What Is the Fight Really About?

I had never heard Randall Kennedy speak until last week when he appeared on Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square. I was impressed. Until then, I had only a vague notion of who he was - a prominent African-American public intellectual. I now understand that he is a law professor at Harvard University and the author of a number of books, including, memorably, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002).

 

Like any white person with at least a minimal sense of decency, I feel a certain measure of discomfort writing that title, given the prominence of the racial slur that is its subject. But I decided to write it out despite my discomfort. And I think I’m going to have to read the book in its entirety, given my interest in sociolinguistics and racial relations.

 

The n-word (by which I will identify it from now on) is peculiarly harsh in its impact. No other racial or ethnic slur carries the nasty punch that the n-word does. I’ve long believed its uniquely nasty quality reflects the viciousness of racial oppression itself. The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that when used by a white person, it automatically calls up the cruelty and injustice of racial oppression and does so approvingly. To use that slur is to say through subtext, “You, black person, are stuck in a lowly category that allows me to look down on you every time I glance your way, and you have to accept it because that’s just the way things are. So, screw you.”

 

The word, in other words, is not simply an insult in the way that words like scumbag, dipshit, and asshole are. It’s an ethnic slur that echoes the dark spirit of an entire social order, a grossly unjust and cruel social order. This order is the source of the word’s poison. Those who use it are, consciously or not, strutting and preening themselves while trampling on the injured limbs and pummeled bodies of the system’s victims.

 

I have noticed in my lifetime that the n-word has replaced the f-word as the most unacceptable item in polite conversation. This is a good thing, and it reflects some of the positive changes that Professor Kennedy noted in his GPS remarks. Kennedy also noted that many of the phrases we use today have been weaponized and so have lost their usefulness in our current efforts to push social improvements further along. According to him these no longer useful terms include racism, structural racism, and, of course, critical race theory.

 

I agree.

 

It seems to me that the biggest issue facing us since the upheaval of the Trump years is best framed not as black vs. white, but as fair play and decency vs. malpractice. The key issue is the survival of the democratic institutions that we rely on to promote justice. The central political question should be, “Is your party for democracy and fair play or against them?”

 

If I were advising Democratic party leaders on future elections, I would recommend putting more emphasis on America’s longstanding promise of democracy and justice for everyone, and less emphasis on fighting racism per se. The Republican party is trying to cast Democrats as anti-white by coughing up the idea of critical race theory and claiming it lies at the heart of the Democratic party. For Republican propagandists the hope is that they can make white Americans feel inherently criticized by the Democrats. Their scheme is aimed at driving moderate whites away from the Democrats and into the GOP.

Let’s not take the bait. The real issues are not race, nor criticism about race relations, but justice and democracy. The Republicans have aligned themselves against both of these with their slew of new restrictive voting laws. Let’s fight them with all we have, not across the black-white seam, but on the front where we are sure to win, the fair play and decency divide. The Republicans have rejected these American values and that’s where we should be hitting them hardest. I can’t speak for Professor Kennedy, of course, but my sense is that he would agree with this approach.

 

                 Professor Randall Kennedy

 

 

 

The Establishment - Then and Now

 White supremacists are the greatest domestic threat we face as a nation. So said Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who testified before the Senate last May. 

According to them, “Those who advocate for the superiority of the white race” are the single greatest domestic threat facing the United States.

 

                Garland and Mayorkas Testifying

 

What’s interesting about this for me is not that white supremacists are a major threat – old news – but the positioning of “the Establishment” against it. You can hardly get more Establishment than the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and there they were calling out the bigots among us. This is a welcome change for people of my generation who grew up viewing “the Establishment” with hostility and contempt.

 

And the Establishment did deserve contempt in the 1960s and beyond. At that time we had a viciously racist president in Richard Nixon. We also had a notorious bigot running the FBI, namely, J. Edgar Hoover. Beyond this, systemic racism was entrenched and seemingly immovable in every nook and cranny of that era’s institutions.

 

Of course, we can’t say that today everything has changed completely for the better. But we can say that almost everything has changed at least a bit in the right direction. How great is it that our vice president and Secretary of Defense are African-Americans, and that the leaders at Justice and Homeland Security are striving to remind us all about just how nasty and dangerous America’s bigoted weirdos have become? As a child of the Sixties, I say, all this is pretty great.

