“So Much Stupid”: On Race, Meet Dumb And Dumberer
Oh, my Lord, where to begin?
You already know what this column is about. You know even though we are barely three sentences in. You knew before you saw the headline.
There are days in the opinion business when one story makes itself inevitable and unavoidable, one story sucks up all the air in the room. This is one of those times. One story.
Well … two, actually: the misadventures of Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling.
Bundy, of course, is the Nevada rancher whose refusal to pay fees to allow his cattle to graze on public land made him a cause célèbre on the political right. They enthusiastically embraced his government-is-the-enemy ideology (Timothy McVeigh would be proud) and militia types flocked to his side, eager for an armed standoff.
Until the press conference where Bundy relieved himself of a few opinions regarding — ahem — “the Negro.”
“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?”
And again: Where to begin? Black people “put” their sons in jail? Slavery promoted family life? And beg pardon, but what is free usage of federal land if not a government subsidy? There is so much stupid packed into those words you’d need a chisel to get it all out.
Small wonder that last week the extreme right treated its hero as the rats treated Titanic, shocked — simply shocked! — to learn that a guy who leads an army in refusing to recognize the existence of the federal government might be nuts.
Which brings us to Sterling, owner of the NBA team the Los Angeles Clippers. A leaked audiotape has Sterling telling a woman friend to stop publicizing her relationships with African-American people and bringing them to his games. Sterling also says of Clippers players: “I support them and give them food, and clothes, and cars and houses. Who gives it to them?”
“Give.” Mind you, the man is talking about people who work for him.
So there you have it: frick and frack, the dumb and dumberer of American racial discourse, and predictably, dutifully, media figures, pundits and pols have come together to blow raspberries in their direction, to say all the right things in condemnation of them and their diarrhetic mouths. And yes, they deserve that. Still, there is something facile and dishonest in it, something that reeks of unearned righteousness and even moral cowardice.
The truth is, the idiocy of these men doesn’t mean a whole lot, doesn’t impact much beyond their immediate lives. We hyperventilate about it, yet somehow manage not to be overly concerned as black boys are funneled into prison, brown ones are required to show their papers, voting rights are interdicted, Fourth Amendment rights are abrogated and some guy has his job application round-filed when the hiring woman sees that his name is Malik.
We keep declaring our country cured of its birth defect of racial hatred. Indeed, that’s an article of faith on the political right.
It is only possible to think that so long as you don’t look too closely, so long as you are willing to ignore dirty deeds done largely out of sight and back of mind by collective hands — everyone guilty, so no one is. Then some guys who didn’t get the memo speak a little too stupidly a little too loudly and people condemn them and feel good about themselves for doing so.
But many of us don’t really understand what they purport to condemn. Otherwise, how could there be all this noise about that which doesn’t matter — and silence about that which does?
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist, The Miami Herald; The National Memo, April 30, 2014
“Chief Justice Roberts, Meet Bundy And Sterling”: An Ugly Corner Of Contemporary American Life, Invisible To The Supreme Court
It’s challenging to keep up with the latest in racist tirades, so let’s attempt a brief review. Last week, Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who became a conservative folk hero for his refusal to pay his debts to the federal government, said that he often wondered if black people fared better as slaves. Then, over the weekend, a tape of what appears to be the voice of Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, surfaced, and it featured Sterling instructing his girlfriend to avoid being photographed with black people and to refrain from bringing African-Americans to the Clippers’ basketball games.
Bundy and Sterling represent an ugly corner of contemporary American life, but it is one that is entirely invisible in recent Supreme Court rulings. In the Roberts Court, there are no Bundys and Sterlings; the real targets of the conservative majority are those who’ve spent their lives fighting the Bundys and Sterlings of the world.
Chief Justice John Roberts has made a famous utterance on the subject of race, and it’s a revealing one. The remark came in a case in which the Justices addressed perhaps the most celebrated precedent in the Court’s history: Brown v. Board of Education. In that decision, in 1954, the Justices ruled that segregated public schools were by their nature unconstitutional. In 2007, the Justices evaluated one of the many attempts that communities have made to address the legacy of legal segregation in schools. Seattle used race as one factor to determine which schools some students attended; the goal of the local initiative was integrated schools. But the Court struck down the Seattle plan as a violation of the Constitution and of Brown. Even to ameliorate segregation, the consideration of race was unconstitutional. In Roberts’ evocative phrase, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In other words, those who were trying to integrate the schools were the ones doing the “discriminating.”
The majority engaged in the same kind of blame-shifting in a recent case, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. In response to an earlier Supreme Court decision permitting some forms of affirmative action at the University of Michigan’s law school, voters in the state passed a constitutional amendment barring any use of race in admissions. The question in the Schuette case was whether the Michigan amendment violated the U.S. Constitution. It was a close, difficult case, and the Court concluded, by a vote of six to two, that the answer was no; voters could ban affirmative action if they so chose.
