The Democratic Party Wasn’t Ready for a Black President

There is something that has been tossing around in my head for now almost four years.  I think it crystalized tonight when I saw that liberals had created a hashtag on Twitter: #Negrospotting.

Words cannot express how infuriated I was (although I tried).

For those less embedded in the Twitter world, a hashtag is a way of marking a subject and aggregating comments on that subject.  So apparently liberals thought it would be funny to spot how many black people were in the audience at the Republican National Convention.  I tried to put my anger into words on twitter:

*facepalm* I can't believe that libs are so un-self-aware as to create a hashtag called #negrospotting cc @michellemalkin @twitchyteam (fix)
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

Hey libs, can you hear THIS dog whistle? #negrospotting most racist hashtag ever.
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

If twitter existed in the 1930's #jewspotting would have been a hashtag. Shame on libs who created #negrospotting cc @michellemalkin
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

And of course Michelle Malkin, who has had more than a little experience with liberal racism, had her own thoughts.

SHAME SHAME SHAME on all you racist progs playing the #negrospotting game. Dear God, you people are sick. #gop2012 #rnc2012
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) August 28, 2012

And I liked Stevie J. West’s commentary too.

.@wilbs999 Liberals are finding black people at the RNC and calling it #NegroSpotting. #BecauseActualRacism
— Stevie J. West (@StevieJWest) August 29, 2012

(Sometimes hashtags are also used as a way of making a side comment, often sarcastically, which is what she did when she said “#BecauseActualRacism”)

And there is more coverage of this vileness over at Twitchy.  But then I wrote out something that might seem like a non sequitur to most of you:

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that Democrats wereNOT ready for a black president.
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

Well, twitter only allows 140 characters, so I will explain what I mean by that.

There was a hope several years ago that one good thing that could come out of the election of Obama was a big step forward in race relations.  Even as I feared that Obama would be... pretty much the colossal frak-up that he is, I hoped at least that passing this benchmark of racial progress would have positive effects well beyond the value of this particular presidency.

But a cadre of the left was not ready for a black president and there are enough of them to make this a problem for the Democratic party as a whole.

“Wait,” you might say, “they voted for him.  How can you say they were not ready for a black president?”

Well, let me talk about what has happened on the subject of race relations for the last few years.  Let me share with you how I believe things have developed.

First, let’s talk about Obama’s election itself.  Let’s be very blunt, here, folks.  The man was not ready for the job, and liberals should have known that from the beginning.  I mean, hell, Obama told you he was not ready to be president in 2004!

He was literally only a U.S. Senator for only ²/₃ of his term when we chose him to be president.  And in all bluntness I firmly believe that executive experience is far more important than legislative experience when preparing to be President and he had virtually none.  Senator-elect Obama was right; we shouldn’t have elected him in 2008.

Can we finally admit that some people voted for him because he was black?  I don’t mean to imply that it was a crude racial preference, so much as this.  As I said before, the election of a black president was an important benchmark in racial progress, and there was a desire among good people of all colors that we pass that benchmark as quickly as possible.  And this is for all the best possible reasons, the hope of greater racial harmony, of showing that America is the land of opportunity for all, and so on.

But we had to earn that benchmark.  I take it as a given that black people are my equals in every relevant way.  I take it as a given that if black people are 12% of the population (which last I heard is the figure) then 12% of the best possible people to be president are going to be black.  I think several times in our history the best person to be president was a black man or woman that perhaps we never heard of, because that person was born into slavery, or Jim Crow, and never allowed to fulfill his or her potential.  I have no doubt that if we now today pick our presidents according to who is most qualified for the job, without regard to color it is a statistical certainty that we will find a black man or woman who is perfect for the job.  (Maybe, in fact, we already have.)  But Barack Obama clearly wasn’t that person.  He talked a good game, he is undeniably a smart man, but his inexperience meant he shouldn’t have become President.  But in seeing an intelligent, yes I dare say articulate, and politically savvy black man, many people—again, for the best reasons—decided that the day arrived when the best man to be President was a black person.  But it hadn’t.  It really hadn’t.

So it started with electing a man who was not ready for the job because of the hope of reaching that racial benchmark.

And then quickly we started to see the constant accusations of racism leveled against those opposed to his programs.  What?  The Tea Party doesn’t like Obamacare?  And higher taxes?  And massive debt?  Clearly that is raaaacism!

Obamacare is the best example to cite because it is almost like a controlled experiment.  In 1993 Bill Clinton, a white man, proposed health care reform and it was killed before it was even voted on.  But in 2010, Barack Obama, a black man, proposed very similar reforms and got it passed.

