The Real Distractions of Trent Lott
Recently a very impoverished set of excuses and defenses has been
offered up on Trent Lott’s behalf. According to Lott’s defenders and
apologists, his critics are “overreacting” and “hurting America”; they
“prevent Americans from focusing on important issues” and “obviously
fail to understand Southern culture” or fail to understand “the
informal context” of Lott’s racist comments.
Lott’s critics would have been accused of race baiting, too, if his
comments hadn’t been so plain and so hateful. Lott’s chief accomplishment
so far is to have been so insensitive, to be so hateful and stupid that it
was impossible for his defenders to accuse his critics of race
baiting. Eventually, even President Bush, who’s never shown the least
interest in opposing racism, had to criticize Trent Lott’s comments, all
while continuing to support Lott as the Senate majority leader.
What lies behind this maddening spasm of unconvincing excuses and empty
defenses is the idea that the material conditions of racism have withered
under the harsh sun of racial reform. Lott and his defenders, indeed most
Republicans and Democrats, suggest that racism is largely, if not entirely
a thing of the past. Have you noticed that prominent white politicians are
comfortable criticizing racism harshly only insofar as everyone consents
to the idea that it’s a thing of the past?
I cannot remember, nor can I imagine a nationally prominent white
politician suggesting that old-fashioned racism (the kind in which white
people enjoy the privileges of discrimination against and social stigma of
non-whites) continues to be a problem in the US. There’s plenty of talk
from Lott and his kind about reverse racism (the idea that non-white
people benefit from being stigmatized and discriminated against), but the
only time they talk about racism is during speeches opposing affirmative
action as outdated and unnecessary.
But the idea that racism has vanished in the US is plainly and dangerously
wrong. According to a New York Times
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December 16th, 2002 at 3:05 pm
“It’s clear that, contrary to the wishful thinking of most white people, including politicians, racism is alive and well in the US, that it harms non-white people’s lives every day, that it benefits white people’s real lives every day.”
While racism, white privilege, and prejudice absolutely serve to benefit white people, I think it is important to stress that they are detrimental to everybody, regardless of their identity. Racism and racial thinking are toxic to society as a whole: they breed hate, social injustice, anger, violence, bitterness, and resentment, which benefit no one. They rob us of our humanity, causing people to think and act in ways which are unquestionably immoral and inhumane.
Racism contributes to and causes many of the daily struggles of people of people of color, but at the same time it has more long-term, profound effects on society at large. The social construction of race has stolen countless peoples’ histories, deprived them of knowledge of their cultures, and flattened the complex dimensions of human diversity. It has made meaningful cross- and inter-cultural interaction virtually impossible.
In today’s world, “multiculturalism” tends to call to mind the “three f’s”: food, fashion, and festival. If these are the only aspects of each others’ cultures that we feel we can safely share, then we are depriving ourselves of a potential ocean of understanding, communication, and interaction.
Perhaps the way to get more white people, politicians and otherwise, to recognize the depth and breadth of racism in our society is to show them how it harms them, too.
December 27th, 2002 at 12:36 pm
Kendall Clark raises claims by others that statist regimes historically have used the expressed goal of antidiscrimination as a means to centralize governmental authority.
I doubt that this is explicitly in the minds of many Americans, but I do not doubt that people unwittingly conflate their diverse views on diverse issues, seeing them all as related and interdependent. Let’s face it, there are many issues that divide Republicans and Democrats and not all of them are racial issues, as the Democratic leadership would have us believe.
The corollary to the claim that the conservative agenda, though not explicitly racist, is merely a set of code-words for racism (”with a wink and a nod”), is the counter-claim that the race card is played by liberals not for racial justice, but as a code-word for the liberal agenda as a whole.
Looking over the NAACP “Report Card” for the 107th Congress, we see that it contains relatively few items that directly address racial justice.
Included was their *opposition* to lower taxes, testing the quality of education in the schools, school choice, charitable funding of religious outreach organizations (such as the SCLC), tort reform, $400 million for upgrading voting machines, welfare reform, and the border security act. In most of the preceding list, the NAACP position is contrary to the interests of Americans who struggle.
Of the elements of the report card that were race-related in any positive way, nearly all were also non-controversial and passed by wide margins. J.C Watts, black congressman from Oklahoma, got an “F” not because he is opposed to racial justice, but because he is conservative. The NAACP’s main objective appears to be to conflate and confuse the political agenda of the radical-left with racial justice.
The sad fact is that the black rank and file have been “hoodwinked” (that’s a pun because the Klan was founded by Democrats and the Democrats continue to support the only former Klansman we have in national elected office) into thinking that such things as educational choice for the poor harm them (the rich already have it), or that the minimum wage laws help them (they were designed by labor unions to keep the non-unionized working poor from competing for union jobs).
The NAACP position on education, against parental choice and testing of progress, but in favor of more money for the existing, failing systems reveals that their alignment is in favor of institutions and unions over interests of the children they claim to serve.
The labor unions to which the NAACP has tied their hopes have a long history of discrimination, in Detroit, where blacks and hispanics comprise about 80% of the population, the construction unions have a mere 3% black and hispanic membership. Unions have pressed for laws such as the Davis-Bacon Act, which were explicitly designed to keep unorganized Southern black laborers from benefitting from federal contracts.
