-ism reality check

One of the more odious stratagems Hillary Clinton employed to further her quest for power, especially as the inevitable end approached, was to dismiss the still-epidemic levels of racism in our society so she could lay claim to being the alpha victim:

...in private conversations and in interviews, Mrs. Clinton has begun asserting that she believes sexism, rather than racism, has cast a shadow over the primary fight, a point some of her supporters have made for months.

This "sexism is costing Hillary her rightful victory" meme found a ready hearing from many of Hillary's supporters, who were impervious even to the obvious counterargument.  As evidence they pointed to numerous very real examples, large and small, of sexism expressed toward Hillary.  Some of these anecdotes were considered so archetypal and damning that they were repeated over and over; if I had a girder for every time I heard that Hillary makes Tucker Carlson cross his legs, I could build the Eiffel Tower by now.

But by comparison, here's what Obama volunteers were hearing:

In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. ...

She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

You can read the article for more heartwarming examples.  Staying true to their unity theme, the Obama campaign tried to downplay the extent of these kinds of reactions, but I'm just a teeny bit skeptical that 99.9999997% of Americans are entirely race-blind and there's one lone yahoo so filled with hate that he's willing to openly call for a lynching.  Maybe they accidentally phoned a friend of KKK imperial wizard Ray Larsen, who suggested that Obama will be assassinated by white supremacists if he's elected—but somehow I doubt it.

Lest we forget that those kinds of threats are not idle in the least, last week was the tenth anniversary of the murder of James Byrd, Jr., killed by three white men in Jasper, Texas in a manner so vicious that it's like a punch in the soul just to imagine it, much less to realize that it was done to an actual human being.  To their enormous credit, Byrd's family founded the Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing, dedicated to bridging the racial divide in Jasper and other places like it.  And they're making real progress:

Clara Byrd Taylor, Boatner's sister, is president of the organization.

"On the surface, it looks good in Jasper," Taylor said. "The races have been more cordial; older whites will speak to you and look you to your face. White men and white ladies will open doors for blacks going into businesses, and you will be greeted when you go into businesses, and that's a change."

So in ten years they've gotten to the point where whites will speak to them and look them in the face—and this is a genuine change from those ancient, mist-shrouded days of 1998.  It's difficult for coddled liberal [sub]urbanites like myself to understand that this kind of deeply-ingrained racism not only continues to exist but is even widespread in many parts of the country to this very day, but it's a fact.

So as Clinton's coronation quest dies its richly-deserved death, I'm overjoyed that I won't have to listen to any more of her calculating, narcissistic attempts to further her ambitions by simultaneously playing the victim card and downplaying the level of racism in this society.  And as critical as I've been (and will continue to be) of Obama, it really is a major and important symbolic step for this country—founded on racist genocide, developed through racist exploitation, and torn kicking and screaming from these deep racist roots only within the last few decades—to have a non-white as a candidate for president.

Comments

[cemmcs]

The first time I ever voted, I voted for Harold Washington in the general election for Mayor of Chicago. I wasn't really a fan. I had not voted for him (or anybody) in the Democratic primary but after Harold won the primary, it appeared that he might actually lose the general election. I just thought that was apalling. In Chicago, whoever wins the Democratic primary, wins the general election. Obama's recent contest with Hillary sort of reminded me of this.

This may be off the topic but here's an essay about Obama which I thought was interesting:

http://www.prorev.com/2008/05/swampoodle-report_30.html

[Thomas Daulton]

John Caruso: "alpha victim"

...Ha! I laughed out loud. What an appropriate phrase. Did you coin that one yourself? If so, I warn you, better copyright it or I'm going to steal it in ALL my water-cooler conversations.

A very pithy, succinct analysis of the mentality not only of Hillary Clinton, but also [other] Neo-Cons after 911, who acted like {and indeed openly professed that} the fact somebody-or-other actually had the gall to attack us, **GASP** On Our Own Soil, No Less, entitled us to bomb anyone and everyone in any part of the world, because of course That Would Set Things Right.

Strong relation to The Cunning Realist's revival of the German phrase "Dolschtoss" -- meaning "we were stabbed in the back" and thus denied our rightful greatness by traitors.

[John Caruso]

Did you coin that one yourself?

As far as I know. Steal away—if you can really get laughs at the water cooler (or any other liquid-dispensing device) with it, more power to you.

I didn't think of alpha victimhood in terms of 9/11, but I did think of 9/11 in those terms when it was happening, and it angered me that I was expected to feel so much more about deaths of Americans caused by foreigners than I do about the (far greater number of) deaths of foreigners caused by Americans.

[Thomas Daulton]

Yeah, that's exactly my point. Hillary '08, [even though she qualifies as a neo-conservative], versus the war hawks and neo-conservatives in general after 911 -- they were two different victims of very different transgressions. But their reactions had a lot of similarities, which is telling: "Because I've been a victim, Justice is unequivocally on my side -- THEREFORE I get a free pass, I can victimize other people because Justice 'owes' me something." Ummm, politely speaking, all I can say is that the word Justice doesn't mean what you think it means, people.

I generally stay out of the Israel/Palestine issue because I don't have any firsthand experience of it... but I daresay there are some similarities in that area as well.