mean on a daily basis.)

It is important to remember that the word "privilege," when used in this context, does not mean absolute privilege. There are a lot of White folks, for example, who certainly could not be considered to be "privileged" because they are poor, were raised poor, had other disadvantages, etc. With respect to a similarly situated person of color, however, they are considered to "have privilege." In other words, having "privilege" means having an advantage, all other things being equal and is not the same as "being privileged." Like "racist," it refers to what we are, not who we are: "I am someone who has privilege, but I am not privileged; I am racist, but I am not a racist." Failing to appropriately define the concept invariably results in an unraveling of its meaning; after all, only a very small fraction of the population would be considered to be "privileged" in the broadest sense of the word (someone always has it better). Most of us have some degree of privilege in one context or another.

Allies are important to social movements, but they find themselves in a complicated position in a number of ways. They are at once needed because they have disproportionate (though almost never absolute) access to the power structure that, by definition, those who are out of the privileged group do not have. On the other hand, as members of the privileged group, they must always be aware that no matter how well intended, they do not have the lived experience of someone who is in a disadvantaged group, and exerting their perspective can be (or can be perceived as) a further act of oppression, symbolic of the larger issue. In this sense, there is a very real irony present in these relationships.

We will use ourselves as an example. Charlton has the experience of being a Black man in America, which is something Stephen can seek to understand, but can never fully comprehend. Stephen can only know what is is like to be a person of color through the lived experiences of persons of color. One of the ways that this is illustrated is when he speaks publicly about racism. In fact, we often engage audience members in discussion about this issue during the Q&A portion of our public lectures, so we can relate what those folks have shared with us.

There is an inherent sense of legitimacy ascribed to Stephen from White audience members because he is perceived to not have a personal agenda in the matter. That is, if he is successful, White supremacy -- from which he has benefited and continues to benefit in ways that are largely unknowable -- will be dismantled, and he will therefore have less of an advantage. When Charlton speaks about the same issues, he is certainly viewed with a sense of legitimacy with respect to his understanding of how racism works, but there is always a sense amongst White audience members that he is less trustworthy because he has a clear agenda; unlike Stephen, he stands to benefit directly if racism is lessened or eliminated.

Furthermore, it is expected that people of color in academia (particularly in the social sciences and humanities) will be engaged in scholarly pursuits related to race and ethnicity. This, like many stereotypes, is an assumption rooted in reality. It is true that a vastly disproportionate number of scholars who work on these issues are of color, and it is true that a great number of scholars who are of color have as their research interest issues that involve race. But it is quite frustrating for scholars of color who are not interested in these issues to be presumed to be, much like it is frustrating for all tall persons to be constantly asked if they play basketball. And for Whites who have devoted their careers to exploring (in the case of scholars) or fighting (in the case of activists) racism, similar questions arise.

Whites ask them (sometimes quite openly), "Why do you do this? Do you feel guilty about being White?" People of color are sometimes (though, at least in Stephen's experience, not often openly) concerned about the possibility of intellectual colonialism. In other words, just like a man who teaches Women's Studies must be thoughtful about being patriarchal in his approach, Whites who are involved in these issues need to be constantly reflective about the potential to be (or even to appear to be) presumptuous about the proper way to do or think about things.

THIS WEEK, Chris Matthews (left) promoted a documentary about the Kennedy brothers (planned to air this coming Thursday on MSNBC -- see trailer here or below), some of which, naturally, focuses on their participation in the Civil Rights Movement. In plugging the program on The Colbert Report this past Thursday, Matthews claimed that the Kennedy brothers "created the Civil Rights Movement," to which Colbert brilliantly replied, "I loved Kennedy's 'I Have a Dream Speech.'" (Matthews appeared not to pick up on the jab). The comment is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's remark during the Democratic primary contest in January 2008: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” The problem, of course, is that these statements give ultimate (rather than proportionate) credit to Whites for the progress made to bring about racial equality.

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This notion is not unprecedented, and we would not argue that it is an intentional slight. In other words, it is reflective of the speakers' latent racism, not of any conscious bigotry. As another example, school children who were educated in the second half of the 20th century, unless they were part of an Afrocentric curriculum, likely learned that Rosa Parks was an elderly woman who was too tired from a hard day of work as a seamstress to get out of her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Though Rosa Parks did work the day she was arrested, she was not old (42), and while she was, indeed, tired, her real fatigue was from injustice and frustration that her work with the NAACP was not yielding enough publicity for the cause. Rosa Parks was an advocate for racial justice and was participating in an act of civil disobedience when she refused to give up her seat.

Why, then, did generations of children learn such a different story about Rosa Parks? While conspiracy theories are interesting (and often warranted), one need not believe in any conscious decision on the part of Whites to appreciate the cause and effect of this myth. (One compelling argument, for example, is that by not celebrating Parks's direct action, young folks were not taught to believe that civil disobedience was an acceptable or effective response to injustice.) It is more comfortable for Whites (who until very recently had the market cornered on writing history and History textbooks) to believe that it was the benevolence of Whites that remedied the past evils of slavery, Jim Crow and racism in general. It is comfortable for White folks to believe that while they may never have owned a slave or forced someone to a separate water fountain, they (and/or folks like them) took responsibility and corrected the wrongs of those earlier times.

To a certain extent, of course, this is correct. Whites did control almost all the power in those days (as they disproportionately still do), so Hillary Clinton and others were right in noting that "it took" Whites (not just LBJ but the U.S. Supreme Court, White members of Congress, etc.) to "get it done." But such a half-story undermines the courage and intelligence of African Americans who did much of the hard work and planning for years before Whites took notice on a large scale. Further, such skewed versions of history reinforce stereotypes of African Americans as helpless and needing Whites to come to the rescue.

And this remains the primary complication of the contemporary White American who is concerned with and involved in understanding and/or solving the problem of racial inequality. These folks do not wish to be perceived as believing that they are coming to the rescue. They wish to work alongside people of color in the struggle, all the while knowing that it is at once not their struggle and at the same time -- since White supremacy ultimately hurts every member of society -- very much their struggle, too.

In addition to the millions of White Americans who are deeply committed to moving forward toward greater racial equality, there are a handful of White scholars and activists who are deeply engaged in these issues. You might have (should have) come across the work of Tim Wise or that of our friend and colleague Bob Jensen, for instance. Are they driven by guilt? Probably initially, but not ultimately.

When White folks realize the depth and complexity involved in racism (i.e., that it is more than simply disliking someone based on the color of his or her skin), there is an inevitable feeling of guilt because they understand that it is impossible to know how much of what they have achieved is the result of their own hard work and perseverance and how much can be attributed to their race. That is a confusing place to be, and it invariably leads to some feelings of guilt.

But Whites who are committed to being anti-racist (which is a proactive stance that differs from simply being not racist, which we contend is impossible without the praxis involved with anti-racism) -- whether they are dentists or service workers or insurance salespersons -- do so because they feel a responsibility to take advantage of their advantage. They seek to use the privilege that they neither sought nor earned to contribute to the dismantling of the system that provided it to them.

Finally, then, we come to Mr. Blain's question that he posted to our Facebook page: [W]hy [are] white liberals . . . unable to grasp and take action to expose, challenge and provide alternatives to the racism spouted from the right?"

One reason is that it very difficult to address because it is so complicated. A sophisticated understanding of racism cannot be reduced to sound bites. People of color understand it because it is a part of their lived experience. One of the ultimate privileges that comes with being White, however, is that it is possible to go through most of one's life without considering race. (Of course, anyone paying attention to the news in the past few years in particular does not have such a luxury, which is one of the most powerful benefits of having a Black candidate for president, and, of course, a Black president.) Most White folks believe that if they avoid basing their conscious evaluations of people on skin color (or gender or sexual orientation) then they have successfully avoided racism (or sexism or heterosexism). To convince them otherwise requires that they have an understanding of how the human brain works (i.e., the subconscious) and how systems and institutions are more than the sum of the humans who occupy positions within them. In short, it takes a lot of work to disrupt the comfort most Whites have come to enjoy with respect to their own (mostly subconscious) racism.

Secondly, many Whites do not feel that it is their "place" to engage in such conversations. While those who understand the complexities of racism understand that the battle is against a system of White supremacy, not against White people, most folks see it as a battle between Whites and persons of color. They may be rooting for persons of color to "get ahead," but they do not see how they are involved so long as they remain "color blind."

Finally, it is important to understand that many of the "liberal Whites" who are out in front and are visibly and vocally advocating for a more tolerant and fair society with respect to race are not the folks who have (or who articulate) the most sophisticated understanding of how it works. Chris Matthews, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and others are certainly on the liberal side of the political spectrum and have been clear about their commitment to racial progress, but if we compare their statements and actions against Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech or the writings and public statements of Patricia J. Williams or bell hooks or Cornel West or Michael Eric Dyson or (most prominently as of late) Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Marc Lamont Hill, we can see that the depth of understanding is absent from the public comments of these progressive Whites (if not from their own personal understanding). In that sense, while it is certainly better than leaving the issue to Patrick Buchanan or Glenn Beck -- or leaving it unaddressed -- it does a sort of disservice because it perpetuates and reinforces the notion that progressive Whites must simply avoid racial prejudice for their work to be done. It is certainly admirable to avoid bigotry, but it is only through a proactive anti-racist process that White supremacy will ultimately be dismantled.

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois criticized Booker T. Washington's approach to racial progress by noting that it "has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs." Just as DuBois was correct that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line," he is correct that the burden to dismantle an unjust system falls on all of our shoulders. Whites and people of color, however, must bear that burden differently while we bear it together precisely because of the ways in which racism has affected us differently as it has affected us together.

We want to give a special shout-out THIS WEEK to the kind contributors at the Google Blogger Help newsgroup who solved a relatively minor but nagging issue that we had. You may have noticed that the RaceProject "favicon" (the small logo that appears in your URL window and favorites list) and our list of "Links" only appeared on the main landing page and not on the archived pages. That's fixed now, so you should see them on every page you surf on the blog site. Thanks, Blogger Help folks!

Who Can Use the N-Word?: 2009

2009-08-15T14:36:00.005-04:00

We are in agreement with one another about most things. We like a lot of the same music, we generally enjoy the same movies, we like the same food (okay, that’s a bad example because we both like pretty much ALL food), and we certainly share a lot of the same views when it comes to social justice and issues related to race.

But there are a couple of places where we part ways. For instance, Charlton favors the Big 12 conference (OU) and Stephen is a Big 10 guy (Purdue). When it comes to Tastykakes, Stephen prefers Butterscotch Krimpets while Charlton reaches for the Chocolate Juniors (if you want to read something racial into that, go right ahead).

The most substantive disagreement we have with respect to race concerns the use of the n-word. A couple of years back, we did a mini-tour of some colleges where we publicly debated one another and then engaged in discussion with the audience. For a summary of our positions, see our earlier blog entry (and for video of one of the public debates, click here).

This disagreement surfaced again last month when New York member of Congress Carolyn Maloney (left) – who was then planning to run for the U.S. Senate seat in the 2010 Democratic primary against Kirsten Gillibrand – was quoted in an interview using the n-word. As always, the context is important; Maloney (who is White) was repeating what an African American said. Here’s the quote:

"I got a call from someone from Puerto Rico, said (Gillibrand) went to Puerto Rico and came out for English-only (education). And he said, 'It was like saying the n-word to a Puerto Rican,'" Maloney said, using the full racial slur.

Still, she was forced to make a public apology, and she has since announced that she will not seek the Senate seat next year. Here are our respective takes on this situation.

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Stephen: I don’t feel comfortable saying definitively that someone’s career ought to be derailed (and we don’t expect that Maloney’s will be – we only know that she won’t be seeking higher office in the near future), but I do believe that folks who called on her to make a public apology were correct to do so. Of course, the entire situation was somewhat complicated because Rev. Al Sharpton, who predictably (and, in my opinion, appropriately) criticized the comments, is a Gillibrand supporter. Further, the context within which she made the comments were racial because it centered on English-only education. So there is a lot going on here.

My position, though, is that a White person should (almost) never utter the word (I used to say “never,” but attendees at our public debates made some excellent points about, for instance, White actors in a play or film). That is not to say, of course, that White folks shouldn’t talk about the word – I am (hopefully clearly) very much in favor of that. And while it may seem ridiculous to say “the n-word” when everyone knows what it is (it’s like spelling "s-e-x" in front of a 16-year-old, right?), the symbolism of avoiding the word is an important indication of the word’s power.

In short, Maloney could have (should have) repeated the story and said “the n-word” instead of. . . well, the n-word.

