Playing The Racial Card: The Politics Of Race In America Today
by David Theo Goldberg
Many thought, perhaps over-optimistically, that Barack Obama’s election to the US Presidency would signal that racism was now an historical relic in America. The Shirley Sherrod case makes palpably evident, however, a profound shift that has materialized in the politics of race in America since the 1980s. Sherrod, a government official, was excoriated by right-wing pundits for appearing in a pubic address to be endorsing discrimination against white farmers and privileging black farmers in government provision of aid. Within a few days of publication of her views, she was forced out of her job.
Politically active conservatives, overwhelmingly white, have seized on any racial reference by more liberal political figures to charge that the latter are perpetuating racism. Institutional racism is deemed mere anomaly rather than any longer a structural condition. When occurring at all, it is supposedly the expression of wrongheaded individuals. Conservative insistence on a literal colorblindness has undercut any attempts to invoke racial considerations to redress the negative effects of past discrimination.
As a consequence, racism has become less the social exclusion and humiliation of those taken to be racially different than invocation of or reference to race for social and especially governmental purpose. Any political or governmental invocation of race, for conservatives, amounts to racism, especially if designed to produce ameliorative or corrective outcomes in response to the pernicious burdens of past or continuing racisms.
More liberal proponents, by contrast, at least implicitly insist on a distinction between invoking race and expressions of racism. Underlying this distinction is the sense that to address the more pernicious and continuing legacy of racism requires racial identification of those continuing to suffer discrimination. After all, there is compelling evidence that especially African Americans, Latinos, Muslim Americans but also to some degree Asian Americans continue to face discriminatory conditions today, most notably in employment, housing access in renting and mortgages, and loans for large order purchases like automobiles, even after disaggregating for wealth and income differentials. To document such discrimination requires racial reference.
These differences regarding race and racism have been exacerbated since Obama’s election. Conservative white commentators have latched on to the use of racial expression by liberal or progressive politicians to charge racism. When President Obama chided Cambridge, Massachussets police for acting too quickly in the Henry Louis Gates arrest he was quickly accused of favoring a black man because black, and accused of racism. When National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) President Benjamin Jealous recently appealed to the Tea Party leaders to disown racist individuals in the movement, he was summarily denounced as racist for even raising the possibility. And when radical conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart released part of a videotape showing State of Georgia Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, recounting that she had once discriminated against white farmers in providing assistance to save their land, she was strongly condemned by conservatives and liberals alike, including the NCAAP’s Jealous.
Part of the conservative strategy has been to place liberal political figures on the defensive regarding race. They have sought to undercut any advantage liberals might gather by revealing ongoing evidence of racial discrimination. After all, if a black man has ascended to the highest political office in the country, what further racial barriers can there be? So the politics of race has turned to end what has been perceived as the advantages for liberals of a past politics of race. Race has always had a political register in America, and today is different only in the ring that register now assumes.
So what then the prevailing politics of race in America today?
Read the Full Essay @ the JWTC Blog
by David Theo Goldberg
Many thought, perhaps over-optimistically, that Barack Obama’s election to the US Presidency would signal that racism was now an historical relic in America. The Shirley Sherrod case makes palpably evident, however, a profound shift that has materialized in the politics of race in America since the 1980s. Sherrod, a government official, was excoriated by right-wing pundits for appearing in a pubic address to be endorsing discrimination against white farmers and privileging black farmers in government provision of aid. Within a few days of publication of her views, she was forced out of her job.
Politically active conservatives, overwhelmingly white, have seized on any racial reference by more liberal political figures to charge that the latter are perpetuating racism. Institutional racism is deemed mere anomaly rather than any longer a structural condition. When occurring at all, it is supposedly the expression of wrongheaded individuals. Conservative insistence on a literal colorblindness has undercut any attempts to invoke racial considerations to redress the negative effects of past discrimination.
As a consequence, racism has become less the social exclusion and humiliation of those taken to be racially different than invocation of or reference to race for social and especially governmental purpose. Any political or governmental invocation of race, for conservatives, amounts to racism, especially if designed to produce ameliorative or corrective outcomes in response to the pernicious burdens of past or continuing racisms.
More liberal proponents, by contrast, at least implicitly insist on a distinction between invoking race and expressions of racism. Underlying this distinction is the sense that to address the more pernicious and continuing legacy of racism requires racial identification of those continuing to suffer discrimination. After all, there is compelling evidence that especially African Americans, Latinos, Muslim Americans but also to some degree Asian Americans continue to face discriminatory conditions today, most notably in employment, housing access in renting and mortgages, and loans for large order purchases like automobiles, even after disaggregating for wealth and income differentials. To document such discrimination requires racial reference.
These differences regarding race and racism have been exacerbated since Obama’s election. Conservative white commentators have latched on to the use of racial expression by liberal or progressive politicians to charge racism. When President Obama chided Cambridge, Massachussets police for acting too quickly in the Henry Louis Gates arrest he was quickly accused of favoring a black man because black, and accused of racism. When National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) President Benjamin Jealous recently appealed to the Tea Party leaders to disown racist individuals in the movement, he was summarily denounced as racist for even raising the possibility. And when radical conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart released part of a videotape showing State of Georgia Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, recounting that she had once discriminated against white farmers in providing assistance to save their land, she was strongly condemned by conservatives and liberals alike, including the NCAAP’s Jealous.
Part of the conservative strategy has been to place liberal political figures on the defensive regarding race. They have sought to undercut any advantage liberals might gather by revealing ongoing evidence of racial discrimination. After all, if a black man has ascended to the highest political office in the country, what further racial barriers can there be? So the politics of race has turned to end what has been perceived as the advantages for liberals of a past politics of race. Race has always had a political register in America, and today is different only in the ring that register now assumes.
So what then the prevailing politics of race in America today?
Read the Full Essay @ the JWTC Blog
***
David Theo Goldberg directs the systemwide University of California Humanities Research Institute, and is Professor of Comparative Literature and Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine. He has written extensively on race and racism, most recently in The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
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