End of Racism

The End of Racism:

Jake Tapper is not happy:

There's a lot of racist xenophobic crap out there. But not only has McCain not peddled any of it, he's condemned it.

Back in February, McCain apologized for some questionable comments made by a local radio host. In April, he condemned the North Carolina Republican Party's ad featuring images of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

With one possible exception, I've never seen McCain or those under his control playing the race card or making fun of Obama's name -- or even mentioning Obama's full name, for that matter!

(The one exception was in March when McCain suspended a low-level campaign staffer for sending out to a small group of friends a link to a video that attempts to tie Obama not only to Wright but to the black power movement, rappers Public Enemy and Malcolm X.)

...

I've seen racism in campaigns before -- I've seen it against Obama in this campaign (more from Democrats than Republicans, at this point, I might add) and I've seen it against McCain in South Carolina in 2000, when his adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget was alleged, by the charming friends and allies of then-Gov. George W. Bush, to have been a McCain love-child with an African-American woman.

What I have not seen is it come from McCain or his campaign in such a way to merit the language Obama used today. Pretty inflammatory.

Ed Morissey agrees:

I warned about this over a month ago, when Obama first accused McCain of racism without any evidence whatsoever. The McCain campaign has exercised considerable restraint in its choice of criticisms, frustrating some Republicans over his refusal to even mention the Jeremiah Wright debacle. It has roundly condemned other Republicans who have tried to use that argument in an attempt to show good faith in this electoral cycle, and the only payback McCain has received is to be called a racist anyway.

I agree that the Celeb commercial is pretty weak, but if it’s racist, then Obama has defined the term so far downward as to have no meaning at all.

Cassandra scoffs at the attempt to call 'racism':

Yessir, there is nothing like a little honest dialog about race relations in America to dispel all that wrong/bad tension between blacks and whites. Because the Other Side, you know, they operate from the Politics of Fear. And the only way to combat the Divisive Fear and Hate perpetrated by those hateful, divisive fear mongers who keep dragging race into this campaign even though I'd prefer not to mention it is by constantly reminding you of Fear and Race. Because we all know that any criticism of Me during a hotly contested political campaign can only be based on 400 years of simmering racism.

And Professor Reynolds notes:

I imagine that we'll see a lot of this kind of thing if Obama is elected President. And perhaps the best reason to vote against Obama is to spare the country an administration that reflexively characterizes any criticism as racist.

It occurs to me that this -- if not quite a reason to vote for Sen. Obama -- could be a major consolation prize if he is elected. It's already the case in America that "racism" has gone from actual racism -- I remember the KKK passing out their literature on the courthouse square when I was a boy -- to "institutional" racism. "Institutional" racism is combatted in this country via a huge arrangement of what are meant to be counterbalances, but which are now the only way in which race is openly considered. Thus, the only formal recognition of race in society is designed to redound to the benefit of minorities.

This is a rhetorical shift in the same direction as the shift we've already made politically: racism as a concept is being emptied of meaning, except as a hedge for those groups once disadvantaged. What does it mean? Anything. Therefore, nothing. The McCain campaign is guilty of racism even if they can only be suspected of having subconscious impulses that might have possibly informed an ad they put out; even if they strictly forbid actual racism; even if they squash attempts at legitimate criticism that might make an issue of race; even if they have been subject to actual racism themselves, in an earlier day, and learned to despise it.

Therefore, they must always be guilty of racism; and therefore, racism is not a charge to be taken seriously. It is instead a condition -- like the necessity of having oxygen around to breathe -- that you simply accept and ignore as a basic feature of reality.

Once we get there, the advantage of raising charges of "racism!" will wane to the point that it will likely go away. Four years of a President Obama waving the flag over every criticism will probably do it for most of America; the holdouts will find their currency so debased that, though they may continue to try and spend it, it will buy them little.

Thus we might really "hope" to "end racism" through President Obama after all. Middle Americans, to the degree that they are conscious of race -- the younger generations seems much less so even than mine, and mine far less than the one before -- already think of it only in terms of ameliorating the harm of historic racism. When people become convinced that the charge is finally empty, we may at last walk away from this most poisonous of weeds.