Charlton: Yes, perhaps –- politically -- Maloney should have said, “the n-word.” But then again, the “n-word” is not quite the same thing as saying “nigger,” which, I guess is kind of the point on both sides of the issue. I won’t say Maloney was “right” to use the term, but I do think that given the context, it should have been permissible and not have become the albatross it became for her political aspirations. To describe the level of the term's offensiveness, using the “n-word” doesn’t carry the full effect -– the offensive effect it should have had when the person Maloney was quoting used it.

Plain and simple -– whether you’re Black or White –- when we throw all context out the window and say “you just can’t say the word,” we’ve reduced the conflict to nothing more than a political game over the limits of censorship. We can pretend we’re all children and use the n-word euphemism to show we know the power the word has and seek to shield everyone from that reality. Or, we can say that part of continually recognizing and reminding folks of the word’s power is making it permissible to utter the word – especially if the result is a productive conversation about the complexities of the term’s usage.

Stephen: The censorship argument is a red herring. I am not advocating "thought police" or any formal ban on the word (as we saw in a number of places and wrote about in this space a couple of years back). I am arguing that White folks should be thoughtful about the power of the word and should illustrate that power symbolically by conspicuously and ceremoniously avoiding it. We are in agreement, I think, that Maloney should not be unduly punished as a result of saying it in this context, but it was quite appropriate for her to apologize.

The bigger problem from my perspective is that her apology did not push forward the dialogue in any meaningful way. From her statement:

I apologize for having repeated a word I find disgusting. It's no excuse but I was so caught up in relaying the story exactly as it was told to me that, in doing so, I repeated a word that should never be repeated.

First of all, I don’t know that it is true that the word should “never be repeated.” Not only does my colleague argue that it can be used by Whites, but there is an entirely different argument with respect to whether persons of color – particularly African Americans – can use the term in different contexts. Further, she does not explain why she should not use it in this or any other context. As it is, she leaves us with a position that Charlton is correct to indicate is tantamount to censorship.

It is not enough to simply say that it is a “bad” word that no one (or even just Whites) should never say. That isn’t a sophisticated position at all. That’s why my position is that Whites ought to make a conscious decision to talk about the word while not saying it so as to call attention to its hideous history and contemporary power.

Charlton: That is precisely my point. Maloney does not explain why she should not use the word – or whether she should in some context or another – because this is what our racial censorship has taught us. You say the word – there’s only one recourse: say "I’m sorry." That’s all anyone wants to hear. That’s all Rev. Sharpton wanted to hear. Few are really interested in a prolonged conversation about the term because doing so would necessarily require the freedom to use the term by all involved. It would also mean continuously risking the offense and confronting the emotions that would come along with it. That’s harder to do – understandably so. But we have chosen the easier course: We just say that no one should say it under most circumstances so we will never have to confront what it has and continues to mean and whether it should always do so.

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As always, we're very much interested in your thoughtful comments on the issue. Please feel free to leave them below.

(Also, just as a reminder, we do not "moderate" the comments for content at all; that step is simply added to eliminate the tremendous amount of spam we receive in the comments section of our blog when the filter is removed. We love thoughtful disagreement, and we even publish less-than-thoughtful disagreement.)

What the %@#& Do We Know?

2009-08-03T19:09:00.015-04:00

Few folks feel confident enough to substantively question the writing of scholars in the natural sciences or even, to a certain extent, in the humanities. But in the social sciences -- particularly in those areas related to government -- there seems to be less of a sense of deference to scholars' offerings. In a number of ways, that's healthy because it allows folks without formal training (many of whom have not had the opportunity to get formal training) to weigh in on some of the most important problems of our times. It causes us to wonder aloud sometimes, though, what the %@#& do we know, anyway, and why does it matter?

Particularly in the age of the Internet, it is possible for interested persons to do "research" on a number of topics and feel that they are informed. The cycle can be vicious, though, as the information that is available is not always credible, though much of it sounds quite authoritative. Combine this with the conscious and deliberate attack on intellectualism in academia from conservatives who worry that young adults are being indoctrinated by liberal professors, and we are left with a situation where much of the information relating to politics and society appears to be quite similar.

This blog, for instance, gets about 400 hits a week. There are others who read THIS WEEK via RSS, email, etc., but even so, it's a pretty small audience overall. Each week, we try to apply (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly) scholarly principles to current events so that our readers see clearly the ways that social scientists (at least two of us, anyway) "read" these issues. We are rarely sensationalistic, almost never call anyone names (remember: the scholarly use of the term "racist" is not an attack, but rather a truism; we use it as an adjective rather than a noun), and, as a consequence, we have a rather limited reach.

In short, we are pretty boring by the standards of more visible media sources (both new and traditional). So why are you reading this? What the %@#& do you know?!

We hope that you read us each week because you value the unique contribution that scholarship makes to public discourse (not just our scholarship -- all scholarship). We know that many of you are academics, but many of you are not. If you are not, you have come to appreciate what we and other social scientists offer to the discussion of race, language and politics because you realize that there is an important process that is in place that separates our writing from the less formal (though often just as thoughtful) writings of those who are not trained as scholars and do not spend their lives working within that framework.

At the heart of the scholarly process is an understanding of the work of those who have come before us and a commitment to the methods that are accepted as valid in the disciplines within which we work.

Training for a doctorate involves both of those areas. The graduate school years in social science programs are spent reviewing and re-contextualizing previous research and learning the nuances of the various methodologies accepted in the field. The creation of new knowledge centers on the double-blind peer review process in which all scholarly publications are subject to anonymous review by other scholars (who are familiar with the history and methodology in the specific area of inquiry) who determine if the work is worthy of publication in a scholarly journal or as a book. This process takes several years from the initiation of research until publication.

So it is disturbing to hear someone like Michele Malkin (left), who has millions of readers each week (as compared to the handful that we have) state proudly on The View THIS WEEK (watch here or below) that she spent six months writing her latest book about corruption in the Obama Administration. Six whole months! From the perspective of an academic, whether we agree or disagree with the "findings," it is quite suspect to rely on any evidence so hastily put together and screened only for its ability to make money (rather than any external intellectual standards). But in the free market, Malkin (who has no advanced formal academic training) is considered to be an "expert" on politics (she was a round table guest on This Week with George Stephanopoulos last week as she promoted her book).

Sour grapes? Sure. We cannot assume that is not part of our frustration, but it is not about Malkin, Beck, O'Reilly and others simply being more wealthy than we are. Most academics certainly have the talent and opportunities to enter professions where we would make more money. It is more about the frustration of being exposed to (and subsequently internalizing) the idea that information is more valid when it is held to scientific standards and practices. That is, something published in an academic journal or from a university press is a "better" source than something published in The New York Times, which (because it has editorial oversight) is better than something published on someone's blog.

For instance, a blogger named budwhite called Frank Rich and others who, like us, believed that there should be a teachable moment in the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. incident "racial hucksters." (We argued that there should be but would not be.) The commenters (and he has a lot more than we have each week!) tended to agree with him, even though there was no evidence that he applied scholarly principles to his opinion. Budwhite has a compelling story (World War II vet, retired LA police officer, starting law school in the fall) that (we feel) provides him with important perspective with which to offer his opinion. While we disagree strongly with his position on this issue, it brings to mind an important question about formal education versus life experience. Both are valuable, but in what ways? Under what circumstances? Do budwhite's life experiences make him equally qualified to comment on race as folks like us, who have earned doctoral degrees in related fields and who have published and spoken widely on the issue? Are we, in turn, as qualified as he is to speak on the nuances of police action? Is President Obama (when he claimed -- and we agreed -- that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" when they arrested Professor Gates)?

How do we weigh the value of such differing perspectives? As college-level instructors, we expect students to understand that there is a difference between writing by academics and non-academics -- no matter how "smart" the latter are. But it is not as simple as reviewing the qualifications of the author(s). Academics are are also human, we are citizens, and we have a right to advance our own personal agendas, as well. Some of us do so in our own social network posts. Sometimes we make a serious effort to adhere to academic principles in these spaces (as we do); sometimes we do not. That is, sometimes we just wear our "citizen" hats. But we believe that, like a boxer who is not permitted to get into a bar brawl, academics should always remain committed to engaging in dialogue that enhances democracy. In other words, though no one can never be wholly "objective," academics have a responsibility to strive for objectivity by holding firm to the process that separates what we do from what those not trained as social scientists do. Being objective is not the same as being neutral, however; that is a distinction that folks need to recognize.

So we take the time THIS WEEK to reflect, but also to ask you: What the %@#& do we know?! If you are an academic, what do you know? If you are not, why do you read our stuff (and/or other blogs by academics)? Do you read scholarly journals and books, too? Why (or why not)?

It will come as little surprise to you that it takes us between three and five hours each week to put this offering together. Over three years, that is a significant time commitment, particularly when you consider that it has virtually no positive effect on our prospects for promotion. If we spent that time engaging in traditional academic pursuits, we might have an additional peer-reviewed article or two, or our books would be further along. We spend this time because we are committed to making the scholarship about race, politics and language accessible and relevant to our readers. We do it to (hopefully) serve as a model of what thoughtful dialogue can look like in the blogosphere. (For more about why we do this, see our last foray into blogger existentialism, "Defining Our Role," from last September.)

We're not going to stop. We know from your feedback that you are out there and that you appreciate our perspective (even when you disagree). But we know that we could exponentially increase our reach if we were to be more controversial. We also know, however, that you do not want that. Earlier in the week, we posted a link to a very disturbing bigoted web site on the RaceProject Facebook page, and some of our "fans" expressed concern -- not over the content of the site (it is expected that such garbage exists), but because they felt it was beneath what we do to engage with such mindless drivel. While we made a case for occasionally posting such material, we appreciate the sentiment behind the complaints. Folks were saying that they are attentive to the RaceProject because what we do is different than much of the other commentary out there. That has been our goal since we started the Project in 2001. Happily, it seems that you feel that (for the most part) we are doing it correctly.

But hey, what the %@#& do you know?!

Teachable Moment? Add It to the List

2009-08-02T15:18:00.007-04:00

The so-called "beer summit" THIS WEEK at the White House was designed to be a symbol of the power of dialogue amongst folks who see the world differently. (See Charlton's comments on the meeting for New York's WPIX here). On more than one occasion, the entire incident that started with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. being arrested at his home (for being loud, belligerent, uppity -- take your pick) has been labeled a "teachable moment."

We wish.

Pardon our pessimism, but as we approach the third anniversary of writing weekly in this space, we wish that we had a quarter for each "teachable moment" we have referenced in that time; we'd have like $25 (which we would use to buy our own beer).

In all seriousness, though, as professors, we are sensitive to the importance of "teachable moments" -- those times when circumstances result in a possibility of understanding that could otherwise not have occurred (or would have been much more difficult to occur). In a sense, this blog is designed to take advantage of such moments; we apply scholarly principles and concepts to current events so that our readers -- most of whom could and/or do "teach" these ideas themselves -- are armed with multiple examples of the way racism continues to affect our public discourse and, subsequently, our attitudes and behaviors. Each of these events is a teachable moment from our perspective.

If you have a few minutes, scroll through the archives of THIS WEEK for a moment and take a look at all the teachable moments that have occurred over the past three years: Michael Richards, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Tea Parties, immigration reform, Don Imus, and on and on and on. We would love to believe that this will be different, but we tend to side with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker, who, when asked on This Week with George Stephanopoulos if this were a teachable moment, noted: "I'm skeptical about 'teachable moments' period. That is the term of art for the moment: 'Let's use this for a teachable moment.'"

Tucker went on to ask "What was the crime" that Professor Gates committed, and Michelle Malkin gave a less-than-enlightened answer about Sgt. Crowley's Black colleague who publicly supported the arrest -- the intellectual equivalent of "I have a Black friend so my actions could not be racist." (Malkin has a history of supporting such ignorance, including the contest that she sponsored to criticize the president's health care proposal that resulted in a widely-circulated picture of Obama in tribal garb with a bone through his nose.)

We're not at all skeptical of "teachable moments period," as Tucker is, but we agree that this is not one. In short, we don't need more teachable moments; we need to take advantage of all those that fall into our laps on a daily basis. We also agree (as we rarely do) with former Congressman J.C. Watts, who very astutely claimed on Meet the Press this morning that we are, as Attorney General Eric Holder famously noted in February, a nation of cowards when it comes to talking about race. These are not Watts's words, of course, but the point is the same. Here is what he said:

It's very difficult for political people to talk about the issue of race. And then that's very sad. That's unfortunate. I do believe the president wants to talk about the issue. I think he mishandled the Crowley situation; and, and he, you know, said at the outset, "I don't have all the facts." He probably should not have commented on it. However, Professor Gates, as he said, was a personal friend. I think he wants to have this discussion. And this discussion is just too difficult to have in politics, and it's unfortunate. America should--we put men on the moon, we, we can Google people, we've got BlackBerrys; but it's still very uncomfortable for us to talk about the issue of race. And, you know, we've got an African-American in the White House, and we still--we, we can't talk about it in our churches.

