Yesterday ABL kindly linked to my piece about Laura Ingraham, race and privilege in discussion of one Herman Cain. I’ve decided to post that here, updated with with observations on Lawrence O’ Donnell’s interview with Cain that aired Thursday night and the reaction to that interview on Friday.
Right wing radio host Laura Ingraham actually served a useful purpose this week with her charming comments on race, President Obama, Herman Cain, and American history.
And what happened with Obama is that he gets this job that he’s not qualified for… OK, so [Obama is] Constitutionally qualified for but he’s not really qualified for. And guess who pays the price? All of us. Because we had such a yearning for history.
Well I have a question. Herman Cain, if he became president, he would be the first black president, when you measure it by — because he doesn’t — does he have a white mother, white father, grandparents, no, right? So Herman Cain, he could say that he’s — he’s — he’s the first, uh — he could make the claim to be the first — yeah, the first Main Street black Republican to be the president of the United States. Right? He’s historic too.
Now you may be thinking “How is this useful other than as a window into just how awful a person Laura Ingraham is?” I’ll be happy to explain my theory. It goes something like this:
Ingraham’s comments show the difference between racism and assumption of privilege. They’re related, but they’re not the same thing. One specifically involves baseless assumptions, negative stereotypes and bigoted behavior specifically involving race, the other involves that a person believes a specific group that they don’t belong to should follow behaviors and be assigned criteria that they consider to be societal norms that the group in question should possess.
It’s entirely possible to assume privilege about a group, to “take it upon oneself,” on issues other than race (gender, sexual identity, religion or lack thereof, etc.) and it’s entirely possible to be racist without assuming privilege (propagating negative stereotypes about one’s own race, “self-hating” etc.)
What Ingraham is doing is very much in the category of assumption of privilege. She feels that she not only has the right to be the arbiter of the President’s racial identity, that she not only has the right to define what that identity means to all other racial identity groups (and that Barack Obama’s racial identity is different from Herman Cain’s racial identity based solely on her opinion) but given her statements in the past she feels that she knows what is best for the black community as well, even though she’s not a part of it. On top of all that, because the President is biracial (like myself) she feels that she can emphasize one race over the other when it suits her argument, and that his identity is mutable based on what she thinks at the time and from which angle she needs to attack him. The assumption that other African-Americans need her guidance and opinion in order to formulate their own perceptions of the President’s racial identity is pretty much the height of hubris.
But Ingraham’s technically not being racist. She’s not actually saying that being black is bad, she’s just defining what she thinks being black from a Presidential historical standpoint means and should be defined as. Having said that, her assumption of privilege here is repugnant, ignorant, arrogant, unacceptable and generally makes her a truly rotten human being. I’m pretty sure most of us would find her statements to be breathtakingly terrible and that most people find what she said to be unremittingly foul on pure instinct. Her statements in fact imply a great number of negative things about the President being biracial and that not being good enough to qualify the him for historical status, that somehow it makes Herman Cain “better” in her opinion, but her statements weren’t technically racism, only implied. There is a difference, and it’s one that has been exploited to great effect in history.
Now here’s where it gets fun: Ingraham’s defenders will no doubt say that her assumption of privilege is not racism, and that anyone who does attack her as being such is overly sensitive and should be dismissed. But this means that her assumption of privilege is acceptable to society because the racism is merely implied and not overt, and therefore a matter of one’s opinion and perspective. Implied attacks on minorities through the language of assumption of privilege have been used throughout American history.
It’s readily and painfully recognizable to various minorities, but has over the decades lost stigma and even become acceptable to those who regularly assume the familiar code phrases, tired arguments, and “dog whistle” semantics because they are in the majority and get to define in society what the acceptable norms are. When couched in the haze of opinion and point-of-view, attacks on such language can be easily discounted in order to maintain that majority hold on what is acceptable and what is not, and it’s done specifically to blunt criticism from minorities and to perpetuate the power in the majority. At its logical endpoint, it’s also designed specifically to anger the minority group in question in order to provoke a reaction by the minority that can be dismissed by the majority in order to establish dominance by being able to control what is acceptable in society.
It’s worked for a very, very, very long time. Ingraham is playing a game as old as human interaction itself.
Having said that, Laura Ingraham can kiss my biracial ass.
Madam, you are no more the arbiter of the President’s racial identity and what it means to America than the pile of fecal matter inside your cranium, and the poison-saturated sack of hypocrisy that constitutes your soul is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy. I am proud of being biracial. It does not make me any less pure or less worthy or less human than human, and I greatly resent the implication. I am exceedingly proud of my President because he is someone like me, and I live in a country where someone like me can in fact be the leader of the free world and govern a country of 310 million people, all of whom are better people than you are. If you cannot find the singular joy in a society that allows that to happen, your worldview is a hopelessly broken and bleak landscape of endless recriminations that is so exceedingly and perfectly empty that you will seek to fill it with shallow, sneering, venal attacks in order to find some way, any way, to stop the relentless pain that your daily existence must entail.
Now, having said all that about Laura Ingraham, she’s not the only media person to ever have assumed privilege over minorities in America. Lawrence O’Donnell did it Thursday night in an interview with Herman Cain. Granted, Cain had misrepresented his position about what he was doing during the civil rights movement in his new book and O’Donnell completely called him out on it. But then O’Donnell goes and says the following (about the 9:10 mark on this video):
Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on. You could easily as a student at Morehouse between 1963 and 1967 actively have participated in the kinds of protests that got African-Americans the rights they enjoy today. You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes. You watched black college students and white college students from around the country come to the South and be murdered, fighting for the rights of African-Americans. Do you regret sitting on the sidelines at that time?
To put it bluntly, O’Donnell’s position that any African-American could have “easily” participated in the civil rights movement in the mid-60’s is the same assumption of privilege, this time over the very real dangers facing the black community in the South in those years. The situation was far more complex, far more complicated, and far more dangerous than a binary choice that O’Donnell presents. And yes, I’m saying that he’s guilty of the same line of venal sin as Ingraham, his assumption of what it should be like for the black community according to his own perspective, and then he tells Cain exactly how he should have conducted himself during that time.
No offense there, Lawrence, but that’s just the same brand of inane “you know what’s best for us” malarkey that Ingraham so moronically peddled to President Obama about his racial identity. Herman Cain may be generally awful on his positions, he not anyone I ever vote for, he’s a liar, he doesn’t understand basic principles of macroeconomics despite being a pizza chain magnate and I’m particularly not fond of his complete failure to call out his Republican colleagues on using the same kind of launguaged couched in “he said, she said, we differ” obfuscation in order to provide cover for implied racism. Cain showed the mirror of Ingraham’s implications.
But Lawrence O’Donnell, doesn’t get to make that call about what Herman Cain should have done during that period, any more than Laura Ingraham gets to assume she knows how best to define President Obama’s racial identity. Herman Cain was in fact right to call O’Donnell out for that aspect of the interview. Yes, Cain went too far and called him a “plantation master” in response and showed a far more odious level of disregard than was accorded to him by O’Donnell. That part of Cain’s response was indeed foul and insulting as he did everything he could to wreck the racial discourse.
The difference however between Laura Ingraham and Lawrence O’Donnell (and it’s a massive, titanic difference) is that Lawrence O’Donnell openly admitted to what he said Thursday and took steps to expand the discourse instead of limit it like both Ingraham and Cain did. He opened a discussion on it on his show last night with Rev. Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Goldie Taylor of The Grio. O’Donnell explained that he wasn’t trying to Herman Cain what he should have done, that it was a moral choice instead. (Part 2 of that discussion is here.) O’Donnell expanded the discourse, and seeing liberals openly discuss not only race and the implications of but the assumption of privilege is something we badly, badly need more of. It’s Melissa Harris-Perry who explained it best last night:
That said, and with no support for Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan or anything else on the Cain menu, I was squirming with discomfort watching this interview, Lawrence, between you and Mr. Cain, and my discomfort came from a couple of sources. One, just exactly as you said, the menu of choices, I think we have to be so careful. When we are not facing that imminent violence ourselves, we have to be extremely careful about even the implication that those who did not participate were necessarily cowards. Not, Mr. Cain may be a coward, I don’t know, but it was always simply a minority of African-Americans who were engaged at any point in the civil rights movement because it was a life or death question, and I can’t be certain what choices I would have made if I had faced that.
This of course is an excellent point. Dr. Harris-Perry is absolutely correct when she says all this, and even in 2011 we have a lot of assumptions to address before we can get to the actual discourse, the need for a point of origin on discussions like this usually ends up being 90% of the yelling and screaming without anything civil actually said. And for his efforts to publically correct that, I applaud Lawrence O’Donnell. We need more discourse like this, even if and especially because of the rocky road we continually need to travel in order to get there. Please do yourself a favor and watch both parts of the discussion, it’s very instructive, informative, and educational.
My theory ends forthwith.
Disgruntled Lurker
Nice post. Still digesting it.
There is a word missing from this sentence: “O’Donnell explained that he wasn’t trying to Herman Cain”
someguy
She is kind of right. A black guy who graduates from Morehouse – an HBCU – has a more authentically black experience than a black guy who goes to Harvard, the whitest of white institutions. Sure, you can go there if you’re black, but to the dominant culture you’re ornamentation – the same as if you’re not a child of the elite. It’s great that you graduate with a ticket into the elite, but your purpose there was to make the Trustees feel progressive. The purpose of the school is to pass on the dominant culture, not to provide higher education for people who are not members of it.
Lawrence O’Donnell was right to question Cain too – for a black college student not to have been involved in civil rights causes in the 60’s (or at any time really) raises questions about whether he’s a go-along-to-get-along Uncle (Clarence) Thomas. Just like women who aren’t feminists, and gays who aren’t involved in gay marriage activism, you really have to question their motivation and authenticity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Disgruntled Lurker:
It is a new verb. Look it up on Urban Dictionary. It is too vile to describe here.
@ Zandar: Great post. I liked it at your place, and I think the LO’D stuff adds a lot. I think that a lot of well meaning white people (myself included) do, with best intentions and all that, often step on their dicks in racial discussions due to unexamined privilege. LO’D did the best thing one can do it that situation, admit it and use it as an opportunity to have a different and better discussion.
amk
It was stupid of lod to make this an race issue. ‘herb’ fucking cain should have been grilled for his radical positions on politics, economy and wallstreet.
You can always trust the so called librul media to get distracted.
mhp tried to delicately point this out to lod, who was sounding defensive through out that piece. It’s better to shut your mouth and make people think that you are stupid than to open it and confirm that you are, lawrence.
Karen S.
@someguy:
So, what, exactly is an “authentically black experience”? Is it because at Morehouse one is around more black people than at Harvard? I’m truly curious. (Disclosure: I am African American. My mother and father spent their formative years in Virginia and Missouri, respectively. They moved my brothers and I to a predominantly white Chicago suburb in the late 1960s.)
I wonder why anyone cares whether an African American has an “authentically black experience” or not.
General Stuck
White peeps. What you gonna do about us and our wankings on race and racism in this country. The bullshit is built so sturdy in our very genes, it would take a nuclear remedy to wash the bullshit clean.
O’donnell’s sin is at least grounded in good faith. Ingraham is dredging up ancient “mullato” politics and designations that was a mainstay in our distant fascist past.
Maybe we need such rememberance to be expressed to hopefully get free of the unaddressed racial stacks of bullshit, our white forefathers bequeathed us, but it sure is ugly and painful to experience.
