by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n The charge of racism has been leveled against critics of President Obama\u2019s healthcare reform by everyone from\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnists, racial activists, and Democratic legislators to senior statesmen like Jimmy Carter (\u201cIt\u2019s a racist attitude\u201d), Bill Clinton (\u201csome . . . are racially prejudiced\u201d), and Walter Mondale (\u201cI don\u2019t want to pick a person [and] say, \u2018He\u2019s a racist,\u2019 but I do think the way they\u2019re piling on Obama\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0I think I see an edge in them that\u2019s a little bit different\u201d).<\/p>\n But are Obama\u2019s critics really racists?<\/p>\n It is a serious charge. If true, it means the hope of a color-blind society is essentially over after a half-century of civil-rights progress. If false, it means that we have institutionalized vicious smears as legitimate political tactics \u2014 and, in the process, discredited the entire dialogue that surrounds racial prejudice.<\/p>\n How do we determine the accuracy of the \u201cracism\u201d charges?<\/p>\n 1) Is\u00a0the criticism of Barack Obama unusual by recent presidential standards?<\/em><\/p>\n No. Bush hatred was even more intense. Furthermore, it very soon went from fierce partisanship into a deviant desire for the president\u2019s injury or death. Such derangement was tolerated or indeed enhanced by mainstream liberal establishment figures.<\/p>\n Alfred A. Knopf published a novel speculating about killing the president. The Toronto Film Festival gave a prize to a docudrama about an envisioned assassination of George W. Bush. His death became the stuff of a New York play, the dream of a\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0columnist, and a common theme in the left-wing blogosphere.<\/p>\n A certain amount of this kind of venom was evident in the opposition to Bill Clinton, who was accused of everything from covering up murders to being a serial rapist. By any fair standard, nothing so far in the healthcare pushback has approached the smears and dirt directed at Presidents Bush and Clinton.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0Is there a systematic racialist attack on other black politicians and leaders?<\/em><\/p>\n No. Gov. David\u00a0Paterson of New York, for example, alleges a new racism as the chief cause of his own decline. But it is President Obama himself, not white racists, who is pressuring Paterson not to run for reelection.<\/p>\n Charles Rangel cited racism for much of the public outrage over his behavior. But clearly his problems were caused by his own tax fraud, inability to tell the truth, and violations of ethical standards \u2014 which would have destroyed most other politicians long ago. There may well be some racially motivated criticism of prominent at-risk black politicians, but so far there is no evidence that anything other than their own actions accounts for their political troubles.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0Is President Obama\u2019s agenda, or Obama himself, the problem?<\/em><\/p>\n Barack Obama could not have been elected without millions of white voters, coupled with a near-monolithic black base. To believe that innate racism has caused many of the millions who voted for him spontaneously to withdraw their support makes no sense.<\/p>\n Take moderates and independents who were once strong Obama supporters. Why would someone vote for a black man, then\u00a0eight months later decide that he could not support a black man? Clearly, Obama\u2019s problems derive not from his race, but from his radical agenda for out-of-sight government spending, high taxes, mega-deficits, nationalized healthcare, cap-and-trade, and an apologetic foreign policy.<\/p>\n In this regard, imagine two counterfactuals:<\/p>\n a) Had Obama delayed his liberal initiatives and first devoted his attention to controlling federal spending, winning in Afghanistan, and balancing the budget, would his polls have dropped to near 50 percent? (President Clinton\u2019s own up-and-down experience between 1993 and 1996 is instructive here.)<\/p>\n b) Should Obama now escalate in Afghanistan, delay his liberal agenda, and balance the federal budget, would not more of his criticism come from the Left \u2014 and if so, would it then be considered racist? If a protester at an anti-war march carried a sign that read, \u201cI love Afghanistan \u2014 Bomb Chicago!\u201d would that be racist?<\/p>\n Indeed, Obama\u2019s adherence to the Patriot Act, renditions, wiretaps, intercepts, tribunals, Predator attacks, and the Petraeus plan in Iraq \u2014 and his inability to close Guantanamo on his promised one-year date \u2014 have already incurred furor from the hard Left. But again, will that growing anger be termed racially motivated?<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0Has the Right recently been more racially conscious in its attacks than has the Left?<\/em><\/p>\n Not really. We forget that the left-wing blogosphere savaged Michael Steele in racialist terms when he was running for the Senate from Maryland. Harry Belafonte \u2014 to the silence of the Left \u2014 called Secretary of State Colin Powell a house slave. No one on the Left objected to the racist cartoons, both here in the United States and abroad in the Arab world, caricaturing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Much of the liberal hostility against Clarence Thomas suggested in thinly disguised terms that he was an unqualified beneficiary of affirmative action. The assumption is that the heartless Right is guilty of racism unless proven innocent, while the utopian, humanitarian Left could not possibly resort to racist attacks for partisan advantage. So far Barack Obama has seen less virulent opposition than what Alberto Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice, or Michael Steele faced.<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0Is racial polarization more pronounced among whites or among blacks?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Here there seems no general trend of racial animosity by any particular group. The occasional over-the-top sign at a tea party, or right-wing minor official who crosses the line, seems balanced by prominent blacks who talk in racially oriented terms. Obama himself has stereotyped whites in Pennsylvania in quasi-racist terms, and has employed banalities like \u201ctypical white person.\u201d The most prominent racist in the United States currently may well be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the president\u2019s own former pastor, who has insulted in racist fashion whites in general, Jews, Italians, and just about everyone other than African-Americans.