What is more likely to spark an honest and frank discussion about race, however, is the continual racist suggestions by so-called "birthers" that Barack Obama is not really "one of us." The heat was turned up THIS WEEK on birther conspiracy-stoker Lou Dobbs, when Media Matters reportedly bought airtime during Dobbs's own show to criticize his actions in this regard. This follows calls by Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center for CNN to remove Dobbs for his lack of journalistic integrity.

Consider this excerpt (here or below) of Dobbs explaining the "Apollo Alliance" conspiracy from his show THIS WEEK. Dobbs begins by sounding exasperated about how difficult it is to untangle this web of deceit stemming from the president himself, and then makes an interesting intonation with his voice when he says "vast left wing conspiracy" as if to simultaneously suggest that such an idea is silly while perpetuating its validity. He goes on to give a mini-lecture about the interrelationship between "labor," "the green movement," and (gasp) "social justice." He refers to Van Jones (who is Black) as "the guy behind the curtain," which plays on racist stereotypes about African Americans being untrustworthy, shifty and criminal. The "class" (complete with a white board and marker) continues with a photo of Jones (to indicate his race), and repeated references to "Black" and "communist," making references to other targets of middle class White male wrath such as ACORN and labor unions to tie it all together.

What's important for THIS WEEK readers, of course, is that race is used as a way to leverage the otherwise legitimate conservative ideas that Beck puts forth. At one point, Beck even notes that Obama says "I'm one of you guys," when he's really not. Beck puts forth a picture of a president who is getting one over on the American public, which is easier to sell because Obama is Black. After all, we expect Black folk to be corrupt, criminal and shady, so this nicely fits our existing racist framework. (Perhaps the best part of this clip is toward the end when Beck asks his conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity's Phil Kerpen to "talk him out of the crazy tree," as if anyone could at this point. Kerpen, of course, doesn't try to do so, but rather perpetuates the conspiracy.)

It may seem counter-intuitive, but these sorts of racist (and in this case, bigoted) attacks from the far right are actually more likely to stimulate a meaningful, sophisticated discussion about race than anything Barack Obama could do as president. As we argued back in March: "We have believed for some time that Obama's real work on racial justice is likely to come after his presidency has ended (whether that's after one term or two) because, as the first Black president, he will feel as if he needs to not appear to be 'too Black.'"

But the "birthers" and other folks who are demanding "I want my country back" (from the "other" who resides in the White House) have a chance to allow more thoughtful Americans to be reflective of the myriad ways racism works in America. Empathetic and bright conservatives and moderates will be urged to examine their own biases (as those on the left are expected to do more regularly) to see where and how race matters in their lives. Further, they will be forced to either side with the overt bigots and those who are too simple minded to believe that Whites, too, have inherent bias or to come to understand that no one is without perspective and that despite our history, the White perspective should not and cannot be the default "norm."

These would be monumental steps toward racial consciousness in America. While intellectuals of color have been arguing for this recognition (alongside White allies, of course) at least since Frederick Douglass, it very well might be a racist backlash against our first president of color that forces White folks to understand that Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King and, indeed, the election of 2008 did not "fix" America's racial problems.

A couple of beers among folks who simply "agree to disagree" (as Sgt. Crowley stated in his statement after the meeting) is simply not the moment that we've been waiting for.

Note: For more analysis of THIS WEEK's events, including links to the most interesting and relevant stories at the intersection of race, politics and language, become a fan of the RaceProject Facebook page, or visit the public page often.

Opening the Flood-"Gates" to Increased Animosity

2009-07-26T10:23:00.011-04:00

As expected, we are weighing in with our analysis of the arrest of Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts THIS WEEK. If you have been monitoring the RaceProject Facebook page, you will be up to speed on all the happenings. If so, jump past the next paragraph; if not, read on.

In short, Professor Gates was having trouble getting into his home upon his return from an overseas trip. He and his driver managed to get into the home, but as they were doing so, a neighbor called the police. While Gates was on the phone making arrangements for the door to be fixed, the police arrived. At this point, there is some disagreement about what happened, but we do know that the police asked to see Gates's identification (Gates says he produced it, the police say he did not do so immediately), Gates verbally berated the police (including making comments regarding to the way Black men are treated by police in America) and demanded the officer's badge number and name, and ultimately, Gates was arrested. The charges have been dropped, but the incident sparked a debate within and between several communities (the press, academics, activists, etc.). Dr. Gates is really upset, and President Obama weighed in during the last question of his health care press conference by saying that he believed that the police "acted stupidly," even though he admitted to not knowing all the facts. He has since talked to both the arresting officer and Professor Gates and is planning to have them to the White House for beers.

There has been no shortage of thoughtful commentary throughout the week. And, perhaps as we might expect, there has been no shortage of thoughtless commentary, as well.

On the thoughtful side, we encourage folks to read the excellent posts by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Dawn Turner Trice (here and here), Katherine T. Wallace, Liza Sabater, George Mitrovich, Harry Allen, Stanley Fish, Charles Blow and Sam Somers.

On the less-than-thoughtful side, (surprise) Rush Limbaugh played explicitly on the "angry Black man" stereotype (video here; for more on this, check out this MSNBC panel where Limbaugh's comments are discussed), and the angry White guys at The Free Republic were typically repulsive.

As is the trend in contemporary racial politics, there are basically three populations about which we are concerned. The first is the group who has been honest about how this incident is illustrative of the relationship between police and Black men in America. The second group is comprised of those (like Limbaugh) who are explicitly opposed to any attempt to bring about racial equality, either because they are overt bigots who believe Whites are a superior people or because they believe that America is a meritocracy where those who have succeeded are those who have worked the hardest -- and who just so happen to be disproportionately White and male. The third group is comprised of (mostly White) folks who are not particularly sensitive to the ways that systemic racism function; these folks sincerely want to have racial equality, understand that by most indicators, it is not here yet, but have a difficult time viewing the world through the lens of "others."

The last group was out in full force THIS WEEK, trying to make sense of the situation by analyzing the events through what they believe to be a race-neutral lens. These are the folks who were moved by the notion that the arresting officer, Sgt. Crowley, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the late Celtics basketball player Reggie Lewis (our favorite tweet on this came from @mattbastard (Matthew Elliot): "There's a new one 'I'm not racist--I french-kissed a negro [not that there's anything wrong with that].'") and then found "confirmation" that the officer was not "to blame" because he cannot possibly be "racist" when they learned that he was hand-picked by a Black superior officer to teach diversity classes that include information about how to avoid racial profiling and that a Black officer on the scene the night of the Gates arrest publicly claimed that Crowley acted appropriately.

Here's why these interpretations fall short of the type of sophistication we encourage in this space.

Whether the arresting officer is a bigot or not is completely beside the point. He tried to save the life of a Black man and he has been recognized about being thoughtful about racial profiling. That is impressive and certainly suggests that he is not a bigot, but it does not get him off the hook of systemic racism. He is a White man in America -- and a police officer at that -- and thus has a distinct way to view the world that he (like all of us) is unable to escape. He can be thoughtful about that bias that he carries, but as was so nicely demonstrated in Paul Haggis's film Crash, under stressful conditions, it is harder to activate those filters. In short, this is a familiar refrain: "I can't be racist; I have Black friends"; it is a casualty of the continual conflation of racism with bigotry.

Further, under what circumstances would a fellow officer -- of any race or ethnicity -- publicly state that his colleague (particularly one who is facing public scrutiny) acted inappropriately? Seriously: how would that go? "Yeah, he was way out of line. That is not what he should have done at all. I'm embarrassed to be on the same force with this guy." Please. Who can blame a fellow officer for 1) seeing the situation more closely to the way his colleague saw it, and 2) supporting him publicly under these circumstances.

But this is shaping up to be similar to the OJ Simpson verdict with respect to the way Whites and Blacks see the situation. Most Whites see themselves (or wish to see themselves) in Sgt. Crowley (no visible prejudices, history of friendship with Blacks) and worry that they, too, might be accused of racism if they ever do something to a Black person that the person does not like. Since Whites as a group do not have a history of animosity with police, they view the situation outside of that larger context and simply focus on "the facts." But those events took place in a broader context, and that must be considered.

And it is within this context that President Obama spoke. While many (most?) Black folk cheered when he publicly called the officer's actions "stupid" (but see Bill Cosby's response), they recoiled a bit when he backpedaled on the language later in the week (see Melissa Harris-Lacewell's commentary on that issue on The Rachel Maddow Show).

To elaborate on that point, we reprint what Charlton wrote to a friend on his Facebook page about the issue:

My guess is that Obama's first comments were the most honest. I think that his reaction that the Cambridge cop acted stupidly probably came from the visceral feeling of knowing what it feels like not only to be profiled, but to be someone who has done everything society says you have to do to be great, and succeed, etc. and then still get treated like a common criminal -- in your own home no less. Malcolm X use to say: What do you call a Black man with a Ph.D? "N*****." I think that kind of feeling is what Gates had when the incident happened and what Obama was reacting to when he was first asked about his response. His latest response and apologies, etc. are of course politically motivated, though probably the right thing to do to try to help mend fences and use turn it into a "teachable moment."

Even without all the details, I do believe that Gates reacted exactly as the officer said. I believe he said the things he did and in the tone the officer said he did. But I think that to say that Gates "overreacted" is very subjective. As a person who has been harassed by cops for absolutely nothing other than the color of my skin (like the Shawnee [OK] cops who would routinely pull me over when driving in some of the nice neighborhoods, but never give me a reason why they stopped me, and including on two occasions having the cops called because I was "breaking in" to my own apartment, then doing searches of my apartment for no reason), I think Gates's reaction was somewhat mild -- hardly an overreaction. Was it a reasonable reaction? Probably not, but we're not talking about the realm of reason here. It's the emotional feeling one gets at this kind of personal injustice.

Here's the issue with the officer: it's all about the handcuffs. Gates is a short, scrawny, Ivy league nerd who raised his voice at a cop who had a gun, handcuffs and the power and authorization to use force if necessary to exercise his will. The officer had broad discretion. You don't immediately bust out the cuffs because someone gives you a little lip, especially when you know those words are not at all threatening. Putting Gates in cuffs for "disturbing the peace" is a symbolic act, one that says, "get and stay in your place, boy." But few people have been saying that the cop overreacted. And maybe he didn't. Like Gates acted out of his experience and the experience of other Blacks being profiled, the cop acted out of his experience and feeling of having an uppity Black professor talk to him the way he did: not just as a cop, but as a White person. To him, that was Gates's real offense.

Politically speaking, Obama shouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole. But I respect the fact that he he allowed himself to react as a human being who is Black, who has experienced the good and bad of living Black in America and was there to get someone's back who he saw as someone who was a slight victim of injustice (there are plenty of people of color who are profiled and victimized much more harshly).

This is a perspective that Stephen, for instance, would not have had. No matter how sensitive White folks are to systemic racism, no matter how long they study it and try to understand its implications, there is no substitute for experience, particularly with respect to the mixture of cognitive and emotional responses that come into play in a stressful situation such as this. Witness, for instance, MSNBC's Mika Brezezinsky's struggle to understand this element of the situation here (or below) in a discussion with Eugene Robinson and Carlos Watson.

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Finally, here's a bit of bitter humor to bring this full circle: Dave Chappelle "predicted" these events a number of years ago in one of his routines.

Before we let you go, though, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the other big racial story THIS WEEK. The "birthers" (those who believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and, thus, is not legitimately the president) gained a strange sort of momentum as national conservative spokespersons such as Lou Dobbs and some Republican members of Congress continued to attempt to legitimize the claims. CNN's Rick Sanchez tore into these folks, and Jon Stewart made them look like complete nut jobs in his comic send up of their activities. Roland Martin did a nice job in a discussion with Dobbs (see here or below), and the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a formal letter to CNN asking for Dobbs to be removed due to his irresponsible journalistic activity with respect to this matter.

Make no mistake: this issue has everything to do with race. It is a perpetuation of the "otherness" frame that characterized Obama's opponents in the primaries and general election, and it is very much a function of White folks who remain horrified that the nation is being led by a Black man. At the town hall meeting that got so much attention THIS WEEK, a woman screamed "I want my country back!" This language is reflective of a group of people (it's impossible to tell how large of a group) who cannot stomach the fact that a Black man is in charge. Obama, they implicitly argue, is not really American. He's not "one of us." He's quintessentially "other," and he has stolen the country.