It was as if the Justices in the majority and those in dissent were writing about different countries. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion suggested that the debate over affirmative action should and could take place in a genteel, controversy-free zone. “In the realm of policy discussions the regular give-and-take of debate ought to be a context in which rancor or discord based on race are avoided, not invited.” (Yes, it “ought” to be, it just may be that it isn’t.) Kennedy said that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution include the people’s right to “try to shape the course of their own times and the course of a nation that must strive always to make freedom ever greater and more secure.” Apparently, this noble endeavor includes banning affirmative action.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote about a country where the Bundys and Sterlings still hold considerable sway. Indeed, she went beyond the simple bigotry of the Bundys and Sterlings and found that more subtle wounds of racism still exist in this country. “Race matters,” she wrote, “because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’” Indeed, Sotomayor threw Roberts’s famous line back at him. She quoted him—“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”—and then wrote, “It is a sentiment out of touch with reality, one not required by our Constitution, and one that has properly been rejected as not sufficient to resolve cases of this nature. While the enduring hope is that race should not matter, the reality is that too often it does. Racial discrimination … is not ancient history.”
The vile words of the rancher and the basketball tycoon showed just how right Sotomayor was. Even if her colleagues insist otherwise, racial discrimination, far from being ancient history, is as fresh and new as the latest alert on your phone.
By: Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, April 29, 2014
“Words, Ideas, Actions, And The Tangle Of Race”: Sometimes Language Isn’t Really The Problem
We seem to be having one of those moments when a series of controversies come in rapid succession and make everyone newly aware of the relationship between language, ideas, and actions. And naturally, it revolves around our eternal national wound of race.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to see that in a few of these controversies, we aren’t actually arguing about what words mean. This is often a focus of disagreement when somebody says something that other people take offense at; for instance, when Paul Ryan said a few weeks ago that “[w]e have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities, in particular, of men not working, and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value of the culture of work,” conservatives believed he was being unfairly tagged as racist for using a common phrase, while liberals objected to the connection between the word and the idea that followed. There’s nothing racist about the term “inner city” in and of itself, but when people say it they are usually referring to urban areas where black people are concentrated, and when you then describe a pathological laziness that is supposedly prevalent there, then you’ve said something problematic.
But when Cliven Bundy offered his fascinating thoughts on the state of black America, people weren’t appalled because of his use of the outdated term “Negro” in “Let me tell you another thing about the Negro.” It was what came afterward. He could have said “Let me tell you another thing about the African-American,” and it would have been just as bad, and not only because he was about to paint all members of a race with the same ugly brush. (Cliven, it’s safe to surmise, would never say “Let me tell you another thing about the white,” because the idea that all white people are the same in some fundamental way would be ridiculous to him.) To conservatives’ credit, they got this immediately and ran away from Bundy as fast as they could, even if there was still plenty to criticize about the fact that they embraced him in the first place.
And then there’s Donald Sterling, the Los Angeles Clippers owner who has apparently been caught on tape telling his “girlfriend” (I put that in quotes because there’s just no way to even think of a relationship between an 81-year-old billionaire and a 31-year-old model type without being seriously repulsed) that he doesn’t want her publicly associating with black people, putting pictures of her with black people, or bringing black people to his games, despite the fact that we’re talking about an NBA team here. Even weirder is that the black person in question is Magic Johnson, one of the most revered and beloved sports heroes of the last half-century or so.
A statement released by the Clippers said: “Mr. Sterling is emphatic that what is reflected on that recording is not consistent with, nor does it reflect his views, beliefs or feelings. It is the antithesis of who he is, what he believes and how he has lived his life.” Which is the kind of thing you say when there’s a dispute over the interpretation of a word or phrase. We all say things we don’t exactly mean sometimes, or say something in a way that can be misinterpreted. But when you go on and on about how you don’t want people to know that your “girlfriend” hangs out with black people, that’s hard to misinterpret. And so, no one is defending Sterling. Some ridiculous conservatives have tried to make the case that since he donated money to a couple of Democrats a couple of decades ago that this is yet more evidence that Democrats are The Real Racists (Michael Tomasky vivisects that here), but not even many of their compatriots are going to bother with that.
As Jay Smooth points out, it’s interesting that Sterling’s longstanding and widely known record of racist actions, like trying to keep blacks and Hispanics out of rental buildings he owns, weren’t enough to generate calls for him to get booted from the NBA, but some racists words were. Despite all our arguments about the ambiguities of language, it’s his language—or, more properly, his ideas expressed through language—that everyone can agree on. And there wasn’t a racial slur in his conversation, as though he knows which words are OK to use and which ones aren’t, but he still thinks it’s OK to express racism toward black people, so long as you just call them “black people.”
