Comments on: What’s the country coming to when an honest man can’t unfairly attack another honest man, personally, without that other man saying the unfair attack is against his whole race?

By: David

David — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:09:58 +0000

Oh, hell. Let Paris have the last word on this.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/paris-hilton-strikes-back-at-mccain/

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:58:35 +0000

W. Kiernan #57:
“He’s black on his driver’s license.”
Well then.
And race is an important category on driver’s licenses in the first place because?
Because the bureaucratic culture that produces driver’s licenses is still carrying the artifacts of racism.
Out of moral soupiness come many dysfunctional things.

Rationalizations to the contrary there’s little forensic benefit to these broad categories. Hispanics come in many hues, some blend right in with Caucasians, visually, making that useless for id purposes.

There are among us children of one white/black parent one white parent, what were once called for statistical purposes “quadroons”.
Sometimes those children present with “black” features. Causing turmoil by their difficult classifiability.
This is important because?
Because racism is still with us.

Unless there’s some CDC/medical connection, which I doubt, the reason that category’s even on the license is residual, racist however inadvertent.

When I was a kid I lived near an active army base. Soldiers would get weekend leave and spend it in the sleaze ghetto downtown. Sometimes they got in trouble.
The local paper would identify the arrested as “Pvt. William Bland, 27” as opposed to “Cpl. Tyler Monroe, a Negro, 27”.
This stopped sometime in the 70’s.
So we’re all done with racism now, yeah?

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:44:18 +0000

“…has worked both sides of the racial street when he thought it to his advantage…”

Oh, jeez.

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:23:20 +0000

To be sure, Obama(as he has said himself) really didn’t have a choice
as to which racial identity he chose, society did it for him. OTOH, however, Obama has worked both sides of the racial street when he thought it to his advantage, so one can hardly feel sorry for him—or condemn those who point out and criticize his cynical tactics in this regard.

By: Rich Puchalsky

Rich Puchalsky — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:41:01 +0000

Jeez, this is funny. Any of the commenters above obsessing about the one-drop rule and whether Obama chose to be black would have no trouble immediately identifying someone who looked just like him as black if they, say, were walking through an area of town that they were worried about.

By: W. Kiernan

W. Kiernan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:49:44 +0000

Roy Belmont: He’s only “black” through a racist lens.

He’s black on his driver’s license.

By: richard

richard — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:05:33 +0000

in Brazil anyone not perceived as totally “black” is considered “white.”
No, there’s a category of “brown.” There are plenty of white racists and black racists in Brazil, but the consensus position (at least in the media) is a lot more colourblind, or acknowledges that the mixtures are so varied and uncategorisable that there’s no point worrying about them: there’s no room for a “not one drop” doctrine because it would exclude practically everyone.

By: Slocum

Slocum — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:52:41 +0000

Barack Obama is biracial, which in the racially coded U.S. context makes him black, e specially to older white folks.

Actually, blackness is something that Obama chose to embrace. Here’s Matthew Yglesias’s take:

…before Obama was a half-black guy running in a mostly white country he was a half-white guy running in a mostly black neighborhood. At that time, associating with a very large, influential, local church with black nationalist overtones was a clear political asset (it’s also clear in his book that it made him, personally, feel “blacker” to belong to a slightly kitschy black church).

I’d also say that, at this point, it’s African Americans and the left generally who have the greatest interest in maintaining the ‘one drop’ rule. When your politics depends on racial solidarity, you want your racial block to be as big as possible, with none if this wishy-washy ‘biracial’ nonsense.

BTW, I think it’s pretty clear that his race has helped Obama so far—he’s doing much better than Edwards would running on the same platform. In the abstract, Americans like the idea of voting for a black candidate and electing a black president as a way of absolving themselves personally of any potential claim of racism as well as demonstrating that racism is no longer a major issue in the U.S. and putting a stake into the heart of racial grievance politics. A side benefit would be the ability to tell Europeans and others to STFU about race in America until such time as they elect their own person of color to head of state. So Obama’s race helps so long as he’s offering absolution and promising post-racial politics.

BUT…if it looks like electing Obama is going to intensify racial politics rather than diminish them, then a lot of Americans are going to reject the deal and Obama’s race could work against rather than for him.

By: Flippanter

Flippanter — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:12:26 +0000

The range of comments best summarized as “[Candidate] must say what I am saying” would be rendered “[C]:I”.

By: Michael Drake

Michael Drake — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:23:45 +0000

“an identity politics of shared victimization, based on a principled opposition to any such identity politics.”

Alas, victimhood elicits more sympathy when you are in the majority.