<\/p>\n When Eric Holder called his fellow citizens \u201ccowards,\u201d his comments were understood to have been directed at white America\u2019s unwillingness to discuss race on his terms. Green-jobs czar Van Jones promiscuously threw around the terms \u201cwhites\u201d and \u201cwhite people,\u201d associating them with polluters and high-school mass murderers. Again, there seems no greater white propensity for using stereotypes. Bill Clinton, husband of the current Secretary of State, now points to a white propensity to play a racial card against President Obama; last year, Bill Clinton, husband of Obama rival Hillary Clinton, charged that candidate Obama himself had \u201cplayed the race card\u201d on him.<\/p>\n 6)\u00a0Are there trends in the general society that suggest a new racial polarization?<\/em><\/p>\n Again, not really. Recently a number of high-profile controversies may have had racial overtones, but they did not suggest a pre-existing climate of white racism. Had a white counterpart of Professor Gates insulted a black arresting police officer, made a pejorative reference to \u201cyour mama,\u201d and then counted on his friendship with a white president for support, there might have followed charges of racism. Had a white country-and-western singer grabbed the microphone from a diminutive 18-year-old black gospel singer to announce to a national television audience that another white country-and-western singer was more deserving of the award, there could well have been charges of racism leveled. And had a marquee white tennis player lost her cool, charged a small Asian line judge, and threatened her person, there might well have been charges of racism. In all these and other lurid news stories splashed about on YouTube (cf. the bus attack by several black youths against a white passenger), there has not been much of a larger reaction along racial lines that suggests either that whites or blacks in general are racist, or that either group thinks the other is.<\/p>\n In short, there is little, if any, evidence that the millions of voters who are losing confidence in the president are doing so for racist reasons. But there is a great deal of evidence that his own extremist positions on spending, government, taxes, foreign policy, and healthcare, along with a few high-profile, out-of-the-mainstream appointments, have convinced many Americans that Obama, like the Bill Clinton of 1993, is not the moderate voice he appeared to be during the campaign, but a partisan ideologue racing to expand the government before his popular support collapses.<\/p>\n So why is the faux charge of \u201cracist\u201d so freely bandied about \u2014 given that polls suggest it is a losing tactic for liberals?<\/p>\n The most obvious reason is that a popular president believed he could enact an unpopular agenda on the basis of his own magnetic personality. When he discovered that he could not \u2014 and in the process revealed a pattern of partisanship and intolerance \u2014 some of his diehard supporters were flabbergasted by the turn of events and resorted in desperation to the \u201cracist\u201d charge to regain sympathy for both their cause and their president.<\/p>\n Second, liberals never envisioned that they would so quickly regain the House and Senate, as well as the presidency \u2014 partly through tough invective and a demonization of both George W. Bush and a Republican \u201cculture of corruption.\u201d Their noble ends were felt to justify their often over-the-top rhetoric. Now they most surely do not wish the same level of street invective legitimized and used against themselves. \u201cRacist!\u201d then serves as a preemptive firewall against possible conflagrations to come.<\/p>\n Third, there is an almost hysterical fear that \u201cRacist!\u201d has lost all currency as an effective political tool. Indeed, the charge has been rendered almost meaningless by the frequency of its use and the rarity of its accuracy. Counterintuitively, some believe the more the discredited charge is repeated, the more likely it might be to regain its prior effectiveness.<\/p>\n Thousands on the left, both black and white, have for decades invested in the notion of ubiquitous racism that must be addressed by either material or psychic reparations. At risk now with the discrediting of the charge are government-mandated quotas and affirmative action, and indeed the postmodern gospel that oppressed people of color could not, de facto, ever be racist themselves. If charges of racism no longer end the discussion, by sidetracking the accused into first proving his long record of racial tolerance, then the political atmospherics may well be altered.<\/p>\n Polls show that the public does not believe criticism of Obama to be racially motivated, and further that the majority has become exasperated at the tired charge. What we are seeing, then, in the latest hysterical resort to \u201cRacist!\u201d is a growing realization not only that this once-effective scapegoating has become obsolete, but that it has become a boomeranging liability for all who employ it.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Criticisms of Obama are increasingly met by cries of “Racist!” Are his critics racists? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The charge of racism has been leveled against critics of President Obama\u2019s healthcare reform by everyone from\u00a0New York Times\u00a0columnists, racial activists, and Democratic legislators to senior statesmen like Jimmy Carter (\u201cIt\u2019s a racist attitude\u201d), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[651],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ae","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2266,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-devolving-depressing-and-debased-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":2246,"position":0},"title":"A Devolving, Depressing, and Debased Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Policies No, Obama Maybe\u2026 Barack Obama is charismatic. He can charm, and has mastered the art of set cadence, pause, articulation, and voice modulation, in the manner of a JFK. He has appeared on television far more in nine months than have prior presidents\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":151,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-racial-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":2246,"position":1},"title":"The New Racial Derangement Syndrome","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is a different sort of racialist derangement spreading in the country \u2014 and it is getting ugly. 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In the midst of his loud opposition, he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Pool Image\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/pic_relatedBW_033115_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1183,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bering-there-the-obama-sequel\/","url_meta":{"origin":2246,"position":4},"title":"Being There–the Obama Sequel","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Rip Van Obama President Obama went into a deep slumber in December. 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Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}