Every so often, some public figure reveals his racial perceptions by talking without thinking, and that exposure gets dumped upon by the press--all the press, including the rightwing, joins in when the public figure is a liberal. When that public figure is, as it more often is, a conservative the rightwing press does not join the criticism.
In the latter circumstance rightwing media vents most of its spleen defending the conservative, and wailing about a double-standard.
Liberals respond by saying there is no double standard, and so the disconnect with reality persists.
There is a double standard. There should be. It is about time to speak the blunt truth.
Wink-and-nod racial politics. Since the 1930s, Republicans have done nothing to enhance racial or ethnic equality. Nothing. They have not only opposed every legislative attempt to improve equality of opportunity, they have opposed non-white court appointees, and objected to administrative orders that prohibit discrimination.
Of course, none of this was based upon race. Rather, there was always a higher principle when it came to laws or regulations, or problems in a prospective appointee's background that were the problems. Wink...nod.
As race is both a forbidden and illegitimate reason for any policy choice, code words were developed. During the civil rights movement, that involved protests that were often infiltrated by agents provocateur or that just had pent-up emotions that were released, their cry was "law and order". With busing to achieve some measure of racial equality, it was "neighborhood schools". For affirmative action, it was--get this--"discrimination". Wink...nod.
Even more tellingly, the passage of the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s led the Republicans to adopt, quite openly, the 'southern strategy'. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights act, he commented that that act will cause the Democrats to lose the south for generations.
What was the Republican southern strategy? It was to go after the white vote in the South by opposing everything they could that improved the condition of Afro-Americans. Although they could not always be successful, or even speak what their constituents wanted to hear, the white southerner knew at least that these Republican conservatives were on their side. Winks...and nods.
There were exceptions. Jack Kemp--who was famously (for Republicans) said to have "showered with blacks"--proposed tax benefits for businesses that located in depressed areas of cities (mostly non-white). It never passed. George W Bush's "no child left behind" education initiative conceptually would help predominantly black (as well as other) schools, but it was never adequately funded.
But, for the most part, conservative Republicans have courted the anti-nonwhite sentiments of the country. They have used winks, nods and code words to exacerbate rather than heal racial tensions.
Political leaders are supposed to be, well, leaders. Where there are rifts in society--especially such a painful one, with such a tragic history--leaders are supposed to calm passions and try to heal. Conservative Republicans have done what they could to widen the rift of race and ethnicity, and keep the passions burning.
The rightwing lunatic fringe--e.g., Glenn Beck--stokes the fires directly by, as recently, questioning whether Afro-Americans have the right to be called Afro-Americans. Now, who would really care about that except someone whose only purpose is to exploit latent racism? How dare these people get called what they want to be called!
No Republican leader ever steps forward registering disapproval. Indeed, when David Duke, the KKK leader, joined the Republicans, that party struggled with repudiating him. Why? Because they did not want to risk alienating what they had nurtured as their "base".
Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of liberal policies, those that deal with the underprivileged have been designed to improve the lives of racial and ethnic minorities. And, when it came to civil rights, Democrats passed those laws knowing that it would be to their political detriment.
And so, when a Republican conservative "misspeaks", he is not really misspeaking. He is revealing not only his or her own feelings and background, for which learning and forgiveness are appropriate, but rather exploiting an ugly, divisive political strategy for which forgiveness only will be available to those who abandon the strategy and work to repair the damage it has caused.
That is why there is a double standard. That is why there should be.
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Post publication addendum: Based upon many of the comments to this post, I would like to clarify the key point. I did not try to suggest that liberals using racial slurs ought not to be held accountable, but rather that their utterances ought to be forgiven through apology and owning up to the error--i.e., that it was a teachable moment for themselves and perhaps others--but that a similar utterance from a rightwing politician or other so-called leader should not be forgiven unless and until that individual not only apologizes but abandons the vile political strategy of exploiting racial and ethnic divisions and also works in his or her future career to repair the damage caused. I tried to make the point more succinctly in the last large paragraph of the article.
Concerning the historical points raised, I stand corrected on the number of Southern Senators who switched from Democrat to Republican., and appreciate the comment. Perhaps 1970 would have been a better brightline than 1930--but recall it was Harry Truman who integrated the military, and Hubert Humphrey who stood firmly for Civil Rights at the '48 convention, and Eleanor Roosevelt who would not attend a Daughters of the American Revolution event that excluded Marion Anderson, and arranged for her performance at the Lincoln memorial. Ike sent troops to Little Rock, Dirksen helped LBJ pass Civil Rights...that was the '50s and '60s, before the Republicans' southern strategy, so I think the 1970 cutoff would be clearer. It is still the LAST 40 years!
I firmly reject the point the opposing commentators made, that the history of the Democratic party in the South meant that the Democrats were for the last 40 years co-conspirators in exploiting racial politics in the south, and thus the entire premise of my article was wrong. The national Democratic Party came down clearly on the side of Civil Rights. The southern Democratic Senators who remained voted with the Republicans, and were out of step with the national Party. Those who remained like Robert Byrd, have done the penance suggested--abandoned racial politics, and worked for decades to right the wrongs he participated in. The "southern strategy" employed by the Republicans was clearly designed to court those votes--and they did get them. When a conservative Republican, therefore, misspeaks, and reveals a racial or ethnic bias, they have a lot more to prove than a liberal Democrat.
Thanks to all for their comments.
This statement is not true. If it said "since the 1970s" it would be much closer to true. Almost all Republicans up until then were major supporters of Federal civil rights legislation. For example, 80% of Republicans in the House and 82% of Republicans in the Senate voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Republican support of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as even stronger. Republicans had tried to enfranchise African-Americans eight year earlier in the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee took the teeth out of the bill before it became law.
It is important that we remain aware that the values of today's Republican party are completely opposite not only to those of Lincoln but to those of Eisenhower as well.
Looking at this thread and having seen some of the confusion that surrounds Republican political history I think your next one could be about the history of Republican politics. It seems that many people believe party political strategies and positions to be static rather than changing over time.
It is a good try--label the Democrats as the party that used race as a political strategy--but history clearly shows that the Republicans willingly assumed the mantle of racial politics that the Democrats abandoned when the Civil Rights Laws were passed.
ONLY the willfully ignorant would choose NOT to see the difference! And, then try to deceive others with a false premise and distortion of the truth.
“Willful ignorance” just cannot be THAT blissful!