By: john in california

john in california — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:13:23 +0000

Regardless of the intent of the ad, or even how various people interpret it, Obama’s biggest problem is that he is that he is answering it in a way that actually reinforces the thrust of the ad, that is that Obama is a lightweight, a celebrity girly-man, someone who daren’t express the righteous anger that McCain or any winger would if a similar ad was made about them. In fact, McCain gets a two-fer by being able to be righteously angry about the ad being called racist (though Obama himself never levels the charge) and as well humorously belittling Obama for being thin skinned and always trying to inject race into the debate. If Edwards had been the object of such an ad how long do you think it would have taken Elizabeth to cry foul? But, of course, if Michele says anything, its that hypersensitive black woman again. Since Obama has built his career by not being the ‘angry back man’ I suppose it is to much to ask him to now change his stripes. He is using the same tactic he used against Hillary, albeit more overtly, and that is mildly condescending mockery. Even his surrogate, Daschle and Kerry, seem unable to muster real outrage.
Why does all this work for McCain? Because he is the original ‘Angry Old Man’ and the mood of the public is not comedic, it’s angry. Angry at everybody in government, regardless of political stripe. When they fork over fifty bucks for a fill up they are angry, when they pay four dollars for a loaf of bread, ten dollars for a pound of salmon and five dollars for a pound of cheese they are angry. And if that wasn’t enough, either there rent is going up or their equity is going down while their wages are going nowhere. And when they watch Obama being whisked around the world to adoring crowds instead of being back here spending some time on isle 7, talking to someone trying to live on a budget, they are angry. And angry is what McCain and the winger do best.
Ironically, Obama has built his whole political career, maybe even his real personality, on not being the Angry Black Man. (Remember how he was so quick not only to dissociate himself from Rev. Wright’s words but, even more from Wright’s angry performance.) He wouldn’t be the dem nominee if he hadn’t assured a lot of powerful whites that he wasn’t the kind of guy who would guilt trip them by being righteously angry. Now he need anger, not about the ads but about the state of the country and the obvious failure of the political class to have prevented the situation or come up with real solutions. Mavericky and angry McCain can, on the other hand, portray himself as the real outsider and someone who is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. And the polls show it is working. I don’t know where it is going to come from, but Obama better start changing his tune. He had better start sounding more like ludicrous lest he be taken as ridiculous.

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:56:26 +0000

PS: Wiki, for once, has an excellent discussion of the history of the “one drop” rule here in America and elsewhere.

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:48:07 +0000

Appros of racial identity and mixed-races, someone years ago made the point on a television special that the difference between the US and Brazil was that in the US, anybody who is not seen as purely “white” is considered “black”; in Brazil anyone not perceived as totally “black” is considered “white.” In fact the Brazilian social viewpoint is seen as such a threat by the NAACP (because viewing mixed race people as something other than black would dilute blacks’ political clout) that it has a team of lawyers down in Brazil even now trying thru the courts to establish a legal basis for legally labeling mix-raced people as “black” for purposes of preferred univ. admissions, etc. (was a PBS special on the subject not to long ago.) Bottom line, as more and more progeny of multi-racial marriages occur, (see Tiger Woods)the pressure for a category other than the black-white-Latina schema grows apace. (Witness the NAACP fierce opposition to mixed-race categories on US Census forms.) The NAACP fears that as more and more Brazilians immigrate to the US (as is the case here in New Orleans, which has a vibrant and growing Brazilian community) their “take” on race will infect the mainstream—hence their Brazilian legal court-challenge project to “raise” the “conscious” of Brazilians. Or rather, to disabuse them of their “false consciousness.” This is no small savage irony, sitting here in Louisiana, to see the NAACP now
CHAMPIONING the “one drop” rule they historically fought so hard against, the culmination of which was a Supreme Court case brought and won by a female Creole right here in Louisiana.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:36:47 +0000

Flippanter: I’ve sometimes wondered if there’s a way to mildly improve the quality of a comment thread by putting the most obvious responses at the top of the post and as notices in the comment field. Sort of like:

“These thngs have BEEN SAID. We HAVE HEARD THEM:
[blah blah blah]
Please consider not saying them again. Thank you”.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:27:38 +0000

Barack Obama is biracial, which in the racially coded U.S. context makes him black, especially to older white folks.

I still think that he ought to run an ad that reminds everybody that the main purpose of Republican tax policy is to provide benefits to Paris Hilton (she won’t have pay inheritance tax) and Britney Spears (much of her income, unless she’s stupider than I take her for, is now investment income). Oh, and if he could find the video of the two of them praising George Bush, as each has done in the past, that would be cool.

Paris Hilton’s mom is really pissed. The family’s Republican to the core (inherited wealth, don’t you know) and their daughter’s being slagged using their campaign contributions. Surely the Dems can and should use that.