As for the debt, let’s not forget that before President Obama proposed incurring a massive debt, Senator Obama had a different view.  Let’s quote him:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is “trillion” with a “T.” That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion….

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Is it logical to assume that you are a racist for agreeing with Senator Obama?  And certainly if you don’t like our debt rising to almost $9 trillion, you would really hate to see it rise to $14 trillion.  With a T.

And conservatives being opposed to high taxes is racism?  Really?

To the extent that any Republican is hypocritical or otherwise inconsistent in opposing Obama’s policies, does it make sense to assume that racial bias is at the heart of it?  If a Republican is being unfair in opposition to a Democrat, shouldn’t you rule out the possibility of political bias before assuming it is about race?  I don’t particularly like it when people just assume everything their side does is right and the other side does is wrong just because they have chosen a side, but who can deny that this attitude exists among Republicans and Democrats?  So if a Republican is being truly unfair to a Democratic president, is that really so out of the ordinary that you have to assume it is because of the color of his skin?

But for the last few years, every single policy disagreement with Obama has been claimed, by Democrats, to be primarily about race.  If you think that the Stimulus was a waste of money...

 

...well, then obviously you are a raaacist.  And so on.

And then of course there were the alleged racist dog whistles.  This was the concept that there were racists who normally would support Obama (?!) until you use certain code words that then make them go, “oh, that’s right, he’s black!” and then they will oppose him.  Or something.  At its core it never really made very much sense.  It got eventually reduced to the absurdity of  claiming even wanting to “break” Obama’s presidency was racist, somehow.  Yes, really.

And at the same time, in the last few years, the most racist statements I have heard have come almost exclusively from the left.  We have Chris Matthews, for instance, declaring that Obama made such a great speech they forgot he was black... which means the rest of the time it is at the forefront of his mind.  We have Keith Olbermann projecting his own racism onto the Tea Party, looking out into a sea of faces containing many different ethnicities and seeing only white people.  We have Loretta Sanchez complaining that the Vietnamese were trying to take her seat.

We have Michelle Malkin’s hate mail that veer from the racially tinged to the outright racist.  For instance in this post, one can see how many people implied that Michelle Malkin is a whore.  Some of these were not explicitly racial, like this one:

oh, mz. malkin, there are more profitable ways to whore yourself than to do it on television for the likes of the neocons

But gee, I am sure it is a giant coincidence, that all these people decided to depict this Asian American woman as a whore, which happens to line up with one of the oldest and ugliest stereotypes directed at Asian women!  (And for a deeper discussion of why they went to that stereotype, see here.)

And of course the racism underlying that metaphor becomes hit-you-over-the-head obvious in the next examples.  I apologize for sharing incredibly crude and racist language with you, but there is no other way to capture the sheer ugliness of these liberals than to accurately quote them and without censorship:

You’re just a Manilla whore shaking your ass and waiting for the Republican fleet to come in, aren’t you? You’ve even got the lip gloss about right. Maybe if you love sailor long time, he bring you home to big American house? I don’t think so. Just like in Manilla, Honey, they’ll pass you around ’til they’ve all shot their load in you, and then they’ll try to scrub off the stench so they can sail off in their crisp, white uniforms to the land of W.A.S.P.

And for crudeness, it was hard to beat this one:

Hi Self hating flat nosed Filipino Bitch! As we used to refer to your kind – little brown Fucking Machines. Looks like this little LBFM learned to whore in a different way to make some pesos. How sweet.

I particularly enjoy the imputation to her of racism (“self-hating”) one moment and then saying the most racist things the next.  And lest you think that this kind of racism stopped when Obama was sworn into office , you can read this hate mail, too.

And indeed, we found the clearest examples of racism to come from a White House in my lifetime.  We had a Supreme Court nominee declare that a “wise Latina” was preferable as judges to those who are not Latinas—in direct opposition to Justice O’Connor declaring in favor of gender equality—and despite his blatant racial and gender bias, getting confirmed to the Supreme Court.  We have Eric Holder declaring his racial affinity.

And we have Barack Obama saying this about the Trayvon Martin shooting:

As I wrote when he said it:

[H]ere is the absolute worst part of what Obama said:

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”

At the beginning of the statements Obama notes that as head of the executive branch that might very well prosecute George Zimmerman for a crime, he is limited in what he can say.  He rightly recognizes that if he makes statements indicating any kind of prejudice in the case he could harm the ability of the government to prosecute it.  And please note when I say “prejudice” I don’t mean merely if he expresses any bias based on race, sex, etc. but any pre-judgment, any kind of judgment before the facts are in.

