@somewhatannoyed "Elegant racists" Back in the day, in my Dixie homeland, they called them "clean fingernail racists."
— billmon (@billmon1) May 1, 2014
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest essay, “This Town Needs a Better Class of Racist“:
… The problem with Cliven Bundy isn’t that he is a racist but that he is an oafish racist. He invokes the crudest stereotypes, like cotton picking. This makes white people feel bad. The elegant racist knows how to injure non-white people while never summoning the specter of white guilt. Elegant racism requires plausible deniability, as when Reagan just happened to stumble into the Neshoba County fair and mention state’s rights. Oafish racism leaves no escape hatch, as when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond’s singularly segregationist candidacy.
Elegant racism is invisible, supple, and enduring. It disguises itself in the national vocabulary, avoids epithets and didacticism. Grace is the singular marker of elegant racism. One should never underestimate the touch needed to, say, injure the voting rights of black people without ever saying their names. Elegant racism lives at the border of white shame. Elegant racism was the poll tax. Elegant racism is voter-ID laws.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” John Roberts elegantly wrote. Liberals have yet to come up with a credible retort. That is because the theories of John Roberts are prettier than the theories of most liberals. But more, it is because liberals do not understand that America has never discriminated on the basis of race (which does not exist) but on the basis of racism (which most certainly does.)
Ideologies of hatred have never required coherent definitions of the hated. Islamophobes kill Sikhs as easily as they kill Muslims. Stalin needed no consistent definition of “Kulaks” to launch a war of Dekulakization. “I decide who is a Jew,” Karl Lueger said. Slaveholders decided who was a nigger and who wasn’t. The decision was arbitrary. The effects are not. Ahistorical liberals—like most Americans—still believe that race invented racism, when in fact the reverse is true. The hallmark of elegant racism is the acceptance of mainstream consensus, and exploitation of all its intellectual fault lines….
See also, the work of Professor Derrick Bell. We’re Americans, we want somebody to give us an Easy Button that we can push to “solve” racism. But there is no Easy Button, and anyone who offers to sell you one is lying.
Trentrunner
But I feel so good about myself when the obvious crude racists are excised, leaving the pervasive racist superstructure peopled by the elegant racists virtually untouched.
Benghazi!
scav
Is there a intact hinge left in this county?
AnonPhenom
TNC is a treasure to read. Because I’m nearly a generation older than him, I look forward to reading him for the duration.
BGinCHI
What’s been Easy so far is that the GOP has benefited politically from racism without paying any sort of price.
Pay up, fuckers.
Betty Cracker
Factually untrue. He himself has made such a retort, and credibly.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Balloon Juice: Credible Retorting Since 1998.
Bob In Portland
You want a racist? Here’s one of Gin & Tonic’s nationalists, Iurii Lutsenko, who said on television that the “genetic code of the Ukrainian people give them the ability to live outside lies, whereas the genetic code of childern of Gengis Khan makes them willing to live in lies and spread the patriotic syphillis”.
Seems to me patriotic syphillis is spreading in Kiev and Lviv.
OzarkHillbilly
TNC… Nail? Meet hammer.
Cacti
Yup.
The GOPers problem with Bundy isn’t what he said. It’s that he comes off boorish white trash racist, rather than genteel country club racist.
the Conster
Awesome post AL. TNC gets to the nut of it all, and the fact that Cliven and Donald came in the same week is a gift – I’ve actually detected that all of the white men I work with – professional and very well off – are quieter this week – like they’re afraid to say anything – like, they’re beginning to see that maybe THEY are all being lumped into a type – the only question being are they more the Bundy type or the Sterling type when they’re at home?
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
When will the anti-fascists be releasing the rest of the journalists they kidnapped in April?
schrodinger's cat
Even the Indian caste system has its origin in racism. Nothing is new under the sun, even our awfulness, especially our awfulness.
ETA: Varna the Sanskrit word for caste = complexion or skin tone.
Linda Featheringill
@Betty Cracker:
Hi, Betty. I guess you haven’t been flooded out. Good to know.
