JAMES TARANTO: THE NEW FACE OF PREJUDICE
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304171804579121413073509676?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
“If you want to understand why the government is shut down or why elected Republicans would even consider doing something as reckless as using a debt default to extract policy concessions from the White House–without necessarily even knowing which policy concessions they want–Stan Greenberg has a memo for you,” writes Francis Wilkinson, a Bloomberg View editorial board member.
Of course if you begin with the supposition that Republicans are “reckless” and ignore the fact that debt-ceiling brinksmanship is nothing new, what you want is probably to have your prejudices reinforced, not to understand. And Greenberg does deliver. His organization, Democracy Corps, “issued a report this week on six focus groups conducted with Republican subgroups–two each with Tea Partiers, evangelicals and moderate Republicans.”
According to Wilkinson, “the results somehow manage to be unsurprising and shocking at the same time.” We’d say they manage to be utterly banal and unsurprising. The utterly banal part is that Republicans turn out not to care for Barack Obama–who is, after all, a Democrat and a highly partisan one at that.
The unsurprising part–the part Wilkinson finds “shocking”–is that some of them, specifically the Tea Party and evangelical Republicans, speak in rather harsh terms about the president. If Wilkinson actually finds this shocking, he must be about 17 years old, which is to say too young to remember how liberals (including elite ones in academia, arts, entertainment and journalism) spoke contemporaneously of President Bush.
According to Wilkinson, the Tea Party and evangelical Republicans’ “default position” toward Obama “is essentially abject terror.” In truth, some of the examples he cites are actually quite anodyne: “What is he really thinking?” asks one “Tea Party Man.” Another simply says: “Background.” An “Evangelical Woman” says, “His motives behind his actions,” which would be a tautology if it were a complete sentence. An “Evangelical Man” says: “He wants to fundamentally change the country.” If our theory is right, Wilkinson isn’t old enough to remember that Obama himself said the same thing.
Admittedly, some of the comments are on the truculent side. Each of these is from an “Evangelical Man”: “Not a US citizen. Supports Terrorists.” “I don’t believe he’s a Christian. He’s a tyrant.” “He supports everything that is against Christianity.”
Then again, isn’t it possible that the Evangelical Men are on to something? Obama did, after all, describe as his “spiritual mentor” a so-called pastor whose most famous pronouncement was “God damn America!” That would seem to indicate a theological understanding that is at odds with that of most Christians, especially American Christians.
We checked out the Greenberg memo and were particularly struck by this passage:
We expected that in this comfortable setting or in their private written notes, some [participants] would make a racial reference or racist slur [sic] when talking about the African American President. None did. They know that is deeply non-PC and are conscious about how they are perceived. But focusing on that misses how central is race to the worldview of Republican voters. They have an acute sense that they are white in a country that is becoming increasingly “minority,” and their party is getting whooped by a Democratic Party that uses big government programs that benefit mostly minorities, create dependency and a new electoral majority. Barack Obama and Obamacare is [sic] a racial flashpoint for many Evangelical and Tea Party voters.
This is worthy of an old-fashioned fisking. Here is a line-by-line translation into plain English:
“We expected that in this comfortable setting or in their private written notes, some would make a racial reference or racist slur when talking about the African American President.” We set out to test our hypothesis that Republicans are racist.
“None did.” We found no evidence to support our hypothesis.
Stan Greenberg in 1993 Corbis
“They know that is deeply non-PC and are conscious about how they are perceived. But focusing on that misses how central is race to the worldview of Republican voters.” Ha ha, fooled you! We weren’t seeking to test our hypothesis, merely to confirm our prejudice. For that purpose, evidence would have been nice, but rationalization will do. And since our friends in the media share our prejudices, we assume we’ll be able to slip past them our absurd assumption that Tea Party and evangelical Republicans are “deeply” PC.
“They have an acute sense that they are white . . .” You can tell they have a bad attitude by their skin color.
“. . . in a country that is becoming increasingly ‘minority,’ and their party is getting whooped by a Democratic Party that uses big government programs that benefit mostly minorities, create dependency and a new electoral majority.” These people need to learn their place.
“Barack Obama and Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many Evangelical and Tea Party voters.” Prejudice confirmed.
There must be a word for somebody who does what Stan Greenberg did here, which is to smear and attempt to marginalize a whole group of people, without evidence and based on the color of their skin.
Ideally, it should be a word that carries as much sting as “racist.”
Comments are closed.
