I
know race is a touchy subject, but it’s one that won’t go away, especially
during a presidential election that features the country’s first African
American president seeking reelection. So here goes.
I
choose to address race and the left because, being active on Twitter, I see
frequent debates between supporters of Pres. Obama, many of whom happen to be
people of color, and some of the President’s harshest liberal critics, most of
whom seem to be white. In and of itself, that doesn’t mean anything. The
President has plenty of white supporters and plenty of black critics; there is
no one-to-one correlation between race and support for, or opposition to, Pres.
Obama. There are, however, occasions when the issue of race arises in those debates,
and that seems to happen frequently these days.
I’m
also sensitive to the issue because I it caused a rift between me and a
long-time Twitter friend, an individual whom I won’t name because I have no
doubt he’s a genuinely decent person, and because I’m certain that he, a white
liberal who’s sometimes very critical of the President, is not racist in the
least. So I don’t want to sic
anybody on this particular Tweeter should my point here be missed.
But
that difficult exchange with a former Twitter follower/followee illustrates the
crux of the problem, which is two-fold: Yes, I think racism exists on the left;
and, no, refusing to talk about it will not solve the problem.
Allow
me to explain where I’m coming from. I certainly don’t automatically equate criticism
of Pres. Obama – from the left or the right – with racism. I know many critics
of the President (again, from the left and the right) who happen to be white
yet who, I can say with absolute confidence, do not take race into
consideration, consciously or otherwise, when they assess this President’s job
performance.
Nonetheless,
aside from people I know to be (or, I should say, really, really believe to
be) utterly unbigoted, I can’t
help but ask whether racism plays a role in some – not all, but some – of the considerable animosity directed to the
country’s first black president. Take, for example, the more extreme elements
of the Tea Party: Those who called Pres. Obama a Marxist; those who equated
the President’s health care reform to
the Holocaust; those who insisted he is secretly
Muslim (so?); and those who went out of their way to caricaturize
his race and ethnicity.
Of
course, even the brashest right-winger will deny he or she is racist, and very
few people will use overtly racist language in public. But even jurors in a
court of law are told that they should “use common sense gained from [their]
experiences in life, in evaluating what [they] see and hear.” (See, e.g.,
Illinois
Pattern Jury Instructions (Civil), Instruction No. 1.01.) Certainly we can
do the same thing in politics.
In
other words, I know racism in a badly misspelled protest sign when I see it.
Racism
on the left presents a trickier question, because the same conservatives whose
hackles are permanently raised at the mere suggestion of it on their side are the first to accuse liberals of being
history’s greatest racist monsters. Hitler was a liberal, they say. Clarence Thomas was the victim of a high-tech lynching! And, via
Ann Coulter, there’s this catch-all: “It’s outrageous the way liberals
treat a black conservative … Nothing liberals fear more than a black
conservative. Ask Allen West. Ask Michael Steele …”
And
then, of course, there’s affirmative action. Don’t even get me started on that.
But
as misguided as those conservative attacks on liberals may be, it’s implausible
to suggest that liberals can’t
be racist, or that none of the millions of Americans who call themselves
liberal – not a single one – is a racist. This is America; wherever a few
million of us are gathered, I can guarantee you you’ll find a few bigots in the
crowd.
In
any event, it’s my perception (emphasis on perception) that there is a double-standard on the left when
it comes to Pres. Obama. Meaning that he seems to be criticized more
vociferously than, to lapse momentarily into the argot of my profession,
similarly situated Democratic presidents of the past. Take, for example, Bill
Clinton, who brought us NAFTA;
significantly expanded
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to include physical searches of
property in addition to traditional surveillance; and began the practice of extraordinary
rendition – that is, sending suspected terrorists to foreign countries for
interrogation, countries that do not observe the legal niceties we do (in plain
English: they torture). Or Jimmy Carter, the liberal icon who illicitly supported
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after Vietnam deposed Pol Pot in 1979.
Those
are some pretty un-liberal things to do; but in my perception (there’s that word again) neither Bill Clinton
nor Jimmy Carter ever faced the kind of scrutiny, nor the kind of harsh
criticism, Pres. Obama’s been subjected to since the moment he took office.
Which is not to say there weren’t lefties who criticized Presidents Clinton and
Carter for the very things I mention above; but on the whole those Democratic
presidents didn’t face the daily barrage of criticism from the left that Pres.
Obama faces.
Or
so it seems to me.
Now
all I’ve done so far is to identify what I see as a double-standard. That a
double-standard exists doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the product of
racism. I can imagine any number of reasons why it might exist, or appear to
exist, not the least of which is that we’re living in the age of blogs and
Twitter and other social media, where virtually everyone is connected to the
internet and virtually everyone can (and does) share his or her political opinions all day every
day. And then, too, there are some liberals who’d had enough of doggedly
supporting less-than-liberal Democratic presidents and decided long before Sen.
Obama announced his candidacy that they just weren’t going to take it anymore,
no matter who was in the White House.
But
the mere existence of certain possible explanations for that double-standard
does not necessarily eliminate all other possible explanations. So it’s entirely reasonable to ask whether
that double-standard might be
due, in part, to racism on the
left. Might be due to racism. In
part.
Because
like I said before, there’s no reason we can’t bring our common sense and life
experiences to bear on the issue; and all these gray hairs on my head suggest I
have a fair amount of the latter, if not the former. What my life experiences
(and what passes for common sense in my world) tell me is that it’s not only
possible but likely that racism plays a role in the way some liberals view the President … which, in turn, partly explains the double-standard.
Of
course, you’re free to disagree with me. Maybe you don’t think the
double-standard exists in the first place. Maybe you think Pres. Clinton and
Pres. Carter faced exactly the same type of criticism – the same volume, the
same frequency, the same intensity – that Pres. Obama faces today. Or maybe you
agree the that a double-standard exists, but you’re certain that it’s not due
to racism at all. Fair enough.
I disagree, but none of us is a mind reader.
What
I’m saying is, I think there’s
a double-standard on the left, and I think it’s fair to ask whether it’s partly caused by racism. You know
what that is? That’s not some crazy party-loyalty-fueled delusional conspiracy
theory. That’s the starting point for an open, honest discussion – one that
some people on the left apparently are afraid to have.
So,
here’s the deal. If I call you a racist simply because you disagree with the
President, by all means: Call me out on it. But if all I do is to point out a
double-standard on the left and ask the question whether it could be due to race, at least in part, you don’t get to
shut down the conversation just because it makes you uncomfortable.
And
you know what else? Everything I just said about race and the left applies
equally to gender and the left.
But that’s the subject of another post …
