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January 25, 2012
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Racial Anxieties Stoked so Nakedly
Fear, cowardice
drive GOP
partisans
L ee A. D aniels
So, it’s clear now
what really drives the
crowd — or is “mob” a better
word? -- who show up at Re­
publican Party debates, right?
It’s the thrill of having your
basest instincts appealed to. It’s
being able to be among those
who look like you and feel as you
do as you give full-throated ap­
proval to what are politely, and
incorrectly, called “racially-
charged” remarks.
It’s being able to publicly vent
your prejudices as you boo an
American soldier on the frontlines
protecting Am erica’s security
because he won’t stay in the
ghetto you’ve constructed for
people like him.
It’s being able to stomp and
by
whistle your support for the death
penalty, despite the fact that nearly
300 people sentenced to
prison for serious crimes,
including 17 who were
sentenced to die, in the
last four decades have
been proven innocent by
DNA testing.
Most of all, it’s being able,
w hile claim ing to adhere to
homespun “traditional values,”
to shed the pose of so-called
compassionate conservatism, or
even rational conservatism, and
unabashedly wallow in the real
right stuff: callous conservatism.
It’s never been more clear,
has it? What drives the base
instincts of the GOP base which
has shown up at these debates is
fear and cow ardice. T h ey ’re
bully-boys and girls because, at
bottom, they’re afraid, especially
in this period of great economic
difficulty, to compete fairly for
the resources and status of
American society.
JJortlanb OOhserMtr
Established 1970
So, to protect their delusional
sense of identity, they construct
straw-men, women, and children
they bend and twist to fit their
fevered, fearful imaginations.
David H orsey’s brilliant car­
toon from the Los Angeles Times
(pictured above) makes the point
exactly.
Those attending the Jan. 16
debate who supported Newt
Gingrich’s channeling Alabama
Gov. George C. W allace at his
oiliest want their racial anxieties
to be stoked so nakedly in order
to relive the days of old, when
white supremacists didn’t have
to conceal the fact that they
were white supremacists.
“Dave,” a reader responding
to David Brooks Monday col­
umn on the South Carolina pri­
mary in the New York Times
succinctly characterized this
revanchist politics:
“When a person asserts that
they ‘want their country back’ I
always want to know which tribe
they’re from. But I realize I’m
just being sarcastic because these
people are inevitably Caucasian,
and generations removed from
being in any tribe.”
“When someone asserts that
they want to return to a time
when we had better values, I
know, again, that they’re Cau­
casian, and that they’re refer­
ring to a time when there was no
chance that there would be a
president with dark skin, or a
supreme court justice who was
a woman, or even worse, a wise
Latina woman.”
These Republican Party de­
bates bring to mind something
my mother used to say quite
often: You can fool some of the
people all of the time, especially
when it’s a matter of people
fooling themselves.
Lee A. Daniels is Director o f
Communications fo r the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational
Fund, Inc., and Editor-in-Chief
o f The Defenders Online.
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