“Speaking In The Abstract”: How The Right Talks About Race, Even When They’re Not Talking About Race
In 1982, Republican operative Lee Atwater gave an interview to Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University, in which he explained how the so-called “Southern Strategy” of focusing on race had become much more subtle by the 1980s.
Atwater, who apologized to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of his tactics before his early death in 1991, put it like this:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Some conservatives questioned whether the controversial words credited to Atwater were ever truly spoken by the man who helped George H.W. Bush win the presidency using tactics like the so-called “Willie Horton” ad. After the racially charged 2012 campaign — in which the Romney campaign used racial dogwhistles including insinuating that the president was trying to “take the work out of welfare” — James Carter IV, the son of the former president and the researcher who unearthed the “47 Percent” tape, convinced Lamis’ widow to release the audio above.
Atwater was in his own way echoing what President Lyndon B. Johnson once told his press secretary, Bill Moyers.
”I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” the president said. “If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.”
In this summer of the George Zimmerman trial, Detroit going bankrupt and Republicans demanding huge cuts to food stamps, it’s clear that these old narratives are still embedded in our politics. And in the post-birther era, race is no longer, as Atwater said in 1982, “on the back burner.”
While the right wants to focus on black culture and “black-on-black” crime, they refuse to acknowledge that “white-on-white” crime is statistically nearly as common and happens much more often, as white people, who are the vast majority of the population, commit the vast majority of violent crimes in this country.
Negative aspersions on so-called “food stamps,” like Ronald Reagan’s old “welfare queens,” often carry a racial connotation. But government assistance in this country is actually used by ethnic groups pretty much in proportion to their share of the population:
African-Americans, who make up 22 percent of the poor, receive 14 percent of government benefits, close to their 12 percent population share.
White non-Hispanics, who make up 42 percent of the poor, receive 69 percent of government benefits – again, much closer to their 64 percent population share.
But these statistics fade into the background as Trayvon Martin instantly becomes a thug when he puts up his hood in the rain.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, July 28, 2013
“Rotten Melon Brain”: Steve King Says In Private, Republicans Actually Agree With His Vulgar, Bigoted Comments
A growing number of Republicans are publicly distancing themselves from Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) claim that many undocumented youths are drug mules with cantaloupe-sized calves, but the conservative congressman claims that GOP lawmakers are backing him in private.
During an appearance on Fox News on Saturday, King said that Republicans are in fact standing by him, but are afraid to publicly support him for fear of sparking outrage and losing their legislative leverage.
“My colleagues are standing by me. They come up to me constantly and talk to me and say, you’re right, I know you’re right,” King said. “Is the description such that they have to go out to the press and do a press conference or can they come and tell me, I know you’re right, I support you? They can do that privately,” he said:
KING: You know, they have a lot at stake here. There is a leverage within the House of Representatives and they all need to be concerned about their own leverage, so I’m not asking them to step forward, I wouldn’t ask them to step forward. I don’t want them to take repercussions.
King reiterated that he has seen and heard undocumented youths with cantaloupe-sized calves cross the border and even confirmed those details with border patrol agents since his remarks attracted controversy. “I got a call from [border patrol] yesterday and I said, do I need to come back down and refresh myself? They said ‘no, you’re spot on with what you’re saying but maybe you got the weight ten pounds up,’” he said.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) are the most prominent Republicans to condemn King’s comments, but the Iowa congressman remains highly influential in the Republican caucus. King recently authored an amendment in the House to deport DREAMers, which passed with nearly unanimous Republican support. Labrador and Ryan were among the 221 GOPers who voted for the measure.
The House of Representatives is expected to consider a series of immigration reform bills in the fall.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, July 27, 2013
“Something’s Gotta Give”: A Deeper Divide In A Culture War That’s Now Spread To The Full Range Of Public Policy Issues
There’s been a lot of polling conducted about the George Zimmerman verdict, and/or the whole Zimmerman-Martin saga. And a lot of it tracks divisions on, well, most other major controversies in American politics, including partisan attachments and competitive national elections.
One way of looking at the congruence of opinion on issues directly relating to race and ethnicity and on all kinds of other issues is that it reflects a partisan and ideological polarization that’s taken on the atmosphere of a culture war. The other way, of course, is to suggest that we’re in a culture war that’s now spread to the full range of public policy issues.
In his latest National Journal column, Ron Brownstein adds the considerable weight of his judgment to the latter proposition:
Although the contrasting attitudes about law enforcement ignite more sparks, that question of Washington’s proper role now represents the most important racial divide in American life. Minorities preponderantly support government investment in education, training, and health care that they consider essential for upward mobility. Most whites, particularly blue-collar and older whites, now resist spending on almost anything except Social Security and Medicare.
This clash rings through the collision between Obama (who won twice behind a coalition of nonwhites and the minority of whites generally open to activist government) and House Republicans (four-fifths of whom represent districts more white than the national average). In their unwavering opposition to Obama on issues from health to immigration, House Republicans are systematically blockading the priorities of the diverse (and growing) majority coalition that reelected him. Without more persuasive alternatives, Republicans risk convincing these emerging communities that their implacable opposition represents a “stand-your-ground” white resistance to minorities’ own rise. In the meantime, a rapidly diversifying America risks a future of hardening disparities and enmities if it cannot forge more transracial consensus in the courts—or in Congress.
