Mary Francis Berry Explains How the Race Card is Played

Back a few posts ago, intrepid and cherished reader, Bill Fleming, accused me in these terms:

KB, when you downgrade true acts of racism into a buzzword (playing the race card) and say it's all politics, you are denying the problem.

Bill was objecting to my point that the Left was using the race card in its attacks on the Tea Party Movement, just as Breitbart was trying to use the race card to attack the enemies of that movement (in this case, the NAACP).

In fact I thought this whole story was not about racism at all, but about the political use of the race card. I now have my suspicions confirmed.

Professor of Political Poker at the University of Pennsylvania, Mary Frances Berry, explains at Politico how the race card is played.

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

I am not as sure as Professor Berry that this charge is proving effective, over the long run. But I am sure she is right that "There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans." I couldn't have put it better. It is politically safer, however, to accuse a smaller group of racism than to make that same accusation against the opposite party as a whole, let alone most Americans.

Professor Berry lets the cat out of the bag. The Tea Party people are no more and perhaps less racist than Americans in general. The charge of racism, like the equally bogus charge of encouraging political violence that was the last card played against them, is a purely cynical strategy. It puts the Tea Party folks on the defensive, and distracts readers and viewers from the economy.

That's politics, and I am not particularly offended by it. It's hypocritical and dishonest but reasonably benign if, that is, racism is really not a serious problem anymore. I fervently hope that's true. If it isn't, using the race card in this way is surely analogous to crying wolf when there is a real wolf out there.

Either way, Professor Berry has, for reasons beyond my comprehension, exposed the cynicism and dishonesty of the Democrat's strategy against the Tea Party.

Comments

[Donald Pay]

There was a great poll done on this. It's pretty clear that members of the Tea Party harbor stronger racial resentment against blacks and other minorities than other conservatives and Republicans who do not identify with the Tea Party. Race has been a factor in Republican political strategy for years (since the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon).

http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/racepolitics.html

[KB]

Donald: If by "racial resentment" you mean disagreement with the New York Times Editorial board over affirmative action policies, and if you mean by conservatives and Republicans "Middle of the Road" and "All Whites," then yes, Tea Party People are have more racial resentment than the latter. If you mean by racial resentment racial resentment, it is much less clear what those polls mean. For example:

"Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many
other minorities overcame
prejudice and worked their way
up. Blacks should do the same
without special favors."

Is that racial resentment? If so, it is shared by 70% of Whites and 67% of those who are described in the poll as Middle of the Road. Even among "true skeptics" of the tea party movement, a 56% majority agrees with that statement. So the 80% agreement among tea party "true believers" is just marginally to the right. What would you expect?

There is no way that this poll can be used to measure racial resentment at all, let alone among a movement scattered across the United States. It measures opinions of a range of issues, and suggests a degree of moderation and consensus that I find rather surprising.

Yes, Republicans have used race in their political strategies. So have the Democrats. No one is doubting that.

[Donald Pay]

See, if you look at the poll question the assumption that has to be made is that all those "special favors" provided to whites and not provided to blacks and Hispanics weren't really "special favors." It's a complete misunderstanding of US history. Very few whites overcame discrimination without being bestowed the "special favor" of being considered "white."

Whites had lots of "special favors" one generation upon another generation that were denied to blacks and Hispanics. Sure, some ethnic groups suffered some discrimination for a generation or two (much of it tied to whether certain whites thought these ethnic groups were "white"). The dual wage system (one wage for whites, another for Hispanics or blacks) didn't begin a slow unravelling until WWII, and it took till the 1960s to end legally. You can go through the history of every government program, every church denomination and charity and every private corporation and find mandated policy giving specific special favors to whites and denying them to black and Hispanics. But the Tea Party and its apologizers aren't interested in that. They want to keep their little piece of the pie, and they have been fooled into thinking it's the blacks and Hispanics that are threatening them, rather than the corporate elite.