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster: Kathleen Parker does not approve of racial profiling of old white men, seriously that was the topic of her last column.
JPL
Bundy is disappointed that Sterling took him off the front page. It’s all about the message.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: She was on Hardball promoting Jeb. I guess his bumper sticker is gonna be third time’s a charm or something..
schrodinger's cat
My thoughts on Cosmos episode 6 on neutrinos. Unlike racism, our collective pushing the boundaries of knowledge is something we can be proud of.
Linda Featheringill
Elegant racists, indeed!
I come from a long line of white trash and I certainly recognize Bundy as being from that group.
The white underclass has several phrases for folks who like to pretend they’re nice when in fact they’re dirty as hell. The more religious ones might mention whited sepulchers.
And I suspect the other underclasses have choice expressions for such elegant folks.
Tommy
I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I leaved in place where I was the only white dude around. I had it said to me “white dude what are you doing here?”
schrodinger's cat
The most infuriating thing about the Sterling saga; Chuck Todd asking Obama about his reaction to the tape. Is there a group of journalists more pathetic than the White House Press Corpse?
kuvasz
“You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well, their father’s hell did slowly go by”
We are not going to stamp out racism before every single person living today is dead, and long dead.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: Eeww, do not want!
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Kathleen Parker is my personal “go-to” hate-read, because she’s the epitome of the Elegant Racist Oligarchy in action. Her job — and she knows it! — is to pose as the Silk Magnolia, the [fake] Southern Belle who can funnel the “elegant” dismissals of those people (people of color, but also women, and most especially working-class people who might be or choose to make common cause with women or people of color). But sweetly, like a Lady!
She’s the nicely-painted figurehead on Chief Justice Roberts’ pirate ship. And I can’t wait until the day she’s in a glass case in a museum, like the rest of the figureheads.
schrodinger's cat
@Anne Laurie: I think of her as the low rent MoDo.
Monala
@OzarkHillbilly: Your point?
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think of her as the low rent MoDo.
The single greatest proof that there is no God?
Both have Pulitzer Prizes for commentary.
Elmo
TNC is a treasure.
Had an interesting interaction today. Business meeting: me (middle aged white female), two African American gentlemen, and one older white gentleman.
Older white gentleman: What do you think of that Sterling thing?
Both black gentlemen: What they did to him wasn’t right – mans got a right to his opinion, in private in his own home. What if I said to my wife, I don’t like white people, should I get fired? (Obvs paraphrase)
And I’m over here thinking, Dude, you aren’t the CEO. You’re a security guard. If you were the CEO, you damn right I’d fire your ass.
Just a funny dynamic.
Cacti
Bad news for the Snowdenistas.
Wikileaks acknowledged today that they advised him flee to Russia.
RIP: “Obama forced him to stay there” talking point.
maya
@JPL:
BUSH .45
Cacti
@maya:
Dubya is publicly supporting a Jeb 2016 run.
Please appear with him on the stump as often as possible, George.
Mandalay
@the Conster:
My own experience is that they are usually of the equally vile Jeremy Clarkson type: “just a joke!…just kidding!…lighten up!”…
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Me, I don’t think of MoDo as high-rent.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: how about she’s a more authentic Cokie Roberts?
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: She isn’t, NYT is. Kathleen Parker’s column appears in the Pravda on the Potomac. So comparatively speaking MoDo is higher rent than KP.
maya
@Suffern ACE: Cokie Roberts.
Shouldn’t someone have told her by now to ditch that sorority nickname?
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: Well, if you followed the news you’d know that they proposed a prisoner swap for the folks the Kiev government has put in prison for not being cool with the coup. Didn’t the NY Times mention that?
So I guess when Parubiy stops talking about destroying the ethnic Russians and agrees to negotiate with the half of Ukraine who voted for Yanukovich there will be prisoner exchanges.
By the way, who’s bright idea was it to send a busload of NATO officers into territory controlled by “terrorists”? Was that supposed to be a provocation or is the Kiev government just really stupid?
Also, the Poles in northwest Ukraine are talking about independence. What say you? Reform the 14th Waffen SS?
