Dusting Off The Manual

Kevin reports that Time magazine says the Republicans have a three point plan for a comeback after Katrina:

By late last week, Administration aides were describing a three-part comeback plan. The first: Spend freely, and worry about the tab and the consequences later….The second tactic could be summed up as, Don’t look back. The White House has sent delegates to meetings in Washington of outside Republican groups who have plans to blame the Democrats and state and local officials.

….The third move:…Advisers are proceeding with plans to gin up base-conservative voters…focused around tax reform….no plans to delay tax cuts…veto anticipated congressional approval of increased federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.

There’s one other little way to gin up base conservative voters that we can already see developing on the shout fest and gasbags shows. But this is one that the leakers know very well mustn’t be mentioned to writers for Time magazine. They are already dusting off their old tried and true southern strategy manual and after more than 40 years it’s like a favorite old song — they just started regurgitating their coded talking points without missing a beat. They’ll need to. This happened deep in Red territory.

On This Weak, George Will basically said that the problem in New Orleans is that blacks fuck too much. Or rather, the problem of the “underclass” can be traced to so many “out of wedlock births.” I think it’s pretty clear he wasn’t suggesting that abortions be made available to poor women. (If Bill Clinton thought he neutralized that line with welfare reform, he was sadly mistaken.) As far as the right is concerned, it’s all about that old racist boogeyman “dependency.” Last night on the McLaughlin Group, Pat Buchanan was foaming at the mouth about “the welfare state.” He was in his element, getting his “we’re gonna take our cities block by block” Pitchfork Pat mojo back. These are code words. They aren’t about class — although they will certainly claim that’s what they’re talking about. These are code words for blacks. (And if you want to understand how it’s affected our ability to create a decent liberal government, read this.)

Immigration had already reared its ugly head out of nowhere, and now this. I believe the Republicans already see the elections of 06 and 08 as an opportunity to revert to a tried and true code saturated “law ‘n order” strategy. The War on Terrorism has been losing its juice for sometime — and Iraq is nothing but an embarrassment now. It’s time to go back to what works.

For those who think that we are in a post racist world because George W. Bush appointed blacks to his cabinet, think again. The modern Republican Party was built on the back of an enduring national divide on the issue of race. George Bush may not personally be racist (or more likely not know he’s racist) but the party he leads has depended on it for many years. The coded language that signals tribal ID has obscured it, but don’t kid yourselves. It is a party that became dominant by exploiting the deep cultural fault of the mason dixon line.

I know that people are uncomfortable with this, but that doesn’t make it any less true or relevant. Remember that famous electoral map of 2004:

Here again is that famous map of the slave and free states.

Whether or not you believe that Ohio was overtly stolen, there can be little doubt after reading the Conyers report that African American disenfranchisement likely resulted in that close election going to the Republicans. The same was true in Florida in 2000. Nobody wants to talk about that or deal with it. It interferes with our liberal insistence that all problems must be seen through the prism of class. But white voters have not been systematically disenfranchised, regardless of class, that’s just a fact. And that speaks to the larger issue.

There are strong forces at work that rival economics in people’s minds — tribalism, religion, culture, and tradition all have strong pulls on the human psyche. We are complicated creatures. And the complicated creatures who call ourselves Americans have an issue with race. It’s been there from the beginning of this republic and it affects our political system in profound ways.

In the modern era, the Republicans party has developed a patented technique for exploiting it. It’s been in disuse for the last few years — war superseded their need for it. But, they only have to pull it out of the package, wipe off the filth from the last time they used it and put it back in action.

The good news is that each time they use it; it is less effective than before. Things are improving. Racism is not as immediate for younger people as it once was and the virulent strain is much less potent than it was when I was a kid. On race, this country takes two steps forward one and a half steps back. I’m hopeful that we can eradicate the systemic nature of this illness from our culture over time.

But we aren’t there yet. It was only forty years ago that this country was still living under apartheid. Since then, overt public racism became socially unacceptable. That’s huge and is the reason why, in my opinion,you see so much less of it among the young. But we’ve also seen the Republican Party very deftly develop an alternate language to appeal to those for whom this issue is still very salient — and who talk about it among themselves. That language has helped to remake the map we see above. It’s not a coincidence that the lines that divided the slave, free and “open to slavery” states are the lines that form the political divide today.

