This morning I saw that Jonathan Chait had a new feature in New York Magazine. Normally, that is something to celebrate. He’s an excellent writer with a lot of great insights. But this article was, The Color of His Presidency. It is about race in politics—an issue that Chait hasn’t exactly distinguished himself on recently. And more than anything, it is an example of his own special genre of articles, “See how liberal I am? I’m beating up on liberals!”
It is kind of hard to get to the bottom of the article. It’s something like this. The very basis of the Republican Party is racism. Pretty much everything they do has racist motivations to one extent or another. But talking about this just makes the Republicans claim that all accusations of racism are invalid. So we shouldn’t criticize them for their racism or the criticisms we don’t level against them won’t be effective. Or something. It’s hard to say.
Not surprisingly, the article is being eaten alive by liberals. Ed Kilgore wrote, Conservatives, Race, and “Winners” and “Losers.” His basic argument is that conservatives are determined to be resentful of liberals, so trying to make them less resentful is a ridiculous goal. Jamelle Bouie goes after the whole white-liberal-elite focus of the article, Color Blind. He doesn’t say this explicitly, but his argument is that pretending that these racial issues are nothing more than ideological battles just cedes the battle to the white power elite.
The most vicious attack against Chait comes from Joan Walsh, Jonathan Chait’s Epic Race Fail: How a Story About Racism and Obama Goes Horribly Wrong. She meets him on his own terms and, frankly, tears him apart. She summarizes his argument, “If only MSNBC would stop crying racism, then…” To which she responds:
I agree with everything written by these three writers. And I am so tired of Chait’s efforts to claim the liberal high ground by attacking other liberals. It’s just his own personal way of being a Serious Centrist. But what’s especially horrible is that tomorrow (assuming he’s working), he will post an article in which he defends himself against all his attackers. And if Ta-Nehisi Coates decides to weigh in, it’s going to get bloody, and I’m not going to enjoy watching Chait flailing around impotently.
Update (9 April 2014 8:56 am)
Chait is back with this obligatory defense, Obama, Racism, and the Presumption of Innocence. There’s not much to it except that he attacks everyone I quoted in this article. Poor Jonathan.
If Chait had anything valuable to say in that article he would have said it out front. Thesis paragraph, supporting arguments. That’s not how I like to write, and meandering towards a point is a good way of thinking through what you mean. It can also convey to readers how complicated you find the subject. Chait isn’t expressing self-doubt, however. He’s officiously meandering to avoid saying what he’s saying; "the Tea Party isn’t racist." Which it is.
Are the Tea Party ‘s goals explicitly and exclusively racist? No. They welcome Cains and Rubios into the fold. Would the Tea Party exist without racism? Not much, no. The Tea Party exists and thrives because of its insinuation that Obama is taking money from white people to give to shiftless Negroes. That’s its reason for being. And it can only exist because of racism, as Obama has done nothing for Black people. (shiftless or otherwise.) Had Obama actually instituted programs targeted at benefitting the Black underclass, the Tea Party’s rhetoric would actually be less racist — it would be interest-group politics based in reality. Since it isn’t based in reality, but in stereotypical assumptions about how Blacks always look to screw over whites (and that Blacks are lazy, whites are not), it’s racist to the core.
Ages ago, I read an interview with Spike Lee where he defined prejudice and racism. Prejudice, he said, was hating some other ethnic group irrationally. Racism was acting from a position of power to harm members of that group. You can be racist and not prejudiced. You can be prejudiced and not racist.
I’ve always liked this definition because it addresses something Chait is almost (not quite) saying; that white people who don’t consider themselves prejudiced are tired of being called racist. Which is valid; it rarely does much good to insult people.
But our criminal justice system is deeply racist. Our school funding system is deeply racist. Our safety net. I could go on. Poll after poll shows that most Americans support drug law reform, support more money for schools, for food assistance, etc. And yet election after election inaugurates politicians who go against public opinion, and get away with it because huge numbers of Americans believe vast troughs of government money are being thrown at Black people, who are obviously too hopeless to do anything with their decades of colossal windfalls.
This is largely due to "strategic racism" (Ian Lopez’s handy phrase for top-down planned, rather than bottom-up derived, discrimination) but it also reflects something Americans want to believe. Anti-climate science propaganda works because people don’t want to start taking the bus. Strategic racism works because people don’t want to think of our system as rigged; it rips away their hopes that they, too, will eventually Make It if they pray hard enough and find that new career they were destined for. It’s easier to imagine that "others" are getting tax money you would use to right the ship of your life.
There’s a real problem with mainstream liberal commentary, although neither Chait nor his critics will do more than sniff at it. It’s a failure to engage, consistently and coherently, in defensive class warfare. (As Minnesota governor Mark Dayton said when accused of "class warfare," "our side didn’t start it.") Mainstream liberalism doesn’t attack tax cuts for the rich, or health insurance companies, military wastefulness, excess corporate salaries/profits (all deeply unpopular things.)
As long as Americans are confused about where their tax dollars actually go, and why their standard of living really doesn’t improve, strategic racism will always work. If Americans could focus more on real problems, the racial animus wouldn’t end, but it would have far less traction.
@JMF – I think you’ve nailed it. I’m really not very interested in whether Paul Ryan secretly hates blacks. I [i]am[/i] interested in whether his strongly held opinions just happen to harm blacks at an especially high rate. Note that what Chait is saying is exactly what I recently attacked "bleeding heart" libertarian Dave Weigel for.
What I most hate about the Tea Party and such is that they are [i]so[/i] concerned about their hard earned money being given to the undeserving poor. But they aren’t at all concerned about their money going to rich charlatans. It all goes back to their beginning. It wasn’t the hundreds of billions of dollars going to TARP that bothered them. It was the extremely small sums of money going to low income homeowners. Of course, if you counter them on this (or any other supposedly libertarian), they will claim that they care about that too. Well, okay. I care about same sex marriage, but you don’t hear me screaming about it around here for one simple reason: it isn’t a big deal to me. Sticking it to the little man is what the Tea Party is all about. Even if they aren’t racist, the Tea Party are really vile human beings.
As for Chait: he’s just an addict. He’s got to have his liberal-bashing fixing now and then. Most of the time, he’s really very good.