Of ‘Post-Racial’ and the New Racism

by Rick Marschall

 Our Constitutionally mandated twilight zone between election and inauguration is virtually unique among the world’s democracies. In totalitarian systems, needless to say, the transfer of power and authority is instantaneous, and even bloody aspects do not deter the world’s creeping rollback from democracy. But in most of the so-called democracies of the so-called enlightened world, elections trigger a scenario of dutifully emptied desk drawers, orderly replacement of nameplates, and a new cast of frozen-smile portraits in government buildings.

In parliamentary systems, the Opposition is a government-in-waiting. The American interregnum between November and January 20 (March 4 prior to 1933) was instituted to accommodate long travel over muddy roads in the early days of the Republic. Few people, least of all the new president, wanted to miss the inauguration. Or the inaugural ball.

Living in this never-never land has its benefits, however. A government in suspended animation between lame ducks and incoming statesmen virtually assures a minimum of meddling, just as the first cool evenings of late summer eliminate mosquitoes and other pests. The Permanent Campaign of modern politics gives way to Permanent Speculation, a guessing-game about Ins and Outs (this year, Change You Can Believe In is either a brave new world or a stroll down memory lane). This “transition” period is a bonanza at least to the news media – a decompression-chamber from the windfalls generated by election controversies and campaign advertising.

In recent years a “honeymoon” – between recent partisan foes; between press and politicians – is traditional, or at least a traditional pretense. After the 2008 election, however, the mainstream media (MSM) and the incoming president enjoy something more like a wedding night than a honeymoon; in fact they have been flirting and dating and doing the nasty since first sight. “MSM + BHO” is carved on every tree and scrawled on every fence between Springfield and DC. “Yes we can.”

Another change we can believe in, heralded as part of the Political Millennium, is the corner that has been turned, the chapter that has been closed, the era that has ended: the arrival of a Post-Racial society. Have you noticed?

That the horrors of slavery are past is of course an uncontested truism, but also a blessing with countless effects, just as the evil stains of slavery spread in many and long directions. That black people still inhabit the lower regions of the statistical charts and tables documenting advancement, achievement, and accomplishment, suggests several things… but resolutely resists answers. It has become an a priori fact of sociology and public policy that blacks attract more bigotry from the established order than do other newcomers to the American shores (or, in fact, newcomers to shores of other countries). Also that the black peoples’ slave status begat more “strikes against” them, even to generations far removed, than any negative attitudes or horrible treatment accorded almost any other group.

All of which has led to the successful Reparations movement. Writing checks to black people as compensation for crimes of earlier wrongs might never happen; but that is just a detail. A mindset of virtual-reparationism, a sort of entitlement, has attached itself to many blacks, many whites, and many voters.

The human animal sets internal clocks by Emerson’s Law of Compensation – everyone silently subscribes and occasionally refers to the inevitable swing of the pendulum, Karma, pay-back time, “what goes around comes around.” A time-heals-all-wounds type of justice frames the election of a man of color to the presidency in a land where slaves (slaves of all colors, not a frequently cited distinction) were denied the right to vote. In the beginning they were equal in this regard – equal, that is, to women and, in some areas, freemen who didn’t own property or were not literate.

The differences between racial attitudes, racism, and bigotry are real… but were meaningless distinctions to black celebrities, athletes, and musicians – I mean to say, EVEN these blacks – as recently as my childhood. On vacations I saw “Whites Only” signs on restroom doors, and I was stung by the odium, as much as one who was neither perpetrator nor victim could be.

Yet the race-related tenor of this post-election / pre-inauguration celebration disturbs me. It has nothing to do with the election of a person of color to the presidency. I dearly would love to have seen Alan Keyes elected senator (over anyone, not just Obama). I would love to see Michael Steele run for president, to be president. Some of my best candidates are black, to beat critics to a paraphrase. What disturbs me is that – typically – the media’s orgiastic, sound-bite filtration of current events is fatally flawed.

This might be Post-Racial America in some eyes, but it is NOT Post-Racist America, and the perpetrators largely are the media, liberals, and many black leaders themselves. A New Racism – we can view it as Political Correctness on steroids – is based upon a libel upon honest citizens of good will, and skews the proper vision of social justice and the popular rule.

