Perhaps Republicans, as elderly as most of them are, don't quite understand how the Series of Tubes works. Most of what one posts on the internet is for all intents and purposes permanent. Sure, we can scrub whatever we want from our own personal websites and blogs, but what we say on things like Facebook or comment sections of popular websites are like tattoos – a lasting testament to judgment both good and bad.
Last week an aide to South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster posted a humorous news item about a gorilla escaping from a zoo in Columbia. Rusty DePass, a long-time GOP activist in South Carolina and candidate for various state/local offices throughout the years, helpfully and hilariously noted, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors – probably harmless." Charming.
Shortly thereafter, a low-level functionary in the South Carolina GOP saw fit to Tweet the following:
Note the "thumbs up" from Adam Piper, who has openly discussed throwing his name into the upcoming race for Governor in the Palmetto State.
Moving westward, a staffer for Tennessee State Senator Diane Black decided against the newfangled Twitter and used a good ol' fashioned email forward to send the following photo of our 44 Presidents:
The quest to build a Big Tent appears to have hit a few snags. That's too bad, because the Michael Steele-led GOP was really starting to make some progress in appealing to non-white voters.
Wait. No they weren't. There was the Southern California GOP group that sent out a mailer in the style of a "food stamp" bearing the image of the President…along with watermelons, ribs, fried chicken, and Kool-Aid (note: I thought the stereotype was grape/strawberry soda. Am I so out of touch with contemporary racism?). And the California mayor who sent out the "White House watermelon garden" email from his government email account. Or the South Carolina mayor – lot of South Carolinians here, no? – who wondered aloud to his constituents if our Muslim President is the antichrist. Or the Georgia mayor who responded to the flap over Obama's lame gift to Gordon Brown and the rest of the British delegation by expressing relief that Obama had not given them Negro gifts like malt liquor and cigarettes. And who could forget "Barack the Magic Negro" as a campaign jingle for one Tennesseean's effort to win the chairmanship of the RNC? I'm sure there are other incidents I'm failing to extract from my memory at the moment.
These incidents underscore the challenges inherent in diversifying a party whose bedrock constituencies are nativists, unreformed segregationists, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-immigration zealots, and various other rural white people with Confederate flags on their bumpers. This leads me to ask an open question to America's Hispanic, Asian, and black Republicans: What the hell is wrong with you? Is this a race-based version of the "self-hating Jew" phenomenon? I am reminded of the calls for Michael Steele to resign which came from, among others, Dr. Ada Fisher, one of only three black members of the RNC. Dr. Fisher (who, by the way, backed South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson, a segregationist who proudly belongs to a whites-only country club) complained about Steele's efforts to reach out to black voters:
"I don't want to hear anymore [sic] language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn't going to win us any votes and makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish."
Steele isn't making you appear foolish to black voters, Dr. Fisher. The simple fact that you are a Republican already accomplished that.
doug says:
Am I so out of touch with contemporary racism?
No, the watermelon thing is old school racism…………….
Emily says:
Okay. I live in South Carolina, and the politicians here have been blowing my lobes nigh on 28 years (even as a wee babe I knew this place was bizarre). That said, I probably wouldn't care as much as I do about the doings of our government if it weren't for the inflammatory and, frankly, stupid things that come out of the mouths of many of this state's representatives (and the general populace–there's a house not far down the road that displays the Confederate flag most days of the year. Believe me, I've thought on many a drive home of putting a match to it).
I only wish more of my fellow Carolinians would pay attention to this kind of blatantly racist crap. It might get these backwards morons out of office.
Kevin D says:
More and more the GOP is starting to resemble some of the Far Right parties of Europe like the BNP (British National Party) or Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD). I don't know if the election of Obama scared them into that direction or this is just something that's been simmering for a while. The arguments I'm hearing today sound more like thinly veiled racism (or as today's blog shows more blatant attempts) than actual policy debate. Racism to me is a reaction to fear and the only thing I can assume is that the GOP has been shitting its pants since November.
JohnR says:
to doug – not the watermelon, he's referring to the preferred drink of choice for your modern 'Nigra'. Apparently Kool-aid is the new thing, although I have a sneaking suspicion that that's a clever and subtle coded reference to the fact that the "Uppity" (ie non-Republican) Blacks are drinking the Democrat Party Kool-aid.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure you mean it the way it sounds, but I would just like to point out on behalf of many of my friends, neighbors and colleagues that there's a bunch of us rural types (even down in Dixie!) who aren't reflexive racist jackasses. Some of us even admire aspects of the Confederate effort in the War of Northern Aggression, and yet aren't sorry that the South is still losing. We are sorry that the South is still fighting – those of us who actually admire RELee instead of some idiot's cartoon of him take his advice to heart and accept the fact that the war is over and the South lost.