I see a good president and a good man in Barack Obama. It baffles me to no end, why others on both sides of the isle don’t see the same, since it is so fucking obvious, or should be. He could be purple with big white dots, and still the same talented and imperfect man.
vcr#117
You are correct, as a history teacher, I’ve been looking for the phrase you just described ” assumption of privilege”. May I use it? I’m white but, was very uncomfortable with O’Donnell’s interview. I ended up turning the sound down and did not listen to most of it. I found the follow up last night much more interesting. This is a good post, it gives someone, like me, a lot to think about.
Baud
Great post, Zandar.
The Ingraham aspect is interesting to me because, on one hand, I’m proud that this country elected a black (or biracial if you prefer) president, but on the other hand, I couldn’t actually care less about Obama’s (or Cain’s) race. I know it seems contradictory, but I don’t know how to explain it any better right now.
I’m curious about your take on what, if any, comments or criticisms you would consider acceptable for Group A to make with respect to Group B, whether those groups are defined by race, sex, political party, etc., without it being taken for an assumption of privilege.
SRW1
Actually, in my book Ingraham is very much a racist with that shit, just not quite in the usual manner. What she is saying, is that somebody with a background like Obama isn’t really a white person and not really a black person either. And the fact that he doesn’t belong to any of these ‘real’ categories is worse than belonging to any of them. So Obama’s racial background makes him a lesser person than somebody who is either really white or really black. And if that isn’t defining somebody by his racial background then racism doesn’t have that much meaning any more.
Rest of the post is spot on.
Betsy
@someguy:
Dude, I’m sorry, but that’s horseshit. An “authentically black” experience is the experience one has while black, regardless of where one has it.
RossInDetroit
@General Stuck:
I’ve been playing the mental game of imagining that Obama looked like George Will or some other tweedy WASP type, and thinking how I might react differently to what he says and does. If you visualize him as looking like a conservative, it’s very easy to view his actions as those of a conservative politician.
Not that I’d change him or wish any change. He’s awesome just as he is.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
I’m not giving O’Donnell a pass. I honestly leave it to others to judge how and if he went too far, because that’s not my point. My point is that, having taken in criticism, he reached out to the people best suited to judge the critiques, and allowed them to praise or hit him on his own show, without reflexive defense or scare-mongering (“You need my ally-ship!”)
What O’Donnell did — to stop, and give a platform for people to debate and even criticize his actions as an ally — should not be rare. It should be part of the process of evolving and learning as an ally, to put your ego and certainty aside in the face of negative opinions from people with far more experience, and who’s lives are far more affected by the issues the ally brings up. This was a hard lesson for me as a male feminist to swallow, to say the least — ad I still work on it. :)
Cain’s flavor of the month will likely be up soon. But discussions like these are to be acknowledged, and so I do.
SIA
Brilliant.
SRW1
Deleted because of loss in the struggle with the editing function.
West of the Cascades
I’m impressed that O’Donnell followed up his interview with Cain with the discussion the following night. The interview with Cain made me uncomfortable not only because of O’Donnell’s presumption about what the “right” course of action for Cain was with respect to the Civil Rights movement, but in another part of the interview making an accusation that Cain acted somehow “wrong” not to volunteer to serve in the military in Vietnam, but instead went into the draft lottery (and didn’t get picked) and then took a civil service job with the Navy. Both parts of that interview struck me as O’Donnell simply seeking to provoke the candidate by bringing up questions about how he acted as someone in his early 20s — with regard to two moral choices for which O’Donnell openly set the premise of what the “correct” course of action was, and challenged Cain to explain why he didn’t follow the “correct” course (with regard to service in Vietnam, O’Donnell mentioned John Kerry by name as someone who volunteered instead of waiting for the draft lottery). It seemed a strange and fairly extreme position to assume to be the “correct” choice (“when your country decided to fight an undeclared war based on false premises in a country that had no strategic importance, YOUR duty as a 22 year-old kid coming out of college was to volunteer to be a foot soldier in that war, WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THAT LIKE JOHN KERRY DID?”).
I’d just finished reading Zandar’s post at ABLC about assumption of privilege/Laura Ingraham before I watched the O’Donnell-Cain interview, and (as Zandar emphasizes in here) it drove home the point that it’s a far more common phenomenon than I’d been conscious of. And I’m really glad to see that O’Donnell took it the next step, to have a discussion that opened his assumptions to challenge.
BTW – Zandar – your post(s) on this issue are about the most thought-provoking things I’ve read on the internet recently. Thanks!
donquijoterocket
Someguy- I’m not black,but of an age, and well-traveled enough in this country to remember that there were few areas where one could not be pulled over for the ex-officio violation of driving while black.
I wasn’t all that long ago that people like Ingraham would be citing the one drop rule in regards the President’s race and both he and Herman could and would have been frozen out of higher education, housing, and access to capital for no other reason.
Svensker
Thanks for a thoughtful and interesting post, Zandar. And your critique of O’D’s grilling of Cain helped quantify something I felt but couldn’t express. “What YOU should have been doing as a member of your group, as decided by ME, not a member of your group” — not good. It applies to racial privilege, of course, as in this case, but it’s also a good lesson generally, to not judge a man unless you’ve walked in his shoes.
Good for O’D for being open to criticism and to discussing the issue.
Svensker
@someguy:
I think you need to go read Zandar’s post again.
CarolDuhart
In many ways, I think Cain brought this upon himself, first by denying his real age, secondly by that “brainwashed” remark. Not every black male in the 1960’s participated actively in the movement-for various reasons from health to courage. But those who didn’t have always appreciated those who did.
Linda Featheringill
Great post Zandar!
Barack Obama is the physical embodiment of several contradictions. Lots of people who cannot embrace the duality are still disturbed by him.
I understand this. I was raised to be a racist pig. Hard core. I was weaned on white supremacy. When I became an adult, I formed my own opinions and carried on with my life.
Obama came on the scene and as I watched him and listened to him, a lot of old ghosts stirred and became present again. I had to face these ghosts and interrogate them. Obama, of course, is a lot smarter than I am, more energetic than I am, and may be a better person than I am. He is superior to me by those criteria. He is superior to most presidential candidates I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Could this country have elected a mediocre black dude? Dunno. Is that fair? No.
[Laura who? Does she think that History will remember her?]
Kola Noscopy
Dear God, this is the biggest fucking word salad I’ve read on BJ thus far. This is the entire word salad bar…at Applebee’s.
kdaug
OT, but am I the only one cheering watching the “Christian Conservatives” turning on each other Live on CNN right now?
“Mormonism is a cult.” “No I’m a real Christian!” “Oh, no, you heathens are going to hell.”
Damn.
Dudes, y’all go over there and work it all out with the “God hates fags” and “the Pope is the Antichrist” and “Jesus came to New York” folks. I mean, y’all are free to believe whatever you want, that’s fine, but you should at least try to come up with a coherent message.
But in the meantime, the rest of us are going this way and try to solve the real problems we need to work on.
Get back to us, if you want. Or not. Cool either way.
West of the Cascades
@West of the Cascades: thinking more on this, the thing that made me uncomfortable re: the Vietnam service part of the interview was that O’Donnell seemed to be suggesting that in wartime (even undeclared war-time) the only legitimate form of service to the country was to volunteer to be a soldier, and (in the context of speaking with the one of the leading candidates for the GOP nomination) that making a decision to volunteer to fight was a prerequisite to be Commander in Chief of the armed forces as President. That seems a badly flawed position to advance, because it delegitimizes not only Cain’s reasonable course of action but anyone who protested the Vietnam War or tore up his draft card or otherwise refused to fight.
Seemingly that would disqualify President Obama from his current job, too — “when the US engaged in Operation Desert Storm, you were 30 years old, why didn’t you volunteer to serve in the Army in Saudi Arabia and participate in the liberation of Kuwait? Other people volunteered — why didn’t you?” I would be very pissed to hear questions like that aimed at the President, and those are what O’Donnell’s questions to Cain about Vietnam sounded like to me.
Captain Howdy
I don’t know, Zandar. You make what I think is an unjustifiable charge when you say that Ingraham’s “assumption that other African-Americans need her guidance and opinion in order to formulate their own perceptions of the President’s racial identity is pretty much the height of hubris.”
I don’t think that this odious talking head makes that assumption. I think she is giving her opinion — an idiotic, malformed opinion to be sure — without the assumption that the “other” needs her guidance. Obviously this is a rather key element of your post, because if Ingraham isn’t trying to foist her stupid on black Americans as “guidance” or some such, then your analysis about privilege falls apart. In other words, it’s not hubris, it’s just stupid.
I could be wrong. Is there any real evidence that she believes black people (or any people) need her guidance?
Villago Delenda Est
Zandar, I really did enjoy and LEARN from your O’Donnell addendum to your Ingraham post. O’Donnell can’t make the “why did you do what you did” call nearly as convincingly as someone who actually participated at the time, because it’s first, 50 years off, and second, lacks the authenticity for precisely the reasons you state.
Cain is a scuzzbucket, no doubt about it. The 999 plan is utter fucking idiocy, and makes me wonder how the hell he got to be CEO of Godfather’s Pizza in the first place, because it has such a can’t do the math sort of vibe.
cat48
Very thoughtful post, Zander. Personally, I don’t think I could get out of bed in the morning if I was attacked as relentlessly and as ruthlessly as the prez has been. It’s been extremely difficult to watch.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@someguy:
You know what’s an Authentic African-American Experience in America? Being Black in America. Sure, I went to a lilly-white small college in Mass. Sure, there’s more of “my culture” at a HBCU, yet to tie that to tired old notions of “authenticity” is to degrade the experiences of millions of African-Americans — and I sincerely hope you’re not planning to do that.
Because of not just racism, but expectations that in part stem from general, even positive, racial/ethic attitudes, it’s nearly impossible for anyone who is African-American to truly disengage from the culture, in part because the overall American culture is neck-deep in ideas and concepts that originated with “us”. People — including other African-Americans — expect you to be conversant with “black stuff”, from the latest hip-hop artists on. That’s both a blessing and a burden, but it’s also an expectation that is strongly correlated (in my experience) with my African ancestry as reflected in the US.
In fact, there’s some guy named Obama who wrote about coming into that very experience in some book or another that might have had a few sales. Before people comment about what the “authentic African-American experience” is, it might be prescriptive to read about what people who’ve had to come into that experience went through.
Chris
@kdaug:
I don’t know, but if you mean the Values Voter summit, it’s just a couple blocks down from where I live in DC. Maybe I should find a bar to go to this evening and see if I can catch anything interesting in people’s conversations… but nah. Not worth the time or the money.
Kola Noscopy
By attacking Lawrence O’Donnell, and assuming the privilege that you have the right to make assumptions about what he and by extension the entire white, news anchor community should be doing at this time and in their position, aren’t you being hypocritical and acting JUST LIKE Laura Ingraham?
Shouldn’t you be very, very careful here in what you say, think, and feel? After all, you have not had the same racial experience as LOD and by extension the entire white population of the United States which is of course monolithic and exactly the same.
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Cascades:
On the Vietnam thing:
The question here is, was Cain a vocal supporter of the war in Vietnam, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were. Or was he an opponent of it, as guys like John Kerry became?
If you’re all for a war when you refuse to put your skin in the game because you have “other priorities”, then you’re definitely open to charges of outright cowardice, and ridicule for same.