[KB]

Donald: the argument you are making now is an argument in favor of Affirmative Action. Maybe its a good argument and maybe not, but that isn't the point. The point is that opposition to affirmative action is no measure of "racial resentment". One might believe, as I do, that it has hurt African Americans more than it has helped them.

The poll questions above is, as you correctly point out, very oversimplified. But that is hardly the fault of the respondents! As best I can tell, the poll had a very small sample size. It produces some very odd results on a lot of the questions. At most, it shows that the Tea Party "true believers" are marginally further to the right than "Middle of the Road" respondents, just as "tea party skeptics" are to the left. Film at eleven.

The Tea Party people are activists, and activists tend to lean away from the middle. They have been accused to encouraging political violence and of being racist, but the evidence for both charges is as thin as Sarah Palin's reading list or, for that matter, Barack Obama's list of academic publications.

[Bill Fleming]

Here's an analysis quite different from yours, KB.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/new-data-on-tea-party-sympathizers.html

[Bill Fleming]

A little thought experiment might serve us well in this discussion. I'll get to it in a minute. But first, it's perhaps helpful to define our terms. Without resorting to a dictionary, I define "racism" as a sense of feeling superior to another individual because of their ethnicity, usually triggered by the simple visual cue of skin color. It tends to lead toward oppression of those deemed inferior. By contrast, "xenophobia" does not necessarily imply a feeling of superiority, but rather fear of someone different from oneself or ones culture.

Now, for the thought experiment, based on two recent events. First we have two black men standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia. Both are in makeshift uniforms, one is wielding a stick. Next we have Tea Party rallys where hundreds of people, mostly white show up openly carrying firearms, and their politicians talking about exercising their "Second Amendment Option" if the government won't listen to them.

Now, imagine that the poll workers were white, and the Tea Party demonstrators were black.

What does your gut tell you? The exercise is designed to assist you in checking your level of racism and/or xenophobia.

Without rationalizing, write down how you feel. Now notice whether you would be comfortable sharing that true gut feeling openly with someone who is of a different color or culture than you are.

[Bill Fleming]

Next, a recent Pew Research study on the "Millennials" (Americans age 18-30) shows that 61% or them are white, (ethnically speaking). By contrast, among persons age 30+, 70% are white. At this rate of change, the majority of people in America will be non-white in the next generation or two.

Again, what does your gut say about that fact?

The study is quite interesting. Here's a link to it: http://pewresearch.org/millennials/

[KB]

BillF: We are very near to agreement about what racism is. I think it is a real thing, like electricity. It is a belief (along with the gut reactions you mention) that someone of a specified race is bad. "Bad" may mean inferior, inferior may be weak, unintelligent, or morally defective. But most of all, it means that the the person is an enemy, merely because of his racial identity.

I am sorry, but I can't quite follow your first thought experiment. I am sure that is because I am slow. As for your second, I understand it very well. What does my gut tell me about the projections that America will be non-white in a generation?

My gut, like my mind, doesn't believe in white people. My mother's maiden name was Daugherty, which is Irish. I recently discovered that Blanchard may be a French version of an ancient Irish name. Were the Irish "white" when they began arriving in large numbers in New York? Not so anyone noticed. Neither I nor my gut give a rat's ass what complexion future generations of Americans sport. That they accept the principles in the Declaration of Independence, that I care about.

[Bill Fleming]

So, good, KB. Now, do you agree that there is a difference between "hate" and "fear?" And that their respective opposites are "forgiveness" and "acceptance" as opposed to "love" and "courage?"

By the way, I wasn't necessarily challenging you personally with the thought experiments. It's interesting, in a way, to hear what your personal feelings are, but it's much more important, don't you think, to see how we as a society answer those questions, especially as it pertains to our laws? Huge difference between structural racism and xenophobia (think Apartheid) and the individual thoughts of a few isolated citizens of that society.