But ironically that very statement exposed himself to charges of prejudice—the kind of prejudice you think of first when you think of the word, bias based on race.  He just implied that because of racial affinity he feels particularly bad about the Trayvon killing.  So then since a hypothetical son of Barrack and Michelle Obama would not look like George Zimmerman, does that mean he feels less sympathy for him?

And indeed Trayvon does not look particularly much like Barrack or Michelle Obama.  The only way you could say that Obama’s hypothetical son would look like Trayvon is if you think all black people look alike, and gee, I thought that was a racist point of view?

And yet liberals thought this was awesome the way he was indicating that his race was guiding him on the prosecution of George Zimmerman.  I heard virtually no admonition against him for having said something inappropriate.

I won’t attempt to guess which side has more racism total, but I can say that when it comes to openly stated racism, the left wins it in a landslide.  Conservative racists, when they exist, have learned to shut up about it.  But liberal racists shout it loud and proud.

And why is that?  There are a number of explanations.  Much of the time liberals such as Keith Olbermann are so convinced of their own perfection on racial issues, that they are oblivious when they say something racist.  And in many cases, liberals decide whether a person is a racist not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin.  If you are black, or Hispanic, or whatever, you can’t be a racist to them, which of course is a racist viewpoint.

Sometimes this is given a non-racial glean, so that today you see a number of professors explain that black people cannot possibly be racist, because racism is prejudice plus power.  So, the argument goes, since black people are powerless, no black person can be a racist.

First, it is employing the old intellectual trick of taking ordinary words, imprinting your own idiosyncratic (and often-self-serving) definition onto it, and then using that new definition to make a fallacious point.  In fact the correct definition of racism is nothing more than the opposite of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream: judging people by the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character.  To do this is wrong, and I believe that to the core of what I am.  Hell, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have met and married the love of my life.

Second, even if you accept that definition of racism, does anyone notice the flaw in the argument?  Black people are not and indeed never have been powerless.  That they are not presently powerless is evident in the fact Obama is President.  And even in the days of slavery, they were not powerless.  It is a slander upon the human spirit, and the intelligence and ingenuity of those slaves to say they were completely powerless.  This is proven by the fact that once Lincoln announced a policy of emancipation—giving the slaves a reason to side with the Union—resistance by slaves brought the Southern economy to its knees.  As Jeffery Rogers Hummel wrote in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, “[l]iberation, so often presented as something the Union did for blacks, was as much something they did for themselves.”  Slaves had some power, and when it mattered, they used it.

Further, many on the left simply believe that a little positive racism by minorities toward their own group isn’t wrong.  They dress it up as racial pride and so on, and gosh it seems so benign.  But in fact, any time you say, X trait is better than Y trait, by implication you are saying Y trait is worse than X—and if X trait is preferred, then why shouldn’t you discriminate in favor of it?  Racial affinity is racial preference; racial preference leads logically to racial discrimination.

Finally I think at times there is an element of intellectual reparations going on here.  Oh, it’s okay for a black person to discriminate against a white person because of slavery, or for there to be discrimination by a native American against a white people because white people took their land.

The overall result is that racism by minorities is treated by liberals of all colors differently than racism by anyone else.  And as a result of such racial discrimination there are disparate effects.  Sonya Sotomayor’s comment about wise Latinas was not a one-shot.  She had been saying it for years.  If a white man said that he hoped a white man would be a better judge than any woman or minority, he would expect to be contradicted—if not run out with torches and pitchforks.  But when Sotomayor said what she did, the liberals who surrounded her never protested her obvious racism.  So she kept saying it, leaving her own prejudices unexamined until she got out of the academy and into the harsh spotlight of the Supreme Court confirmation battle, where suddenly she discovered that some people who don’t give racist statements a pass when a Latina says it.  So she had to hastily lie and say the statement was poorly phrased, when in fact in context it was a deliberately racist and sexist statement.

So, yeah, the Democratic party was not ready for a black president.  It thought it was ready for a black president.  For all the best reasons in the world, they wanted to be ready.

But they weren’t.

Because being ready for a black president involves more than just pulling the lever and voting for the black candidate.  It means being ready to vote for a black person to be president because he or she is the best possible choice to be president.  And like I said, for some of the best reasons possible, the Democrats were not able to do that.  They wanted us to reach that benchmark of racial progress so badly that they jumped the gun.  I won’t guess how many voted for Obama for this reason, but I have no doubt that it was enough to turn the election.

But more than that, being ready for a black president also means that you have to be ready to treat that black president exactly like you would treat a white president.  And Democrats really weren’t ready for that.  While I won’t say there was absolutely no racism among Republicans, by and large Republicans have treated him every bit as badly as they would any socialist Democrat.  But Democrats have not treated him the same, because they have not treated opposition to his programs and policies the same as they would have if the President had been white.