In the right wing litany of family values, small government, low taxes, god and guns the missing word is racism. They don’t have to say it. It’s part of all those things.

These last two weeks I’ve heard the old school racists dragging out the “n” word, but they are dying out. We aren’t going to see a lot of that anymore, thank god. But the code words were being slung around more freely than I’ve seen in ages. The first thing I heard out of people’s mouths was that these people had been “irresponsible” for not following the directions they were given. The next thing I heard was that “looters” were taking over the city and they should be shot. Then there was the “why do they have so many kids” and “why can’t they clean up after themselves” and “defecating where they stood.”

I’ve heard all of this before. Just as racist code language sounds sweet and familiar to the true believers, it sets off alarm bells for people like me; when you grow up in a racist household, (just as when you grow up in a black household, I would assume) you know it when you hear it.

And throughout I’ve heard many good people insist that race is not a factor. They seem to think that racism is only defined as an irrational hatred of black people. It’s not. It also manifests itself as an irrational fear of black people.

Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. This slide show of the destruction of the city from the beginning of the hurricane until the photographer managed to finally get out on day four is spectacular. Look all the way through it. It’s great. When he finally realized that he would have to evacuate from the city he went to the convention center with a friend as authorities told him to do. And when he got there he saw long lines of people. This is the caption to his picture:

My jaw dropped and a sudden state of fear grasped my body. However, I maintained utter calmness. It was obvious that they were NOT going to help these people evacuate any time soon. They had been forgotten and obviously and shamelessly ignored. And it was evident that Andy and I were merely two specs of salt in a sea of pepper. Not only would we have to wait forever, but more than anything, we would probably suffer dire conditions after it would be obvious that we wouldn’t “fit in”. It was clear to me that we would have to find another way out. We left the Convention Center and my first intuition is to walk around the city. I wanted to clear my head, but I also had a weird and crazy plan in mind.

This was number 193 out of 197 pictures with captions. In earlier pictures he was pretty judgmental about looters but I thought that he was maybe just a law and order type. He is also Nicaraguan, so I didn’t chalk up his vague condemnation of looters to racism although I’ve known many non-whites who actively dislike black people. And I don’t chalk the above to overt racism. It is, as I’ve pounded the last few days, a sub-conscious fear of the black mob. If you look at that picture (#193) you don’t see a rampaging mob. You see a bunch of black people standing around. He sees their plight. But he also assumes that he is personally in danger because he doesn’t “fit in.” He had been walking around lawless New Orleans taking pictures throughout the crisis and the only time he expressed fear for his personal safety was when something exploded nearby. But when faced with a large group of African Americans he immediately feels terribly threatened. He is proud that he “maintained utter calmness” in the face of it.

That’s subconscious racism. And many white people succumb to it without even knowing what they are doing. The New York Times reported that the Louisiana authorities were “terrified” — just as this guy was frozen with fear. He is not a bad person. Neither are most of the cops or the others who succumbed to this fear. They just do not know themselves. And that lack of self-knowledge ends up coloring their decisions, both political and social, in ways they don’t understand.

The fact is that at this point, white people don’t appear to have been the primary victims of crime during that time. As far as I am able to ascertain, the deaths at the evacuation centers were all black people.

(Incidentally, the weird and crazy plan that this gentleman had was to hotwire a car and drive it out of New Orleans. That is an action that Peggy Noonan and others considered worthy of being shot on the spot. Do you think she would have thought this guy should have been shot?)

If Karl Rove is going back to basics and shoring up the base you’ll hear a lot of talk about Jesus as always. But after Katrina when they rail about traditional values, they will also be talking up the traditional value of southern racism again. The Republican base is that sea of red in the deep south and Karl and his boys are going to have to reassure those people that all this talk about rebuilding and federal money isn’t going to benefit black people at the expense of whites. That’s always been the sticking point.

We can hope that this has a galvanizing effect on the country and that there will be a reckoning for the Republicans. But prepare for the fact that there will also be a reaction. That’s how these things work in Murika.

I wrote some things last year in the wake of the election, when I contemplated that election map that some of you may remember. If you are interested in this subject and you haven’t read them, you might find these posts interesting:

Resentment Tribe
A very old story
It won’t work
More culture war

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