My thoughts on the "protest" in Washington.

[angrycarpenter]

I will preface this statement with a little information about myself. I am a middle aged southern white male who would look right at home in that mass of seething hatred. I live in Alabama where open racism is never far away. Confederate flags are numerous and even some of my relatives think I would enjoy a good ole racist joke. In fact I have been told all of them followed my a puzzled look when I don't laugh like an idiot. In short I know the people who attended that ignorance convention and I can tell you with certainty that they hate and fear black people.

Having grown up surrounded by racists I can give a glimpse behind the careful rationalizations that have been built up so that these people can say the crap they do and still consider themselves not a racist.

The one I have heard the most is "There are Blacks, and then there are n-----s". When asked what the dividing line is they answer with a list of stereotypes, the welfare queen, the gangbanger, the civil rights activist and the statement that getting out there and working hard and taking responsibility for themselves is the difference. Yet when a black man does just that to the point that he becomes a senator and then president he is still to be feared as a "reverse racist" and an enemy of "real Americans".

Socialist is indeed the new N-word with these people, the proof is in the fact that few know what the word means. To them it is simply "the other", the group that wants to tear down our supremacy, the people we pushed down for decades who are looking for some pay back. That seems to be what they fear most, they seem to think that a black man in a position of power will use it to get revenge on the white race. That he will be every bit as spiteful and petty as they are.

Don't get me wrong here, I can't say with certainty that everyone there is the same as the hillbillies I am used to. Perhaps some of them are actually concerned with debt and deficits. But dollars and cents rarely have the power to make people scream and shout with the level of anger seen in those protesters. If deficit spending alone was enough to bring out such strong passions then those same people would have been in the streets years ago, no, they can say what they like but the last time we saw the right wing of our nation so up in arms about government policy was during the civil rights days, and they opposed reform then the same as they do now. Seeing the racial balance tipping away from them is the only thing that will anger these people enough to leave their house and protest.

Take a look at the message, It is all about my wallet, my taxes, my gun, my god, my country. Where is the "our"? Where is the the "us"? They like to say "we the people" but I really see no interest whatsoever in the common good. The man that walked thought the crowd with a sign that read "public option now" or something to that effect required a police escort. The sheer bile that was directed at him was just about the ugliest thing I have seen in a long time. There is little doubt that this somewhat elderly man would have been beaten half to death had the police not been there. To me it looked exactly like the first black students being escorted to school surrounded by National Guardsmen because they would have been killed otherwise.

If these people want to quit being seen as racists then they need to take a long look at the civil rights era and see for themselves how similar they look to the crowds that supported segregation and how they say many of the same things. When it comes right down to it they are pissed about the same thing, The federal government taking the side of the people they love to trample and demonize. Make no mistake, when these people hear "poor people" they think lazy welfare queen and we all know what that is code for.

[Skittles]

1. wonderful post

:thumbsup:

[Faygo Kid]

2. Good post. You're too kind to these people.

You are thoughtful and try to understand them. They are racist dittohead haters who take their marching orders from Rush, Beck and Faux News and are incapable of critical thinking. "Perhaps some of them are actually concerned with debt and deficits." You give them too much credit. A friend of mine "infiltrated" the event this weekend to check it out for himself. The n-word was prevalent throughout, as was the call for Obama's death. They aren't quite blatant enough yet to go on the record, but make no mistake - their true intentions are for the very worst, for the president and the rest of us.

[stuball111]

8. Perhaps...

But I see the OP as good liberal critical thinking. Most seem to just dismiss them as nuts or racists, which is what they are for sure, but there is a message here. I moved down from Canada a few years ago, where racism does exists, albeit not to the extent down here and is somewhat frowned upon, and there are laws up there that go much further towards hate speech as a "freedom" Some of those signs I saw them carrying would be grounds for arrests up there. There's a lot of ugliness out there for sure. I Work in a Union craft, and was appalled to hear some of the racist shit even in a so-called "liberal" environment. Seeds of it lie just under the surface here, and it was just a matter of time until it came to the surface. I actually feel sorry for some of these people whose minds snap shut at certain cultural and political themes. They will never know tolerance or freedom in it's true form, and they are slaves to their thinking and ideology. But the sad thing is, they are dangerous, and a threat to the very country the declare their love for.

[stuball111]

3. You about hit it right on

And it's a wake up call to the rest of the country that because of a Democrat majority, and a Black/White president, it brought out each and every racist redneck in the country to wave their hate in our faces. They are still a minority, but the sheer numbers of them scares me. It can be taken in a couple of different ways, We have a long way to go, or we have come a long way. I like to believe the latter.

[FLyellowdog]

4. "If these people want to quit being seen as racists..."