When he sided with the "lippy," "uppity" African American studies professor, it was simply additional evidence for the fact that "his kind" stick together; they will protect one another, but they hate Whites. He is a "reverse racist" (as Rush Limbaugh has called him), and he has disdain for (at least parts of) America.

We see some very scary trends emerging THIS WEEK. The White supremacists will always be stoking racial animosity and attacking Obama on racial grounds, but when otherwise thoughtful Whites (whom we put in "group three" above) start to be attentive to and perpetuate these notions, there is a real danger for the racial divide to widen. The backlash we (and many others) predicted at inauguration time is in full effect. What remains to be seen is how deep and how widespread it will become.

(Another) Busy Week in Race

2009-07-20T11:45:00.009-04:00

It seems as if we have been saying this a lot lately, but it really was a very busy WEEK IN RACE. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court gave us an opportunity to examine some of our most pressing national issues related to race and equality, including affirmative action. Combined with the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, the Young Republicans' national convention, and the appointment of an African American woman, Dr. Regina Benjamin, as U.S. Surgeon General, as well as some other issues scattered throughout the week, there is an awful lot to analyze.

Still, we always seek to provide thorough but relatively brief analysis of the week's events, so we will not take too much of your time. If you would like to have more timely updates of events and analysis, we encourage you to become a fan of the all-new RaceProject Facebook Page. Doing so will allow you to have the most recent news and commentary appear on your Facebook News Feed. If you'd rather not have that much contact from us, simply bookmark the page and visit when you have a chance.

THIS WEEK, Charlton penned an op-ed for Newsday in which he briefly traces the history of racism and explains the ways that it applies in the contemporary context. Specifically, he noted that term has come to embody vastly different connotations as folks strive to use it against anyone who disagrees with them in a way that is racially relevant.

Take the Sotomayor hearings as an example.

As students of racial communication, we focused on the degree to which stereotypes of Latinas surfaced. And did they ever! As expected (and as predicted by conservatives' and Obama opponents' response to Sotomayor in the weeks since the nomination), there was a lot of attention given to the judge's speeches over the past couple of decades, as well as her rulings. Her now-famous "wise Latina" comment was mentioned by most Republican Senators on the Committee, including ranking member Jeff Sessions (over and over and over again) and minority whip Jon Kyle. Senator Lindsey Graham asked Sotomayor if she had a temperament problem (the fiery Latina stereotype and the angry minority stereotype), and Tom Coburn joked with Sotomayor that she'd "have a whole lot of 'splainin' to do," reminding us of that omnipresent one-dimensional caricature of Hispanics, Ricky Ricardo, from the 1050s classic television series I Love Lucy.

Believe it or not, the racial rhetoric actually got worse THIS WEEK. During a House debate on health care reform, Kansas Republican Congressman Todd Tiahrt suggested that having cost-free access to abortions could provide incentive for women to terminate pregnancies that they would otherwise carry to full term. He wondered aloud about the great leaders whose mothers might have aborted them. The only two examples he gave: African Americans Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas.

As the great comedy writer Dave Barry says, we could not make this up.

Progressives weighed in throughout the hearings, attempting to point out where racialized language was being used. We were reminded more than once about the ways that opposition to civil rights has characterized much of Senator Sessions' career. Indeed, Sessions was arguably the most notable Senator to use race in his questioning of Sotomayor. At one point, he suggested that she could have voted differently on a case by noting that another judge of Puerto Rican descent voted with the other side.

On Sunday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pointed out the racism during a CNN interview with Senator Sessions in attendance. The exchange is worth watching.

To put things into context, Melissa Harris-Lacewell put forth a thoughtful reflection of what was really happening at the Sotomayor hearings. She argues that since the Republicans do not have the votes to stop the nomination, it was all about public humiliation for Sotomayor, which has been a consistent aspect of American racism.

The comics had a field day over the course of the week, too, by exposing implicit racism. See Jon Stewart's brilliant "White Men Can't Judge" piece below or here, for instance.

On a slightly different note, Elon James White really has blossomed as a politically astute comic over the past two weeks through his This Week in Blackness multimedia website and his tweets @elonjames. His piece ("Why You So Black?") that was reprinted at Huffington Post explores how he came to do racial humor, even though he did not wish to do so.

We definitely understand where he is coming from. While we study race with less reluctance, it has certainly been overwhelming for us to try to distill so much racial communication each week. Take a look at what we have to work with. In addition to all the happenings in the official corridors of power THIS WEEK, Pat Buchanan continued his efforts to defend the rights of the oppressed White man. First, he offered a strategy for the GOP that actually included accelerating the racial attacks on Judge Sotomayor, and then he unleashed a rant on The Rachel Maddow show that would have been almost unbelievable if it had come from anyone other than Buchanan (or perhaps Tucker Carlson). Watch below or here. (Maddow had promised via Twitter to refute the points one-by-one on Friday, but the unfortunate passing of Walter Cronkite understandably altered those plans. Tune in tonight at 9pm EDT to MSNBC to see if she gets to it.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

We focus so much attention in this space on implicit racism because we feel it is important to point out where and when it surfaces to show that none of us is immune to such latent resentments that have been programmed into our subconscious throughout our socialization. But incidents of overt bigotry such as this should not go unnoticed. LIFE magazine released a small but chilling set of pictures THIS WEEK taken at modern gatherings of the Ku Klux Klan that we strongly recommend.

Of course, one does not have to be as crass as Buchanan or as sickening as a KKK member to embrace racial resentments or to allow such resentments to continue to affect our public policy. President Obama's speech to the NAACP on the occasion of the organization's 100th anniversary contained a great deal of thoughtful rhetoric about how systemic racism continues to operate. We had to shake our heads when, seconds after the speech ended, CNN's Lou Dobbs complained that the speech "could have been given 4o years ago." A more sophisticated view of the speech reveals that Obama spent a great deal of time talking about the progress that has been made and (to some criticism) about how personal responsibility has to be part of the equation (Jesse Jackson was not heard anywhere threatening to castrate the president this time, however). But he was very clear (in the speech and with the Black press beforehand) about how much work is left to be done -- apparently this is work with which Dobbs is no more willing than Pat Buchanan to help.

Finally, we want to update our discussion of the controversy in the election for president of the national Young Republicans. Audra Shay, who was accused of bigotry (and who some conservatives and many progressives urged should be defeated), won the election. At the convention, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele was asked about how he was going to increase diversity in the party. Steele's answer got a lot of attention, and we wanted to take just a moment to provide our analysis.

Steele started to answer the question by saying that everyone is invited into the Party: "My plan is to say 'Ya'll come.'" That got some laughs (presumably because of the direct nature of the answer), and Steele continued "cuz a lot of you are already here." At that point, someone is heard to say "I'll bring the collard greens." It's impossible to tell for sure if it is the person who asked the question (who appeared to be African American) or someone else, but Steele responds lightheartedly (and laughing) by saying, "There you go. I got the fried chicken and potato salad."

There are a number of ways to read this. First, if Steele was not Black, we would predictably be all over the comment as an improper play on a stereotype of African American culture. But he is, which means that he has license to invoke such messages for effect because he cannot personally benefit from the resentment among Whites that such stereotypes activate (though his Party might benefit by perceptions of Steele being self-loathing or not "really Black."). It's possible that Steele was making fun of the question, suggesting that because he is Black he is presumed to spend all his time figuring out ways to get "people like him" into the Party. More likely, though, he was at once dismissing the comment as presumptuous but also playing along to be polite and affable. This is particularly likely if, in fact, the person who made the comment was African American. In that case, Steele is making an attempt at demonstrating solidarity with the presumably like minded conservative with whom he shares an ethnic heritage.

But Steele's remarks (and the response to it) cannot be examined in isolation. In the greater context of all that has happened in the past two weeks with respect to explicit racism (i.e., the suburban Philadelphia pool situation has continued to remain in the news) and implicit racism, Steele certainly understands that Republicans are not on track to be picking up support from racial minorities. The degree of insensitivity that was on display during the Sotomayor hearings and the flat-out resentment that was visible in conservative commentators' critiques of Sotomayor specifically and affirmative action generally only makes that part of Steele's job more difficult.

If, in fact, Steele was chosen at least in part as a symbolic gesture that the GOP does not embrace bigotry, he is going to need a little help from his friends -- no matter what sort of picnic food he decides to serve.

Bad Apples: Dealing with Pools, Fools and Tools

2009-07-10T16:19:00.009-04:00

It's been a busy WEEK IN RACE. As we move to recognize the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, we are reminded about how far we have come, but also how much work needs to be done. As we expected, we are seeing a noticeable backlash against racial justice since Barack Obama took office in January.

Pools

Most notably was the so-called "racist pool" incident THIS WEEK, where children from an inner-city youth summer camp was turned away by a suburban private pool, with several reports of racist language coming from the White swimmers and their parents. The video reports (watch here and here) are heartbreaking. There is no way that those kids will ever forget the feelings they had when they were insulted and discriminated against on that early summer day; as Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell reminds us, the event will very likely stick with them for the rest of their lives.

As some posters noted on the (new) RaceProject Facebook page, there is a long history of segregation and discrimination with respect to leisure in America, even though most of the attention is paid to workplace and education. The reported reaction of the children and parents is eerily reminiscent of stories and footage from the 1950s. Unfortunately, as you will read below, it's not the only connection THIS WEEK to that time.

Fools

Later in the week, it was discovered that readers of the conservative Free Republic blog unleashed a flurry of racist comments about Malia Obama after a picture of her in a t-shirt with a peace sign (left) was posted. The Vancouver Sun reports comments including: "A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion." We encourage you to read the article for more of the vitriol (though we recommend you do so on a empty stomach). It's important to note that Free Republic is considered to be a mainstream conservative site (unlike the White supremacist social networking site on which some U.S. military service members have apparently been participating). It would be difficult to dismiss this as rantings of a few fringe "wing nuts."

One of the commonalities, of course, between these two stories is that the racist resentment is directed at children. Imagine the power the (mostly anonymous) posters must have felt as they typed away within a mob mentality reminiscent of historic lynchings. Angry Whites (mostly men) who are convinced that their power is endangered because of affirmative action and a "radical" Black president who is either a radical Black Liberation Christian or a closet Muslim, must have felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction as they read, wrote and contributed to this assault on a little girl whose only crime was to signal her wish for (gasp!) peace.

Thoughtful conservatives, though, have not been taking this lying down. GOP insider Larry Gellman wrote a magnificent piece for Huffington Post THIS WEEK wherein he admonishes that the "hate speech" (his words) coming from the right is more dangerous than any radical language from the left because the former comes not from the margins of the movement but from the power source.

Hate speech is different. It's when you accuse the President of the United States of being a socialist, a terrorist, a Muslim, an anti-Semite, or a traitor based on lies and distortions. And it becomes particularly meaningful when the venom comes not from the radical fringe -- as it often does from the Left -- but from the heart of the party leadership -- as it often does from the Right.

His comments were written in the context of the election for the president of the Young Republicans of America, as the front runner was recently discovered to have permitted and (at least tacitly supported) hateful, racist language on her Facebook page by supporters.

In her weekly Daily Beast blog, Meghan McCain implored her fellow Republicans to "NOT elect a racist" (her emphasis). While we would have liked to have seen Meghan reflect the scholarly differences between "racism" and "bigotry" in her language, it was refreshing to see that she and Gellman both realize that endorsing someone who fails to stand up to bigotry is a tacit endorsement of the bigoted beliefs.

Tools

Frank Ricci, the most famous firefighter from New Haven, Connecticut, was exposed as a tool of the Republican Party this week. Some may have always believed that he and the other White firefighters who sued because the city decided that a test that resulted in only White promotions was invalid were tools, but as we noted when the case was decided, it was actually quite complicated. Of course, the case was all the more notable because the appeals court summary ruling was made by a panel that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republicans decided to call Ricci as a witness against Sotomayor in the hearings that will begin next week, though we wonder now if they might reconsider.

You see, it appears that Mr. Ricci got his job with the New Haven fire department by way of a lawsuit alleging -- wait for it -- discrimination. When he was not among the 40 selected from a field over over 700 back in 1995, he argued that the civil service exam was biased against him because he has dyslexia. The settlement included a job for Ricci as a firefighter (presumably keeping out a qualified firefighter who did not have dyslexia).

The problem is that Ricci was correct in the first place. Whether he was correct enough to have been awarded a job as a result of his lawsuit is beyond our ability to know, but he certainly had a point that a seemingly "objective" timed written test is not fair for someone who has a reading disability if the position in question is not directly related to one's ability to read or write quickly. He was discriminated against, and he deserved to have that case heard. What he apparently cannot cannot see, however, is that an otherwise "objective" test that relies on knowledge and skills that Whites and persons of color do not have the same opportunity to acquire is similarly unjust. The fact that he went crying to the courts instead of seeing the similarities is what justifies cries of hypocrisy.