Bob In Portland
I guess the good thing about Nuland’s coup too far is that the neo-cons in the permanent government will finally destroy NATO.
ShadeTail
Gotta disagree here, TNC. There are many such retorts. Here’s one: “Then why do you keep undermining every reasonable and reliable effort to stop it?”
Mike in NC
@schrodinger’s cat: Kathleen Parker has a burning crush on old white men, specifically John McCain and Mitt Romney.
JaneE
If it weren’t skin color they would have found some other difference with which to justify treating people as animals and property.
Comrade Mary
Yeah, unknown number of Boston racists. Way to maintain any good feelings about your city.
(I have no patience tonight for excuses. Really, fuck you fuckers.)
the Conster
@Anne Laurie:
She’s more like Bobo for white women. While Brooks coos to the little people locked in steerage that it’s for their own good while the oligarchs man the lifeboats, Parker tut tut tuts to the feminists that everything will be perfectly alright and they’ll be taken care of if they just behave conventionally like she does, and default to respect for power and old white men. She’s a hipper Phyllis Schlafley.
Bob In Portland
@maya: Would it be inappropriate to mention that Cokie and her hubby worked in Gloria Steinem’s CIA propaganda shed during the International Youth Festivals back in the late 50s, early 60s? Or is that one down the memory hole?
Mandalay
@Cacti: “Bad news for the Snowdenistas.”
I see why you decided not to provide a link to your “scoop”. Keep fucking that chicken.
Mike in NC
@Cacti: Poppy will probably be recently deceased by 2016, so the media will be painting him as one of the greatest presidents ever, with frequent interviews with his evil spawn to lend credence to that ridiculous notion.
Kay
This is intriguing:
Let’s all sue under Section Two!
People love early voting and they got used to having it in Ohio so it’s important we curtail all that predictability, convenience and voter satisfaction.
Ash Can
@Mandalay: Here you go.
Baud
@Kay:
No respect for the dignity of the state.
Mandalay
@Anne Laurie:
I’m not a fan either, but I do give her credit for pointing out that Sarah Palin was a complete dimwit while almost everyone else on the right was ignoring Palin’s obvious incompetence and cheering madly.
Jeffro
I was thinking about how conservatives are oh-so-concerned about the “slavery” of welfare benefits, like this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-analyst-obama-slavery
Obviously they don’t care if the less well-off are enslaved as a practical matter if not in law and fact. But I thought about it, and it dawned on me that they’re dog-whistling…(dog-hinting?)…they’re always trying to get ‘Murican taxpayers thinking they’re enslaved by simply having to pay taxes to support the government (which in their minds is 50% welfare and 50% foreign aid, i.e. international welfare).
Talk enough about slavery, and it pushes all the wh…right…buttons, doesn’t it?
guachi
Read TNC’s entire piece. He’s scary good, isn’t he? I have little to add other than “Go read all of it right now”.
gbear
@Suffern ACE: I used to say that Cokie Roberts was the reason that snooze bars were invented, but then I just stopped waking up to Morning Edition. Many years ago.
Kay
@efgoldman:
I’m not really surprised it took this long. It’s not an obviously strong claim, IMO. Husted isn’t a dope. It’s not blatant. He cut back the early vote hours but the justification is the counties couldn’t agree on consistent hours and he’s also mailing every voter an absentee ballot. He also did that in 2012, universal absentee ballots. That doesn’t address the Souls to the Polls issue, though, which is why they want Sunday restored.
I don’t know, but I think part of this is they’re exploring the limits of Section Two, how good a tool it is or will be. I’m just pleased to see a really aggressive strategy, win or lose. They should push it as far as they can go.
jl
@ShadeTail:
‘ “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” John Roberts elegantly wrote. Liberals have yet to come up with a credible retort. ‘
‘Gotta disagree here, TNC. There are many such retorts. Here’s one: “Then why do you keep undermining every reasonable and reliable effort to stop it?” ‘
I disagree with TNC there too, and I think that part of his post is the weakest. My retort would be that Roberts’ statement is gibberish and means nothing, and cannot be interpreted as a condensation of any coherent argument supported by any evidence elsewhere in the opinion. It is just gibberish, in context or out. And anyone who would write that should not be judge in any court.