Which brings us back to Paul Ryan. McKay Coppins of Buzzfeed has a piece out today about Ryan that features this exchange:
At one point, as he tells me about his efforts during the presidential race to get the Romney campaign to spend more time in urban areas, he says, “I wanted to do these inner-city tours—” then he stops abruptly and corrects himself. “I guess we’re not supposed to use that.”
His eyes dart back and forth for a moment as he searches for words that won’t rain down more charges of racism. “These…these…”
I suggest that the term is appropriate in this context, since it is obviously intended as an innocuous description of place. He’s unconvinced, and eventually settles on a retreat to imprecision: “I mean, I wanted to take our ideas and principles everywhere, and try for everybody’s vote. I just thought, morally speaking, it was important to ask everyone for their support.”
Ryan is laboring under the misimpression that all he did wrong before was use the term “inner city,” and if he banishes that term and any other dangerous ones from his vocabulary, then everything will be cool. Sorry, Congressman—it’s not so easy.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 28, 2014
“The Racists Among Us”: No, Racism Isn’t Back. It Never Went Away
Let’s not pretend that deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy and basketball team owner Donald Sterling are the last two racists in the United States. They have company.
I hear regularly from proud racists who send me — anonymously — some of the vilest and most hateful correspondence you could imagine. You’ll have to trust me about the content; this stuff, mostly vulgar racial insults directed at President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, is too disgusting to repeat.
My sensibilities are not delicate. I grew up in South Carolina as the civil rights movement reached its climax, a place and time where racism was open, unambiguous and often violent. I would be the last person to deny that we’ve made tremendous progress against discrimination. But it is obvious that we have miles to go.
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. was harshly criticized five years ago when he said we are “essentially a nation of cowards” in our reluctance to confront the racial issues that remain. In retrospect, Holder was merely telling a truth that many still will not acknowledge.
Bundy’s hideous assessment of “the Negro” — he wondered whether African Americans were better off as slaves, picking cotton, than they are today — should have come as no shock.
A Nevada rancher who refuses to pay for grazing his cattle on federal land, Bundy belongs to the far-right, anti-government fringe. I’m talking about the kind of people who deny the federal government has any legitimacy and expect black helicopters to land any minute. This worldview has found a home in the tea party movement, which harbors — let’s be honest — a racist strain.
This is not to say that all or most tea party adherents share Bundy’s ugly prejudices. But it has been obvious since the movement emerged that some tea partyers do. Media-savvy leaders eventually convinced those attending rallies to leave the racist placards at home, but such discretion says nothing about what remains in those people’s hearts and minds.
Racist words from Donald Sterling, a real estate mogul who owns the Los Angeles Clippers, also should have been less than surprising. In 2009, Sterling agreed to pay $2.73 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging discrimination against African American and Latino tenants in his apartment buildings. In an earlier discrimination suit, settled for an undisclosed sum, one of his property managers quoted Sterling as saying of black tenants in general that “they smell, they’re not clean.”
Still, the recording of the alleged conversation between the 80-year-old Sterling — there has been no denial that it’s his voice — and his young girlfriend dominated the weekend’s news, perhaps because it was not only racist but truly weird.
“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people,” the voice believed to be Sterling’s says to the girlfriend, V. Stiviano — who is of mixed African American and Mexican heritage.
Sterling apparently believes that since Stiviano is light-skinned and has straight hair, no one has to know that she is part black — if only she would stop posting photos of herself with African Americans, such as basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, on Instagram. He instructs her not to bring Johnson to Clippers games.
Throughout the recorded conversation, which was obtained by TMZ.com, Sterling is unable to grasp why a black woman might resist his demand that she not be photographed with other black people. He apparently views racial segregation, at least in public, as the way things still ought to be.
Sterling’s racism has the National Basketball Association in an uproar — understandably, given that nearly 80 percent of the league’s players are black. Even Obama, midway through a trip to Asia, felt the need to comment on what he called Sterling’s “incredibly offensive racist statements.” He said Sterling was advertising his “ignorance.”
But something more sinister than cluelessness was involved. Sterling made clear in the conversation with Stiviano that African Americans were unwelcome in his “culture.” This is old-fashioned “separate-but-equal” racism, pure and simple.
The Republican Party, Fox News and a majority of the Supreme Court would like to believe such naked prejudice is history. Yet some big-city school systems are as segregated as they were in the 1960s. Leading public universities are admitting fewer black students than a decade ago. The black-white wealth gap has grown in recent years. Blacks are no more likely than whites to use illegal drugs, yet about four times more likely to be arrested and jailed for it.
No, racism isn’t back. It never went away.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 28, 2014
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