If you opposed the war on moral grounds all along, then not so much…your opposition isn’t based on your own personal safety, but your objection to this particular war at this particular time.
Then there are those like Kerry, Oliver Stone, and others, who felt an obligation to serve which only reinforced their opposition to the entire mess…for the usual practical reasons that become particularly sharp if you’ve been there, done that, and have the scars to prove it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kola Noscopy:
O’Donnell was open to discussing the entire issue.
Ingraham is most definitely not.
That’s the difference.
Tyro
To put it bluntly, O’Donnell’s position that any African-American could have “easily” participated in the civil rights movement in the mid-60’s is the same assumption of privilege, this time over the very real dangers facing the black community in the South in those years.
That’s true, but Herman Cain is running for president on the basis of what is supposed to be his special moral and personal insights. So I do kind of want to know what happened to a guy who was at ground zero and see what decisions he made, much like John Kerry was at ground zero of opposition to the Vietnam war and had to make decisions about what he was going to do.
I wouldn’t blame a guy who said, “Look, I didn’t want to get myself killed and ruin my parents’ lives.” Hey, fair point. But not an unfair question, particularly if he says, “other guys were braver than me and had a lot more to lose.”
Shawn in ShowMe
@Villago Delenda Est:
The guy has a BS in mathematics from Morehouse and a Masters in computer science from Purdue. Cain knows math very well. There’s a reason that his plan enriches the 1% at the expense of the 99%. That’s the way it was designed to work.
I wonder what his parents, proud members of the 99%, would think of the man Herman has become.
wilfred
Isn’t all this a bit of post-racial pearl clutching?
The new politics is class consciousness. Time to get over this silly, “who’s a bigger racist” wankery.
Class – class – class. Herman Cain and Laura Ingraham occupy the same one.
karen marie
@someguy: You weren’t there, you’re not black, and you either didn’t read the whole post or you reject this argument.
I’m glad that O’Donnell had further discussion of the issues raised by the Cain interview. Thanks for posting this, Zandar*.
(*Corrected — guilty of assuming this was an ABL post.)
Omnes Omnibus
@wilfred: I apologize on behalf of everyone on this thread for our being distracted for even a second from the the class struggle.
WereBear
Seconded; I’ve been really enjoying all your posts. It is hard for me to take Ingraham seriously about her distinctions… as I mentioned on your earlier post, if the situation were reversed, she’d be hinting the biracial nature of the candidate would make them more acceptable to the voting public.
And, from Wikipedia:
Jiminy, those business geniuses. How do they do it? Are his Tea Party fans also aware that Mr. Cain was “deputy chairman (1992–94) and chairman (1995–96) of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City”? Don’t Republicans hate the Fed?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Karen S.: If you look black, you will have an authentic black experience.
We swim in a sea of white privilege, but it’s a hard thing to see when you’re white.
Bruce S
Good post – O’Donnell realized he’d screwed up and did something very good in response to realizing he’d mucked the interview up. I watched the first interview and have such visceral loathing of Cain that I didn’t really question O’Donnell’s assumptions and focused on the pleasure of watching Cain digging his own hole deeper. Watching the re-cap with my wife, who blew up when she heard O’Donnell’s “Rosa Parks vs. your Dad” question and listening to Harris-Perry’s reaction, I realized that O’Donnell had blown the interview at that point. Good for O’Donnell for not just getting defensive but opening up the discussion.
I also have to say that some of the white folks in a previous thread on this who make comments like “I’m a white person but understand the implications of a Morehouse student not joining the civil rights movement” need to check themselves out. WTF? I’m a white person who actually DID participate the civil rights movement starting in 1963, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take a superior attitude to a black person living at that time in the South who didn’t step out to the frontline. Nobody who wasn’t there – and especially young people who take everything that has gone down for granted – do not fucking understand that movement or the system that existed at the level of judging black people who didn’t join the demonstrations.
Also, O’Donnell is an expert on tax policy and would have better spent his time using his skills on that one to demolish Cain’s idiotic tax plan. He got to it at the end of the interview, but the clock ran out and he let Cain get away with a lot of BS.
debit
@karen marie:
ETA: Saw your edit.
@Zandar: I’ve really been enjoying your posts. You’re a welcome addition to the FPers here.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Villago Delenda Est:
Or was he a guy that didn’t think very hard on questions of war and peace? Which, unfortunately, is a pretty common position.
FlipYrWhig
@someguy:
FWIW, Obama didn’t go to Harvard, he went to Occidental and Columbia, then Harvard Law.
Cat Lady
As a white person these discussions about race make me feel like I feel when men discuss abortion. I’m going to just shut up and listen. Thanks Zandar.
West of the Cascades
@Villago Delenda Est: I think it’s not that stark a set of choices — Cain probably was a supporter of the war (I don’t know, but assume that from the fact he went to work for the Navy), but in the context of the late 60s it seems to me that standing for the draft, not having your number come up, and then going to work for the Navy using his math skills to figure out how to better bomb the hell out of people was a legitimate choice even for a war supporter. I think what I’m getting at and obviously not articulating well is what I thought was O’Donnell’s assumption that volunteering and enlisting to fight was the only legitimate course of action (even for a war supporter) was wrong, and is not what I would like to see become the normative assumption about how people are supposed to act when the country’s leaders decide to conduct war in foreign countries. Like the issue of participating/not participating in the Civil Rights movement, the decision of how you react to a war is a lot more complex than a stark binary choice, and I was uncomfortable with O’Donnell’s premise about what the “correct” action was that Cain should have taken.
Even more uncomfortable in the context of the interview because O’Donnell seemed to ask the question on the fly, after realizing that he’d mis-read Cain’s book (O’Donnell had remembered that Cain served in the Navy – Cain corrected him to say that he (Cain) had been a civil servant working for the Navy – and then O’Donnell laid into him asking why he didn’t volunteer to fight).
Brian S
@Shawn in ShowMe: it’s an especially common position when you’re in your teens and early twenties, and I don’t think there’s anything unusual about that.I’ll probably get blasted for saying this, but back in 2000 when Dubya was asked about his drug use as a young person, I thought his answer “when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible” was a pretty good one. Didn’t make up for the rest of his bullshit, and it completely elides all the privilege that his family’s wealth provided him with that kept him from paying the same price for that irresponsibility that tens of thousands of others have paid.
But the core of that statement is an important one–how long do we hold a young person’s actions (or lack thereof) against them? My question is, do they show maturity and growth now? Is there evidence that they’re not that irresponsible or weak-minded person they were when they were 22? In Dubya’s case, that answer was obviously no. For Obama, it’s yes. For Herman Cain? I haven’t paid enough attention to say.
Amir Khalid
@Cat Lady:
Agreed. This is one of those discussions where, as a foreigner (albeit one who has read Dreams From My Father), I too feel it wiser to open my ears than my mouth.
But I feel a need to ask something. Should Lawrence O’Donnell have asked this question: What would Cain have done differently with regard to the civil rights struggle back then, having the knowledge and perspective that he does now? Would he have been more active?
Omnes Omnibus
@Brian S: I suppose it depends in large part on the actions of the 22 year old. The statement worked well for Bush because the actions about which he was questioned, drinking and drug use, are both relatively harmless and relatively common. William Calley was only 24 at the time of the My Lai; should he get a pass because he was young and irresponsible? Of course not.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shawn in ShowMe:
If that were indeed the case, didn’t think about it, then waiting for the draft lottery to decide your fate isn’t anything you need to be defensive about.
Unlike guys who were vocal supporters of the war, but made every effort to avoid serving in it, like Bush and Cheney did. The shit for thee, not for me! I’m special!
schrodinger's cat
OK let me get this straight according to Laura Ingram, Obama is black enough to be called an affirmative action president but not black enough to be the first black president.
ETA: Racist or not it is an offensive statement which doesn’t even make any logical sense.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Difficult needle to thread but there you have it.
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Cascades:
I’m afraid that if you were all for this war, if you felt it was necessary and important, and you attacked those who asserted otherwise, then you didn’t put your own ass on the line…then you’re a coward, and you’re dogshit. Signing up for a job in the rear as a civilian don’t cut it. You need to put your ass on the line, if you’re have any aspiration at all to lead, and that’s precisely what someone running for President is doing. Confronted by your generation’s war (note that Obama never had a war to be confronted with, unlike Bush, Cheney, Romney, or Cain), vocally supporting it and saying it’s what must be done, and you sit on the sidelines while others fight, bleed and die for this war that YOU insist is necessary, but not enough that your ass need face the danger, is beyond contempt.
Cat Lady
@Amir Khalid:
I think a better question for Cain is why he’s a Republican knowing what he does now about how they operate? It’s a question I have for every person who’s a Republican I guess, but for a black man it’s more curious. It’s the same question I would ask any gay person or woman who’s a practicing Catholic. They’re going to despise you first and ask questions later, if ever, so WTF?
Lavandula
Thank you Zandar. This is something I have struggled to articulate for myself when talking to my conservative friends. They seem to understand racism as a crime of intent, so that if your intentions are good, then you didn’t do anything wrong and anyone who says otherwise is just “oversensitive” or “playing the race card.” They will then tell me that they aren’t racists because they don’t believe African Americans are an inferior race, which may be true, but only up to a point — they don’t think African Americans are inferior as long as the person in question is living up to my friends’ idea of what a good black person should be. anyway, you said it much better than I did and I am stealing your description for those facebook fights I know are in my future. . .
West of the Cascades
@Villago Delenda Est: Agree, going AWOL from the Air National Guard (Bush) or getting five deferments because of “different priorities” (Cheney) seem to be a different animal (way more calculatingly hypocritical) than Cain’s apparent “I’ll take my chances at the draft lottery.”
Mark
@Bruce S:
This is a bigotry, plain and simple. No generation has a monopoly on “taking things for granted” and a sweeping generalization like this is remarkable in a thread about privilege and presuming to know someone else’s experience.
Linda Featheringill
@Bruce S:
Good for you!
I was too young and located too far back in the woods to participate but I do remember that there was a lot of very scary stuff going down. Participation in those protests was not something to be undertaken lightly.
kdaug
@Chris: Yeah, the Values Voters Summit. And contrary to what I initially posted, it’s not exactly OT here, either. It’s an issue of who defines “Christian” and who defines “race”.
The parallels…
Amir Khalid
@Cat Lady:
I wouldn’t ask him that. Such a question would carry the implicit accusation that Cain is some sort of dupe. He might be one at that; but if he is or if he ain’t, he’d never admit it. All you’d get is Cain angrily denying that he is a dupe.
Amanda in the South Bay
Of course its okay to bring up Cain’s actions in the 60s-he’s a Republican, a member of a party that fetishizes the military, and whose politicians think they have a monopoly on being tough guys.
Seriously, how come none of this hand wringing every other time a Republican is called a chickenhawk? How many articles have been approvingly read about baby boomer GOP politicians avoiding Vietnam, or younger pro-war pundits missing out on GWOT service? I dunno-does Cain have a Ron Paul-esque foreign policy? If not, I’d say his past is fair game, just like every other time a GOP politician is called a chickenhawk.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Exactly. Fish have no idea that they’re wet all the time.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? I’d say its fair game if he acts like a typical GOP dumbass and says dumbass things about the military and foreign policy. Alas, I know almost nothing about Cain’s views on those issues.
Davis X. Machina
OT: The man the GOP should put on our money somewhere is dead. Not Reagan. Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis. Goodbye E pluribus, unum, hello, “Just Win, Baby!”