The tie-in to ‘elegant racism’ I see is that pervasive racism and bigotry among powerful whites forbids that simple retort. And the retort is forbidden because of the implications of that retort having merit are forbidden to be acknowledged among powerful whites, not the merit of the retort itself.
But, the post made some very good points, As a few commenters noted, including humble me, a couple of days ago, Bundy or Sterling could have said essentially the same thing in a different way, and they would fit right in with many respected ‘experts’ of one thing or another who appear regularly on Fox News.
Mandalay
@jl:
TNC elegantly made a similar point to yours:
Priceless.
Mr. Longform
I feel like an idiot. This single phrase has thrown me for a loop. I had truly never thought of it this way, and now I see how right this is. Damn. Racism precedes race. Of course it does. One of those aphorisms that clears things up. OK, I’m dumb, but now less dumb than I was.
Kay
@efgoldman:
And so there’s risk to that, because if they push it and lose that route can be closed off or narrowed if something more egregious comes along, which it probably will :)
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
Well, if you followed the news you’d know that they proposed a prisoner swap
Oh, so they’re abducting civilian journalists as hostages for negotiations?
That makes it sound much better.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
Here you go.
And another apologist lie bites the dust.
Chris
@jl:
I think a better phrase than “liberals have yet to come up with a credible retort” is “liberals have yet to come up with a retort that most white people [which until recently meant most Americans] are willing to listen to.” There’s no shortage of good points that’ve been said about the continuation of racism after official desegregation. Most people simply aren’t comfortable examining their privilege.
leeleeFL
@kuvasz: I have a little song in my head that uses the music from Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof. Something I thought of during Healthcare Summer. The verses always change but the chorus is always “Attrition! “
jl
@Chris: I think you and I are circling around the same point, which in turn leads to the point Shade Tail was making. Powerful whites, and their powerless white dupes, do not want to tolerate open and wide ranging discussion of the work of people like Roberts, who I think is an ever bigger mess than Scalia. What kind of mess I am not sure, maybe fool, maybe fraud, maybe corrupt and suborned, or some combination.
If a mess like Roberts can pass muster, what does that say about their precious color-blind meritocracy? It says too much, and goes in the wrong direction.
Which explains why Roberts ran out quick as he could and accused Sotomayor of playing the race card when she made (I think very politely) strong criticisms of Roberts’ bare assertions, gibberish, and arbitrary stipulations masquerading as arguments. They have to stop honest discussion of certain topics at all costs.
Suffern ACE
@Cacti: it sounds like Latin America was a ruse, which is fair when dealing with spies. I don’t get the point of this narrative. When China turned him out, Russia made sense. There aren’t that many countries to choose from.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Do you know to which judge this case has been assigned? Please, please, please say Marbley.
Mnemosyne
Accidentally on topic, kinda-sorta via a comment at Slacktivist:
Taking a Magnifying Glass to the Brown Faces In Medieval Art
Basically, our understanding of medieval Europe was censored by racists over the centuries. If you look at the originals, there are a whole lot more black and brown people than most would care to admit.
Mr. Longform
So how is it possible that the New York Times pays cash money to David Brooks, who is craven and not very smart; Maureen Dowd, who is not very smart and has no insight; Thomas Friedman, who may be smart, but has been phoning it in for the past 10 years at least; and Ross Douthat, who is not very smart and is a prissy little turd; when they might have given a national stage to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is really smart, really insightful, and can write circles around those guys? Why?
Mandalay
@Cacti:
I’d already seen your “scoop” – that’s why I said I understood why you didn’t include a link. Strange that nobody else is making the same argument!
Keep fucking that chicken.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Crap. It’s Frost.
J.Ty
@Mandalay: The story’s not about Snowden. That being said, screw that twerp.
