Dr. Laura All N-Words and Miscegenation

Adam Serwer in The American Prospect writes:

In actuality, it's the rest of her rant that drips with racial animus. To recap: Dr. Laura immediately dismisses her caller's problems, uses a racist joke to prove her non-racism, insists that black people voted for Obama over nothing but racial solidarity (as if pre-Obama, African Americans never voted for Democrats), strongly resents the fact that "black guys" can use the "N-word" but she can't, and declares that "If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry outside of your race." Dr. Laura isn't known for her sensitivity, but this is an impressive display of raw racial resentment.

Brace(d) for the Race-Baiting

Slate magazine discusses the upcoming race-baiting expected this fall during the 2010 mid-term elections.

As Rachel Maddow discussed on David Letterman last night - race-baiting works.



And from Maddow's blog this morning, a story about a a shooting game at a Catholic carnival involving a cardboard black man holding a document that says "Health Bill."

Frame-Flipping

Well worth the full read. Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic on the NAACP condemnation of racism in the Tea Party movement:

The NAACP's announcement initially struck me in much the same the way. But some hours of considering this have proven to me that my initial skepticism says more about the broad American narrative of race and racism, then it does about the justness of the NAACP's charge.

I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.

"Thank God for Slavery"

Judy Thomas' piece in the Kansas City Star on racism in the Tea Party movement is a MUST-READ.

For many tea partiers, racism is in the eye of the beholder.

Take Ron Wight, who stood with dozens of tea party activists at the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain in April, complaining about the Obama administration, its socialist agenda and being called a racist.

Those like him who complain about President Barack Obama are accused of racism, lamented the semi-retired music teacher from Lee’s Summit.

Then he added: “If I was a black man, I’d get down on my knees and thank God for slavery. Otherwise, I could be dying of AIDS now in Africa.”

Wight doesn’t consider that comment to be racist.

“I wish slavery had never happened,” he said. “But there are some black people alive today who have never suffered one day what the people who were black went through in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. Has somebody said something stupid or done something stupid? Yes, there have been incidents.

“But with everything that has been done in this country legally and socially for the black man, it’s almost like they’ve been given a great leg up.”