aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Pond Scum & The Flip Side of The Race Card

Richard Thompson Ford says in today’s WaPo that modern racism isn’t like the water in a well. It’s more like the scum in a pond:

It might settle to the bottom if left alone, but it can also be whipped up into a froth. And that’s what Bendixen was really doing.

The Bendixen he’s referring to is Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic pollster Sergio Bendixen. Thompson Ford says Bendixen was pond scum playing the race card when he told a reporter last month that Latino voters haven’t generally “shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.”

Thompson Ford continues:

...by insisting that Hispanics are anti-black bigots and insinuating that black politicians won’t serve the interests of Hispanic constituents, Bendixen may well have helped inspire the racial tensions he purported to describe. African Americans have had their worst fears of anti-black racism confirmed by a supposed expert on Latino opinion; Latinos, told that their community rejects black candidates, may well assume that this must be so for a good reason—such as African American prejudice against them.

He’s “insisting that Hispanics are anti-black bigots???” That is word-smithing worthy only of a master politician. Where is this insistence? Oh, it’s coded? Who’s doing the inflaming now?

I’m telling you, Richard, I agree with you and understand this concept is complex, but you are an academic and where is the academic rigor in that statement? There are all kinds of qualifiers in your argument—no one called Hispanics anti-black bigots! You are committing the same reductionist slight you’d like to stop!

A lot of contemporary racial antagonism isn’t based on hatred and animus, but rather on mutual suspicion and mistrust. Overt racism is rare, but racial inequalities remain widespread and subtle. As a result, we often have to guess whether or not our neighbors are secretly prejudiced. People of color wonder whether their white neighbors and co-workers secretly hold them in contempt because of their race; whites worry that people of color secretly resent them for the color of their skin. And the increasingly complex relationships among black, Latino and Asian groups present similar anxieties, as well as their own unique vexations. An insidious suggestion from an influential person can trigger these suspicions and set off a dismal spiral of mistrust, reaction and recrimination.

It’s ironic that, as politicians play the race card for personal advantage, pervasive racial injustices go unaddressed. None of the presidential candidates has proposed a policy response to the real racial problems facing our society: Many of our nation’s cities are as racially segregated as they were in the era of Jim Crow, many minority neighborhoods are crime-plagued and bereft of opportunities for gainful employment, and one in three black men between 20 and 29 is in prison, on parole or on probation.

Looking for coded racism is tricky business; kind of like Bush’s war on terrorism—once we start looking we can find it anywhere. We ought to be careful.

I need to read the book to learn the nuance of the argument. I’ve seen the interview, read the first chapter and reviews and easily agree with what I understand of its central thesis. But it occurs to me that the Race Card can be flipped. We might reasonably ask why is Obama not addressing these very same racial issues you describe in your piece.

Yes, I agree, no candidate “has proposed a policy response to the real racial problems facing our society.” By your very same logic, shouldn’t it be Obama? Not solely because he is the black candidate—though he is—but because he has that absolutely terrific record in Illinois.

Even better, we know from his writings where he stands on so much of this. If he won’t tackle these issues in the relative safety of a primary fight, can we expect him to do it in the general election? And after he is elected, will he do it when hope turns to gritty Washington reality?

Why, in this vitally important presidential primary race, are we talking about the race card and not about issues of racial justice?

Just asking.