The truth is, they DON'T want to quit being seen as racists. They are proud of the fact that they are racists and now they don't even have to hide under white sheets to spew their hatred. This is what's scary..Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh have made it acceptable for these bigots to parade out in the open and spout their venomous lies. I don't know to stop this movement, but I believe it goes far beyond freedom of speech. This is fast becoming more polarizing than the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's. How can it be happening again?

[angrycarpenter]

5. I am no stranger to the Klan

I remember seeing them marching in parades when I was a kid. They all had kids and filled their heads with hate and then along comes Beck with crap that sounds just like what grandpaw used to say. That is where traditional values come in.

[FLyellowdog]

6. Exactly.

[Emit]

7. You hit the nail on the head with this one line, angrycarpenter

"But dollars and cents rarely have the power to make people scream and shout with the level of anger seen in those protesters."

If that were the case, they would've been out there a long time ago.

[ShrimpScampi]

9. I agree

I'm from Georgia and I know exactly what you're talking about. These people are full of fear. They have sheltered their minds for so many generations that a world changing right under their nose terrifies them. No doubt their fevered imagination creates images of reverse oppression, reverse discrimination, etc. So they band together like nice little lemmings to feel better in a mob. Then there are those who are just too mean to care and are proud of their hate. Either way, at this point I just want these people to go the way of the dodo bird while the rest of us who actually have a brain evolve past them.

[angrycarpenter]

10. I love shrimp scampi

What a great handle. No one could ever get mad at someone named after the most delicious dish in the world.

[ShrimpScampi]

14. Exactly

One of my favorite dishes, plus it is fun to say five times fast. : )

[jotsy]

11. Thank you for proving there is something of the southern gentleman left in the region.

The simmer is set it seems to boil and undoing the division won't be easy if it can at all be had. I said to my spouse one night a few weeks ago, as the town brawl mawls were getting all the attention, you may as well try to convince a two year old fireworks aren't scary. I hope you have a circle of peers who believe as you do. I'm sure I'd go a bit crackers if all that surrounded me was a mindset I find so sad and offensive.

[angrycarpenter]

12. Had to move back here 7 months ago.

I used to live in Florida but work dried up and I had to move in with my parents. There is little work here but at least I am not out on the street. DU keeps me sane. Red state hell is a tough thing to deal with, for the most part I keep my opinions to myself and claim to have little interest in politics.

[hfojvt]

13. I don't believe that

although I perhaps don't have as much experience with racists as you do. But it also depends on how you define racist. It seems to me that many on DU use a dualism. With a dualism, things are binary. You are either a racist, represented by a 1 or a non racist, represented by a 0.

Whereas I would put people on a spectrum, ranging from zero, the totally racist free person to 10, the complete racist. Except I don't believe there are really any perfect zeros nor perfect tens. I would probably characterize our population like this

--------X
--------X-X
------X-X-X-X
------X-X-X-X-X
----X-X-X-X-X-X-X
----X-X-X-X-X-X-X
--X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

With most people falling in the 3-6 range, with some bigotries that they deny or try to overcome. The hardcore bigots are usually open about it, at least with their own kind. Like our hatred or fear of Republicans, they cherry pick the evidence they see about blacks to justify the stereotypes. Just like some DUers see one or two or three racists at a Republican event and paint the whole group as racists, so too the racist sees one or two or three black people who are thugs or bozos and paint the whole race as inferior.

So a few problems I have with the 'teabaggers are racist' theme.

1. The presumption that we are free of hate and bias when we demonstrably are not. (But our hatred is justified! And our fear is justified! (Hint, everybody thinks their own hatred and fears are justified.))

2. The hyperbole and intolerance of seeing all the 1s and 2s and 3s ... as being the same as 10. (It might do well to note that in this framework Jesse Jackson is a total anti-Semite).

3. The social impact of this constantly crying racism.

a. First, every time you cry racism and people look closely and don't see the racism, it reinforces the idea that the cry of racism is often bogus. More people think "Well I have seen racism called 10 times and only saw racism two of those times, so apparently most people who cry 'racism' are full of crap." After a while people figure that they don't even need to look any more because they know this dance by heart.

b. Second, is the defense of the racism charge. Most of the people who cry racism do not seem prepared to defend their charge or make their case. Instead of defending their thesis, they attack those who doubt their thesis. It's the kind of defense that makes more enemies than conversions. ("You just don't see the racism because you are wilfully ignorant or a racist or apologist.")

c. The same thing is true with the charge itself. You wrote "If these people want to quit being seen as racists ..." but for the most part, they really don't care how YOU see them. You do not hurt them with what so many see as a baseless charge. All you do is discredit yourself. There is a whole crowd in the middle, the moderate Democrats and the moderate Republicans and independents who just see hate, vitriol, intolerance and baseless charges of racism coming from the left and since the targets of that vitriol are "people like us" they feel that this shows that "the left is fricking nuts".

[barbtries]

15. thank you

for a well reasoned and well written piece.