uncivic meetings
We of the political left and middle are increasingly exhorted to acknowledge a painful truth: the bizarre public ‘debate’ over health care, its shockingly disingenuous claims and scarily angry town hall shouters, all reflects a deep undercurrent of racism in American society. It’s not us, of course; we’re not the racists. It’s them. Those people. They are the racists. The ones who turn town halls into personal echo chambers. They are racists. Not us.
This suggestion - emanating from such dispassionate analysts as Paul Krugman and Cynthia Tucker - bears so many familiar marks of self-comfort and expectation-confirmation that we should in fact be very, very wary. The thought seems simple enough: those people (not us) can’t handle the idea of a black president, but don’t want to openly admit their racism - perhaps even to themselves - and so they channel it towards ridiculous stories about death panels and incoherent rants against socialism. They have no real problem with health care reform - they just find it terrifying because of its association with Barack Obama, whom they find terrifying because he is black. They (not us) are racists.
Are there some racists among the town hall mobs? Yes, of course. There are also racists at the opera, and racists in the Democratic Congressional Caucus, and racists at your family reunion. Without a doubt, it’s worrisome that the crazy town hall phenomenon seems to have provided opportunities for rare public expression of possibly racist sentiment. Yet a handful of nasty incidents simply does not give good grounds for concluding that most members of the angry town mobs are motivated by deep racism, or that opposition to Obama’s drive for health care reform is really just a covert enactment of anxiety at a black president.
If we make such facile assumptions, we fail in two ways. First, we fail internally: we pander to our own ugly sense of superiority. The people who disagree with us, they cannot have good ideas, for they are not us! In fact, they can’t even have real ideas at all - their alleged views on public policy are mere camouflage for their vile prejudices. In opposing such people, we show ourselves to be reasonable and tolerant. (cf. Liz Lemon: “[white guilt] is to be used only for good, like overtipping and supporting Barack Obama.”) We certainly needn’t engage in any reflection on the values animating the opposing side, for plainly there can be none - racism has no value!
Second, we risk failing externally, in alienating those we accuse of racism and thereby making any sort of civic peace that much more difficult. Accusing someone of racism does not promote discussion - it ends discussion. Add to this the outrageous condescension in diagnosing an opponent’s avowed views as mere unwitting diversion, and it should be no surprise that they might be unable to see in us anything like tolerance or reasonableness. That many of the town hall screamers are so obviously destroying careful deliberation provides us justification to do the same only under the most ‘but they inhibited civic discourse first!’ playground mentality.
We need to abandon this meme, and quickly. Are some of the people who scream about Barack Obama’s socialist plan to destroy our country driven by secret racism? Yes. But it’s likely that most are merely expressing the familiar opportunistic paranoia that had Bill Clinton executing Vince Foster and that turned the phrase ‘swift boat’ into a verb. (And that finds its precise ideological counterpart in recent years’ imputation of fascism to George W. Bush.)
Some small portion of vocal health care reform opponents are racists. Some are lunatics. Some are cynical liars. But the bulk are our fellow citizens, who happen to sincerely hold values divergent from our own, however inchoate their expression may be at times. In contentedly assuming their motives dark, we show them disrespect, do a disservice to civic discourse, and - perhaps worst of all - delude ourselves in righteous comparison. It is just too happy a coincidence that the people who happen to disagree with us on an issue unconnected to race also happen to all be closet racists.
This suggestion - emanating from such dispassionate analysts as Paul Krugman and Cynthia Tucker - bears so many familiar marks of self-comfort and expectation-confirmation that we should in fact be very, very wary. The thought seems simple enough: those people (not us) can’t handle the idea of a black president, but don’t want to openly admit their racism - perhaps even to themselves - and so they channel it towards ridiculous stories about death panels and incoherent rants against socialism. They have no real problem with health care reform - they just find it terrifying because of its association with Barack Obama, whom they find terrifying because he is black. They (not us) are racists.
Are there some racists among the town hall mobs? Yes, of course. There are also racists at the opera, and racists in the Democratic Congressional Caucus, and racists at your family reunion. Without a doubt, it’s worrisome that the crazy town hall phenomenon seems to have provided opportunities for rare public expression of possibly racist sentiment. Yet a handful of nasty incidents simply does not give good grounds for concluding that most members of the angry town mobs are motivated by deep racism, or that opposition to Obama’s drive for health care reform is really just a covert enactment of anxiety at a black president.
If we make such facile assumptions, we fail in two ways. First, we fail internally: we pander to our own ugly sense of superiority. The people who disagree with us, they cannot have good ideas, for they are not us! In fact, they can’t even have real ideas at all - their alleged views on public policy are mere camouflage for their vile prejudices. In opposing such people, we show ourselves to be reasonable and tolerant. (cf. Liz Lemon: “[white guilt] is to be used only for good, like overtipping and supporting Barack Obama.”) We certainly needn’t engage in any reflection on the values animating the opposing side, for plainly there can be none - racism has no value!
Second, we risk failing externally, in alienating those we accuse of racism and thereby making any sort of civic peace that much more difficult. Accusing someone of racism does not promote discussion - it ends discussion. Add to this the outrageous condescension in diagnosing an opponent’s avowed views as mere unwitting diversion, and it should be no surprise that they might be unable to see in us anything like tolerance or reasonableness. That many of the town hall screamers are so obviously destroying careful deliberation provides us justification to do the same only under the most ‘but they inhibited civic discourse first!’ playground mentality.
We need to abandon this meme, and quickly. Are some of the people who scream about Barack Obama’s socialist plan to destroy our country driven by secret racism? Yes. But it’s likely that most are merely expressing the familiar opportunistic paranoia that had Bill Clinton executing Vince Foster and that turned the phrase ‘swift boat’ into a verb. (And that finds its precise ideological counterpart in recent years’ imputation of fascism to George W. Bush.)
Some small portion of vocal health care reform opponents are racists. Some are lunatics. Some are cynical liars. But the bulk are our fellow citizens, who happen to sincerely hold values divergent from our own, however inchoate their expression may be at times. In contentedly assuming their motives dark, we show them disrespect, do a disservice to civic discourse, and - perhaps worst of all - delude ourselves in righteous comparison. It is just too happy a coincidence that the people who happen to disagree with us on an issue unconnected to race also happen to all be closet racists.