Race and Politics -- Part I

Lately I've been reading some blogs and having interesting conversations about race and politics. So I thought I'd start a series of posts about this topic, although I'm not sure I'll make it beyond two (although who knows, maybe this will be rich enough to carry me through the Iowa Caucus).

At any rate, my prompt for this post is about racist Republicans, or rather this highly provocative question:

Are all Republicans racist?

Let me explain. Christmas Eve was spent with friends and amongst folks who were both non-academics and white Southeners who had ties to Southern politics, especially the yellow dog Democrats in the South. One of these gentlemen, a person who had been a teenager during the Civil Rights movement, who was born and raised in an ex-confederacy state, and who had worked for various Democratic campaigns, and who, I should note, is a white Southern man, made this emphatic statement:

All Republicans are racist.

I actually laughed when he said that, because I mean, it's what liberal-progressive Democrats like to say but truthfully, we don't really believe that every-single last voting member of the Republican party is racist...do we? Sometimes I find non-people of color (my ultra-pc way of saying "white" folk) making very bold and somewhat over-the-top statements to show how progressive they are about race. But this wasn't the case. I can't quite explain why--but I didn't get the feeling the person was pandering to me or talking to me in that way of trying to make me feel more comfortable by saying the thing that I might agree with.

This person, lets call him Southern Dem, had a lot of experience with campaigns and seeing the way various Republicans have used racism to their advantage in campaigns--and he has heard a lot of racist stuff--and he truly believes that white Republicans are racist and listen to racist dogma. And in fact he contends that it was Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign that swept through the South and converted the racist Democrats into Republicans, which is why the South has changed from blue to red in the last few decades.

Now, as much as I'm a bleeding heart leftist-liberal-wanna-be-radical-queer-friendly-feminist-of-color, I actually don't believe all Republicans are racist. And I'm not just going to point to the obvious Republicans of Color to show how this might be problematic. I just don't think we can make sweeping generalizations like that. It's like saying that all Democrats are non-racist, and that's just NOT true.

But I also believe that Southern Dem's point, that he had heard and seen A LOT OF RACIST STUFF that white Southeners have said and continue to say (among other things, he told me that he knew some guys who wanted to go to the U.S.-Mexico border and sit on a telephone pole and shoot at anyone trying to cross the border into the U.S. because they believed there was no value to Mexican life and all immigrants were illegal and needed to be summarily deported), is an important one to think about. Because I tend not to have really racist stuff said to me by other people. It's probably a combination of my obvious non-whiteness/people-of-colorness or more particularly because people know I do research on issues of race and racism and work on Asian American literature. And most of it probably has to do with the fact that I am surrounded by like-minded people, at Southern U., in my small college town, in my profession and my personal life.

But Southern Dem, who works in the world of commerce and business, who has been around Southern politics, who is a white Southern man who has a strong Southern accent, I'm sure he hears a lot of things that would have my jaw dropped in a permanent state if I were invisibly standing next to him. So his experiences have taught him that in the South, if you're a Republican you are racist.

I'll explain how we got on this subject in tomrrow's post, but I'll just end by asking the following to anyone who is game:

1) First of all, how do you define how someone is racist? What does it mean to be racist?

2) Can it be possible for the entire Republican party to be racist?

3) If #2 isn't possible, does it seem as if one party is more open to an anti-racist praxis than the other party--and why is this the case?

4) Is it possible to be a racist Democrat and still vote for Obama?

Feel free to answer just one of the above or all, depending on how nimble your fingers are feeling!

Being Paranoid vs. Being a Target

I'm returning, once again, to the topic of racial paranoia, because over the Labor Day weekend I was in West Virginia visiting some friends. And over the course of three days I became aware that I must have had an invisible sign on my forehead that said "Please stare at me long and hard." While I think some of the staring was out of curiosity, there were distinct moments when the staring felt hostile. And it's hard for me to unpack whether it's because I was with my white boyfriend (which means we constituted an inter-racial couple, the only one I saw in the 3 days of our trip) or because I was visibly Asian and hence different and hence not from there (aside from looking at my face in the mirror, there were no Asian people I saw over the course of 3 days--not at rest stops or restaurants or gas stations or supermarkets or the Hampton Inn we were staying at).

I, obviously, felt paranoid. Even my white Southern boyfriend, born and raised in a Southern Capital, felt uncomfortable with the evangelical and conservative overlay we felt, at times, hitting us on our travels (which only increased my paranoid feelings, because if my white Southern boyfriend is feeling like West Virginia is uncomfortable TO HIM, you can only imagine what I was experiencing).

However, I want to be clear about one thing: nothing bad happened to us. Nothing was said. Nobody bothered us. While I may have detected a certain curtness with our Shoney's waitress (that's right, we ate at Shoneys: and for anyone traveling out there--DON'T DO IT! ONE OF THE WORST MEALS OF MY LIFE. But we were hungry and tired and looking for something quick near our hotel that wasn't fast food). And while the woman at the Dairy Queen could not take her eyes off me--kept staring at me with an expression on her face that indicated that she had stepped into something foul and unpleasant, nothing was said, nothing was done.

Which means, that all in all, it wasn't all that bad. Uncomfortable? Sure, but it is vastly different from experiencing the effects of real institutional racism.

Which is the topic of this post: The Jena 6. Again, for a more succinct (and visual) summary than I can provide here, please go to the link on the Racialicious website:

Link to Jena 6 case:

The African American teens in Jena, LA experienced people putting nooses on a tree, a man who aimed a rifle at them, being beat up at parties, and overall harassment and abuse. That's real racism. I mention this not to say that my paranoia isn't warranted--it comes from a place where I fear what is happening to these African American students could happen to me in places where I'm obviously a curiosity, at best, or an item of hostility and possible abuse, at worst. But the truth is, as much as I think it's folly to rank racism, the history of race relations in the South, of racism against African Americans in places like Jena, LA is a long and deep and troubled one. And it is different, my experiences as an Asian American woman, are different than the experiences of young African American men.