Entry tags:	political-ish
Crossposts:	http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/1118961.html

In the past two weeks or so, there have been a rather astonishing number of blatant examples of racism in public/political discourse. I just sort of cringed at the first couple, but they snowballed - and I can only assume they'll increase heading in to the November 2010 elections, just as they did during the 2008 election season.

I don't even have anything particular to say about these incidents, and you've probably already seen most of them around, one way or the other. All I can really do is offer a horrified link-roundup.



As almost everyone on my FList/Dwircle has noted, science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon - guest-of-honor for the next Wiscon - has written an ode to the importance of Muslim assimilation (and deleted all comments when, shockingly, people disagreed with her - including, among other things, correcting her appalling ignorance about the thing that is not a mosque scheduled to be built at a place that is not Ground Zero).

But Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, apparently shares her views:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Don't worry, though. He's apologized for suggesting that any group should be denied First Amended protections.

Moving on -

The cover story of the latest issue of Forbes is an article by Dinesh D'Souza purporting to demonstrate that President Obama's otherwise-incomprehensible political priorities can, in fact, be traced to the anticolonial Kenyan politics of his father. In the words of David Frum, "When last was there such a brazen outburst of race-baiting in the service of partisan politics at the national level? George Wallace took more care to sound race-neutral."

The shocking thing to me about this isn't that D'Souza wrote it - fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly - but that Forbes made it a cover story. Happily, here's the Economist:

I DON'T find it at all difficult to understand how Barack Obama thinks, because most of his beliefs are part of the broad consensus in America's centre or centre-left: greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, universal health insurance, financial-reform legislation, repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and so forth. Dinesh D'Souza, on the other hand, appears to have met so few Democrats in recent decades that he finds such views shocking, and thinks they can only be explained by the fact that Mr Obama's father was a Kenyan government economist who pushed for a non-aligned stance in the Cold War during the 1960s-70s.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

For a less, uhh, polite take on President Obama, you can turn to the emails of the newly-minted, Tea-Party backed GOP candidate for New York Governor. Or you can enjoy this Tea Party parade float. Don't look without a strong stomach.

And here's a picture from a cocktail party hosted by the National Federation of Republican Women in a Charleston country club. They called it "The Southern Experience."

Haley Barbour, Republican Governor of Mississippi, has his own recollection of the South. He recounts what it was like to attend Ole Miss in 1965, during the period of forced integration. He claims that by the time he attended school, race was no longer an issue, no one thought twice about it, and he even copied notes from the black woman who sat next to him in class. That woman, Verna Bailey, recalls things a little differently:

"I don't remember him at all, no, because during that time that certainly wasn't a pleasant experience for me," she said. "My interactions with white people were very, very limited. Very, very few reached out at all."

She recalled dancing in Oxford Square once with another black student at a school celebration when a crowd of whites began pelting them with coins and beer. "It was just an awful experience. I just saw this mass of anger; anger and hostility. I thought my life was going to end."

A campus minister, one of the only whites she remembers showing her kindness, took her by the hand and led her to safety. She said the minister was ostracized.

During her undergraduate days, she was inundated with intimidating phone calls to her dorm from white men. "The calls were so constant," she said. "Vulgar, all sexual connotations, saying nigger bitches needed to go back to the cotton field and things of that nature." She'd complain, have the phone number changed. Then the calls would start again. Funeral wreaths with what appeared to be animal blood on them were found outside her dorm.

In one science class in a lecture hall, no one would sit near her. The only class in which she remembers alphabetized seating was a Spanish class where the teacher seemed empathetic to her. Bailey figured that was because the teacher was from South America, not Mississippi.

But out of all of this, you know what really had my jaw dropping? It was some new-to-me background about Arizona's immigrant-racial-profiling law. I'd always known that the law was drafted and promoted by a white supremacist group. What I did not know was that the bill was also supported by America's private prison industry, which directly profits by populating immigrant detention centers - and is lobbying for similar laws in other states.

But honestly? I don't even know why I was surprised. Scratch any of this, and that's what you'll always, always find.

Elections are about a month and a half away. Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night.