Bad Apples

In The Political Mind, cognitive linguist and progressive political writer George Lakoff notes that a conceptual frame that is consistently employed by conservatives is the "bad apple" frame (chapter 10). This is where we come to resolve problems by pointing to the one person (or handful of people) who are caught and feel comfortable that we have solved "the problem." Lakoff mentions the Enron scandal, for instance, where we made ourselves feel as if we took care of the problem by collectively (and metaphorically, of course) pointing fingers and chanting "shame, shame on you" to Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling as criminal proceedings commenced. But the problem of corruption in corporate America is systemic. That doesn't mean that everyone in corporate America is corrupt; it means that there is something about the system that facilitates and even encourages such behavior.

The same is true with racism. As we argue regularly in this space, changing people's conscious attitudes about race (which as been largely successful over the past 50 years) will not solve racism. It reduces the number of bigots (though they're popping up like whack-a-moles lately!), but it does nothing to deal with the root causes of racial inequality and injustice.

So we can demand that the president of the suburban Philadelphia pool be fired, but who cares? All that does is let the racist members of the community feel as if he was the problem instead of looking at themselves. We can refuse to elect Audra Shay, the Young Republican presidential candidate, but so what? The attitudes that exposed her unwillingness to stand up against bigotry are still firmly in place. We can hold up the Free Republic posters out as examples of horrible people, but the context in which they felt empowered and encouraged to air such feelings is the real issue.

As Larry Gellman so elegantly put it, "There is nothing wrong with criticizing people in power. It is essential in a democracy and our ability to do so has helped make our country great. But there are ways to do it hatefully and ways to do it with dignity. It is the hatred and anger that seem to ooze so effortlessly from the leaders of the Republican Party that are so disconcerting."

That anger is not only oozing effortlessly, it's oozing more frequently and with more vitriol as the weeks roll by. It will be up to conservatives and Republicans to decide how to handle such attitudes and language. If they follow Gellman and Meghan McCain, they will move toward the Jack Kemp model of conservatism that we heralded on the occasion of his death a few months ago. If not, they will continue to spiral into political irrelevance as younger voters reject such messages and gravitate toward other electoral options (either Democrats or Libertarians, we suspect).

In other news. . .

While we do not have the space to elaborate, we wanted to note a couple of other important stories from THIS WEEK.

First, Illinois U.S. Senator Roland Burris, the nation's only African American Senator, has (wisely) decided that he will not seek reelection in 2010. We argued upon his initial nomination that he was a bad choice because of his close ties to impeached (and now removed) governor Rod Blagojevich, and revelations about his ties to "Blago" since Burris was seated have done nothing to alleviate concerns. To date, none of the prominent names on either ticket is a person of color.

Second, it appears that the Southern Christian Leadership Council is ousting the president of its Los Angeles chapter, Rev. Eric Lee, because he supports gay rights. We agree with Rev. Lee when he said of Martin Luther King, Jr., who founded the organization, "Dr. King would be turning over in his grave right now." Dr. King would have been appalled by the politics of intolerance, hate and division being advocated or accepted by his organization, which has a history and a mission of fighting against injustice.

Finally, we want to join those who have expressed disgust about a disrupted graveyard in the Chicagoland area where some 300 caskets of mostly African Americans have been disturbed in a scheme to re-sell the burial plots. (All four suspects are also African American). It's poetic that one of the caskets (though empty) was the original resting place of Emmett Till, the young man whose murder helped to spark the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. Till's body was exhumed in 2005 as part of a federal investigation, and he has since been buried elsewhere. (Charlton has written extensively about cultural differences with respect to death and dying.)

So here we are: The 100 year anniversary of the NAACP, the first African American president, and millions of Americans walking around feeling proud to live in a "post-racial" nation. Yet it's little Emmett Till who has surfaced again, 54 years later, to remind us that we're not done. Not by a long shot.

As usual, the kids (whether from the pool, Malia or Emmett) have a lot to teach us adults.

Independence Day for African Americans

2009-07-06T13:56:00.008-04:00

There was a lot of chatter in the blogosphere over the past few days with respect to what July 4 does (and should) signify, particularly for people of color, as we celebrated the first Independence Day with a Black president.

Many folks tweeted or posted links to Frederick Douglass's famous speech titled "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro." In this address, Douglass tries to explain what it is like to see celebration of ideals that have not been realized. He says:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

He begins (and ends) the speech, however, with optimism:

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too Ñ great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

Francesca Biller-Safran situated the holiday in a contemporary context, noting that "for many Blacks who have felt ambivalence, separatism and exclusion; this will be a Fourth of July like no other."

Rikyrah, of Jack and Jill Politics, reminds us that to suggest that Black folk have not been patriotic prior to this momentous time in our history is offensive and misguided. For it is easy to love that which loves you back; loving a nation that has treated you and people like you with disdain, disrespect and deceit is a true sign of dedication.

Indeed, several articles and posts over the weekend attempted to call our attention the difference between nationalism ("my country, right or wrong") and patriotism. Byron Williams notes that patriotism is about celebrating the ideals of a country and Mike Lux argues that the folks whose ideas we celebrate on this day (Thomas Jefferson and his buddies) were radicals and leftists fighting against forces that wished to impede progress. They certainly had their own hangups and were bound by their cultural context, but the ideas for which they fought are the same ideas that many progressives are fighting for today.

This is particularly true with respect to racial progress. THIS WEEK, Barack Obama read for his (sorta creepy) animatronic likeness in Disney World's famous Hall of Presidents. (You can watch the behind-the-scenes video by clicking here or watching below.) It gives one a real sense of the history of his election to consider the power of his likeness on that grand stage alongside all the White men who led this nation through the first 220 years.

Thinking about this moment and reading Frederick Douglass's words prompts one to think about how much has truly changed in the past 150 years, as well as how much work we still have to do.

RaceProject on Facebook

For a number of reasons (most of them technical and boring), we have moved the official RaceProject.org Facebook content from a "group" to a "page." If you were a member of the RaceProject.org Facebook group, please "fan" the new page (which has an easy-to-remember URL: Facebook.com/RaceProject). Soon, we will discontinue the old "group," so please take a moment now to make the switch, or "fan" us even if you are new to Facebook or had not joined the old group.

Framing the Ricci Decision

2009-06-29T13:00:00.009-04:00

Even though we had a really nice blog about images of Michelle Obama almost finished, we switched gears at the last minute to provide an analysis of the United States Supreme Court's decision in the Ricci v. DeStefano case yesterday morning. We apologize for the tardiness of THIS WEEK's entry.

The case (which involves White firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut suing because the results of an exam designed to lead to promotion were tossed out because the results would have led to disproportionate promotions of Whites over applicants of color) is quite compelling for a number of reasons. TWIR readers might suspect that we would side with the four dissenters, who, anchored by Justice Ginsburg, who authored the dissent, noted that the majority of the Court failed to take historical context into consideration. While it is true that we would have voted with Justices Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Breyer, we do not dismiss the claims made by Justice Kennedy in his majority opinion. Specifically, Kennedy argues that a problem with this case (the facts of which we have discussed previously) is that the city of New Haven determined that the test was racially biased solely based on the output (i.e., that candidates for promotion based on the test would be overwhelmingly and disproportionately White).

From our perspective, such disproportionate results should be a red flag that something is wrong with the test, but there should be a thorough analysis of the test to determine why and to what extent there was inherent bias in the questions, tasks assigned, etc. The justices in the majority believe that there was not enough proof of bias, while the dissenters believe that there is. We strongly suspect that the test was biased, but we cannot ignore the fact that, with such a small sample of test takers, it is possible that the White candidates were simply the best.

IF that is the case (and it is a big "if"), it is important to ask the next question: Why were the White test takers "the best?" Is there something about the socialization process in the fire department that cultivates White firefighters toward management more effectively than firefighters of color? Is the test predicated on other educational characteristics that, in New Haven like everywhere else in America, unfairly benefit Whites? If so, are those characteristics essential to the tasks associated with management? Should New Haven adopt an affirmative action program to level that playing field?

These are all important issues that strike at the heart of what it means to be a person of color competing for jobs, promotions, and access to education, housing etc. in a context where Whites have decided advantages at almost every turn. But while it is appropriate for the Court to take those issues into consideration (as Justice Ginsburg notes), they are charged only with deciding the case that is before them.

In short, while New Haven officials had the right idea (that is, they understand that biases exist, appreciate the value of a diverse workplace, etc.), they goofed it this time. Particularly in this climate where Whites are sensitive (we think overly sensitive) about discrimination against them), we must be very careful to document carefully findings of bias where they are found to exist. But, like the landmark affirmative action decisions in 1978 and 2003, this means only that folks committed to social justice and equality of opportunity need to be more thoughtful about how to achieve those goals. In the Bakke decision in 1978, for instance, the Court (correctly, we believe) suggested, in effect, that the Regents of the University of California were trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer, and so ruled quotas to be unconstitutional (this will come as a shock to folks who have been listening to opponents of affirmative action incorrectly assert that quotas are still in effect). What is needed now is a process by which scholars are routinely asked to evaluate tests where the results produce outputs that suggest potential bias. We see nothing in the Court's opinion THIS WEEK to suggest such an effort would not be permitted and, as suggested by Justice O'Connor's majority opinion in one of the 2003 cases, welcomed (at least for now).

But what of the press's reaction to the decision?

Stephen is in the midst of his annual course for the Junior State of America summer school at Princeton University, where he had just finished explaining the concept of framing to the students in his Political Communication course. In short, framing is the act of putting information into context. Whether intentional or not, the frame changes the way information is perceived by the reader/viewer by focusing on some aspects of the story over others. In fact, in her dissent in this case, Justice Ginsburg suggests that the Court's majority in this decision has selected a particular frame: "The Court’s recitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story."

Just hours after the decision was announced (and before much reaction was available), he asked the students to come up with a number of possible frames for the Ricci decision by way of predicting headlines; some of those frames appear below with elaboration and examples from today's blogs and press stories that confirm the existence (or, in one case, absence) of those frames.

Frame 1: Racial Conflict

Perhaps the most likely of frames, this was the most common amongst the primary news outlets in the past 24 hours (see below). Headlines that indicate that Whites prevailed over discrimination are alternatives to those that would indicate that people of color have suffered a setback. In either case (and we see none of the latter among the primary news outlets), the suggestion is that there is an ongoing competition between Whites and non-Whites in America for jobs. In many respects, of course, this is true. Just as frames do not have to be intentional, they certainly do not have to be misleading or incorrect. The point is that by highlighting some aspects of a story at the expense of others, readers or viewers are encouraged to think about the story in some ways but not others.

LA Times: White firefighters were victims of discrimination, Supreme Court rules
NY Times: Supreme Court finds bias against white firefighters
Washington Post (AP): White firefighters win Supreme Court appeal

Frame 2: Reverse Discrimination

This frame presupposes that Whites have been taking it on the chin in recent years and that yesterday's ruling was a line in the sand and a victory for those who are "fair minded" and/or "race neutral." After all, if one believes that everyone in America has an equal chance of making it, that so long as we are not bigoted we are not racist, and that minorities want that which they do not rightfully deserve (because they are lazy), affirmative action in general and the act of overturning such an ostensibly objective test because results were not of the government's liking are signs of "reverse discrimination." This frame highlights the fairness of the Court's decision by implying that such a decision is overdue.

The Wall Street Journal's headline (Ruling Upends Ra ce's Role in Hiring), which features this frame, is actually quite misleading. The suggestion here is that race can no longer be taken into account in hiring practices. The first paragraph of the story reinforces this notion (scholars often look at headlines and lead paragraphs to determine frames): "The Supreme Court set a new standard for employers' use of race in hiring decisions, ruling that New Haven, Conn., wrongly discriminated against a group of mostly white firefighters who lost out when a promotion exam was scrapped because no blacks scored well enough to advance." After that, the authors quote from Justice Kennedy's opinion, which makes it clear that race can, in fact, be taken into account, but that there must be strong evidence of bias. One can understand, though, how a reader encountering that information after being presented with a headline and lead paragraph such as this would not view the quote from the opinion as it was clearly intended, but rather as a minor adjustment to the stronger sentiment implied by the frame.

Frame 3: Ideological Struggle

Because Justice Souter is stepping down, it is understandable that there would be some interest in the ideological composition of the Court. USA Today's headline indicates as much (High court curves in conservative direction), though the frame leads readers to ignore the fact that Souter sided with the dissenters, which means that his replacement would not change the balance of ideology, at least with respect to this issue. In other words, Souter's replacement, if he or she were on the Court instead of him during this decision, would not have made a difference in the outcome. (The only possibility would have been a larger win for the petitioners.)

