Commentary By Ron Beasley
Over at Salon Gene Lyons says:
You won't win the healthcare debate by calling people stupid racists
Sorry Gene, you won't win the health care debate by ignoring the racist motivations of many of the protesters. The majority of Americans are not racist and pointing out the racist motivations of the angry few we may get them to reconsider their opposition.
Also from Mr Lyons:
Elite right-wing foes of healthcare reform are telling lies. The folks listening to them are mostly just scared
True as far as it goes but most of the most vocal are scared because we have a black president and would not agree with anything he did.
I have to keep returning to Rachel Maddow's interview with Frank Schaeffer. Frank,along with his father, Francis Schaefer is responsible for what what we now know as the religious right. He left the movement and wrote the book Crazy For God when he realized that the movement he created to fight abortion had become racism in the name of Jesus - a politically correct KKK. He talks about those who's brains were broken when a black man was elected president. He also said this:
they would rather see our system go down than see a black president
Now we here at hoggers have been trying to figure out what the next big story will be. I suggested it will be open violence on the right - at least part of which will be racially motivated. In a post yesterday I quoted John Hari of the Independent:
The election of Obama � a black man with an anti-conservative message � as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right's view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin.
When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn't compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of "Drill, baby, drill" have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right's world-view � to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation � has swollen. Now it is all they can see.
Now these same people are often well armed and angry. We ignore them and their motivations at great risk. They are not only being driven into a hate filled feeding frenzy by right wing pundits like Beck and Limbaugh but buy the oligarchs of the medical industrial complex who see their profits as being more important than the future of this country and the Republican party which sees a return to power more important than the country. The racist card is one the Republicans have been playing since LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Bill. The president of FOX news, Roger Ailes was one of the architects of the "Southern Strategy" and it plays a big if subtle part of FOX programing. The racists are a declining but vocal minority. They should not be ignored.
Another way to frame this discussion is to ask how racists are expressing themselves in public.
ReplyDeleteOne can argue that explicit racism is socially unacceptable, according to the media. The media will cover and acknowledge anger and opposition for other reasons. Consequently, the newsworthy political manifestation of racism today must take on a deceptively benign outward appearance.
Once you know what to look for, its easy to find racists claiming to be mad about something else, and not making sense about it.