Monday, September 14, 2009

WHAT OBAMA AND ALL OF US MUST LEARN CONCERNING REACTIONARIES AND RACISTS

There can be no meeting of the minds between people of good will and haters! All the intellectual arguments, all the emotional testimonies, all the rationality in the world is transcended by those for whom hate and deep-seated prejudices are their major motivators, and for whom appealing to the hate that lies in the human heart is politically and/or materially profitable.

Just listen to the most popular radio talk shows; just listen to sermons in most of the institutional Church that deal with LGBT issues!

As you know, I'm no fan of Obama, although I voted for him as being what I thought was the lesser of two evils.

However, much of the antipathy directed to him and to his programs by many Reactionaries is, in my opinion, largely racially motivated, and that thesis must be surfaced lest it be submerged under rhetoric that sanitizes and masks the true reasons for the heat from those Reactionaries and racists that he and his family have had to withstand since he decided to run for the office of President, and that continues to this day.

In my opinion, when I hear some radio talk show hosts say, "We must take our country back," that is mere code for, "Let's get a white man back in the President's office."

Certainly conservative media is stoking the flames. Fox News' Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Laura Ingraham, for example, have for months been ratcheting up the racist and cold war sentiment on their programs, suggesting that the president and his supporters vacillate between hating white people and fomenting socialist revolution.

Even as President Obama tries to strike a middle ground on health care and the high school address, conservative talk show hosts, bloggers and some elected officials continue to escalate the antagonism, hostility and name calling (demonizing the president as Hitler and his team as communists, socialists, and Marxists).

These voices daily are helping to nurture an atmosphere of racial confrontation and in the process bring the hatred above ground.
[See here.]

Let me be clear, I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that white people in general are racists. What I am suggesting is that a majority of those hostile to minorities in power and specifically a black man as President mostly reside in the “base” of the GOP. These are people who regularly watch people like Glen Beck, listen to people like Rush Limbaugh, and read people like Ann Coulter. By the way, I’m not suggesting that all their supporters are racist either, but let’s not play dumb either. They know, just like GOP strategists know, that if they want to sell books, drive up ratings, make money, or create political havoc for Democrats and the President, all they have to do is feed this group coded language and innuendo’s that allow them and give them the talking points that will ensure that they can say what they really feel without just plainly stating the obvious: “We don’t want and don’t like the fact that a black guy is the President” so they hide behind ridiculous issues and pretend that’s not the case, but it’s quite obvious what’s going on here....

What are all these chants about wanting their country back, from whom we should reply? A black man stole “their” country, that’s what they mean. In “their” country, Presidents should look like them, it’s really that simple when you get down to the bottom of it. In “their” country, they don’t have to accept that one day soon they will not be the majority. Deep down at the core, is their primal fear of genetic annihilation, the fear that their whiteness will give way to more people of color in both the world as a whole but particularly in this nation and in power. It’s akin to a mental illness if you ask me, because the God of whom I believe, revealed that He created us in different hues and tongues so that we may know one another and celebrate our diversity as a gift from the divine that also bears testimony to the greatness of His creation. But when your fears are rooted in being afraid of other because they don’t look, act, or believe as you do, then in my humble opinion you are against God and following the path of Satan....

Think about this for a minute: Obama wants to tell kids to stay in school and white parents who no doubt support the GOP are taking their kids out of school! Why? Because they are “afraid” that Obama will say something to their kids other than what he and past Presidents have normally said, such as stay in school!!!!! It would be funny if it were not sad. I wish we really had true journalism that would call this what it is. Let’s be real, they don’t want their kids to be faced with the reality of a black man as President in an environment where their careful coaching will be absent. Obama represents the reality that many of them still have not faced and refuse to accept. The reality that black men can and have been more than criminals, thugs, etc. The reality that black men can and have been good parents, educated, successful, and in this case ascending to the highest office in the land. How dare their kids be exposed to such vile things and hearing vile messages, that if given by any other President (white of course) like in the past, no one would bat an eye.


[Please read the full article here.]

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
[See here for a good Op Ed piece by Maureen Dowd.]

The value of understanding the hateful, and usually intractable, underpinnings of rhetoric from racists and/or Reactionaries can teach us at least five very important lessons.

Those lessons are:

1. Racism's (and, of course, homophobia's) ugly face must be exposed every chance we get.
2. We cannot and must not cozy up to Reactionaries and racists, people of ill will, and falsely think that we can come to any meeting of the minds.
3. Obama and all ethnic minorities must come to realize that those who are racists, who hate them because of the mere color of their skins, are cut from the same bolt of cloth (and are usually one and the same) as those who seek to deprive LGBT people of full and equal civil rights.
4. Ethnic minorities who in any way seek to deprive LGBT people of equal civil rights are akin to White Supremacists, and are aligning themselves with many of the very people who resent, if not despise, them.
5. LGBT people, allies, and all people of good will must fight for full equality for LGBT people, so that they are no longer viewed and treated as second-class citizens, deprived of any of the civil rights that heterosexuals enjoy.

It would be good for President Obama and for LGBT people if Obama learned and took these lessons to heart, the lessons that racism and homophobia are two sides of the xenophobic coin, and assertively acted on them, so that equal rights for LGBT people would that much sooner become a reality!
Share |

2 comments:

genevieve said...

Another point is that in 1972, I think it was H.R. Haldeman who labeled black people as criminals.I still old that against the Republican Party. Another thing is that this is my country, too. Beside my African-American heritage I am also part Choctaw. This side of my ancestors had their land stolen from them.

Jerry Maneker said...

Hi genevieve: Any minority group member who aligns him/herself with those who oppress one or more other minority groups, is a very limited human being who "doesn't get it." He/she is aligning him/herself with the very people and mind-sets that historically (and even contemporarily) despised him/her and who are merely using that person for their own nefarious purposes.

The lynch mob mentality as represented by White Supremacists and the attempted genocide of Native Americans represented the same mind-set as reflected in much of the hateful rhetoric of "religious" and secular homophobes. Best wishes, Jerry.