Look at other Democrat programs. How about Social Security. This is our only federal tax that applies in full to the poor, but which has an exemption for *high* incomes! And the NAACP supports this. A person who made $20,000 per year for 40 years gets taxed (with both the explicit and the implicit halves of the tax) about $2500 per year. And does this go into an account for the individual? No. It goes from black wallets into white wallets, since the sad fact is that poor black wage earners are far less likely to live to the retirement age. They pay larger percentages of their incomes into the system, and take out a smaller piece of the pie.
If that retirement nest egg were invested, there is *no time in the history of the US*, including the depression and especially not including any recent years, in which a 40 year diversified investment plan would yield a worse result than Social Security yields.
And with private investment, the resulting funds can be used to create intergenerational wealth, the raison d’etre of Social Security is to force the poor into a cycle of poverty–which Democrats hope will force them into utter dependence on the federal government. The issue is power–Democrats want the politicians to have it, Republicans want the people to have it.
Furthermore, private investment is owned by the investor. The Supreme Court has already ruled [Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960)] that Social Security benefits are subject to the whims of future congresses, and may be taken away. A person who immigrates to work, and then rejoins his native country in retirement, loses all benefits. In the case in question, Nestor lost his benefits after being deported. These quirks happen because the money is owned by the government rather than by the individual. Furthermore, in its current form, the Social Security system is doomed to failure. And yet the Democrats are so power-hungry that they would rather have this than a system that yielded better performance and promoted the accumulation of wealth by the working poor. Even allowing personal retirement investment in government bonds would be better than the system we have today–at least that would create a binding commitment and a transfer of ownership of the funds.
The Republicans have proposed shifting more and more of the tax burden to simple and progressive income taxes. Democrats favor all sorts of hidden taxes, such as corporate taxes, which fall disproportionately on the poor. They know that in a society in which some have more economic power (and choices) than others, that indirect taxes and tax loopholes favor the powerful over the powerless. The income tax is highly progressive, but our tax code as a whole is not, because of these other revenue sources (the Social Security tax being one of the most regressive).
Republicans favor “getting rid of the IRS”, by so simplifying the tax code that it does not involve IRS investigation into personal lives to make sure that only the “right people” get any benefit. When the Democrats talk of “targeted tax cuts”, what they mean is “tax cuts for me and not for thee”.
Poet Maya Angelou once wrote, “So, I’ll believe in Liberal’s aid for us/When I see a white man load a Black man’s gun.” [On Working White Liberals]. Republicans, in supporting the second amendment, have been doing precisely that. Only so much injustice will be tolerated by the armed masses, who when sufficiently oppressed have little to lose through conflict. The NAACP, despite the history of an armed white (and solidly Democrat) political establishment terrorizing a disarmed black community, supports measures that disarm blacks.
Ed Gordon must have shocked Trent Lott when he asked about his vote against the “Voting Rights Extension Act of 1992″. Lott seemed not to remember. Small wonder, this was a matter that did not come up for a vote in the Senate. It was not major civil rights legislation. It was a small measure calling for increasing fees for paid witnesses, that was also tabled in the Democrat-controlled House, where it was introduced. A Republican-sponsored amendment (McCollum) to make it actually strengthen the anti-racism provisions of the Voting Rights Act was defeated in that body.
Gordon was probably thinking of the Voting Rights Language Assistance Act of 1992, which Lott voted against despite its being endorsed by President Bush. I don’t know why Lott voted against the act, which expanded the multilanguage voting provisions to groups that didn’t rise to the 5% of population standard of the 1965 Act (primarily to include languages other than English and Spanish, which generally get in under the 5% rule of the 1965 act).
However poor blacks are disadvantaged by multilanguage programs, which are designed to make it easier for new immigrants to compete for low-income jobs (higher-income jobs in our society tend to require English). I disagree with the English-only legislative position, but it does not disparage blacks.
Kendall Clark’s reference to Bertrand and Mullainatan’s job applicant experiment is interesting. Is this really the best hard evidence he could find of racism in the US? The results of the study were not nearly as clear as Clark maintains, for example people named LeRoy or Jermaine were more likely to be called for interviews than people named Neil, Geoffrey, Brett, Brendan, Greg, Todd, or Matthew. People named Kenya, Latonya, or Ebony were more likely to be called than people named Emily or Anne.
And although the study may reveal racism in hiring practices, the link between this and Republican policies (nor even Trent Lott’s policies) is nowhere made. I am happy to accept that there are differences of opinion on how to best achieve racial justice–however, despite the race-card rhetoric of Democrats, the record of the Republican Party has always been, and remains, good by comparison.
On CNN recently, Democrat Cogressman Gregory Meeks described in apparent horror seeing what he described as campaign literature with a picture of a black family and the words “If they win, we lose.” What he did not say was that this was Democrat-sponsored literature, in favor of the Democrat running in Georgia. This is entirely typical behavior–to blame Republicans for that which the Democrats have created.
If you believe that black people are not owed the respect that they should be allowed to decide for themselves how to educate their children, how to manage their retirement accounts, should not be allowed to own firearms, etc. then vote Democrat. Keep ‘em uneducated, inter-generationally poor, and unarmed–come to think of it, on these issues the Democrats haven’t changed much since the days when they created the Confederate Flag.
September 8th, 2003 at 5:00 pm
I’m trying to locate an article or study that deals with european tourism to the US and immigration. There was an article in the Source magazine some 6-7 years ago that discussed the lack of discussion/focus/media attention on european immigration numbers being cloaked under the guise of tourism. Interesting issue that I never thought about. The researcher-writer was from a university in Texas and, again, the article was in a hip-hop magazine called the Source.
Thanks,
Mike Leslie
Labor Studies Center
Wayne State University
313-577-2195