Frame 4: Sotomayor Overturned

Because Judge Sonia Sotomayor was part of the three-judge panel that issued the un-authored appeals court decision in favor of the city of New Haven, many have looked at this case as a referendum on her judicial temperament. Such a claim is absurd, of course, as many former and current justices have had their opinions reversed before being appointed to the Supreme Court. Further, conservative commentators latched onto Justice Ginsburg's point that the Circuit Court should not have granted summary judgment, such that many of them -- in language that appears to lend additional credibility to Cappella and Jamieson's finding that conservatives operate in an "echo chamber" -- claimed a 9-0 vote against Sotomayor.

Frame 5: Activist Supreme Court Overturns Decision by Elected Officials

Despite the fact that conservatives are generally on the side of "judicial restraint," they are clear that they would like to see Courts "act" to overturn policies that violate their ideological predispositions (such as legal access to abortion and affirmative action). In this case, the elected officials of the city made a decision that was upheld (not "actively" reversed) by the appeals court, so one could imagine a frame whereby the Supreme Court was chastised as interfering in the workings of democratically elected officials.

We have seen no such frame in primary press.

At the end of the day, Justice Ginsburg provides compelling reasons -- reasons we did not rehash here -- that the test was, indeed, flawed and that it should have been replaced. Since Whites are never systemically disadvantaged -- any perceived "disadvantages" come as a result of programs designed to rectify systemic advantages that they have -- they have no schema available to understand how an ostensibly "objective" test could possibly be unfair. TWIR readers understand, of course, that built-in privilege is, as Peggy Macintosh has famously said, invisible. Eventually, more and more folks will understand how systemic racism works. But, at least for now, to paraphrase the legendary Cubs chant: "White guys win! White guys win! White guys win!"

Rejection, Reflection and (Ultimately) Reception: The Uighur Situation in Palau

2009-06-18T23:30:00.011-04:00

As promised, Stephen blogs THIS WEEK from The Republic of Palau.

I arrived here Monday night (local time) amidst a rare flurry of international media attention. The media attention was not over my arrival, but over the recent decision of Palau’s president to allow thirteen soon-to-be-former detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to relocate here. My interest was to get as much reaction as I could, from as many folks as I could, as often as I could. The short story is this: while initial reaction here was quite cool to the idea of the Chinese Muslim Uighurs (pronounced: WEE gurs; also spelled "Uygurs") settling here after their forthcoming release, folks have turned the corner swiftly as the narrative has shifted from “taking America’s terrorists” to “welcoming marginalized people.”

I spent a half hour this morning talking with Patrick Tellei, who is president of the local college. Dr. Tellei was part of a delegation of four Palauans who visited with the detainees earlier in the week in Cuba, so I wanted to get his impression of them, of the local response to the idea of them moving to Palau, and of the shift in sentiment that I observed over the course of the week. While there were things that he was not able to share with me (for obvious reasons – they’re still being detained even though they have been cleared of charges, so there are lawyers involved), he was able to say that the eight men with whom they had a chance to speak (first in a group and then individually) were being fairly treated, were speaking English pretty well (though translators were around to help), and seemed genuinely appreciative of the opportunity to re-start their lives in Palau.

Dr. Tellei is in the majority position at this point in the week: supportive of President Johnson Toribiong’s decision to tell President Obama that the men were welcome in Palau. This is consistent with what I have heard from nearly everyone I have spoken to about this over the past 24 hours, but quite different from the reaction on Tuesday.

When I first arrived, I heard things like, “They’re terrorists,” and “why should we take them if the U.S. doesn’t want them?” The local papers on Tuesday (they are printed Tuesdays and Fridays) had headlines such as “Toribiong Defends Decision” (Island Times) and “[Senator and former President Tommy] Remengesau Says People Not Fully Informed on the Detainees” (Palau Horizon), which reflected a defensive position on the part of officials supportive of the relocation.

But there was an interesting contrast with a page 10 AP story about eleven asylum seekers from Myanmar who moved here back in February. The only member of the group who speaks English gushed about the reception from Palauans, who have treated them “as their own siblings.” When their money ran out, the Roman Catholic Church housed and fed them. This week, the president’s younger brother, who is also a Senator, decided to move them all into his farmhouse while they are waiting to hear if they are granted asylum.

Further, an op-ed on page 4 of the Horizon that day by Philip Haruo blasted what he saw as unwarranted hostility toward the Uighurs by sarcastically charging that folks who are outspoken about the plan “know more than the CIA and Interpol.” He noted that while he didn’t know much about the men that it wasn’t necessary for him to know: “I do know that they are human beings in need of help and no one seems to notice.” In word, Haruo was calling for (swallow hard here) empathy.

In contrast, we must consider the narratives that are available to Americans. The United States Congress has been clear that detainees are not welcome in the U.S., even if they are cleared of charges. Why? Because as much as we like to think that we value “due process” and the “best system on Earth,” we generally believe, deep down, that if someone is accused of something that they must have done it – or something else. Add to this the anti-Muslim sentiment that is rampant in the U.S. (and in much of the West), and we are left with a group of radicals (they want their own nation – sound familiar?) who are not Christian and, even though the Chinese government detests them and vice versa, are Chinese nationals (read: “communist”). Check out Newt Gingrich’s column in The Washington Examiner from last month where he tries and convicts the Uighurs right there in the Opinions section (and then be sure to read hilzoy’s point-by-point rebuke).

Similarly, the self-described conservative blog Hot Air was quite crass about invoking a common narrative, which has been that Palau is taking the men in exchange for money. (The U.S. has funded Palau since World War II and will likely continue to do so because it is in its strategic interest – there is no need for additional carrots or sticks.) Read through the comments of the folks who make up the private discussion board (comments can only be left by members, and membership is closed) if you want to experience severe insensitivity, hasty generalizations and arrogant mockery of Palauans.

Glenn Beck recommended that suspects be shot in the field rather than having formal charges brought against them. (Think I’m making this up? Watch here or below.)

For his part, Jon Stewart (see below or here) got a good laugh with the inevitable turn of phrase: Uighur, please!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Guantanamo Baywatch - Uighur, Please

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Jason Jones in Iran

In the three days since Haruo felt the need to remind Palauans of their duty to humankind and their culture of hospitality, the drastic change in public opinion can be seen by way of an unscientific measure of Palauans’ attitudes. Here are some excepts from letters to the editor in this morning’s (June 19, 2009) Island Times:

[From an American] I cannot imagine the deprivations these men have endured and a warm welcome to your island nation would probably do wonders. I appreciate [President Toribiong’s] compassion and willingness to give these men a chance, and I hope the people of your country appreciate what kind of president they elected.

If we Palauans are proud of our Christian heritage and boast so much about our faith in Jesus, where is the proof? This is the time when we will show the world, if no one cares about these Muslims our arms are wide open to take them in.

The Uighurs are being branded by terrorists by some people. To their countrymen, they are nationalists. Is it wrong of any group of people to aspire to create their own nationhood? If these Uighurs are terrorists to say X country, then obviously they have grudges and political differences against that X country. If they come to Palau, do they have political movement against us? Do you think they want to take over our national government and change us to become Uighurs and not Palauans? I doubt it.

I didn’t cherry pick these responses. There were five letters on this topic in the Times (no letters at all in the Horizon), and all were strongly supportive of receiving the Uighurs with open arms.

These hardly sound like sentiments from uneducated bumpkins who will do anything for money, as much of the Western media has portrayed them. And if they were Americans, we'd say that they "flip flopped" and ridicule them mercilessly for changing their minds and not standing their ground. In societies with more sophisticated discourse, however, it is considered to be growth, stimulated by a recognition that things are not always as they appear and that the complexities in life require us to be attentive, flexible, and reflective of our core values (and the degree to which our attitudes and behaviors are congruent with those core values).

On the other hand, we cannot pretend that the initial response was not at least partially rooted in ethnic and racial resentment. Palauans are quite concerned about holding onto their heritage, and the influx of foreign (mostly Filipino) domestic workers and (largely Bangladeshi) manual laborers is the topic of much conversation here. Xenophobia is not an American invention. There are about 400 or so Muslims in this nation of approximately 20,000, so there are lingering questions about where these men would live, if they have families to bring with them, where they will work, where they will worship, and how long they might stay. These are real (and legitimate) concerns, but the sense here today is that while those questions are important, the welcoming of these thirteen men is not dependent on the answers.

Four other Uighurs were sent to Bermuda last week (left), where reaction has been mixed, where U.S. legislators will have to go to hear their story, and where the men have refrained from car bombing anyone for seven entire days. I communicated with a woman there (a former student) who reports that

[t]he big deal here was not really so much about the men themselves, but in the way our premier handled the situation. . . . It was announced on CNN that the men were here and living in Bermuda and that is the first that anyone heard of it. The governor was told the night before the story broke on CNN. Many people were upset; a lot of people were worrying about them being terrorists, others were worried about a possible Muslim increase on the island. The men did a live interview with our one local news programs for 90 minutes were the public could call in and ask questions, and they were given the chance to tell there story, which is very compelling.

You can read more about the reaction in Bermuda in The Royal Gazette. (While I’d love to make that my next island destination, it’s unfortunately not in the cards.)

There is no question that this is a difficult situation all around. The Bush Administration was certainly overzealous in making arrests and accusations and in labeling people "terrorists," which resulted in the detention of people who are not and were not a threat to the U.S. But once that happened, the bell could not be un-rung. President Obama is moving to close Guantanamo Bay’s detention center, and Congress, responding to fears of Americans, refuses to allow any of the detainees that we took from around the world to stay. Fair enough, especially if they have a home to go back to, but in this case, they do not. This leads to a very complicated and unique situation that is undergirded by ethnic stereotypes and resentment.

For hard-line U.S. conservatives and other Obama Administration critics, there is a triple bind. First, they want Obama to fail (and are refreshingly forthcoming about it), so anything he does needs to be criticized to try to drive his approval numbers down. Second, they hate communism, so they have a tendency to be sympathetic to critics of (“Red”) China, particularly those who have been oppressed by the authoritarian regime there. But all Muslims are (at least potentially) U.S.-hating terrorists, so they find it difficult to rally around these men.

For Palauans, it is clear that they will do what the U.S. will not: honor the rights and dignity of men who have no charges against them, who have no home, and whose lives have been disrupted inappropriately by one imperial power as they struggled against another. We do not need to romanticize their struggle or turn them into saints to have empathy for their position. They are guerilla fighters who wish to have an independent Muslim state in Northwestern China. Maybe they’re even mean. Maybe they’re tough guys who are willing to kill for what they believe. If they were our Founding Fathers or otherwise on our side, we would champion their cause.

The point is this: Palauans are digging deep into traditions rooted in their Christian faith to make space for those who need it. For all the talk of Christian values from the left and the right in the U.S. and among its European friends, none (save, to some extent, British-ruled Bermuda) of us was willing to do as the holy books mandate in this situation. Far from mocking Palauans as money-hungry savages, we should think about what we might learn from our allies in Micronesia.

Perhaps this is a good time for us to take a hard, honest look at who we are and who we want to be.

Update: There are some diverse opinions about Uighur resettlement in Palau on the Palauan blog "Okedyulabeluu." Some of this information is rumor and directly conflicts what what I have learned from officials while I have been here, but in any case, it is worth exploring.

Teaser: Palau Us to Look Into This, Please

2009-06-13T09:47:00.005-04:00

It was reported this week that a dozen or so (the number varies with each report) Chinese Muslim "Uighur" detainees from Guantanamo Bay will be sent to the South Pacific nation of Palau, since the U.S. Congress has decided that even detainees cleared of charges may not reside in the United States.

Stephen is heading off to Palau this evening to get local reaction and will blog more thoroughly on the racial implications of the news next week. After all, there is certainly an ethnic component to this, and there are issues of nationality, as well. Palau, once controlled by Japan, has been quite happy with its association with the United States since the end of World War II, through its status as a protectorate territory until the mid-1990s to today, as the independent nation enjoys significant funding from the U.S. by virtue of its compact of free association. Additionally, most of the low-wage laborers in Palau are from the Philippines, so there is a social structure in place there that is related to ethnicity.

To whet your appetite, see these recent stories, which range from the mundane to the insensitive:

Fox News's Greg Gutfeld refers to Palau as "a place called Palau" and The New York Daily News refers to the prisoners as "garbage.").
The Los Angeles Times reports that locals in Bermuda (where some other Uighur detainees have been sent) and Palau are uneasy about the relocation.
The latest news is that the deal is not as certain as early reports suggested.

More analysis is forthcoming once Stephen gets situated, gets over his jet lag, and settles into the work he was already scheduled to do there with high school students for the Junior State of America (JSA) program.