If Ron’s analysis is right, of course, there’s another scenario for the future if “hardening disparities and enmities” cannot be overcome: one side or the other might actually win for long enough to set a new course for the future. For a brief moment that seemed to have happened in 2008. I’m sure some conservatives thought they saw it happening in 2010, which is why they quite literally couldn’t believe what was happening just two years later. But whether the current gridlock leads to a currently unimaginable “transracial consensus” or something else, something’s gotta give before long.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July, 26, 2013
“Side Door To Voting Rights Pre-Clearance”: The Next Best Way To Enforce The Voting Rights Act
I mentioned this briefly at Lunch Buffet, but because the story will be with us for a while, let me quote from Lyle Denniston’s explanation at SCOTUSblog of Eric Holder’s strategy for re-establishing a preclearance requirement for states engaged in repetitive and egregious voting rights violations in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision:
The preclearance provision is contained in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It has been widely considered to be the government’s most effective legal weapon against race bias in elections, because it requires states and local governments with a past history of racial discimination in voting to get official permission in Washington before they may put into effect any change, however small, in voting laws or procedures.
The 1965 law provided two ways to impose a Section 5 obligation on a state or local government. One was a virtually automatic formula, contained in Section 4 of the law. If a state or local government had a sustained history of racial bias in its voting patterns in the past, that triggered a coverage formula that led directly to a Section 5 preclearance obligation. Preclearance can be sought either from the Justice Department or from a three-judge District Court in Washington.
The second way to get a state or local government put under a preclearance duty is the 1965 law’s Section 3 — the one that the Attorney General said the government will now be invoking. If a state or local government is found to have recently engaged in intentional race bias in voting, a court has the power to impose the preclearance duty on that jurisdiction for a set period of time. It is not an automatic method, in contrast to the coverage formula in Section 4.
While the Supreme Court in the Shelby County ruling did not disturb Section 5 and the preclearance requirement, it did strike down the Section 4 coverage formula. That has been the quickest and most effective way to lead to Section 5 preclearance. The Court’s majority ruled that the coverage formula was seriously out of date, and could no longer be used to trigger Section 5 for any state or local government anywhere in the country.
The Shelby County decision did not disturb Section 3 as a separate way to bring about a preclearance duty. That is why advocacy groups — and now the Obama administration — are turning to Section 3 as the next-best way to enforce the 1965 law through preclearance.
The immediate effort will be focused on Texas, thanks to past court findings of intentional discrimination. But challenges to new voting rules and districting decisions elsewhere–most notably those in North Carolina, which are setting a kind of Gold Standard for voter dilution and repression–could well be next, particularly if the Texas litigation is successful.
BTW, I’d like to note that Lyle Denniston is 81 years old. The clarity and comprehensiveness of Denniston’s writing gives this old goat hope for a journalistic second wind that lasts a while.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 25, 2013
“Too Inept To Lead: Steve King Fills A Vacuum Left By John Boehner
The Democratic Party’s general approach to immigration policy is pretty straightforward: create a legal process through which millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States can become legal citizens, while taking concrete steps to improve border security. The Republican Party’s position on immigration is … less clear.
GOP officials are divided, confused, and overwhelmed by uncertainty. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was asked over the weekend for his personal opinion on a pathway to citizenship, and the Republican leader was so overwhelmed by weakness and fear that he refused to give an answer.
This in turn creates a vacuum within the Republican Party, which is filled by folks like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). Watch on YouTube
For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s what the GOP lawmaker told a right-wing website about Dream Act kids:
“There are kids that were brought into this country by their parents unknowing they were breaking the law. And they will say to me and others who defend the rule of law, ‘We have to do something about the 11 million. Some of them are valedictorians.’ Well, my answer to that is … it’s true in some cases, but they aren’t all valedictorians. They weren’t all brought in by their parents. For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the same act.”
In case facts still matter, King’s assessment isn’t even close to being accurate.
But even if we put that aside, King’s offensiveness reinforce a larger dynamic in Republican politics that party leaders are eventually going to have to address.
To be sure, House GOP leaders eventually got around to criticizing King’s comments last night, just as they did in March when another House Republican lawmaker used the “wetbacks” slur.
But soon after, King doubled down on his remarks, appearing on an Iowa radio show to say, “It’s not something that I’m making up. This is real.”
And while King keeps talking, and party leaders keep wringing their hands, it’s worth appreciating the political circumstances that have brought us to this point. Note, for example, that the right-wing Iowan may come across as a racist buffoon that the American mainstream finds repulsive, but at this point, he’s winning — King has been fighting to kill comprehensive immigration reform, and by all appearances, House Republican leaders intend to hand him and his allies the outcome they prefer.
In other words, as ridiculous as Steve King appears, he and his kooky friends are shaping the House Republican caucus’ position on immigration policy, largely because Boehner and his friends are too inept to lead.
What’s more, the dynamic is getting worse, not better. As Jon Chait explained back in April, “A drawn-out immigration debate commanding center stage will simply create more opportunities for conservative Republicans to say offensive things about Latinos. And make no doubt: however diligently their consultants coach them not to, they will say offensive things about Latinos.”
That was nearly four months ago, and Chait’s prediction is holding up quite well.
If Boehner wants to make this nightmare go away, the Speaker is going to have to try to pass immigration reform. Unfortunately for his party, the weight falls on Boehner’s shoulders, and he may not be up to the task.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 24, 2013
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