Brian S
@Amir Khalid: i think he answers that question (after a fashion) every time he suggests that his fellow black citizens have been brainwashed by the Democratic party. He tries to throw the dupe tag on them as a way of shedding it himself.
Bruce S
55 – Mark
Deal with it…
I wouldn’t make assumptions about how I would have performed on the front-lines of WWII. I have the maturity and humility to assume that folks who actually experienced that history have a better insight into what it was like. Your poutrage is pretty telling and shallow.
Emma
@Kola Noscopy: I hope to God you’re trying to be funny.
Lynn Dee
I thought Melissa Harris-Perry’s point was — as is usual for her — so thoughtful and well taken. One point raised by Al Sharpton and the other panelist, Goldie Taylor, though, was important: That O’Donnell didn’t ask his questions or make his points out of the blue. Rather, they were in response to statements made by Cain in his book.
Still, I thought Harris-Perry’s larger point was far more interesting and something for us all to think about.
Professor
Herman Cain was someone we used to call a ‘House Negro’. Please find the definition of a ‘house negro’
gelfling545
I am very much against attempts by outsiders to force a certain definition of identity on any person, although this seems to be another great American pastime. That said, there are legitimate questions that Herman Cain should answer if he is actually seeking the nomination of a party that has some well defined and limited beliefs on many issues. In re: civil rights activism or lack thereof, what did you do and why is a legitimate question to put to a man who wants to run as the candidate of a party in which a number of members are hostile to civil rights issues. In re: military service, again the republican party is very vocal about supporting the military, sending service people into wars, etc. Again, what did you do and why is a legitimate question. To suggest that he should have done other than what he he was at perfect liberty to choose to do based on a certain perception of his identity is wrong. To ascertain and perhaps underline how his choices and the reasons for them are or are not in accord with the republican philosophy which he seeks to represent is useful.
Jax6655
@wilfred:
You’re mistaken. Class is in the eye of the beholder. i.e. I have no doubt Cain is wealthier than Laura, however, when Ingrahm or Cain need to hail a cab in New York City, guess which one is likely to wait longer??? If either one gets into an elevator, guess which one will make some people clutch their wallet or purse more tightly?
No matter what Cain’s accomplishments were at Godfather’s Pizza, I have no doubt that there were some [disgruntled] white folks there who thought he got his position through Affirmative Action. I wonder how many think that if Ingraham?
The only ones who think race does not matter are the ones who don’t have the fact of their race shoved in their face on a regular basis, regardless of their income or accomplishments. Class my ass. Cain’s money just lets him hire a limo.
@someguy:
John Cole showed a video several weeks ago about Democrats in W.Va. who would not vote for President Obama because . . . . . . . In spite of his Harvard Law bonifides and his net worth, what is it about that which makes his “Black experience” less valid than a Morehouse man? What about ‘class’ makes his race less important to them?
People, people. It is race. Race matters. Whether or not you want to admit it. Denial of the facts does not change the facts.
@General Stuck:
FWIW–Although I know you ‘get it’ and I know from lurking here that you mean well, whenever I hear someone say they don’t care if a person is purple [or green] my nostrils flare and my heartbeat increases. After all, no one in this country hates purple or green people, because there aren’t any.
If there were, the haters would hate them too.
If you don’t care if someone’s Black, or Mexican, or Muslim, just say so. The purple and green thing can come across as false to non-White people, and I know you don’t mean it that way.
El Cid
In a nation (like many South American nations) in which there are publicly identified ethnic backgrounds often leading to notions of purity and mixing, debates about who was ‘really’ from this or that group are very different.
For example, Bolivian President Evo Morales was viewed as the first ‘pure’ or truly ethnically and culturally indigenous person elected leader of a South American nation in its 500 years of European conquest history.
But he was not the only one with ‘Indian blood’.
Likewise categories of ‘mulattos’ or mixed background peoples — remember, we’re talking the public identification of and political reference to and treatment of these notions of ethnicity and identity.
Mexicans have a promulgated notion of the ‘3 cultures’ — Spanish (indicating apparently ‘pure’ European decent, obviously both a place of privileged power and deceit), Indian, and ‘mixed’, or the vast majority of the Mexican population which is and is seen as a blend of European and Indigenous, er, breeding.
(The African-originated part of Mexico’s population is quite less acknowledged.)
South Africa and many other African nations had similar divisions and created though real ethnic divisions — i.e., whites, black Africans, Coloureds, Indians (from India, like Gandhi’s South African period). Who was ‘truly’ this or that group — apart from the extreme division of anyone else from “white”.
(A lot of which, of course, the white power elites and popular reactionaries learned from us, particularly our pioneers of racial segregation within physical proximity, the white South.)
In this country, it’s a very different discourse and a different context. But it isn’t everywhere where such a question about whether or not politician A was “really” black or “really” Indian or if he or she was viewed as one way or another would be so aggressive and insensitive and generally uninformed.
de stijl
So in other words, Ingraham is saying that Obama is sort of like Marissa Tomei on the first season of A Differest World?
gogol's wife
@cat48:
Co-sign. The only thing that makes me feel better is that I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t let it get to him. I often think about that when I get upset.
Mike G
This from a bitch who voted for Bush.
Cassidy
If only deeds matched words.
Lysana
FYWP. I wrote a comment and it went straight into the spam trap. Must’ve used a three-letter word once too often.
El Cid
Speaking of South America and leaders from non-European backgrounds:
There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Well, at least there will be such a reaction among some there and the entire media here.
Clearly he’s been emboldened by the Occupy Wall Street fascist hippie thug mobs.
I’m assuming that this is like the rest of the “expropriations” which are actually mandatory buyouts at government pricing. (Often which, like the cause of the US overthrow of Guatemala’s social reform government in 1954 when it did so with United Fruit, are price estimates based on what those companies and owners claimed for property value when it came time to paying property taxes.)
Note: I don’t have an opinion on how helpful or not this is.
El Cid
@Cassidy: Or if only they’d just shut the fuck up.
Ha
So she’s saying Obama got the job because he’s black, then says Hermain Cain is more black, so vote for him so that Republicans can say they had the first black President?
Oh, and the qualifications. This idiot voted for Bush twice, and will pull the trigger for any Republican on the ticket, even if it was Palin herself, all the while claiming Obama isn’t qualified.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bruce S:
Well played, sir.
On the entire “take for granted” thing, there are none who are more into this than IT glibertarians who don’t realize that they would have NO FUCKING JOBS if it wasn’t for the evil government that, first, put a demand on the private sector for smaller and smaller computers (the space program) and then invented the technology that the private sector refused to consider developing, the internet.
I’ve had dimwits actually say that the government didn’t need to do any of this, the private sector would have done it to meet the demand. These guys need to be pelted with chicken eggs. Repeatedly.
Lysana
@someguy: And as a side note, you’re also dead wrong about women and feminism and whether LGBT people should work for marriage equality (it’s not gay marriage, more orientations than that pair off with a matched gender partner). I tried to get into larger detail, but that forced my post into the spam trap. You really need to check yourself, in short. The experiences of women and LGBT people, especially in those latter two letters, are not identical across class or race lines. Feminism and marriage equality do NOT serve us all equally.
Kola Noscopy
@Emma:
Sorry, dear, no. This ABL parody of a post is what’s funny, all on its lonesome.
John D.
@Jax6655: I’ll explain why *I* use “polka-dotted” as my analogous comparison. It’s because I accidentally offended someone when I used the “black, white, or yellow” construction and they were Native American. Enumerative lists that are not a covering set can be tricky. So, you can assume bad faith on my part, but I’ll continue to use a nonsensical comparator.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jax6655:
Race is MUCH easier to make a call on than class. A black guy can be dressed to the fuckin’ nines, well groomed, etc, obviously displaying more wealth than a white guy in a tshirt and blue jeans, but the white guy gets the cab. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Class is important, but race trumps it in everyday life where you don’t have time to do the research, and you’re making the call on the fly.
Bruce S
“whenever I hear someone say they don’t care if a person is purple [or green] my nostrils flare”
I will be the first to admit that there is no way I’d vote for a President who was purple or green. The socio-historical context of cartoon characters is a construct I am just not able to rise above. Call me a bigot (for the second time in this thread)…or perhaps just wary of politicians who are even more obviously one-dimensional media fabrications than most of what we’re already treated to.
To rise above lame humor, yeah – “color” is not an abstraction but deeply embedded in our national “flesh and blood.” White folks – and black folks – of both good and ill-intention react to what we perceive as “race,” and not admitting it or trying to do an end-run around it with declarations of “color-blindness” is BS. There’s, frankly, something insulting about not acknowledging a black person’s “blackness” as part of their being in the world – indeed, I probably wouldn’t find Herman Cain as repugnant if I didn’t hear his pronouncements in the context of his being a black man of a certain age. I don’t indict him for being a “Morehouse man” who didn’t go downtown to demonstrate with those I see as the best of his generation – who among us can say we would unless we did at that moment in the deep South – but I do indict him for his broadside attack on black folks as “brainwashed” for being intelligent voters who recognize their own interests and have seen where the parties have lined up on core issues relevant to the community since ’64-’68, which gives racist pigs like Limbaugh a “Cain-approved” license for their filthy ammunition. So, yeah, I see a black guy doing this and realize his “blackness” is a currency for this racial contempt that he’s passing out like free slices of pizza to white racists and I judge him on that.
Cassidy
@El Cid: I’d have taken more substantial pay raises and not sent to war to make the upper class more wealthy.
RinaX
@Lysana:
Amen. Particularly your point about feminism, coming from the perspective of a black woman.
Shade Tail
@Emma:
No, he’s being a troll. His name should make that pretty clear. Just ignore the waste of DNA.
Plantsmantx
“Yeah, Cain is a lunatic far-rightist, but he’s a black one. so we shouldn’t regard or talk about him the way we would a white lunatic far-rightist”.
That’s infantizing.
Svensker
@Plantsmantx:
You’re quoting whom?
Kola Noscopy
@Shade Tail:
Well, Shade, I believe YOU are a troll, because ummm… you apparently disagree with me and because I say so. Same reasoning as yours, in other words.
Amir Khalid
@Emma:
T think you misunderstand our friend Colonoscopy. He doesn’t try to be funny or even interesting, bless his little heart. He’s like a comment-thread pyromaniac troll — he posts comments here hoping to bait people and start flame wars. He likes the pretty flames, you see.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lysana:
Or, WP is just randomly screwing with you, as it sometimes does.
Shit does sometime just happen.
ruemara
@someguy: Uh. No. HBCU do not grant any sort of “Authentically Black Experience”. I went to NYU. I’m fucking authentically black and I didn’t need to go to Morehouse to do it.
Back on topic, I didn’t feel LOD went too far. I get the discomfort factor, but Cain’s an idiot. I think, to an extent, the assumption of ease to participate in the Civil Rights struggle is the only thing I would ding him on. Plus, it’s lovely to see the resident non-racist trolls come out to push back on the sheer concept of white privilege. Whatever would the coloured folks do without you to correct us?
Kola Noscopy
@Amir Khalid:
See #89.
And you of course, post comments here hoping to hear everyone else agree with you and you with them and you can all tell each other what you already think and agree on, and how awesome you are for all holding the same thoughts in your tiny little Otard brains. And for some reason you have come to believe that BJ is your own private little corner of the intertrons where all the dumb shit that the BJ cool kid Otards post can be echo chambered back and forth without threat of reality or dissent intruding.
