The 'Racism' Canard

[Victor Davis Hanson]

In the wake of Joe Wilson's crude outburst, many network commentators (and Jimmy Carter, of course) are weighing in on the new racism that supposedly explains 1) rising opposition to Obamacare and 2) the president's sinking polls. I think this is a disastrous political move to save a health-care plan that simply has not appealed to a majority of Americans. I suspect it will result in another 5-point poll slide.

To prove their charge, those who allege racism would have to show empirically that the present angry rhetoric eclipses what was said about and done to Bush. It does not yet.

We don't see the word "hate" used in mainstream publications like The New Republic and the Guardian, as it was during the Bush years. (Even worse, really unspeakable things were done to Bush in novels and films.) "You lie" is about on par with the past statements of a Rep. Pete Stark or a Howard Dean ("I hate Republicans"), or the booing Democrats at the 2005 State of the Union. The extremists at the demonstrations are in smaller numbers so far than those who turned out against Bush and the Iraq War. A senior figure like John Glenn or Al Gore has not called the current president a Nazi or brownshirt.

A better explanation than right-wing racism for the Left's exasperation is that in the Bush wilderness years, the Left assumed permanent political marginalization, adopted an ends-justify-the-means strategy of street rhetoric against Bush, then found themselves unexpectedly as the establishment, and now are appalled that anyone might emulate their own past emotional outbursts.

As a political tactic, the accusation of racism makes no sense (especially when someone like Maureen Dowd has to invent the word "boy" to provide the evidence). This week the Internet and Drudge splashed around a number of provocative incidents that could be interpreted as racially polarizing — Kanye West (who has a history of racist accusations) crudely grabbing a mike from a young singer to praise another contestant; Serena Williams (whose father has made a number of racist comments about tennis and its protocols) caught on tape threatening to injure to a rather small and meek line judge; and the retread clips of Van Jones accusing whites of polluting black neighborhoods and having a greater propensity to kill en masse in schools.

The elite media take on all that, of course, is that these are pre-selected race-baiting incidents publicized to inflame the Tea Party base. But others, perhaps a majority of voters, would see that argument as counterintuitive, and instead would worry that the larger society is becoming racially polarized — and that the subtext of Jones, Williams, and West is that a number of prominent figures are expressing a great deal of anger at whites and others.

The voter that Obama needs to keep will look at these incidents far differently than a CNN or MSNBC commentator, and will wonder what might have happened had a Bush White House czar claimed blacks were racial polluters or prone to kill, or had a white-male country-music singer stolen the mike from a small young black woman to praise another white country singer. So there will be a class distinction in how these incidents are seen, and it will result in the media elite's alleging white racism at exactly the same time that the blue-collar voter draws the exact opposite lesson.

Obama himself wisely called West a "jackass" and accepted Wilson's necessary apologies, but the larger question is why the Left is now nearly unhinged about criticism of a black liberal president, when it was silent (well, there was always Harry Belafonte . . .) about the racial implications of the constant and vicious anger directed at Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, not to mention the rather personal, condescending attacks on Alberto Gonzales. For that matter, the ubiquitous Pete Stark once said some particularly unkind and racist things about former health and human services secretary Louis Sullivan (who is black).