This sign, held by a tea party protestor, is a dog whistle. It means, "Obama is black, we are white, he is not one of us".
Welcome to any southern state you choose. The time is 1950 and the drinking fountains and restrooms are marked according to your status as a human, i.e. men’s room, women’s room, and colored. The front of the bus is free for the taking, as long as you are white. Housing is racially segregated, schools also. In some towns, black people cannot come to town except on Saturday.
Zoom ahead to today and you find that many things have changed in the last 60 years. Some have not. The advances our society has made to relax the tensions between the races made us more sensitive to our African-American population’s mistreatment, but efforts such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the diligence of civil rights leaders to remind us of our missteps, have not yet completely eradicated the hatred. Even though these efforts have demanded civility in its discourse, things are moving in opposition and even the civility we thought would grow to become enlightenment is taking a turn for the worse.
Today, racism is in the hearts and minds, and on the tongues, of many people. In what I call a role reversal from the dark days of Selma in the 60′s, white people are taking to the streets carrying signs in protest of President Obama with no legitimate beef other than the fact that he is different from presidents in the past.
These tea party, or teabagger, protesters are using the public protest and its subsequent media coverage as a technique to demean this black president with any notion they can think of regardless of the lack of any basis in fact. They do this to propel their ideology, or I should say, their backer’s propaganda. These protesters, funded by wealthy PR firms and right-wing Corporate CEOs, lack moral high ground, or the one central cause that would endear them to the masses. They instead use a jumbled mix of messages that they think will resonate with voters. The sad part is that it is working, mainly because the media has legitimized the teabaggers. The media coverage has gone from reporting the protests to becoming the teabagger’s cheer leaders.
There are some influential figures who use their pulpit as a means to try to rally to themselves these protesters who still carry the hatreds, the white-supremist notions, of yesteryear. One such figure, Glen Beck, has seemingly leaped from the past when talk of African-American people as “different” was accepted speech, has tried to become the spokesperson for their cause. What makes it so important to understand the intent of this bigot is because there are millions who listen to him regardless of the advances we have made with race relations. This makes him, and his nonsense that he spouts, very dangerous.
From my email yesterday:
Media Matters for America wrote:
Media Matters: The politically motivated selective-victimhood of Sarah Palin
From: Media Matters for America [action@mediamatters.org]
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 7:49 PM
To: Tom
Subject: Media Matters:The politically motivated selective-victimhood of Sarah PalinOther Major Stories
What’s in a name? For Glenn Beck, the answer, it appears, is everything
On Thursday, Beck was revisiting one of his favorite subjects: the hidden history of Barack Obama. Reflecting on how Obama had, as a young man, gone from calling himself Barry to using his given name of Barack, Beck said this:
He chose to use his name Barack for a reason — to identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?
Beck’s history regarding discussions of race speaks for itself. He has said Obama possesses “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Soon after, he defended those remarks, stating once again that, “I think the president is a racist.” He has suggested that Obama is seeking to become a “slavemaster.” He has pushed the idea that Mexican immigrants want to “reclaim” California and Texas. He called Justice Sonia Sotomayor a “racist” on at least three separate occasions. Beck has portrayed the Democratic health care reform effort as “the beginning of reparations,” a theme he has repeated on both his Fox News and radio shows, saying that Obama plans to “settle old racial scores through new social justice.” During a discussion of former White House green jobs official Van Jones’ past, he baselessly juxtaposed Jones’ picture with footage from a riot. He has claimed that India lacked “flush toilets” and said that the Ganges sounded like “a disease.”
All of these examples are from the last year. The deeper you dig, the worse it gets.
And yet, when Media Matters accused Beck of racial insensitivity, he responded indignantly that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
“If you don’t see why some people would get upset that you accused the president of adopting his African name in order to repudiate his American identity and connect with his father’s radical Kenyan heritage, “wrote Media Matters’ Simon Maloy yesterday, “then I’m afraid you might be a lost cause.”
Indeed, he is — and he’s not interested in being saved. Though he portrays himself as an average Joe just trying to make sense of the world, Beck is actually a wildly successful broadcaster with decades of experience. Everything he does and says is deliberate, and by now, it should be overwhelmingly obvious that he routinely crafts his rhetoric to appeal to the worst impulses in his audience. He insults minorities, and uses racially provocative language and imagery, because he wants to stir resentments among viewers and listeners. There is simply no other way to explain the racially charged content he has made a staple of his work.
Is it any wonder why at least 80 advertisers have fled his Fox News program and civil rights groups have condemned him over his latest comments?
Beck says that something is wrong with Obama, that Obama is somehow fatally flawed. He does this by using any piece of conjured up nonsense he can grasp to prove his point. His talk is nothing more than covert signals, or “dog whistles”, to other racists to use this particular lie as justification for their hatred. This has happened before when southern slave owners tried a thousand different justifications and explanations for slavery.
Beck needs to be called out. We need to keep talking about these angry white people who protest nothing at all. We must continue to define these protestors and expose them for the race baiting bigots that they are. In order to continue toward enlightenment the discourse cannot go chasing nonsense claims from Beck like Alice after a disappearing rabbit down the hole. Instead, we must resolutely shine a light of truth and reason on Beck and his followers. Kudos to Media Matters for America.
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Words Matter – Where the Dangerous Discourse Began
Re: Clinton Calls Out Armey And Gingrich For Reprising Roles, Reusing Lines, by Sam Stein, Posted: April 16, 2010 12:47 PM
President Bill Clinton, speaking in Oklahoma yesterday on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing (inserts, […], not mine):
Sobering, honest, and pertinent. Clinton is scolding – telling us that we are responsible for the language we use. Every politician or other notable speaker must be aware of and must be held accountable for their own rhetoric that pushes the envelope of civility. Some do. Others seem to charge ahead as if they wanted the crazies to start something, anything, just so it is bold enough to make the 24 hour news cycle.
This all started during the campaign in 2008. The Republicans, John McCain and his vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, proudly proclaimed that Senator Obama was associating with terrorists, effectively labeling Obama as the enemy. And when an audience member shouted “kill him!” nothing was done to correct the crazy. This from an article in the Huffington Post by Dawn Teo, HuffPost Arizona Correspondent, Posted: October 24, 2008. She hits the nail on the head:
McCain tried to stop the craziness once, at a rally October 10, 2008. A supporter at the McCain town hall-style forum in Lakeville, MN said “Obama is an Arab,” which McCain quickly corrected. Then McCain was booed by his own supporters for correcting the crazy lady. His efforts were too little, too late. Pandora’s box was already opened.
Who they are:
This was the beginning. The McCain campaign gave birth to the radical, and dangerous, Tea Party zombies.
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