Bout right?
but you’d be wrong about that…
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
“Ooh…shiny!”
Kola Noscopy
Why isn’t anyone asking about Laura Ingraham’s authentically white experience?
Elliecat
@Linda Featheringill:
I caught part of the PBS series on the Freedom Riders and in one segment, some of the participants talked about gathering the night before a freedom ride to prepare their wills. I wonder how many of us can truly imagine being all of, say, nineteen or twenty and writing up a will before going out on a protest or demonstration because the risk of being killed was so great.
Jax6655
@John D.:
Sure, why not still focus on offending that one person long ago when you can continue to offend so many? Sounds like a plan.
@Villago Delenda Est:
OK. You’re either agreeing with me, or you don’t realize that you’re saying this to someone who’s Black.
Or both?
John D.
@Jax6655: As I said – you can assume bad faith — which is exactly what you are doing — or you can actually, y’know, LISTEN to the explanation. If you choose to be offended afterwards, it is not my fault.
I changed IN RESPONSE TO someone being offended. You are demanding that I change back in response to you being offended. How is your demand more valid than theirs? Please note that invoking “many” as you did is EXACTLY the assumption of privilege that is being discussed on this thread.
kay
@Bruce S:
Cain makes the same mistake all conservatives make, and it’s this: black people changed the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party didn’t change black people.
The Democratic Party didn’t “line up” on “core issues” of civil rights until black people within the Democratic Party made them do it.
They were and are actors within that organization. They had and have agency within that organization. They changed us. We didn’t change them. They arrived with a civil rights agenda. We didn’t have one. We had “Dixiecrats”.
If I said to any conservative “fundamentalist religious were brainwashed into voting Republican” there would be huge screams of outrage. I would be wrong, too, if I said that.
Republicans didn’t change fundamentalist religious people into Republicans. The Republican Party was a very different organization prior to the religious influence. Fundamentalist religious changed the Republican Party.
What Cain is doing is denying black Democrats agency. He’s denying they’re actors within the Democratic Party. It’s a false statement. It denies reality.
Cain will know that black people are changing the Republican Party when he isn’t making excuses for Rush Limbaugh.
Until then, he’s the passive person, he’s the person within an organization who doesn’t have any power, and is subject to “brainwashing”, not black Democrats.
B W Smith
Perhaps O’Donnell was asserting white privilege in his questioning of Cain. Personally, I would never tell a person of a different race what they should do or how they should react. But I’m still not convinced that he was telling him what he should have done. I watched the interview in real time. I have now watched the video multiple times and while I agree these questions may have been more palatable coming from Rev. Al, we need to ask ourselves why Cain chose LOD for the interview. I have serious doubts whether Cain would agree to an interview with Rev. Al. I think Cain has no respect for Rev. Al and the path he has taken. I think he would be fearful of being taken to task for his condescending remarks to the Black community and his constant refrain of American exceptionalism being the deciding factor of his success. I think Cain’s team decided that a white liberal would not go “there” and if he did, they could spin things to make Cain look like a victim. After all, that is the specialty of the right-wing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jax6655:
I’m agreeing with you, and thought I’d offer an illustration of what you were talking about.
That you happen to be black is irrelevant to the example, which has been, unfortunately, tested and found to have truth. Although many will continue to deny it, even though there are plenty of examples.
I’m aware I’m wet, and I try to compensate for it :)
Bruce S
ruemara – I watched the first interview and it gave me pause when O’Donnell said “easily” and put his other question in terms of “What if Rosa Parks listened to your father?”, but Cain handled the question so badly when he started lying about where he was and when that I just enjoyed watching a scumbag squirm. But I think that when a white guy on my TeeVee feels he should put on three acutely incisive black folks the next night to discuss how he handled one or two questions of a black man the previous night, it’s not a sign that he performed brilliantly. Especially when his “victim” is someone who is giving fodder to the worst racists out there with his contemptuous characterization of most other black folks as “brainwashed.”
The very fact that O’Donnell – to his credit – felt compelled to put on the follow-up segment is proof IMHO that he messed up and knew it. I thought Harris-Perry characterized what was problematic with the original interview best. I’ll admit I passed over it first time around – but when Harris-Perry and my own better half at home both expressed the same discomfort with O’Donnell’s line of attack, my take is that I was letting my disgust with Cain obscure recognition of O’Donnell’s arrogance as a white guy basically hectoring a black man ten years his senior about why he didn’t “easily” participate in civil rights demonstrations in the deep South in 1963.
Questions about specifics in his book are fair game, but O’Donnell over-reached badly and put his own glib, white elite liberal assumptions in question. He was actually quite lucky that Cain exposed his own arrogance and slippery relation to facts in response to an “at-best badly-framed” question. Herman Cain is a very target-rich environment – O’Donnell misfired IMHO.
M-pop
Thank you so much for that.
Cat Lady
@kay:
But Kay, the Republicans can’t be racist because they’ve doubled the number of black congressmen in almost 10 years. There are now TWO black Republican congressmen!
Cacti
@Bruce S:
I honestly wonder how conflicted Cain must feel about his role as guard-dog for the good ole boy right.
For a fleeting moment, his humanity got the best of him about Rick Perry and “Niggerhead” rock. Then he remembered his Father’s advice to “stay out of trouble” and dutifully moved to the back of the proverbial bus, when the white folks made it known they didn’t think much of his opinions.
kay
The measure of power and influence and integration within a traditional, rigid organization (like a political party) is not how the organization changes you, it’s how “you” change the organization.
It’s the difference between being outside and inside.
Black Democrats aren’t an “interest group” outside the Democratic Party, anymore than white Christian conservatives are an “interest group” outside the Republican Party.
Mitt Romney is about to find out where Mormons fit: within the GOP, as actors with agency who change the GOP, or outside the GOP, as a (mostly passive) reliable group of voters the GOP wants to court, so will reluctantly include, but not doing anything important :)
It’ll be crystal clear. In or out.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jax6655:
This is a very interesting paragraph, for a number of reasons.
First, you’re right, there are some who would sneer that Cain’s business success was the result of Affirmative Action. I don’t believe that, myself…it’s pretty obvious from Cain’s attitude that he, at least, thinks he got there purely on merit, and I’m inclined to believe that he displayed qualities that those who called the shots were looking for, and that his skin color was icing on the cake.
In the case of Ingraham, though, there are way too many white people who DID get to where they are through Affirmative Action. Except it’s called the Legacy Admission. Prominent example: George W. Bush. If that applies specifically to Ingraham, I don’t know…but she’s definitely a wingnut welfare recipient.
Beauzeaux
When I was growing up and read about the holocaust, I liked to think that I would be the kind of person who hid Jews from the nazis. But would I have been? I didn’t actually live in Europe in the 1940s — it was a terrifying time for anyone who wasn’t an actual nazi — so I can’t be sure.
I was around during the first wave of sit-ins and demonstrations for civil rights. It took a lot of courage to do what the participants did — black or white. The black resisters always took the brunt of the racist violence and it was fierce. I can’t criticize anyone who couldn’t face it.
Now on the Vietnam war. If you were for it, it was your duty to enlist. If you were against it, it was your duty to get out on the streets and demonstrate. If you just didn’t give a shit, say that. I caught all kinds of hell from my family for my opposition to the war. Now they say I was right. Gee, thanks. But I knew I was right at the time.
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
In the US, class is race. Our class assumptions are tied up in racial assumptions. That’s why, back in the day, the most broke white sharecropper could make a successful black dentist step off the sidewalk to make room for him — because his white skin automatically made him a member of a higher class. It’s why a black surgeon can suffer permanent nerve damage because the LAPD refuses to loosen the cuffs while a rental car mix-up is straightened out — after all, you can tell he’s lying just by looking at him, amirite?
Trying to separate the two is absolutely futile as long as white working-class people are still told by our society that they’re of a higher class than black people, or Latino people, or Asian people solely because of the color of their skin.
Bruce S
99 Kay – good points, but I think you have to give some credit to, among some others, LBJ for doing the right thing. Yes, the Democratic Party was pushed by the civil rights movement (not so much black Democrats within it at the time, since there was a rich black Republican tradition including the King family and the first black Senator since Reconstruction, Edward Brooke) but there was “agency” that encompassed a fairly broad spectrum of folks in that historical moment. The Democratic Party was transformed, but the “party” Democrats and the “party” Republicans made quite different decisions around ’64 about what their institutions would represent. Imagine a Rockefeller victory over Goldwater in ’64. Counter-factual and all that, but it was certainly presumed a possibility at the time and had it happened the records and relationships of the parties as regards to the black communities might not have turned out to be as stark. To some extent, the GOP in nominating a candidate in ’64 who opposed the Civil Rights bill helped push the Democrats into becoming the party identified with the black community as an interest group. History is complicated, etc. etc.
But you are exactly on point in that Cain is denying the real political and historical dynamics, but much worse, the agency of black folks. Also, the notion that Democrats – for all of their faults – are simply “plantation masters” is crap. Again, it denies that the Democrats are a fractious coalition which pretty much does a lousy job of representing ALL of the average folks who find it the coalition of “last resort” in our fucked up, money-driven political system. Minorities, labor unions, poor and working-class folks in general, etc. etc. don’t get great representation by Democrats on core issues that create tension with corporate interests that dominate the Beltway political process. I am a die-hard Democrat who is more-often-than-not pissed at significant segments of my party and often looks to Indy Bernie Sanders to speak “my mind” on the Hill, and I’ll keep voting for Democrats. Hell, I’d even vote for that piece of shit Ben Nelson over a GOPer if I lived in Nebraska – but fuck if I’m brainwashed. Most of us see this shit very clearly, but we’re pragmatists who have seen too fucking much to throw away what little (and every now-and-then quite significant) things – we’ve gotten through some combination of social movements, issues lobbying and liberal Dem politics and are pushing for more.
Poopyman
@kay: Very insightful, Kay. Perhaps you should put those thoughts on the front page? As for me though, I have a garden that needs put to sleep, and this weekend is the start.
(Also too, I originally typed “inciteful”, which it probably is to some folks.)
kay
@Cat Lady:
It’s such a weird way to look at an organization or entity.
There’s this stubborn insistence that the “Democratic Party” exists independently of the people that comprise both the leadership and members of the Democratic Party.
It doesn’t.
Without the people within it, there is no “Democratic Party”. It’s an empty office building and a logo.
We have “traditional” conservatives here, and when I talk to them I’m always amazed how they make this crazy distinction between the GOP that exists only in their head and the real people who are Republicans.
“Well, if we take out religious conservatives, and the Tea Party, and lunatic warmongers, and crony capitalists, that’s my Republican Party!”
The whole fucking thing is gone without those people. The GOP is a sum of its parts, like all organizations.
It’s not a freaking theory. It’s a collection of leaders and members. People.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
This is very deliberate…it keeps the peons divided against themselves. When someone white starts to realize that he’s in pretty much the same condition as his supposed “inferior” with darker skin is, that’s when the people at the top start to sweat.
Jax6655
@Villago Delenda Est:
No prob. It just seemed like you were telling me. You may be ‘wet’ but no doubt you understand what the deal really is.
@John D.:
The purple and green thing is offensive to many non-Whites as it is not based in reality. There are no purple and green people. That you’ve decided you’ll continue to use it, in spite of some new knowledge, is the point I was making. Your ALL CAPS, feathers-ruffled, dig in deeper response puts you on the level of Ingraham. Framing a discussion about race within your paradigm.