What? Did you think that we had a budget to investigate global news now? Please. Call it a happy coincidence.

Creating Space for Progress

2009-06-07T09:16:00.006-04:00

The Race Project has a number of volunteer research assistant positions available for the summer. Scroll to the bottom of this blog entry for more information.

There are some Americans who honestly believe that racial minorities have an unfair advantage over Whites (see Pat Buchanan) and others who are simply uninterested in seeing any power whatsoever shifted out of the hands of White men (see the Ku Klux Klan). The vast majority of us, however, understand that the legacy of inequality, manifested in (mostly latent) psychological predispositions about members of different groups, has left us with a system that undermines our espoused shared core values of justice, equality of opportunity and even individualism. While it often feels good (and always gets ratings) to call names, point fingers, belittle, ridicule, mock and otherwise humiliate our political opponents, doing so leaves no space for progress.

THIS WEEK, we consider what it means to leave space for change. In this month's Esquire, political statistics whiz kid Nate Silver argues that there may be a trend toward increased geographical polarization in America, as the poor job market makes it more likely that folks will relocate on the basis of ideology. It's the physical manifestation of the "selective exposure" hypothesis in media effects research: people will seek out that which affirms their existing beliefs to avoid experiencing (and, thus, having to relieve) cognitive dissonance. Last year, we reviewed Cappella and Jamieson's book Echo Chamber, which traces the interconnectedness of the conservative media establishment (Fox News, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh's radio show). We may be seeing an emergence of a progressive echo chamber, as MSNBC has attempted to become the Fox of the Left, exchanging information over the airwaves and Internet with progressive websites such as Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Media Matters. The other networks -- which conservatives claim are liberal and progressives claim are conservative -- attempt some middle ground by having hosts or guests from the left and the right screaming at one another and hurling insults at or about anyone who has a different perspective.

This is horribly dangerous for our political discourse because it reinforces the notion that one must hold firm to one's ideas, even in the face of clear, contrasting evidence. Five years ago, Jon Stewart intellectually ambushed Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson on an episode of CNN's Crossfire (below), telling them that their sort of discourse was "hurting America."

This moment was situated in the context of a brilliant political strategy on the part of President Bush's campaign team to label Democratic nominee John Kerry as "a flip flopper," a moniker that will likely define Kerry's legacy. Whether Kerry would have made a good president or not is beside the point; whether his changing of positions (to the extent that the claim was even valid) would have been an indication of his abilities is another issue altogether. Our bias, as college professors, is to constantly push for a more complicated understanding of the world, which necessitates leaving space for intellectual growth. The chasm between what we encourage on college campuses and what we champion in our political discourse is wide and seems to be expanding.

In his "Cairo speech" (formally titled "A New Beginning") THIS WEEK, President Obama called for increased understanding between warring factions in global politics (read the transcript here):

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Obama was praised throughout the world for this fresh take, but the position is not without controversy. Conservative pundits accused Obama of pandering and being "soft" because he refused to use the word "terror," a word that Obama realizes is so laden with emotion and perspective that it is virtually meaningless. To accuse someone of being "a terrorist" is to engage in name calling that does not leave space to move us closer to peace.

Similarly, as we argue regularly in this space, calling people "racists" (as contrasted with pointing out racist assumptions) is counterproductive to clearing space for progress toward racial equality.

Perhaps a parallel example would be New Hampshire governor John Lynch's speedy signing of the gay marriage law passed by the NH legislature THIS WEEK. Lynch, who has stated repeatedly that he believes that marriage is "between one man and one woman" gave a speech last month wherein he acknowledged his own limitations:

My personal views on the subject of marriage have been shaped by my own experience, tradition and upbringing. But as Governor of New Hampshire, I recognize that I have a responsibility to consider this issue through a broader lens.
[. . .]

Throughout history, our society's views of civil rights have constantly evolved and expanded. New Hampshire's great tradition has always been to come down on the side of individual liberties and protections. That is what I believe we must do today.

This speech is important in at least two respects. First, of course, it paved the way for NH to be the sixth state to legalize gay marriage. Second -- more broadly -- it serves as an example of what can happen when we give public officials the space to grow without punishing them for that growth (though, of course, it remains to be seen how Lynch might be ultimately punished).

Another public shift in position THIS WEEK came when Newt Gingrich retracted his statement (which we discussed last week) that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "a racist." Said Gingrich:

My initial reaction [to Sotomayor's 2001 speech] was strong and direct -- perhaps too strong and too direct. The sentiment struck me as racist and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the nation’s highest court have been critical of my word choice.

With these critics who want to have an honest conversation, I agree. The word "racist" should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable. . .

Of course, Sotomayor's words are not unacceptable -- even if President Obama thinks they are -- to those who understand how important life experience is to one's outlook and how important that outlook is to providing meaningful (and yes, empathetic) representation and leadership. In terms of overall effect, Gingrich's "apology" is not particularly important. He still opposes her nomination, in part because he is offended by her unwillingness to pretend that she is without perspective, and the clarification may have more to do with trying to soften his image on the eve of a presidential run.

But, while we can only speak for ourselves, we absolutely do "want to have an honest conversation." Further, we wish to assert that it is important that progressives allow folks to revise their remarks to the extent that they are being intellectually honest about beliefs that initial reactions or prior positions were improper. We need to acknowledge and not punish public figures when they show signs of growth. Labeling Gingrich a "flip flopper" or otherwise trying to define him by his initial statement only serves to contribute to a culture of rigidity that rewards stubbornness and discourages change where change is appropriate.

It became more clear THIS WEEK that Congressman Artur Davis will seek the governorship of Alabama. If he is to become the first Black governor of a deep South state since Reconstruction (and only the third Black governor elected anywhere), he will have to count on the (private) votes of Whites who have historically not been supportive of civil rights. Those folks will be more inclined to vote for a Black candidate if they get cues from leaders that, to paraphrase John Lynch, our society's views of civil rights are evolving.

It is important to create and maintain space for that discourse to occur, not because Artur Davis should or should not be elected governor of Alabama, but because there should be a context within which his candidacy would not be defined by his race.

We will get there by way of honest, thoughtful, meaningful discourse, not by shouting, name calling and ridicule. Our success or failure will be largely the result of the space we create.

Update: In clarifying his statement about Sotomayor on today's Face the Nation, Newt Gingrich called Sotomayor "a racialist," which is a term that has no distinct meaning as of yet, but that we are starting to encounter more and more frequently. We will address this language in a later post.

Research Assistant Opportunities

The Project on Race in Political Communication (http://RaceProject.org) has a number of volunteer research opportunities for anyone who would like to be involved with the Race Project. While students are a natural constituency in this regard, anyone is welcome to help. We are entering the most labor-intensive phase of a very exciting element of the Project -- one that we have be planning for nearly eight years -- that will have implications far more widespread than the study of race and political communication.

We are compiling data and constructing a database that will be made available to researchers (in the form of a spreadsheet appropriate for quantitative analysis) and the public (in the form of a Web-interfaced search engine) that contains information about candidates for federal office (U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and U.S. president) since 1970, including the candidate's race, gender, party affiliation, number of votes received, amount of money raised and spent, and other variables of interest. Computer programmers are busy at work on the Web-interface, and two Race Project senior research assistants students, Sidra Hamidi and Priscilla Martinez, are prepared to oversee the collection and entering of data over the summer months. Research assistants will be responsible for collecting information from a variety of sources (most of which are online) to compete the dataset. This is an important contribution that has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of elections, as this information is not currently available in one place.

This work requires no prior research experience and can be done from any location and at any time of the day (we can work around work schedules). For students, working as a Race Project research assistant affords the opportunity to gain experience with social science research for the purposes of CV building, instigating an original research project, and/or working toward a better understanding of racial inequality and injustice. Research practicum credit through North Central College (which may transfer to other institutions) can be arranged.

If you are interested, please Facebook message Stephen or Charlton, or send an email to SMCaliendo@RaceProject.org. If you know someone who might be interested (or if you are a faculty member who has students who might be interested), please do not hesitate to pass this information along.

Republicans Battle Over and About Sonia Sotomayor's "Racism"

2009-06-01T10:23:00.006-04:00

It's been one of those weeks.

First of all, there are a number of important issues that deserve our attention. The only African American U.S. Senator, Roland Burris, finds himself in trouble. (BTW: We believe he should step aside; we cal led for him not to be seated in the first place amidst dubious charges of racism in the face of which Senate Democratic leaders caved). A White woman in Pennsylvania took off with her kids and used the familiar claim, "a Black guy abducted us." And Ursula Burns (left) became the first ever Black woman to head up a Fortune 500 company (Xerox).

But, of course, the story that captured most of our attention this week was the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court.

As has been widely reported, Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic American to sit on the high court, and she has not been particularly skillful in hiding the fact that 1) she is, in fact, Latina, 2) is aware of her own gender and ethnicity, and 3) has a sophisticated understanding of the way group identity matters in the lives of Americans. Unfortunately, some on the right either sincerely believe that people can be neutral (as opposed to objective) or are acting as if they believe it to try to convince less thoughtful folks that this is an accurate depiction of the human psyche.

The immediate controversy stems from a lecture Sotomayor gave in California in 2001, where she was talking about how her "story" affected her worldview. In the context of this, she said:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

It is this last sentence (hereafter "the sentence") that has attracted the ire of the usual cast of angry Whites (mostly male + Ann Coulter) who populate the airwaves of overtly conservative media outlets. The refrain is similar and predictable: minorities are stealing their America from them, and someone needs to stand up and say something about it. (For his part, President Obama has unfortunately claimed that "the sentence" constitutes a poor choice of words. Whatever.)

So here is just a partial list of what we saw unfold over the course of the week (for a more comprehensive look, see here and/or see the video that follows):

Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter called "the sentence" "a racist statement." Carlson added that it was racist "by any calculation." (Hmm. Not by ours.)
Glenn Beck called "the sentence" "one of the most outrageous racist remarks he has heard." (Really? One of the most outrageous he has heard? Maybe he should take a look at some of these reactions to a Drudge Report posting about Sotomayor.)
Pat Buchanan called her "an affirmative action pick" and said that it "appears" that she "believes in reverse discrimination against White males."
Rush Limbaugh called her, at various points during his five broadcasts this week, "a racist," a "bigot," and a "reverse racist."

Limbaugh, ever the thoughtful contributor to meaningful dialogue about the hegemonic order, was more accurate in his reflection of what is bubbling under the surface. At its root, this is not about Sonia Sotomayor. Some on the left are very concerned with her record on issues like abortion, so it's not like she is an ideological extremist (a leftist Robert Bork, for instance), and it's not like she's not going to be confirmed. It seems clear that more than 60 senators will be willing to vote for cloture if a filibuster is attempted, and clear-headed Republicans understand that not only is opposing the first Hispanic Supreme Court appointment political suicide, but it will not result in Obama naming someone more to their liking anyway (see Senator Mel Martinez's carefully worded press release on the nomination). There is a strong undercurrent of White resentment and the ongoing fear that Obama is out to oppress White people.

Think we're exaggerating? Limbaugh said THIS WEEK that Obama "is the greatest living example of a reverse racist," and Lou Dobbs said that the appointment was "pandering to the Hispanics."

Former U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (never afraid to criticize racial minorities) told Ed Schultz that Sotomayor "appears to be a racist," and, when asked if he subscribed to Limbaugh's assertion that the way to "get appointed to the Obama Administration" is by "hatin' White people," Tancredo told David Shuster "I don't know. . . I have no idea if they hate White people or not."

See the exchange here. Limbaugh's rant (which is shown in the video) is so ridiculous that it almost doesn't deserve our attention. He claims that Obama wants to make Whites "the new oppressed minority" and that Republicans are going along with it by "moving to the back of the bus" and obliging by drinking only out of designated water fountains. The metaphor is silly and offensive, and making such a parallel reveals his utter lack of understanding of the suffering of generations of people of color. Tancredo goes on to express his frustration of "the suggestion" that because he is White, he cannot comment on the situation. (Recall the similar outrage by Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson that we blogged about last year.)

So here is where we are. The truth is that very little of this matters right now because such discourse is firmly on the margins of mainstream political thought, even though the voices espousing the claims are loud and popular in the narrow universe they serve. We still have members of the Ku Klux Klan and there are still neo-Nazi skinheads. Those are the most hateful, bigoted members of our society. There are bigoted people of color who are hateful and resentful of Whites in a way that is similar to the White supremacists in some ways. Just to this side of empathy from these folks are the so-called "wing nuts," who either legitimately do not understand the way power works because they are too blinded by their own racism to wrestle with the difficult questions, or are being intentionally dishonest to stir resentment among Whites in an attempt to gain political advantage. This is most often manifested in the "if the shoe were on the other foot" comparisons that fall apart in the face of historical context.