 

But how did those creepy characters – Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon wackos, and the rest – get to be so dangerous? I say it’s the Republicans’ fault. Starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, continuing with Ronald Reagan’s bigoted “welfare queen” fantasies, and George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton ads, the GOP has been cultivating racial hatred as a key part of its electoral strategy for decades. The culminations of this unethical racial pandering are the presidency of Donald Trump and the violent assault on the Capitol last January 6.

 

So now the battle lines are almost the opposite of what they were in the 1960s. Inside the White House and Congress we have men and women who are trying to counter the effects of our deep, enduring traditions of injustice. Outside in the streets are throngs, mainly white male throngs, trying with all their might to stop justice and the rule of law from prevailing. Injustice and lawlessness are their bread and butter and thereby lies our danger.

 

Our best long-term hope, I believe, lies in the success of the Biden presidency. That’s why I am hoping that this week’s legislative agenda gets through more or less intact. If Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer can make the economy more efficient and more responsive to the needs of middle class and working-class people, the pull of racial bigotry will begin to lose its appeal. Not for everyone, but for enough people that we will be able to move forward as a united society toward more justice and fair play for everyone. If and when that does happen, I will happily send a congratulatory bouquet and a deeply sincere peace offering to my old enemy, the Establishment.

 

 

 

 

Republicans vs. Democracy

Today is Memorial Day, a day for remembering the sacrifices of those who fell in our nation’s conflicts. But I have something else on my mind, namely, the possibility that future Memorial Days may commemorate American Democracy itself, which could tragically fall to the current right-wing onslaught against it. Leading the attack on our democracy are Donald Trump and his supporters both in government and at right-wing media sites like Fox News. I don’t think our democracy is doomed, but I could be wrong.

Evidence of the danger we face – those of us who believe in democracy – can be seen in a number of recent polls. Here are the results from a May 27 poll by PRRI (the Public Religion Research Institute).

 

What jumps out from this poll is that Republicans are living in a world of their own, one not shared by most Americans. They are furthest from the mainstream on the idea that “true American patriots” may need to resort to violence in order to “save our country.” But in general, the wacky conspiracy theory beliefs about elite, Satan-worshipping pedophiles, etc., find a much more welcome home among Republicans than they do anywhere else.

 This crazy irrational mindset could easily be swept away if only more people knew the difference between reliable and unreliable sources. But, alas, they don’t, and too many of them continue to trust Fox News, Newsmax, and other bullshit factories*.

 Just as dangerous as the irrational nuttiness of the Republican base are the underhanded tactics practiced by Republican elites. In Texas this weekend, legislation was introduced aimed at discouraging voting by minority voters and making it easier for the state legislature to decide who gets Texas’s electoral votes regardless of who the voters chose. This pro-Republican law was not immediately confirmed as official only because Democratic legislators walked out of the session thereby depriving the legislature of a quorum. But, of course, the law is not utterly dead. It will be re-introduced and the GOP will no doubt find a way around the recalcitrant Democrats and make it the law. In other words, Republicans 1, American Democracy 0.

 Our democracy is in danger because of the Republican party and the media sources that support it. But I believe this attack will fail and I’m optimistic for four reasons. First, because Donald Trump and the other prominent people who are behind it are themselves in serious legal trouble. It’s quite possible that Trump, some members of his family, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, his ally Matt Gaetz, and others in his circle will be convicted of serious crimes before the end of 2021. Some of them my well spend time behind bars, and may even be in the slammer during the 2022 election.

 Secondly, normal, respectable people in the GOP, like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger continue to loudly call out the dishonesty and stupidity of Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign. This campaign, which is the reason for so many Republicans believing that Trump “really” won the election, loses a bit of traction with every month that goes by. Eventually its followers will make up an even smaller minority of American voters than they do now.

 Also, the Democrats won the 2020 presidential election partly because so many Republican suburbanites couldn’t stand Trump’s sleazy and incompetent style of governing. The GOP, with its current dirty dealings, is not giving those voters any reason to return to the party.

 And finally, there is Stacey Abrams, whose heroic effort ensured that Democratic voters in Georgia turned out in sufficient numbers to win the senatorial runoffs there, and with them the Senate as a whole. We need an army of Stacey Abrams to counteract the dirty work the Republicans have been doing in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and so many other states where they are resorting to voter suppression. But with Stacey’s inspiration, along with the intense resentment of those voters whom the Republicans are trying to strip of their rights, we may see an unprecedented surge in Democratic voters in 2022 and 2024. I don’t know about you, but as for me, I’m counting on it.

 

 

*Bullshit Factory is the label offered by CNN reporter Jim Acosta to refer to Fox News. Good enough to steal, so I’m stealing it.