If I got offended by every dumb thing someone said, including the purple/green nonsense, I’d need to be on medication and I’d definitely be unemployed.
Also, too. There were no demands in my earlier post. Reading is fundamental.
WereBear
It’s a truly rare rich person who doesn’t think that.
However ironically, I do consider Mr. Cain a member of an oppressed minority and recognize that he actually did rise from humble beginnings. But this rise was also due to the struggles of a whole lot of other people who demanded merit be acknowledged. He might have risen on his own merit… but he did not craft that opportunity to do so.
And now he is working for a political party who wants to stop these human rights advances.
Mnemosyne
@Jax6655:
There may not be purple or green people, but there are definitely blue people out there.
(Sorry, but I am unable to pass up any opportunity to make fun of this idiot conservatarian. Oh noes, Y2K will kill us all — better drink collodial silver to survive!)
Bruce S
“Well, if we take out religious conservatives, and the Tea Party, and lunatic warmongers, and crony capitalists, that’s my Republican Party!”
Wendell Wilkie currently resides in a grave in Rushville, Indiana, if that faction of the GOP is looking for someone to speak for them.
WereBear
I just have to ask… how many of the people who say this are there? Or are most of such people hiding under the Independent label?
eemom
@B W Smith:
Thank you.
On last night’s thread I asked if all this hullabaloo would have ensued if O’D had been a black man asking those questions. No one answered.
The ensuing discussion may have been interesting and worthwhile, but I still think the attacks on O’D were bullshit to begin with.
FlipYrWhig
@Kola Noscopy:
She went to Dartmouth. So did I, roughly 10 years later. Trust me, it’s authentically white. White as Topsiders. Even for Ingraham’s old college boyfriend, Dinesh D’Souza.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: re: “blue people”
I would say so.
John D.
@Jax6655: You keep speaking in the passive voice – “it is offensive to non-whites”. Do you intend to speak for all people who are not white, or do you mean “I find this offensive”. If the former, well, we’re done with the conversation. If the latter, I’d like you to explain why my using “polka-dotted” as a comparator is more offensive than using “white, yellow, or red”, when talking to a black person. You keep saying that “it is not based in reality”, but I was specifically called on an unintentional exclusion of a specific person when creating the list. I didn’t pull this out of a hat, y’know. It resulted from a real offense given, and the discussion resulting from that.
I get that you are offended by it. I do. But I do not know you – and I do know the friend whose feelings I hurt when I enumerated my list and did not see him. So I am inclined to grant his feelings and thoughts more weight than yours, unless you can explain why one is intrinsically more offensive than the other.
Bruce S
eemom – I think Melissa Harris-Perry responds well to this burning question of yours (at least in the context of how Sharpton might have been a better interrogator from the angle O’Donnell chose to pursue) if you listen to her remarks. Of course, since you flatly judged anyone “brain-dead” who had problems with O’Donnell’s line of questioning, perhaps it’s asking too much that you pay attention to Harris-Perry’s remarks.
Jax6655
@WereBear:
Seems like he rose up at Godfather’s by firing half of their workforce, dirty work for others. Now he indulges in attacks on Black people and Muslims, also dirty work for others.
I sincerely hope I never meet this man in person. Like Clarence Thomas, he long ago sold his soul.
[pun not intended]
Villago Delenda Est
@Bruce S:
He, along with Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater, of all people, have been ejected from the GOP pantheon.
The fact that Reagan is still there when he’s the guy who championed and got the soshulist Earned Income Tax Credit on the books indicates that some people are just not paying fucking attention.
eemom
@Cacti:
Sorry, but that comment smacks of white privilege. YOU’VE never been a black conservative republican running for president in 2011.
kay
@Bruce S:
Well, they could say what you said, which is: “while they don’t always represent my interests, I vote for them, because of X, Y and Z”. You’re acknowledging the reality of the Democratic Party, as a sum of parts. It exists. You’re grappling with that.
I get this baffling denial from conservatives, that there’s some imaginary “real” Republican Party that they belong to.
Cain is looking at the actual reality of the Democratic Party, which includes black people at every leadership level, actors, and insisting they’re standing outside, passively, being “brainwashed”. He’s denying reality, and in an incredibly patronizing way. We don’t even have to get to “patronizing”. We could stop at “is this true, what he says, looking at this organization?”
It’s not true. The factual basis for his statement is in error.
Alison
@schrodinger’s cat: Schrodinger’s Blackness?
Also – Excellent post, Zandar. You really got to what was troubling me about the LOD interview, and I agree with your assessments basically 100%. Sad that it’s so…relieving to see someone get it the way he seems to…wish it wasn’t so rare as to be a pleasant surprise.
Jax6655
@John D.:
Whatever
Bruce S
100 BW Smith – “I have serious doubts whether Cain would agree to an interview with Rev. Al.”
Good point. Not in a million years.
Still O’Donnell could have handled himself better and put Cain in a much hotter seat and induced zero “cringe” by friends like Melissa Harris-Perry if he’d focused on policy stuff that Lawrence actually has some authority to delve into. He actually ended up giving Cain a pass on his dumb tax plan because he ran out of time and seemed off his game by the end of the interview.
kay
@WereBear:
I’m the wrong person to ask. I don’t think “independents” exist. I think there are people who don’t belong to a political party, but I think nearly all people have an ideology (fuzzy as it may be), and vote accordingly.
Bruce S
127 – kay – yeah, the Dems are a complicated, maddening organization, but black Democrats are absolutely in key leadership – long before Obama – and often are dealing better than most with the problematic realities of the party. Before the Progressive Caucus existed, the Black Caucus were my designated “spokespeople” – and I’m a white guy. Now I’ve got several caucuses representing my issues.
Shawn in ShowMe
@eemom:
I can’t think of a black liberal pundit who would have attacked Cain’s reticence to challenge white supremacy in the Deep South as a character flaw. No, not even Sharpton. Hell, you’d be attacking most black people in the South.
Jay
I don’t know. I am an American of German ancestry, and I’m pretty uncomfortable with any German who-were they alive in Nazi Germany-would, say, claim ignorance of what was going on as a reason they didn’t resist. Being scared of getting shot by the Fascists is another issue, but even then, I imagine it would be hard to not notice even a small opportunity to help the victims of the genocide, I mean, even if someone were presented with the chance to circulate anti-Fascist leaflets for 30 minutes of a single day, that’s still something. How far does fear go? Can it really paralyze us entirely? And yes, I know the slavery/Holocaust comparison is inexact for alot of reasons, but I’m trying to muddle toward the truth here.
eemom
@Bruce S:
And you know I didn’t pay attention to her remarks HOW, exactly? Because I dare to disagree with her opinion on this matter?
From your comments earlier in this thread, I gather that you’re at least in your late 50s. That kind of surprised me — I didn’t know it was possible for someone of that age and experience to continue to exude the arrogance of insufferable moral superiority most commonly seen in naive 20 year olds.
Chris
@WereBear:
“I have had scientifically provable luck from time to time. Being in the right place at the right time and then doing the right thing. You cannot get where I got without luck. Bags of it. Fucking bags of it. You can be as good as I am or better. You can be incredibly more attractive and charming and capable and still be shit out of luck. The only thing that I have done that is not mitigated by luck, diminished by good fortune, is that I persisted. And other people gave up.”
– Harrison Ford
I think I’ve posted that here once before, but it’s worth posting again. I was quite frankly blown away when I read that quote: it’s so rare for someone as rich and famous as that to candidly admit to what extent it’s a simple crapshoot, as opposed to whining about how misunderstood they are for their awesomeness, how they’re carrying the entire world on their backs and it owes them special breaks because they’re just that great.
Bruce S
135 eemom – you’ve proved yourself an idiot. If I’m “self-righteous” you’re so steeped in self-regard you can’t construct a coherent thought. Disagreeing with someone and calling anyone who raises those questions “brain-dead” then doubling down when called on it is the height of arrogance and ignorance. An air of “insufferable moral superiority” would be self-improvement in your case.
You’re lame on your good days.
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
Also, you don’t know what it’s like to have Rush Limbaugh bearing down on you the way he was on Herman Cain…
eemom
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I don’t think “attacking as a character flaw” is an accurate characterization of what O’D was doing. He was asking questions that IMO were fair game based on statements Cain made in his book.
I also think your comment misses the larger context in which a “black liberal pundit” would be asking questions of Herman Cain, as noted in BW’s post above.
Silver
You know, Cain is a little like the Pope.
They both took the easy way out when they were younger for reasons of personal and family safety. When they got older, they suddenly turned into moral absolutists who wish to enforce their mores on the society around them, and denigrating “moral relativists”.
They can both go fuck themselves. One of them protects child molesters, and the other wants to fuck over poor people so that the owner of the workhouse can buy another boat.
hilts
Laura Ingraham is a malignant media carcinogen and hopefully there’s a special place in Hell reserved for her alongside Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin.
Kudos to Melissa Harris-Perry for her insightful critique of Lawrence O’Donnell’s interview with Herman Cain.
eemom
@Bruce S:
You’re a bore. Move on.
Bruce S
143 – again, simply being boring would be an act of self-improvement for a presumptuous trash-mouth creep such as yourself.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jax6655:
Yup, he did pretty much what senior management wanted him to do: whatever it took to make Godfather’s profitable…again.
He did come in and find an overextended operation that needed to be pared back. The point is, unlike someone like, oh, I don’t know, Mr. Bain Capital, perhaps?, he didn’t do it just to break up the pieces and sell them off for a tidy profit. The company did continue to exist, albeit smaller than it was before. Sometimes you can grow too fast and you get bitten in the ass as a consequence…if the idea is NOT to just build it up, then sell out, leaving cleaning up the mess up so someone else, which was pretty much how the dot.com bubble operated. Leave someone else holding the bag of tulip bulbs when everything went to hell.
That aside, the 999 plan is just taking our current overall economic situation and cranking up the fail to 11. This is fine if your objective is to get your own personal tumbrel for the reckoning, but I don’t think he realizes that’s what he’s doing.
eemom
@Villago Delenda Est:
and that is A LOT to be bearing down on one, amirite?
Oops. Uh oh. Damn, I think I fucked up again….
Shawn in ShowMe
@Jay:
If another 9/11 occurred and President Perry decided to “protect Americans” by rounding up a bunch of Muslims, I’d like to believe that there would a massive outcry against it. But the bulk of American history suggests otherwise: it’s more likely the vast majority would sit on their hands while their Muslim neighbors were carted away.
eemom
@Bruce S:
you wanna play gotcha last, eh?
I see I erred in my first assessment. You’ve managed to attain that advanced age with the attitude of an EIGHT year old. Most impressive.
B W Smith
@Bruce S: So, how then are Cain’s words and believes regarding Blacks supposed to be explored? I have never seen him interviewed by a Black person. Heck, I haven’t even seen him in a discussion with Juan Williams on Fox. Maybe he has, I’m not really a Fox viewer. He really does need to explain some of the comments he has made and some of what he wrote in his book. He may very well have a righteous and understandable explanation but we will never hear it if he refuses to be interviewed by someone like Rev. Al and no white interviewer can approach the subject without being questioned. Cain has said more than once that Blacks are brain-washed into following the Democratic party and if they paid attention to his message they would follow. That warrants asking him questions if he expects others to follow.
Jax6655
@Villago Delenda Est:
Cain is a lot of things–many unpleasant. But clueless is not one of them.