If there was racism in the recent presidential campaign, it overwhelmingly (and ironically) was exercised by the black candidate, his media collaborators, and his campaign strategists. “They’re gonna tell you,” Obama frequently intoned, “that I’m different, I have a different name, that my face doesn’t look like presidents on dollar bills.” But we never did hear such things from McCain or other Obama opponents. Or anyone, except leftist scare-merchants. Obama claimed that Sarah Palin rallies featured calls from the crowd to “kill him,” that is, to kill Obama. Evidently the only time those words were heard was when Obama claimed so on national television – neither Secret Service nor FBI could corroborate this libel.

In other words, there was more race-baiting from Obama, telling us what we were GOING to hear, or what he wanted us to THINK we heard, than was actually said or ever actually heard. Therefore Obama benefitted mightily from race-baiting, sort of a designed threat, to quote one of the Vice President Elect’s rare original phrases. That’s not the new Post-Racial; that’s the old Racist. Or, to be clear, the New Racism.

In the media, Chris Matthews eerily confessed to sensations of “tingling” up and down his leg when he saw Obama. He says it now is his “duty” as a cable-news host to make Obama look good. Don Imus almost punctured another lung contorting himself to kiss up to every exposed portion of Obama’s anatomy and toss countless softball questions to Obama cheerleaders. Harry Smith, host of a television news program on CBS called “The Early Show,” said after the election, “I wept tears of joy last night." And, this just in, his co-host Julie Chen reported: "You have tears in your eyes right now, Harry." Since the election, writers at The New York Times and at TIME Magazine took their journals to task for – no, let just say, they admitted to the fact of – extremely biased coverage.

It should be noted that all these variations of disservice to the Republic are not simply because Obama is a Democrat or that he was astride some Trojan horse about which “journalists” fantasize. No, most of the Kool Aid packets were Race-flavored.  And this returns us to a consideration of the differences between racial attitudes, racism, and bigotry. Amidst the din of this Post-Racial celebration, we note some curious role-reversals.

Consider the case of Saturday Night Live, where much of the ink devoted to during the campaign was misdirected: not the bad Hillary impersonation, not Tina Fey’s additional 15 minutes of fame, not even the staggering ratings bump when Sarah Palin guest-starred. No, it was the impersonation of Barack Obama. SNL was condemned for… having a white actor portray Obama. What an insult. Supposedly. But why? Obama is half-white, and by some reports of his ancestry less than half-black. Do critics think it is demeaning for a black guy to be portrayed by a white guy? Is there an anti-anti-minstrel rule? – not that there was anything untoward in the impersonation other than its fecklessness. Its treatment invariably was fawning – no surprise – yet people rushed to bash the racial insult that wasn’t (except under the new rules of the New Racism).

New Racism is characterized by more than its inherent noxious absurdity. It is culturally acceptable. It is that rare category of Hate Speech – Hate Speech that is approved.  Approximately 97 per cent of blacks across America voted for Obama, but I doubt that any lily-white precincts of the old South, or stereotypical country clubs in Northern suburbs cast 97 per cent of THEIR votes for McCain, the white guy. Indeed, if such statistically lopsided votes were cast in such areas, the voters routinely would be branded as old-fashioned Racists. Or, as Obama said of his white grandmother, “a typical white person” with all the ingrained and horrible attitudes he attaches to that stereotype.

Yet blacks who voted as automatons for Obama saw themselves, and universally were praised by patronizing observers, as acting out a form of liberation. It was a GIVEN that blacks would vote for Obama; that it was acceptable to check at the door all traditional requirements – let us call them obligations – of exercising the right to vote.

No other probability is plausible; no other reasoning is reasonable: Obama received his votes – overwhelmingly of black voters, and according to exit polls in large percentages among some white partisans – because of his skin color.

Some patronizing paternalists of the left concede this fact, claiming that a color-based vote has the effect of righting a thousand old wrongs… that a minority needs symbolic idols… that Obama, and his telegenic family, provide role models for unaccomplished blacks. The definition of justice as a moveable feast of the pendulum-swing, and the formulation of public policy on readings from a bathroom-scale accumulation of grievances and complaints, are, like race-baiting and “voting based on the color of his skin,” values that are alive and well.

The Liberal-Industrial Complex and the black voting bloc that has allowed itself to be in acquiescent servitude for generations (which, among things, has effectively eliminated their leverage on the political playing field) has been less concerned with Race as a means than an end; that is to say, racial harmony, or a color-blind society, as an end. A seamless elevation of a black man to the presidency a half-century after Brown v Board of Education is of course evidence of a seismic transformation of cultural attitudes – absolutely an admirable event on its surface, perhaps without parallel in history, in any culture. It is more remarkable as a function of human nature than the American political system, and therefore more profound.