MomSense
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah but why not Indonesia-direct from Hong Kong? They don’t have an extradition treaty with us.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, I don’t know, but I hope we get your judge. I think the claim is a reach. They’re using the Obama campaign case from 2012:
But that was obviously not gonna fly. It was different treatment for military and non-military. This curtails early vote for everyone, so they have to rely on exit polls and testimony to show disparate impact.
The whole Husted voting dance is complicated because he manages this so carefully. He has to satisfy the GOP base on voter fraud (!) AND not be a known voter suppressor which would rile up the Dem base when he runs for governor, and he is planning on running for governor. It’s a fine line he has to walk :)
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bad, I guess?
Cacti
@Mandalay:
You really should get in touch with wikileaks and tell them stop spreading dastardly lies about your prince.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: First term W appointee.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
No.
SATSQ.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Louis CK has innocently blundered into the public school wars. His kids go to public school in NYC and he started tweeting pictures of his third grader’s math homework. It’s test prep. The ed reformers jumped all over him, and I would say he’s winning this fight because they’re just so stern and haughty (and to me just arrogant) but I’ve obviously made my mind up about them:
The whole thing is very funny, because he’s approaching this with a lot of humility and humor but he won’t back down.
https://twitter.com/louisck
Mandalay
@Cacti:
You really should ask yourself why you have chosen to go the only web site which is making such bizarre claims based on publicly available information. Nobody else is making those claims. Did all the other web sites miss the scoop, or is the writer you choose to believe a little bit wacko and a little bit desperate?
Wally Ballou
@Mandalay: Perhaps, although I always suspected her real problem with Palin was more NOCD than anything related to her actual qualifications (or lack thereof).
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Linda Featheringill: My granddaughter’s mom, mom’s dad, and her sister (all in Pensacola) were, Two of those three lost their cars to the floodwaters, but nothing else, thank god. Shortly after telling me this, they reported the news of the explosion of the county jail in P’cola. Biblical.
The Fat Kate Middleton
Forgot to mention … quite possibly your best post here ever, Anne Thank you. I can’t stop thinking about “elegant racism.”
Ash Can
@Mandalay: Did you happen to notice that the source of this information is Wikileaks itself? This isn’t a “bizarre claim,” it’s information provided directly by the source.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: Which journalists are you talking about? The guys from VICE were released. Do you have a link from somewhere in English?
I was actually thinking about the busload of NATO officers. They were supposed to be traded. But the soldiers who surrendered to the little old ladies. They just had to surrender their bullets and armored vehicles. They got soup, sandwiches and beer and were put on buses home. They got to keep their rifles, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland:
You’re an expert on the topic and yet you need links to be in English? I would have thought that you would be comfortable in Ukrainian and/or Russian.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Didn’t you know? Being fluent in Ukranian is proof positive that you’re a neo-Nazi spy.
Another Holocene Human
But more, it is because liberals do not understand that America has never discriminated on the basis of race (which does not exist) but on the basis of racism (which most certainly does.)Ideologies of hatred have never required coherent definitions of the hated. Islamophobes kill Sikhs as easily as they kill Muslims.
Burn.
That’s why Sterling was sanctioned. He insulted Magic Johnson, got otherwise happily prejudiced white peoples’ backs up.
LAC
@Suffern ACE: I think she is the less alcoholic version of Peggy noonan.
Older
@Elmo: He might have a point. If Sterling had stuck to being bigoted in the privacy of his own home.
artem1s
@Kay:
there is a petition going around now to put a referendum on the November ballot that would set the number of early voting days so the SoS can’t arbitrarily reduce them. I signed but don’t think it is broad enough. Even if some repuke SoS can’t decrease the early voting dates, s/he will just find some other onerous work around to keep the wrong people from voting. Killing early voting in OH is only one prong in Blackwell’s playbook that Husted is cribbing. Once you kill early voting, you also have to make sure there are 7 hour long lines at the ‘right’ precincts. Blackwell’s favorite ploy was to make sure there weren’t enough workers and polling booths at urban precincts no matter how many registered voters were in that precinct. rural precincts often had 3-4x as many booths per registered voters as urban precincts.