Whether or not Godfathers was overextended, mass firings are dirty work indeed. Cain stepped up.
Republicans needed someone to blatantly further their racist message to keep the base engaged. Cain stepped up.
This time, though, unlike his Godfathers experience, he won’t be rewarded with the nomination.
THAT he may not realize.
Shawn in ShowMe
@eemom:
I’m not saying O’Donnell didn’t have the right to ask those civil rights era questions. I’m saying that a black liberal pundit wouldn’t have challenged his manhood that way. It just isn’t a winning strategy.
Bruce S
148 – haven’t you embarrassed yourself enough?
149 – I didn’t say that no questions should be asked by anyone. But O’Donnell’s questions were fucked up. “What if Rosa Parks had taken your Dad’s advice?” Really! Or the suggestion that he could have “easily participated in the civil rights movement.” That’s fucked up coming from a white guy from Boston to a black guy who grew up in the South and is at least ten years his senior. Frankly, this isn’t a particularly egregious aspect of Herman Cain’s record as a human being, i.e. how he conducted himself as a young man at Morehouse. O’Donnell could have referenced the fact, citing his autobiography, that he didn’t participate in the civil rights movement when quite a few of his peers were deeply committed and, perhaps, as someone suggested upthread, asked if he’d reflected on that non-participation, in the light of the doors the movement had opened, or something like that. But O’Donnell went prosecutorial and the juxtaposition of Cain’s father against Rosa Parks was beyond “insensitive.” It was an indicator of a sort of glib arrogance. Cain is target rich on issues of policy as well as his utterly rotten comments slandering black folks. O’Donnell did a lousy job in that interview – as proven by the fact that he himself felt moved to bring three black commentators on the next night to discuss his handling of Cain. Not exactly where a skillful journalist wants to go. O’Donnell’s questions became the subject of questions ON HIS OWN SHOW. If that’s not problematic in terms of how effective his interview with Cain was in putting Cain on the spot, rather than O’Donnell, I don’t know what is.
Cacti
@Silver:
I’ve thought the same thing.
They both took the path that was personally safe in a time of moral crisis. That makes them no different than the many people who made similar choices.
The problem starts when they try to obfuscate why they made their choice. For Pope Bennie it was because he “had no choice,” for Candidate Cain it was because he was “too young”.
Both of those explanations are crap, and suggest that each feels some personal shame and/or embarrassment over having taken the safe route.
Kola Noscopy
@FlipYrWhig:
But I’m white too! And I graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, which is a different place. There were black people there too, though.
So am I inauthentically white? And are my fellow Jayhawks who are black actually white, or black people living an inauthentically white existence?
It’s all so confusing…
Chris
@Jay:
Well, yes it can, and it’s not entirely irrational. Forget fear for yourself: most people have a family, which translates to hostages. One day, you’re passing out anti-fascist leaflets. Okay. The next day, the local chapter of the SA or Ku Klux Klan has someone follow your kids home from school. The day after that, they pay you a visit and let you know what a shame it would be if something were to happen to them. How many people would keep printing anti-fascist leaflets after that? After all, most people would say their obligation to their family comes before any obligation to the rest of society.
“People from your world have so much to lose.” It’s one of the big reasons why people are capable of taking so much shit for so long before lashing back.
Chris
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Absolutely. No, I don’t see any outrage happening. If they tried it now, probably, but if it was after another 9/11? The fear and anger would outweight the moral scruples by a very wide margin.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jax6655:
I believe he did get a lesson he was not expecting on Monday, though, when Rush tore into him for some fairly mild comments on Perry’s “hunting lodge”.
Cassidy
Wow! I think I just read through a circle jerk of “I’m more liberal/ enlightened than thou”. This was progressive bukakke at it’s best.
Kola Noscopy
@Cassidy:
I came twice, actually.
Jax6655
@Villago Delenda Est:
Soon he will realize the gaping canyon between his view of his prospects [that his race won’t matter] and the view of the Republican base.
Because at the end of the day they’d just have another Black president . . . . NOT!
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
It was more than Rush:
ET
There are a lot of brown folk in New Orleans who if they listened to her crappy yack (or yak) fest would be laughing their ass off.
Jax6655
@Villago Delenda Est:
Soon he will realize the gaping canyon between his view of his prospects [that his race won’t matter] and the view of the Republican base.
Because at the end of the day they’d just have another Black president . . . . NOT!
Jax6655
@Villago Delenda Est:
Soon he will realize the gaping canyon between his view of his prospects [that his race won’t matter] and the view of the Republican base.
Because at the end of the day they’d just have another Black president . . . . NOT!
Jax6655
@Villago Delenda Est:
Soon he will realize the gaping canyon between his view of his prospects [that his race won’t matter] and the view of the Republican base.
Because at the end of the day they’d just have another Black president . . . . NOT!
Svensker
@eemom:
Hon, pot, kettle. Mirror check.
Jax6655
so sorry for the multiple posts.
Time to go outside and enjoy the rest of the day.
eta: FYWP
eemom
@Svensker:
three way mirror there, dearie.
‘sides, I’m not as old as y’all. : )
eemom
@Kola Noscopy:
You are SO Tim. Now fess up.
Martin
Can’t win one drop black. Can’t win one drop white.
I really hate these people.
aimai
I’m not sure its any less fair for O’Donnell to ask Herman Cain what he was doing, as a young adult, at that crucial period of US history than it was to ask Cheney why he had “other priorities” during the Vietnam war. Any interviewer, whatever his race, should be entitled to ask that question of Cheney and any interviewer, whatever his race, should be able to ask all political figures “what they did in the war for civil rights.” I’d be happier if it was a question routinely asked of elderly White politicians: e.g. “Why weren’t you a Freedom Rider?” than of Cain but Cain was actually making an argument about his youth and how it relates to the issue of African American political struggle. Its totally reasonable to call him out on it–it was in his book.
aimai
Shade Tail
@FlipYrWhig:
You are wasting your time with that one-note troll. Just ignore the waste of DNA and you’ll be much better off.
Cat Lady
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I’m too lazy to look anything up, but what was the general public reaction to Japanese internment? I know a German American lady who as a little girl suffered through quite a bit of harassment during WWII. I’m going to guess that if a pollster was polling the issue through those years, most Americans were A-OK with it. It wasn’t until shortly before my 93 year old father died that he mentioned what his experience was in the Army during WWII when the subject of the Jews came up. It pained him to recount it, and it was… interesting… to say the least to hear it.
B W Smith
@Bruce S: I take your point re: LOD’s glibness, but as a consistent watcher I can say that is his interview style with folks he sees as adversarial. He didn’t reserve that for Herman Cain. I think you also may have put some words in my mouth. I never accused you of saying no one could interview him. My question is and remains how do we get to Cain’s rational on civil rights? Also, I would like to know why the Cain campaign agreed to an interview with LOD. Is it because LOD’s style is so well known that they knew they could spin it no matter the outcome?
I do think LOD is having some second thoughts about the wording of his questions, hence the panel last night. Another commenter, possibly last night, said the actual Rosa Parks question was written by a Black staffer. That doesn’t absolve LOD but possible sheds a different light. I don’t know if that’s true or if it even makes a difference. I haven’t decided.
kay
And, Zandar, I forgot to say it what with my theorizing and all, but this was a very good read.
Jay
@aimai: Well yeah. O’Donnell did point out to Cain that, contrary to what Cain suggested in his own book, he was not a child or teen during the whole Civil Rights Movement (and that was the passage O’Donnell highlighted). That’s fair, but I don’t see how the lie in that passage is part of a larger argument Cain was making about African-American political struggle. What Prof. Harris Perry challenged O’Donnell on was his use of the phrase, “you easily could’ve been involved” (emphasis on “easily”).
Ruckus
@West of the Cascades:
I agree on the military service question. I was eligible for the draft during Vietnam. I joined the navy to avoid being drafted into the marines. I did this for 2 reasons. Those being drafted into the marines for the most part were being sent to the front lines to be cannon fodder. The second was that I felt then and still do that this was a totally unnecessary and illegal war. As my choices were the draft, joining, jail, or leaving the country, I made one that worked for me. My experience was that most of my fellow swabies joined for the same reasons. Why Cain’s or anyone else’s position should have been any different than mine escapes me.
And I agree with everyone else that Zandar has written a great post here. There are many discussions that we need to have in this country, the one concerning privilege is one of the most important, for many wrong things flow from that privilege.
Edited for clarity
Mark
@Bruce S: I think it’s great that you’re a proud bigot who sees the world in stereotypes. I didn’t know John McCain was here to tell kids to get off his lawn. White men over 50 voted en masse for McCain; white men under 30 voted en masse for Obama. Old people as a group have zero claim to moral superiority over young people as a group.
Svensker
@Mark:
There’s something…I can’t quite put my finger on it…
Jay
@aimai: Btw, on the Civil Rights Movement/Vietnam War comparison, I think the draft is a key factor. I believe it’s reasonable to ask Cheney why, on five different occasions, he turned down the government he’d one day seek to run.
I don’t know where I fall on Cain’s decision not be actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement, but there was, of course, no draft for it.
Kola Noscopy
@Shade Tail:
I am honored by your obsession with me.
Tonight I will waste some DNA with you in mind. You can be my towel.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
There you go.
All these guys told him to go sit down at the back of the bus, and Cain’s response was to quietly shuffle to the back of the bus.
Cassidy
Seems to me, if you want something, you fight for it. If you don’t want it hard enough, you leave it alone. The kick in the nads comes from living a life of privilege and not willing to recognize that other people made a sacrifice for you to do so. There would be no “Herman Cain, Candidate for President” without the Civil Rights Movement, and the various other equality movements up through today. So to not give a nod to these people or, even worse, publicly insult them when you had no interest in doing the same is not only disgusting as a personality attribute, but something that should be called out loud every day. Herman Cain was a fucking coward. He put his head down and kept his eyes on the floor.
B W Smith
@Villago Delenda Est: I think this is what bothers me so much about Cain. He seems to have a carried a “go along to get along” pattern throughout his life. I understand as a young man, he might have decided that best served his future. What I don’t understand, which was demonstrated by his own words regarding black voting patterns and the whole Perry ranch retraction, why a man with some power still uses that pattern today. He said he has never been angered about his treatment as a black man. He succumbs to Rush and Erik, but can still take it upon himself to call President Obama weak.
Villago Delenda Est
It will be interesting, in 20-40 years, to see how politicians react to the entire “let’s invade Iraq to get revenge for 9-11!” thing. As in, did they sign up to join in, or did they have “other priorities”?
I strongly suspect this will be a rerun of Bush and Cheney, with people talking about “other priorities” that prevented their direct participation in this VERY necessary exercise in throwing some shitty country up against the wall to show the world who’s boss.
Chris
@B W Smith:
He made his bed and it’s too late not to sleep in it. Except, perhaps, by dropping out of the race.
B W Smith
@Chris: I think you are right about that, but it looks cowardly, not presidential. As a woman of a certain age, there have been times in my life that I have been royally pissed at the way I was treated simply because of my gender. I haven’t let that anger dominate my life but I sure as hell wouldn’t deny my anger to appease others. No way has this man gone his entire life and never been angered by his treatment as a black man. That is just one of many of his lies that should be explored.
Amir Khalid
@B W Smith:
Well, it could be a big lie, or it could be a monumental feat of denial — which could conceivably account for Cain’s political affiliation as well. But either way, it doesn’t reflect well on Cain as a candidate for President.
