The Practicing Progressive

I suppose one could excuse the boorish behavior of South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson as simply the inopportune outburst of a passionate politician. Of course, such understanding would have to diminish Wilson’s membership in the “Sons of Confederate Veterans” an organization, one could fairly assume, that still bemoans General Lee handing over his sword at Appomattox.
And maybe when Senator Jim DeMint, also from South Carolina, declared that defeating any health care reform would be President Obama’s…”Waterloo. It will break him.”, it was nothing more than political strategizing and not the personal vendetta it appeared to be. But then again one would have to exclude his enthusiastic remarks on “Good Morning America” complimenting the plethora of poster-bearing and confederate flag-waving folk that attended the September 12 protest march in Washington D.C. Many of the posters at the gathering depicted President Obama as a communist, a fascist and, perhaps worst of all for the gathered, an African-American.
I’ll grant it is possible that these two men’s comments are not infused with bigoted undertones but simply the innocent commentary of dedicated conservative thinkers…although it does tend to stretch one’s credulity to think that the state that elected the segregationist Strom Thurmond to the Senate right up to when he was 100 years old, would be humbly offering America two racially objective congressional representatives.
But when two Republican county chairmen…again from South Carolina…publish an opinion column this past week in the Orangeburg Times-Democrat that includes a vile anti-Semitic smear, it is enormously difficult to ignore the racist mindset that seems to permeate Republican politics in that state. The fact that the two chairmen immediately and effusively offered apologies for their gaffe only underscores their inability to understand the realities of 21st century America. It is clear to me that these men never thought their use of a pernicious stereotype would offend any of their readers. These men were only expressing what is taken for conventional wisdom in too much of America. What’s more, I’ll wager there isn’t a person reading these words who can’t remember a recent time when a similar xenophobic sentiment was shared in their presence.
To think that over 200 years of racial, religious and sexual injustice can disappear from America’s collective psyche without a significant backlash is to evidence a naiveté that even we liberals are incapable of achieving. The “race card” continues to be played over and over again in contexts that stretch from country clubs to Congress, from neighborhood red lines to national party lines. Each time an 18 wheeler rushes by with a Confederate flag on its grill, each time you hear how someone “jewed” another down, each time you read of one more gay man beaten nearly to death, you can bet that the race card or the religion card or the sexual card is being played one more time in America.
This week, The Boston Globe reported that the Secret Service was under a significant strain with the “unprecedented increase” in threats to our president. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of hate groups and paramilitary organizations throughout America, has this to say on the recent enormous growth in these groups: “A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man.”
When you hear TV and radio commentators claim that our president has a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." (Glenn Beck) or describe him as “the little black man-child” (Rush Limbaugh) or when politicians allow their bigotry to trump protocol and their prejudice to pervert the democratic process, it is difficult not to think that what is being played is some very dirty poker.