Political scientists often say, and I concur, that a Democracy has to develop a tradition of loyal opposition.  But what they are really getting at is something even more basic.  We have to have a tradition that tolerates disagreement and recognizes the essential good faith of those who disagree.  Of course simultaneously there has to actually be good faith among those disagreeing—a topic of another discussion.  Declaring that anyone disagreeing with you is a traitor (unless they actually are traitors) is at best not constructive and worst it leads to things like the suppression of those views which in turn leads to an end to democracy.

But the same can be said about deciding that dissent from Obama is necessarily racist.  At best it is not constructive, and at worst it can lead to the suppression of such dissent, which is equally antithetical to democracy.

So Democrats were not ready for a black president because they were not ready to accept criticism of that black president on the same terms that they deal with any other criticism.

And that realization also deeply saddens me.  Because like I said, I really hoped to see some positive good come out of the election of our first black president, even if I didn’t think Obama should have been president.  But I fear that Obama’s election and the Democrats’ reaction to it may have set back racial progress.

For one thing, charges of racism have become nothing more a punchline--never to be taken seriously.  And that is unfortunate because racism really does exist.  For instance, I won’t name them but I know two Filipina women who recently told me about how when they were out and about in the supposedly racially enlightened District of Columbia, people assumed that they were nannies.  One of these women has a white husband, and thus mixed-race children and she told me that these racists assumed that she was a nanny to her own child, and asked for her business card.  And that is really only one anecdotal example of the real racism that exists and needs to be addressed.  But having seen so many people cry wolf about it so many times in the last few years, too many people just tune it out.

And I fear that if Obama is voted out of office, that there will be real—and unjustified—racial resentment.  You can be sure that MSNBC will declare that the KKK has gotten its way, if Mitt Romeny is the next president, just as you can be sure that any opposition to a President Romeny will not be treated as presumptively bigoted toward Mormons.

And I fear something else.  Way back in 2010, I offered what I called the “Jackie Robinson Theory of the Obama Presidency:”

Let’s go back to Jackie Robinson.  I take it as a given that you know that he was the first black player in Major League Baseball.  But he was also something else: a test case.  He was brought into the league first because they believed that he had the disposition, class, and intelligence to keep what was important in mind....  He had to take [the racial abuse], play through the pain and never give back what they threw at him.  It was unjust, but at that time it was necessary, and he got that.  It wasn’t about him, it was about his whole race....

So is Obama the “Jackie Robinson” of the presidency? In the sense that he is the first black man to come into this position, undeniably. But what about in the second sense, that he is a test case?

I would bet that the majority of the conservatives, the Tea Partiers, etc. would absolutely say “no.”  I could be wrong, but that is my sense of it.  We simply don’t believe Obama has to prove anything about black people, or that his conduct reflects on anyone but himself.  Obama is a terrible president, and that’s just him.  It doesn’t shake my faith in the equality of the races, and it doesn’t make me one bit less likely to vote for a black person next time.

But in the minds of many liberals, I think they believe he is a test case. They think that if Obama is a bad president, that this means we will never elect a black man again, or that whites might take it to imply something about all black people.

Ideally, Obama’s failure as a President should be taken as his failure alone and not reflective of his race as a whole.  And if his presidency is seen as a test case, the issue to be determined is not whether to let another black person take up residence in the Oval Office but whether to allow another Democrat to do so.

But what I fear is that many ordinary white people will decide not to vote for another black president, even if he or she is the best qualified.  And the reason wouldn’t be precisely because they think that black people are less qualified for the job, but instead they will think of the madness of our politics of the last few years and decide they don’t want to ever go through that again.

And all of those outcomes, if they come to pass, are a travesty.

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My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years.  I know that claim sounds fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video evidence.  If you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the Blogger’s Defense Team button on the right.  And thank you.

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

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Disclaimer:

I have accused some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct.  In some cases, the conduct is even criminal.  In all cases, the only justice I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system.  I do not want to see vigilante violence against any person or any threat of such violence.  This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong, but it is counter-productive.

In the particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him.  Do not call him.  Do not write him a letter.  Do not write him an email.  Do not text-message him.  Do not engage in any kind of directed communication.  I say this in part because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to happen to him.

And for that matter, don’t go on his property.  Don’t sneak around and try to photograph him.  Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision.  Your behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).

And do not contact his organizations, either.  And most of all, leave his family alone.

The only exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might report.  And even then if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request.  That this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you refuse.

And let me say something else.  In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above.  But if any of you have, stop it, and if you haven’t don’t start.