If everyone started out equally, then it would always be inappropriate to take race, gender, class or sexual orientation into account. Those pining for the "objective," non-activist jurist who "does not see" categories of humanity either honestly believe that all Americans start life equally and are subsequently judged by the content of their character rather than social groupings or understand that making such claims will contribute to the ongoing oppression of minorities. Newt Gingrich invoked the reciprocity fallacy when he stated (immediately after the nomination was made), "Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘[M]y experience as a white man makes me better than a [L]atina woman.’ [N]ew racism is no better than old racism.”

Of course, there is no such thing as "new racism." Such a phrase suggests that racism is an historical artifact -- something that ended with the Civil War or perhaps the dismantling of Jim Crow.

Perhaps Gingrich is referring to prejudice, bigotry, or maybe, as Limbaugh put it, "reverse racism." On those grounds, we agree: it is improper for people to be judged on such characteristics. However, pretending that we are not judged by our race, gender and sexual orientation is foolish at best and malicious at worst. We may strive for such a day, but it is not upon us (sorry, electing a Black president did not end racism either), and arguing that those who are attentive to the way difference matters in America are somehow getting the upper hand in our society is reflective of either intellectual dishonesty or flat out ignorance.

Mainstream Republicans worked to distance themselves from these sorts of statements THIS WEEK, though few that we have heard directly criticized Limbaugh or the other de facto leaders of the conservative movement (if not the Party itself). Consider, for example, Jon Kyle's language from CBS's Face the Nation.

Senator John Cornyn came the closest to a full-on rebuke on ABC's This Week, but fed host George Stephanopoulos the "justice is blind" line, as well:

Well, of course, George, the concern is that above the Supreme Court it says "Equal justice under law." And it's doesn't -- shouldn't make any difference what your ethnicity is, what your sex is, or the like.
We would also hope that judges would be, you know, umpires, impartial umpires. And, you know, the focus shouldn't be on the umpire and what their sex or gender is, or their ethnicity.

Maybe it shouldn't, Senator Cornyn, but it does. It matters a lot. It is wonderful for the good senator to wish that it did not (that means he is not a bigot). Martin Luther King wished that (dreamed that), as well.

But wishing something doesn't magically make it come true. This is particularly hard for Whites (and more so for White males) to understand because they have been socialized to believe that the American values of fairness, justice and equality are rooted in empirical reality -- after all, Whites have been successful in every element of society, a fact that is readily apparent to even the most casual observer. If the disproportionate levels of success in the White community are not rooted in hard work and merit, then what could possibly account for the discrepancy? The answer, of course, is systemic imbalance and a fundamental lack of justice, which, naturally, is difficult for Whites to embrace, since it calls into question their privilege.

So calling attention to difference is uncomfortable for anyone who is not attentive to the way power structures a society. In that same broadcast of This Week, George Will noted that Sotomayor:

. . . seems to have affirmed what's called identity politics, which is a main proposition and a subproposition. The main proposition is, that an American is or should be thought of as his or her race, ethnicity, sex, sexual preference, that that should define their political identity. And the subproposition is, called categorical representation. You can only be represented by someone of the same sexual, ethnic, racial group as you are, because only they can understand or empathize with you. That is of no relevance whatever to the court, however, because it's not a representative institution.

Will's use of "should" here, is instructive. He uses it to mean that, in the abstract, those of us who subscribe to identity politics believe it to be preferable. That is simply incorrect. It is necessary in this context to take such characteristics into account because they are were consciously taken into account by those who built the system and are subconsciously taken into account by all who are socialized within it.

The subproposition argument is interesting, as well, but Will fails to factor in a fundamental principle of American democracy, articulated most clearly by James Madison in Federalist #10: Democracy is about respecting minority will while also protecting minority rights. The Framers understood that the branches closest to the people will be more likely to support the majority (since they rely on their support for election) and constructed a judiciary that was insulated from direct public pressure so that it could be attentive to minority rights without being punished for it. In fact, that is precisely what has happened. The courts have often been out in front of public opinion and electd officials (ending segregation, gay marriage) in advocating for the rights of those who are in the numerical and power minority.

So while Will is correct that the notion of identity representation is most applicable in the so-called "political" branches, he is mistaken that there is no place for such representation in the judiciary. Further, his suggestion that categorical representation is improper rests on the premise that those who do not possess certain categories can be representative of those who do. We agree with that, but guess what? To do so requires something that conservatives have argued is improper in this very situation: empathy.

Gwen Ifill responded to Will's assertion:

I guess I see it differently. I mean, I've spent the past year talking to a lot of people, who got elected, elected -- black elected officials for a book, and all of them talked about identity politics and defined it differently. They defined it as being -- that being part of what you are, but not all of what you are. And I think that's what the defenders of Sonia Sotomayor are trying to say, which is that her point was, yes, what she is and what we all are shapes us, but it's not all that shapes you.
I always take arguments like this and try to turn them on their heads. And I never hear people say that for a white male, that it's identity politics if he is shaped by his white maleness and by the things that affected his life, and whether privilege affected his life. That's never considered to be a negative. It's only considered to be a negative when ethnicity is involved or race is involved or gender is involved.

This is an interesting idea, and one readers might suspect we oppose given our refusal to allow Whites to use the reciprocity fallacy. But this is a very different proposition because of the unidirectional nature of power (pro-White, pro-male, pro-heterosexual) in our culture. In other words, while it is inappropriate to criticize taking minority interest into account on the grounds that it wouldn't be tolerated the other way around, it is essential to do what Ifill suggests because it is revealing of the belief that Whites often have that they are "without race" or "racially objective." Her assertion is illustrated by Senator Inhoffe's comments THIS WEEK that there needs to be evidence that Sotomayor can "rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences." Since we do not recall similar calls made about previous justices, the implication is that there needs not be a similar test for White males in this regard -- it's understood that they would act "properly." As the folks at Media Matters and Huffington Post point out, there has been hypocrisy on this point, as no one questioned Justice Alito on his similar statements.

Finally, Ed Gillespie followed Ifill by noting that:

We are all shaped by who we are. We all bring that to the table. I do think, though, the -- you know, the conscious injection that you see, in a lot of her comments, of gender and race is what is causing for concern. And not only -- a little different with politicians, I think, our identity, than with a judge, and with a Supreme Court justice for a lifetime appointment.

Conscious injection? Is that the problem? So long as we inject our biases without knowing that we're doing that, it's fine? Consciousness is what is objectionable? Again, it reminds us of the inability of folks to distinguish racism (which resides largely in the subconscious) and bigotry (which is, by definition, conscious). And that, dear friends, is the crux of the problem.

We fear that we have missed yet another opportunity to talk meaningfully about the role of race (and, in this case, gender) in America. As is typical, we have allowed the debate to be reduced to individuals, personalities, and political posturing, when there was an opportunity for real work to be done.

For now, we can simply sit by and watch while some conservatives play on racial resentments as others try to get them to stop without offending these leaders of "the base" (i.e., Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Gingrich). When presented with an opportunity to distance himself clearly from Limbaugh's statements on Meet the Press, Senator Jeff Sessions was very careful:

SESSIONS: I don't think I'm going to use any such words as that. I read her speech. I'm troubled by her speech. I think she has an opportunity to explain that. And I don't think we--that I'm going to use such loaded words. People on the outside can say what they choose to say.

MR. [David] GREGORY: But wait, but do you make a judgment about that? Do you think they're appropriate?
SEN. SESSIONS: I don't think those are words...
MR. GREGORY: You think that's fair?
SEN. SESSIONS: ...that I would use. And I don't think--I don't--they would not be words that I would use.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
SEN. SESSIONS: But we need to focus on what...
MR. GREGORY: Do you think she's a racist?
SEN. SESSIONS: ...she would say.
MR. GREGORY: Do you think she's a racist?
SEN. SESSIONS: I think that she is a person who believes that her background can influence her decision. That's what troubles me.
MR. GREGORY: Right. Right.
SEN. SESSIONS: I would not use those words.
MR. GREGORY: You would not use those words because you don't believe them?
SEN. SESSIONS: I don't think that's an appropriate description of her.
MR. GREGORY: Right. Do you think that conservatives should stop using those words to describe her?
SEN. SESSIONS: I would prefer that they not, but people have a free right to speak and say what they want and make the analogies that they want. This is an important thing. We should not demagogue race. It's an important issue in our culture and our country. We need to handle it with respect that it deserves and the care that it deserves.

Wow. That's some nifty tightrope walking. He acknowledges that "we" need to handle race carefully in our culture, but is anxious that Sotomayor will do so on the bench. Why? Why is it possible (advisable) for "us" to be thoughtful about race but a Latina woman cannot? The implicit fairness of Whites makes the point (for anyone attentive enough to notice): There are (often unstated) assumptions about race in America that serve to advantage Whites. If we are uncomfortable with that, we need to fix it -- not by pretending that it is not happening, but by addressing it head on, honestly, with energy, empathy and thoughtfulness.

Unfortunately, we may be missing yet another opportunity to do so. Here's hoping that the confirmation hearings spark a more honest discussion about race in America than what we witnessed this week.

Thanks to Our Vets and Current Military Service Members

2009-05-24T10:47:00.006-04:00

Memorial Day is, of course, the unofficial start of summer, a day off work for many (but certainly not all), and a chance to bust out that grill, and it is an opportunity to reflect on the women and men who have served in the American military. At a time when Americans are in harm's way in a number of places, we may not need a holiday as much as we do during peaceful times, but it gives us an excuse to discuss the contributions of persons of color -- persons who have a unique perspective on what it means to be American.

In 2007, there were 2.4 million single-race Black military service members in the United States. That year, the Boston Globe reported that while the number of Black enlistees had dropped some 58% since 2000, "the percentage of blacks in the military still slightly exceeds that of the general population: 14.5 percent in the military, as of 2005, versus 12.8 percent in the U.S. population." Hispanics are underrepresented in the military, but their participation is increasing; they comprised 13.5 percent of the military in 2007 (as compared to 15% in the U.S. population). There were more than a quarter of a million Asian Americans serving in 2005, and there are approximately 185,000 Native American veterans in the U.S. (For a detailed analysis of race/ethnicity and military service, download this 2004 [.pdf] document from the Population Reference Bureau.) There are organizations dedicated to African American Veterans, Hispanic Veterans, Asian American Veterans and Native American veterans.

It has been said that in military service, there is no Black, White or Brown -- there is only Red, White and Blue. We agree with that sentiment, but, as always, it is a bit more complicated than that.

First, it is no secret that our voluntary military disproportionately attracts young men and women with few other options (though see this report from the Heritage Foundation, which argues against a draft to rectify this imbalance). In 2005, UPI reported that "[n]early two-thirds, 64 percent, of recruits to the military were from counties that have average incomes lower than the national median National Priorities Project said. . . . According to NPP, 15 of the top 20 counties that had the highest numbers of recruits [in 2004] had higher poverty rates than the national average, and 18 of the top 20 had higher poverty rates than the state average." Young high school graduates who are not qualified to attend college or cannot afford to do so find few jobs available that provide opportunities for sustenance. Black and Latino families face rates of poverty in America that are disproportionate to those of Whites.

Second, while service to country is admirable under any circumstances and putting oneself in harm's way for a cause beyond one's own self interest is laudable irrespective of race or ethnicity, it is particularly admirable for persons to voluntarily serve a country that has been historically hostile at worst and indifferent at best to groups with which they identify (LGBT Americans are similarly situated in this regard).

I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me given a damn - I said "never"
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn't with it, but just that very minute
It occurred to me
The suckers had authority
[...]
They could not understand that I'm a black man
And I could never be a veteran
-- Public Enemy, "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" (1988)

So while you are firing up that grill, taking that first swim in the public pool, or otherwise participating in Memorial Day festivities, we join those who urge us to remember why we are asked to pause and reflect. It is not about some blind obedience to a flag (or even what it represents) or the unwavering support for our elected leaders (even when they are making bad choices); it is about the individual and collective lives of those who choose to serve. The most conservative among us understands that if the government has any role at all, it is in national defense. The most progressive among us understands that the military is an indispensable element of a modern democratic society that is often instrumental in helping people around the globe. The men and women who put on (and have put on) a U.S. military uniform each day, many of whom sacrifice their lives on a regular basis, come from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, but share a fundamental commitment to the only identification that should come before country: humanity.

See this page for an archive of African American military service since the Revolutionary War and this page for historical information compiled by the U.S. Army. The Army has also developed this page for information about the history of Hispanic service, this page for information about Asian Americans' service, and this page for information about Native Americans' service.