The race card is being played these days, even as we try to ignore that fact.
As we all watch what is going on in the White House, many are remarking that had former President Barack Obama done or said even a millionth of what the current president has said and done, he would have been shut down by now. He might be facing imminent impeachment. Had he openly lied, as it appears the current president had done, he would have been in hearings already, headed toward impeachment.
The silence and, by that silence, the complicity of the Congress in all of this has been maddening and troubling. High school civics classes teach us about the three levels of government, and how the very structure of America’s democracy was put in place to make sure no one branch was able to realize too much power. But our Congress has, at least up to this point, let the new president do and say pretty much anything he has wanted. While to many of us the swirling stories about Russia and its interference with our election is scary, our Congress has let it fly for the most part, with most senators and representatives remaining silent.
This, although Russian President Vladimir Putin is no friend of the United States, and Russia has been one of our most formidable enemies.
There has been little insistence from the Congress for the president to show his tax returns, or to investigate why it is this president seems to have such a love affair with a country whose leader wants to re-establish Russia as a major world power as it was during the days of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Putin is a man on a mission and seems to be using the American president as his main tool to realize and accomplish that mission.
Chief strategist to the president, Steve Bannon, who many believe are manipulating the president, says that he is an “economic nationalist.” He is careful to emphasize the adjective “economic” in his self-description as a nationalist, as opposed to a “white nationalist.” It was his father’s loss of AT&T stock in 2008 that apparently solidified Bannon’s worldview, making him despise and distrust the “deep state,” and globalization, immigration and the mainstream media.( https://www.wsj.com/articles/steve-bannon-and-the-making-of-an-economic-nationalist-1489516113) Asked if he was or is a “white nationalist,” Bannon, not surprisingly, rejected the notion.
It is mind-boggling that Bannon, or in fact, many white politicians who clearly seem to be racist by many people of color, so quickly reject the charge of being racist or even the suggestion that they might be. Many whites and blacks reject the term and the charge of racism, saying that it is lifted too often as an issue. An African American in power is just as apt to reject the charge of racism as is a white person; Larry Thompson, an African American who served in the Bush White House and who has been as friend of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions for over 30 years, said that Sessions “doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” in spite of Sessions’ voting record which has consistently worked against the interests of African Americans. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessionss-actions-alone-are-disqualifying/2017/01/06/99d7c26e-d392-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.05beb4082296) And Sheriff Jim Clarke of Milwaukee, has said he is “tired of this race card thing…the Left is out of legitimate excuses for wanting some kind of dialogue..It’s an automatic response to call someone a racist.” (http://www.mediaite.com/online/sheriff-clarke-says-im-tired-of-this-race-card-thing-while-defending-sessions-appointment/)
But the fact is that race and its attendant race card is a reality of American and of European life, and it has been a part of the way white people think since before the time of Jesus Christ. According to Wes-Hoard Brook, author of Come Back My People, and Empire Baptized,” the ideas of racial and class superiority of those who were a part of the Empire are found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, and other writers. In their day, it wasn’t people of African descent, but anyone who did not assimilate into Greek or Roman culture, or the cultures of the ruling classes before the Greeks and Romans, were considered “outsiders.” People needed to act and live in ways that helped them be a part of the Empire.
During the time of the Roman Empire, the quest was to take in the “outsiders” without tarnishing the quality of the Empire. Race and/or ethnic mixing, inevitable in a growing world power, were inevitable, but not wanted; Howard-Brook writes that ethnic mixing led to degeneration and deterioration of the empire.” (p. 17) The targets of ethnic disdain during that period (and for many centuries prior) were Jewish people. Howard-Brook writes that what we call “Christianity” today developed in response against the Jewish presence.
Christianity became the religion of Empire.
I am sharing this to suggest that racism is not a “card;” it is a part of the very way we think and breathe. It has been passed down for centuries. It is not going to go away.
To ignore its presence and how it is used is dishonest. As politicians use dog whistle language, such as “affirmative action” or “entitlements,” everyone, black and white, knows what they are talking about. Much of what is going on now with the proposed travel ban is in fact an attempt not to protect America from terrorism, but to shield white America from the effective “browning” of America as these darker-skinned people come into this country. The prediction that by 2043 America will no longer be majority-white has shaken some white nationalists to their bones.
White nationalism is part of the very fabric of America. In 1860, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun and who once called slavery “a great good,”, argued fiercely against funding for public education of people of African descent. He said at that time that “America was built by white people for white people.” The framers of our Constitution were never more than a breath away from considering what to do with America’s black people, who were necessary for the building of the American economy but who could absolutely not be considered equal. President Abraham Lincoln, who freed slaves in order to have more soldiers to fight for the Union, did not consider blacks to be equal to whites. Never.
So, America needs to stop resisting its history. Americans need to stop talking about allusions to race being nonsensical and dramatic. Nearly everything America has done, from gerrymandering to making policies about education and employment and even where people can and cannot live, has been based on racist beliefs.
Racism is a part of America’s political and spiritual genetic core. Our nation was born in racism, and continues to live in it. We have never been “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” We were never meant to be.