Mark
@Svensker: Oh, bullshit. Don’t be so obtuse. No age group in the United States has a claim of moral superiority over any other one; for every claim you might make about group A being better than group B, there’s another claim about group B being better than group A. And being a member of a group that voted for the most part for McCain means you should keep your finger in your pocket instead of pointing it.
Ruckus
@B W Smith:
Is it possible that Cain was not mistreated as a black man? Or that he at least sees it that way?
I’m not sure I could believe that it never happened but is it possible? Maybe he just accepts his treatment as the way the world he is part of works? There are a vast range of experiences we all have, some not so good, maybe his fell on the not so bad range.
Serious questions but as I ask them they seem so, well stupid. I’ve seen much racism in my life and every black adult and most black children I’ve known has at least a few racist experiences. Could Cain be one of the lucky few?
Shawn in ShowMe
@B W Smith:
That’s the danger of adopting turn-the-other cheek as a strategy. Once you do it for so long, it ceases to be a strategy and becomes an emotional reflex.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Herman Cain privately detests Rush Limbaugh and Rick Perry. It’s one of these things we’ll probably find out twenty years from now when the current GOP is in the dustbin of history.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus:
Anything is certainly possible. Just improbable to a very very very small number.
Svensker
@Mark:
Darlin’, I was just pointing out that you were calling out group-related bigotry and then claiming everyone over 50 was an asshole. It seemed to me there was some cognitive dissonance in those two statements.
jron
@someguy:
Depends on what you mean by “authentically black.” You may also have it exactly backward, as an attendee of a majority-minority institution will have a unique experience that is different that most minorities in a predominantly white college. Is their experience inauthentic in some way?
Either way, your comment sounds a lot like O’Donnell’s as described in this post, and I have no idea what your race is (and I don’t care).
B W Smith
@Ruckus: I suppose anything is possible and if that is true for him, he lived a charmed life. I live in Georgia and I can tell you if he never felt angered by racism, he is oblivious to his surroundings. He was a resident of Georgia during our glorious Lester Maddox years. Maybe as a conservative leaning individual he agreed with Maddox’s views on race and was not offended by the ax handle Maddox used to keep Blacks out of his restaurant. If so,I sure don’t desire someone that blind anywhere near power.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The one thing that came across to me in the LO/Cain interview is that IMO Cain is not a leader but rather a follower. While he has been very successful in his life, it has been because he follows paths that others have trod that made it easier for someone like him to be successful.
He has drive and ambition, no doubt about it, it’s just not the drive or ambition of a real leader.
gnomedad
@kay:
In a nutshell. Bravo.
Chris
@B W Smith:
Oh, of course it looks cowardly, not presidential. But it’s all he knows how to do. Shawn’s speculation that it’s “stopped being a strategy and started being an emotional reflex” is as good an explanation as any.
General Stuck
@Jax6655:
Sorry so long to get back to you, had a 5 alarm toothache today, and have a short reprieve.
LOL, you are correct, there are no purple or green people running around the countryside. There was a time, not too long ago, I would have put up an argument of “what I meant was”, but ABL and others have had an effect on me, a good effect, imo, And so long as requests for different wordings is plausible to be offensive, and come from my personal ignorance of such matters, I have no problem accepting that, and changing my terms. I usually say people of color in a reference such as in my comment, but will try to leave purple and green peeps out of it, as it were. :)
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est: @B W Smith:
I agree with both of you. I was just supposing that it is somehow possible that he is that indifferent to the world around him. A trait that makes me respect him not in the least little bit. We already have
enoughway too many conservatives indifferent to the world around them.Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus:
Well, if you’re indifferent to the world around you, then you shouldn’t be too surprised that if you run for political office people will call you out for being manifestly unqualified for political office by being indifferent to the world around you.
This is one of those moments where I think it’s probably a good idea to link to this, and just leave it at that.
No one of importance
@someguy:
What the fuck is an “authentically black experience”?
Jesus fucking Christ. So much stupid for a lovely Sunday morning.
Shade Tail
@Svensker:
Wow, you *really* have to misread what Mark wrote to claim that he was “claiming everyone over 50 was an asshole”. Merely pointing out that old folks have no moral superiority over young folks is not anywhere near the same as calling them assholes.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
manifestly unqualified for political office
Now that’s a Cain description I fully agree with. Face Palm indeed.
At the end of the day LOD’s handling of this issue was pretty damned good. He screwed up(however he got there) but he acknowledged it and discussed it openly with people with a much better perspective than his. His work has opened up a great discussion here and I’m sure elsewhere. One this country needs desperately to have and learn from. We whistle past each other about race because we have never had the discussion. It’s teenage pregnancy because the parents never had a realistic discussion about sex. It’s one of the 8000 pound elephants in the room.
Jax6655
@General Stuck:
Thanks for your belated and thoughtful response. From your lips [keyboard} to @John D.’s: ear. Many are enlightened by these discussions. Others just foam at the mouth.
Sorry to learn about your toothache. It especially sucks when it happens over the weekend or during a holiday. Been there a couple of times, once on Xmas eve.
Hope you feel better soon.
Bruce S
178 – Mark: sorry pal, but you are acting like a whining asshole. Your reading and interpretive skills are deficient (that’s my being generous.)
Bruce S
BW Smith – sorry if I misinterpreted your question. Re”My question is and remains how do we get to Cain’s rational on civil rights?” I think Cain has left the door wide open based on his current slams against black folks. The truth is that no one is going to attack the civil rights movement openly. And I don’t think that what Herman Cain did or didn’t do regarding participation in demonstrations is something that one should try to hang on him. Among other things, it sets a double standard for black and white politicians of his age group – didn’t white people have the same moral duty to get involved, if not more so? Herman Cain has plenty of stuff going on in the present tense regarding his lining up with white racists in attacking most black folks as “brainwashed” by “plantation masters.”
Also, I don’t really care who wrote that question for O’Donnell. He was the one delivering it and should have vetted his text and seen that it was inappropriate, and if O’Donnell is suggesting that as an excuse(I don’t know that he’s the one putting that info out, so I have to qualify this as a big “if”) it’s a dodge. Frankly, that formuation about Rosa Parks would be offensive coming from Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. In fact, while I can imagine a contentious discussion of how Herman Cain has benefited from the civil rights movement while abandoning and slandering black folks in the political arena, I seriously doubt either Sharpton or Jackson would have asked that particular question – or claimed that participation in the southern civil rights movement might have been “easy” for Cain – it’s way too glib for anyone who had an actual connection to the movement.
Bruce S
189 – Mark “No age group in the United States has a claim of moral superiority over any other one; for every claim you might make about group A being better than group B, there’s another claim about group B being better than group A.”
Allow me to explain something to you. I said that a group – generational cohort or whatever – that actually lived through an historical period is much better equipped to understand the complexities and moral quandries of that era than folks who come after and, essentially, tend to “take it for granted.” I suggested that I was not – because of my age group – as fit as someone from the WWII generation to make blanket judgements about issue related to “what did you do in the war, Daddy?” So it is with younger folks who did not experience either the civil rights movement itself (which I was lucky enough to have actually done) or the way moral issues around civil rights presented themselves in real time and real lives. So, yes, younger people – many of whom have grown up with some sanitized version of Dr. King posted up on the wall of their elementary school – tend to take the civil rights era for granted. If you can’t deal with that, you are more than welcome to go all John McCain on me and engage in incoherent poutrage. Age is a number. Wisdom is earned. You’ve got a ways to go…
Chris
@Bruce S:
As one of the Millennial generation, I think this is totally true of many of us. It’s good in one sense, because prejudice decreases the younger your age group. But I think it’s also bad in that it allows easy narratives like “oh my GOD, it was all in the PAST, let’s just all get over it and move on, how does it affect us anyway?” to take hold.
Debbie(aussie)
Testing. Have been unable to get my comments on the last two Sarah threads. so this is a test.
A great article, the earlier version and the expanded one. Gives a lot of food for thought to this white aussie. Love the phrase ‘assumption of privilege’.
Ecks
This is a very very well parsed and smart analysis of a tricky situation. Add in a bunch of references and it would actually be the kernel of publishable scholarship.
(BTW, I’m an academic, that’s our version of ultra high praise. Serious kudos to this!)
kay
@Bruce S:
I think that makes my point, not refutes it. There was. Forty three years ago there was a black Republican tradition. To extend it, forty three years ago there were white “liberal” Republicans who supported civil rights legislation. That’s true. But what happened after that? We know what happened after that. Southern conservatives switched en masse to the GOP and the Republican Party became predominately, overwhelmingly white.
Cain has decided to ignore almost fifty years of recent history. He has decided to ignore almost 50 years of black people working within an organization, the Democratic Party. His assumption is, and all conservatives make the same assumption, that black leaders within the Democratic Party had no influence on the Democratic Party. His assumption is they were passive observers. No agency. Not actors. They were simply receivers of an agenda foisted on them by the Democratic Party.
It’s ludicrous to believe that’s how it happened, given what we can see with our own two eyes, but it’s spouted constantly on the Right.
It’s like saying Eric Cantor was “brainwashed” into being a Republican, because we’re not just talking about Democratic voters when we’re talking about black Democrats, we’re talking about Democratic leaders.
He makes them invisible. In Cain’s mind they don’t have any power. How can that be?
kay
@Bruce S:
Paul Ryan was born in 1970.
Back before Paul Ryan was born, there was a black Republican tradition and black people in leadership positions in the GOP.
Back before Paul Ryan was born, there were white liberal Republicans who supported civil rights.
Mysteriously and inexplicably, since that time, there are very few black Republicans. This is not due to the actions and rhetoric of Republicans, however. Democrats, including many, many black Democratic leaders, are to blame, because they “brainwash” black people. That’s Cain’s pitch. That’s what I’m supposed to believe.
This is fucking insanity. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s ahistorical, and they should know it’s ahistorical because a lot of it happened in their lifetimes. Yet it’s repeated on the Right like it’s gospel.
Mark
@Bruce S: You’re a bigoted cocksucker. No more, no less. You think you’re better than other people because you’re old. Go fuck yourself. Or maybe tell me what the fuck you did when you had the opportunity to prevent this country from going down the shitter. Oh, I forgot, I can never ask you about anything that happened during your life because you’re older than me. Fuck you.
Mothra
Thanks for this post, Zander. I could not understand why LoD would take Cain to task for not participating in the Civil Rights movement in the way that LoD thought that Herman Cain should have participated. [I was a little white girl in the early 60s, and I remember the movement fairly well.]
I assume that LoD has not been happy to see Cain lecture and condemn other black people for being “brainwashed” for the sin of not agreeing with Herman Cain on politics, or to see Cain behave as if the opportunities and successes that Cain has had were available to every poor kid, and they were just too dumb/lazy/brainwashed to get out there and get their share.
Good for LoD for taking another look at his own line of thinking. I recently tried to explain to a racist individual that we all make blunders, racial and otherwise, but decent people don’t glory in them ala Rush Limpbaugh.
Mothra
BTW, old LI explaining that “we” voted for Obama because we were starry eyed about electing the first black President is such shit. There’s no “we” to it, she didn’t vote for Obama, and the racism of declaring him to be unprepared-to-be-President/while simultaneously being black is revolting. Obama has done a damn good job as President, and don’t talk to be about voting for the unqualified if you cast a vote for George the Lesser.