But it was short of being seamless, thanks to its own promoters. Obama’s racial scare-tactics were reminiscent of how politicians a generation after the Civil war would “wave the bloody shirt” – that is, revive incendiary wartime controversies to inflame voters. The prize-winner was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, representing a class of professional agitators whose game would be up if – hallelujah! – a black man were elected President of the United States of America, and seamlessly, without the past’s ugliness and stench of racism.

Better for Wright to continue his stock-in-trade, which is perpetuating Grievance. He might be a Jeremiah, but he is no Joshua or Caleb: he will forever see giants in the land and therefore scream about being denied the Promised Land while diverting his compliant flock’s path anywhere but forward. The closest he will get to racial harmony is, in effect, preaching to his faithful: “Let’s you and them fight!”

Some partisans prefer their meal ticket over social harmony, and some place ideological goals over racial goals. The ultimate irony of this issue is that, while the MSM casts this election in terms of Post-Racial politics, in the quiet moments of the night in one of the bedrooms of his Chicago mansion, it is possible that Obama himself doesn’t see his elevation as a triumph of race over prejudice, but of radicalism over the Establishment.

It is not his degree of blackness, but redness (not Red State, but red ideology) that is the significant aspect of the recent election.

The New Racism provides a smokescreen that obscures a clear vision of the truth: Obama’s beloved surrogate father, Frank Marshall Davis, should be of concern not because he was black; not at all; but because he was a committed and effective worker for the Communist Party USA. Another inspiration to Obama’s words and deeds for many years of his life was Saul Aulinsky, the Marxist architect of “community organizing.” Community Organization is not an innocent description but the designated term for the passel of ideas to indoctrinate schoolchildren, to teach street people how to intimidate bureaucrats-with-budgets, to affect voter-registration rolls.

It is a self-swindling delusion to think that one form of racism is better than another. America will never become place better for anyone unless it is a place better for everyone. The forgotten man in the recent election was not Davis nor Aulinsky nor Wright nor Louis Farrakhan nor any other figures swept under Obama’s rug, but Dr Martin Luther King, whose ringing dream of an America where people will be judged “by the content of their character, not the color of their skin” was cynically marginalized. 

The New Racism, however, will prevail because the MSM and the Permanent Campaign continuously will roil the public discourse, and forever blow on the embers of white guilt. If blacks can be relied upon on to vote 97 per cent for blacks, ad infinitum, democracy in America can be spared the expense of printing ballots, the angst of hanging chads, and the infestation of pollsters psychoanalyzing our civic whims. But there would be negative results too.

The curious “logical extension” of blacks voting 97 per cent for Obama – that is, if it became a model for retooling our entire electoral system – would see all groups voting lockstep for their “own,” until, say, the number of Jews in the Senate would drop from double figures to one or two per cent, which is their proportion of the general population.

But of course Americans vote the candidate, not the skin color or racial background. To the extent that the Establishment now exempts black voters from this dictum, it practices Paternalism (implying blacks cannot process complex issues), Exceptionalism (blacks have suffered so much that they can be excused to operate by different standards), Reparationalism (blacks should present a due-bill for slavery), Grievance Politics (maybe they won’t complain), or, well, simple Hypocrisy.

To yield to any of these practices demands, then, that the implications be dealt with: just how many elections, or years, of race-baiting is condoned before things are “even”? After one group is praised for voting blindly on the basis of skin color, as is happening now, will other groups be encouraged to do the same thing, and for how many elections or years?

Add it all up, it’s the New Racism. Shorn of adjectives, it’s still racism. No lipstick on THIS pig. It still stinks. And the pig has plopped itself down in our national living room, ready to wallow for four years, maybe eight, maybe a generation, maybe forever through America’s twilight.

How to identify the New Racism? Remember quotations like Obama’s description of… well, people who don’t look like him: “… it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Look upon supposedly benign examples of Post-Racism and substitute groups’ names for the indefinite pronouns; try switching an “us” to a “them”; count all the dismissive uses of “they.” Those sorts of parlor games. Behold, the New Racism.

Michelle Obama spoke the truth when she said in a campaign speech: “…sometimes it’s easier to hold on to your own stereotypes and misconceptions. It makes you feel justified in your own ignorance…. That’s America.”

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