D.R.Scott says:
As a pragmatic African-American guy, I see the GOP's ugly, in-your-face racism as a winning strategy for the Democrats. Mind you, I'm not naive enough to think that bigotry doesn't exist anymore, but the Republicans certainly need more than the Angry White Men demographic to win elections these days. Gee, Toto, we're not in Mayberry anymore. As bad as the Democrats are (Hey, guys–you won. Remember?), the party of Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter are worse and are eagerly spiraling into irrelevancy.
John says:
It's part of what makes modern American politics so frustrating to people who aren't uneducated twits. The American Right can be so blatently bigotted and seems to get away with it just fine. Nobody reprimands these people in any serious manner. You don't even hear about most of this in any of the major news outlets (despite constant cries from the right about the "liberal bias of the mainstream media").
The sad part is that these people not only have the guts to run for public office, but they get elected and appointed into it with moderate success. The kinds of jokes you've demonstrated here are the kinds of things the trailer trash in the neighborhood two blocks away enjoy. Georgia is a state where it's not uncommon to hear a group guffawing at the latest "oh them silly negroes" joke that's actually decades old but they just got around to hearing. But these people, one imagines, are by and large just uneducated rural bumpkins.
Finding that they've made their way into the upper echelons of government is disturbing, to say the least. And it's funny, because despite obvious evidence like this that racism is still alive and well in America, the right has the gall to decry someone like Reverend Wright as a kook. Sure, his rhetoric is quite unnecessarily aggressive — but by all accounts he is completely justified in calling it the "US of KKKA".
comrade x says:
GOP, meet the dustbin of history.
Nixon's GOP deliberately took these dixiecrats under their wing- talk about the chickens coming home to roost!
Ed's Sister says:
While these examples illustrate a very serious problem in the GOP, I believe at the heart of it is that these attitudes are being passed down from generation to generation and in certain areas of the country it is not only acceptable but encouraged. This battle is really fought at the level of schools, churches, community groups, etc. where children and young adults can become aware that what their parents and neighbors say about people is wrong. If you aren't ever exposed to anything else, how can you be expected to think any differently? That's all you know and it is hard to unlearn what you've been told your whole life.
Sad to realize we are still at this place when you think so much progress has been made, but as with most things, education of the young members of society is key.
How to accomplish that, I am not sure.
MarilynJean says:
Black, female, gay, Asian, Latino, or anyone not old and white and male who consider themselves Republican just baffle me. These days I can't do anything but laugh at these comments. However, I will always prefer Confederate flag-waving, cross-burning white people to the institutionally racists that I encounter in liberal and progressive circles. At least you know what you're dealing with.
Liz says:
I agree with Ed's Sister above; in my small restaurant we just had to fire an 18-year-old young man who asked our GM why the owner "had to be such a Jew" about us wearing a rather ugly shirt to promote a new product. He did not seem aware of the fact that the owner is actually Jewish, nor that using stereotypes like that in conversation with your boss might be a bad idea regardless of their religious background. We live (and he grew up in) a town that is often thought of a liberal bastion in our state because of the university presence, but at the end of the day we're just small-town Indiana, which is just the rural southern state that migrated north a bit. Now here's a kid who lost his job because of basic standards of decency and critical thought that his community failed to ingrain in him, and that I deeply suspect he will categorize as "pc bullshit."
Daniel says:
I think the burning question is why are these racist hilljacks so open about it? Really, you don't think someone is gonna get you in trouble just because you sent E-mails out? You don't think your knee-jerk, snarky Facebook posts are gonna get picked up by a blog? You don't think your twats are gonna be on the news? Have they learned nothing from Fuzzy Zoeller?????????
J. Dryden says:
I'm not sure if this ameliorates the insult (probably not), but the term "Magic Negro" didn't originate with the bigots. It's a term that refers to a trend in films of late that portray conflicted white men who are rescued by otherworldly and angelic black men: THE GREEN MILE, THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE, everything in which Morgan Freeman plays God, etc. "Magic Negro" is therefore used to describe a narrative device that seems to be racially enlightened ("Look how awesome this guy is–and he's black!") when it is in fact quite bigoted ("Black people aren't really 'people,' per se, but they sure can help out us human beings, with our problems and our flaws and our personalities, but use of their primitive 'wisdom'.") Hence, the selling of Obama to middle America did, in fact, share some elements of this narrative, though those elements were coincidental and not–as his racist detractors are claiming–an intentional move on the part of his handlers.
Or maybe they're just bigots.
Liz says:
J, I feel it's giving Rush et al too much credit to think that they were even remotely familiar with intersectional critical theory, and even if they were, would that not alienate their no-fancy-book-learnin' audience?