What's Wrong With Sotomayor Being Racist?

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By David Michael Green (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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Remember Richard M. Nixon – one of America’s most notable presidents for so many other reasons – who famously seized the presidency by means of the “Southern Strategy”? What was that? Nothing short of taking complete advantage of Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party’s political courage (yes, they actually had some then) in fighting the good fight against institutionalized racism in America. Nixon figured he could offer a thinly-veiled racist appeal to Southern whites who had literally been in the Democratic Party for as long as Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican. Johnson saw it all coming, but did it anyhow. He figured his act of moral courage and sacrifice would cost the Democratic Party lost elections for a whole generation. Nixon was right, Johnson was wrong. It’s now been two generations.

Then there was Saint Reagan (all bow in reverence please), who bravely launched his campaign for the presidency with a speech about states’ rights (Hmm – I wonder what that term could be code for?), given at Philadelphia, Mississippi, the very place where civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan for the crime of bringing the franchise to African American citizens. From that high point, Reagan would then go on to spend the rest of his years denouncing fictional Cadillac-driving welfare queens – a simultaneously classic and classless racial stereotype designed to appeal to the crowd who spend their Sundays slurping Coors, rooting for the Cowboys (“America’s Team”!), wearing their wife-beater t-shirts and, of course, resenting blacks for stealing ‘their’ jobs. Meanwhile, President Gumby arranged for corporate welfare style transfers of wealth by the hundreds of billions, tripling the national debt as he enriched every defense contractor in sight, far beyond even their own wildest dreams.

Want more? How about George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton ads in 1988, a patently racist appeal that successfully won him the presidency? Poor Mike Dukakis. Up seventeen points in the polls that summer against a sitting vice president, he never knew what hit him. He thought he was living somewhere in the late twentieth century, only to find it was really still the nineteenth.

Never to be outdone by Dad (see “Iraq, Invasions of...”, and “Presidents, Hated When They Leave Office...”), Little Bush and Baby Brother made sure that tens of thousands of African American voters (who – totally coincidentally, I’m sure – vote ninety percent Democratic) were falsely disenfranchised in Florida in 2000, on the basis of bogus former felon purges of the registration rolls. That got us the Boy King as president, by a margin of less than 600 votes. Then there was Ohio, in 2004, where the event was reprised with endless all-day waits in black voting precincts, while white suburban voters popped in and out for a quick GOP endorsement.

Quite a litany, eh? Which makes it all the more bizarre when one occasionally hears imbecilically naive conservatives wonder out-loud why black Americans don’t vote for Republicans. Like you need a couple of PhD’s after your name to figure that one out. Pat Boone was an example of this (non-)mentality. The smarmy Jesus-loving conservative singer (a clean, white and non-threatening show biz hack ginned up for the crowd who found rock-and-roll a bit too threatening) once asked the question, and, as it happens, he got a very complete answer from Earl Butz, the Nixon/Ford Secretary of Agriculture, the same guy who presided over the industrialization and corporatization of farming in America, destroying the family farm along the way (His motto? “Get big or get out”).

Butz (yes, really, that was his name), employing a bit of conservative humor that would ultimately be revealed in the press and would cost him his job, responded to Boone thusly: “The only thing the coloreds are looking for in life are tight pussy, loose shoes and a warm place to shit”.

That was in 1976, and not much has changed on the right since. Now it’s just gone underground. Or it’s gays instead of blacks.

And so it is astonishing that the likes of Limbaugh or Gingrich would be upset with the supposed racism they attribute to a Supreme Court nominee.

I mean, apart from the fact that their allegation is a disgusting and transparently bald-faced lie...

...It’s kinda like being the only president in history who allowed a major foreign terrorist attack to happen and then bragging about how you kept the country safe.

...It’s kinda like the folks who’ve spent the last three decades cutting the legs out from under the middle class coming along and lecturing the country on family values.

...It’s kinda like Limbaugh savaging druggies on his air, while he himself is wasted on OxyContin.

...Or Larry Craig legislating against gays.

...It’s kinda like Bristol Palin running around the media singing the praises of abstinence.

Welcome to Regressiveland.

And speaking of abstinence, feel free to abstain from this insanity, yourself.

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David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), (more...)

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