What Makes Racism?
As we approach the mid-term elections, I've had a few thoughts nagging at me regarding the Tea Party movement and the rise in populist anger. The tactics, the anger, the rhetoric has led me to believe that not only is the Tea Party movement racist, but racism is more alive and well in America than any of us suspected.
Many people have claimed that the election of Barack Obama as President proves that racism is dead. We've killed it and moved on. Woo hoo! I think his election has done more to shine the light on racism in this country. The problem is how you define racism.
If you define racism as using racial epithets and systematic discrimination to deny one group of people the same rights as those in power, then racism might be dead.
If you define racism as an unfair, improper, or incorrect categorization of a people in a negative light due to the color of their skin coupled with an attempt (conscious or otherwise) to disenfranchise them from the current political or economic system then racism is alive and well.
While no one is out there using firehoses and dogs to prevent people from voting, there is a giant us versus them undercurrent in American society. White middle class people are angry because they don't have jobs or healthcare benefits. They're in debt and are rightfully fearful of their futures. However, their anger is turned towards African Americans and Latinos. Those people are stealing our rights, our money, our taxes, using up our health benefits, etc. The supposed logic is that by giving minorities or the poor something, you're taking it away from someone who may have earned it (think Medicare).
The problem is that this faulty logic has been extended to assume that:
- Minorities are either in this country illegally or are inherently lazy
- The Other is somehow different and out to get the majority.
Case in point is President Obama. He has fallen victim to both of these points of faulty logic. First the assumption was that the President was not qualified because he was allegedly not born in this country. This was supposed in a number of different ways, including ideas ranging from being born in another country to Hawaii doesn't count as part of the continental United States. At the same time no such controversy was brought up regarding John McCain (to his credit he dispelled the theory publicly), who was born into a military family stationed overseas at the time of his birth.
Once you get past the idea that it is legal for him to be President, the racist logic has to make his ideas foreign and dangerous. Often, the President's policies drew odd comparisons to Nazi ideology. The words "Death Panel," was used to describe his healthcare plan. He is described as socialist, anti-American, non-Christian, etc. He is the Other. As such, conspiracy theories have arisen that President Obama is going to enforce different laws, morals, ideologies, etc. on the United States and fundamentally change everything. The rallying cry used against him and the Democrats is, "Take the country back."
My question is take the country back from whom? As the sign in the photograph claims, there is a sense that some Americans are real and some are not. So-called watchdog groups are going to polling places in the guise of ensuring that all are qualified to vote. However, history has shown us that these tactics are thinly-veiled ploys to intimidate select groups from voting. This week a group of Rand Paul supporters (men) chased down and attacked a protester (a woman). It's been said (and widely accepted) that violence against women by men is really a symptom of sexism.
So this brings me back to my main point, what constitutes racism? This little essay is brief, but my point is you don't have to shout slurs or expect a group of people to drink from different water fountains to be a racist. When a group of older white people (the Tea Party) attacks women, has candidates dress as Nazis (for fun), talks about African American men preferring drug dealing and crime to going to college, uses the idea of personal responsibility to imply that the poor are just lazy, what do you call it? Racism is still racism when it arises from ignorance. The attitudes and damage it does are not as overt, but still exist.
Racism is more than name calling and it's alive and well in this country. Regardless of how loud they shout and protest the label, their attitude and behavior prove that the Tea Party is largely racist.
