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Obamaleezza Rice: Angry Black Nationalist Radical
Posted by KTK

Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding. . . .

Descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that. . . .

That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.

Wow - pretty radical words. Must have been some sort of angry, hateful, anti-white, black nationalist, racist, fear-mongering, Malcolm X-wannabe who spewed that kind of anti-American garbage.

Oh, wait. It was Condi Rice, unindicted Iraqi Occupation co-conspirator, vestigial Secretary of State, and fever-dream GOP Vice-Presidential possible who claims that the United States suffers from a “birth defect” relating to its treatment of blacks and that that history still matters. So I guess we’re not going to be hearing anything about how “angry”, “hateful”, or “anti-American” she is, because . . . IOKIYA(B)R.

Besides, that’s all so very different from when Obama said that:

[The Constitution] was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. . . .

[W]e do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. . . .

Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.

Because, you see, saying the Constitution has a “stain” is not like saying the country has a “birth defect” - the one means you hate America, but the other means you love America.

Saying that “descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that” is nothing like saying that “many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow”. See, Rice “thinks” that “some effects” of slavery still exist, but Obama says outright that “many disparities . . . can be directly traced” to it. Can’t you see what a radical extremist he is?

Rice says that the inculcation of racial discrimination into the country’s founding “makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it”. (Obviously it’s hard for her - she can’t even say what “it” is.) Obama, though, says that “the anger and the bitterness of [the Jim Crow] years . . . . may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice . . . .” Why does he hate America so much?

And Rice, God bless her, reminds us that “it has continuing relevance for who we are today” (whatever “it” is). But Obama shrieks that “questions of race, and racism, continue to define [some black people’s] worldview in fundamental ways”. Why is he so obsessed with these old issues?

Well, it’s not for me to explain why such perfectly bland and obvious sentiments as the above should bring down weeks of howling slander upon the somewhat liberal Democrat who utters them, immediately before almost precisely identical remarks issue from the black toady of the party that has sold itself to racial demagoguery for generations - and which will with absolute certainty not be met with anything like the scorn and calumny that has been poured on Obama for saying it first.

But, aside from setting the Republican double standard in concrete for all to see, Rice’s remarks are kind of amusingly pathetic. She says exactly what Obama said, 10 days later, as if she were offering some kind of insight into the subject. Her remarks are in every instance parallel to his, but vastly shallower, and in every instance also couched in some kind of qualification or diminishing comparison. (Obama says what he says without equivocation about the legacy of racial discrimination; she “thinks” it has “some effects”. He states unambiguously that it has persisted throughout American history up until at least the previous generation and in some ways today; Rice consistently locates the problem in “the founding of this country” or in the years of slavery at the latest. Rice says it is “hard for us to talk about it”; Obama traces the distinct perspectives on race and justice that divide whites and blacks, and points out that they do talk about it - but not to each other. Rice says slavery was a “birth defect” - as if it just happened accidentally, like Down Syndrome; Obama states explicitly that it was written into the Constitution by specific persons for a reason, and played out down the years through the specific acts of each generation including ourselves.)

Rice sounds like an elementary-school teacher trying to evade some difficult subject in front of a classroom of emotionally high-strung children.

Well, a long, long time ago, America was born with . . . a problem. And some people think that that . . . problem . . . had some effects. And now we don’t like to talk about . . . it. But . . . it . . . relates to who we are.

What’s most amazing is that Rice offers this claptrap as her bid for the Vice Presidency. Just two days after her dog-and-pony show to the far-right elite, widely interpreted as a trial balloon for the VP slot under McCain, she suddenly discovers she has to make a public statement assessing America’s racial history and its impact on black/white relations today. What this signals is that the GOP now realizes it has to put up some sort of reasonable facade on race. I’m sure the code words and the dog whistles will still be in evidence, but Republican candidates can no longer be as ham-handed as Ronald Reagan, who famously opened his presidential campaign literally on the site of the infamous murders of three civil rights movement martyrs, or George Bush with his Willie Horton ads and racial whisper campaigns (McCain and Bill Clinton had black love children, remember?). Already there were some voices distancing themselves from Rush Limbaugh; embracing Obama-speak is a startling but inevitable step along the same path.

What it means for the GOP to seriously contemplate adding a black candidate to their ticket - and then send her on the rounds talking about divisive racial history - is that they’re scared to death of the black candidate who has made a name for himself talking about divisive racial history. If they can set Rice up as parallel to Obama on race - which they can do most easily simply by having her follow him around the country saying exactly the same things one week later, so that each ticket has a black candidate making the same speeches - then they may think they have neutralized Obama as the voice of progress on that issue.

The most important impact of this moment, however, is this: Obama has changed the conversation on race already - at the very least by bringing Republicans into it.

In essence, the Wright/Obama/Rice arc has been a tactical struggle to shift the Overton window regarding race in America. The GOP attempted to damage Obama by painting him as a radical for his views on race - thus painting his views on race as radical. They did this by tying him to certain specific sentences spoken over the years by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and by invoking names of other black leaders - Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton - who are seen as radical, “angry”, or “anti-white” by many whites. That would have put Obama’s call for racial honesty outside the window of acceptable political discourse, and Obama outside the range of acceptable candidates for president. Obama skillfully evaded that challenge by reframing the question of his ties to Wright as one of loyalty, and invoking other themes of loyalty - to family and country - that would resonate with conservatives. He also reframed the debate over race by tying black anger to black underclass status, and tying both to American political/racial history - forcing opponents either to deny that slavery had taken place or that blacks were or are an underclass, or accept that black anger was righteous. He thus put racial discourse squarely in the center of the window of debate by making that issue - race and history - and not Jeremiah Wright’s statements themselves, ground zero of the Wright controversy. The issue was in doubt for a bit, but increasingly Obama’s speech - and therefore the factual and ideological ground of that speech - has been seen as an important contribution to the understanding of race in the US, and therefore the debate over Obama’s candidacy, and therefore political debate in general. Obama successfully shifted the window of debate to include, not exclude, the issues on which the GOP had attempted to discredit him with racial stereotypes such as “radical”, “black nationalist”, “angry”, “hating whites”, and so forth.

The GOP, surprisingly, has bowed to the inevitable by accepting Obama’s framing of black history - apparently realizing that they had not succeeded in marking him as a “radical” and that Obama had won the framing battle and placed his version of black history within the Overton window, and the traditional version (blacks are downtrodden because they are lazy/shiftless/criminal/inferior, and racial history has nothing to do with it) outside it. (Amazingly, Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve - the Bible of the traditional racial argument - strongly endorsed Obama’s speech the day it was given). They have now forwarded their own candidate offering a slightly less accusatory version of the same argument, from the same position within the newly-shifted window. Or, instead of claiming that the GOP has already accepted the shift of framing, it may be more accurate to say that Rice has put herself forward as a candidate who can embody that shift, and is waiting to see if the GOP is willing to go that far. Either way, though, something has changed.

After trying to shout Obama down and demagogue him out of the conversation, mainline GOP figures are now, literally, saying exactly the same things in almost exactly the same terms. The Republican party elite has been forced to change the grounds and terms of debate over race, embracing racial history as both an element of contemporary political discourse and a factor in problems that must be addressed by politicians seeking office. The change did not occur because Obama was elected and took steps to alter the political process; the change occurred because Obama successfully reframed the debate during the election itself. The GOP shifted its framing in order to deny Obama’s advantage within the new segment of the Overton window that he had successfully imposed on the discourse.

Simply by talking about the possibility of change, Obama has become the one he was waiting for.

March 28th, 2008 General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race | 13 comments