Utah Savage: And They Say It Isn't Racism

Friday, September 25, 2009

And They Say It Isn't Racism

6 comments:

Grayquill said...: The speaker seems very invested in keeping racism as a tool in his tool box. Some truth but mostly huge generalities made from a few extremists. I think he became in his talk the one he speaks against.; September 26, 2009 at 1:19 AM
themom said...: I saw a little of what Graquill mentions...but the general premise is the point. I get more and more frustrated by those who state that this is NOT a racial environment. I beg to differ, and believe just about all the rethuglian mechanics of the moment are all to "stonewall the black man." When will this mentality go away? Not in my lifetime I'm afraid.; September 26, 2009 at 7:02 AM
jadedj said...: If you scream a lie often enough, it becomes the truth...in the right wing world. Fuck em.; September 26, 2009 at 7:52 AM
Unknown said...: I heard and understood some truth when what the speaker is saying.

Regarding racism toward Obama, of course it exists. There will always be a batch of ring-wing racist dingbats out there.; September 26, 2009 at 10:38 AM
Ghost Dansing said...: for pete's sake.... we're talking about the rump core constituency of the Party that has been using the "Southern Strategy" for the last 30 years....

As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to Political Scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' book The Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005 edition of the New York Times. Atwater talked about the GOP's Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan's version of it:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps...?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”; September 26, 2009 at 7:37 PM
Utah Savage said...: Interesting points of view here. I believe so much of it is racist and isn't even coded. It's blatant. It's in-your-face. It's view of itself as entitled to be on top even when one lives at the bottom, at least they think they're better than niggers. I think that's not even conscious. It drunk with mother's milk and all of daddy's conversation. It's preached at the pulpit and taught in the schools. Texas school boards have been trying to find a way to take the negative parts out of the history books. What are the negative parts? White emigrant culture slaughtering native peoples and working slaves stolen from Africa. Yes, by all means lets take the history books back to the 50s before everybody got so damn uppity.; September 26, 2009 at 8:07 PM