Joe Wilson Doesn't Deserve Sympathy
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Hanna, I see what you're saying about how Joe Wilson is in the mainstream of South Carolina white culture, but that doesn't strike me as a reason to shy away from drawing the conclusion that he's a racist. If anything, that just seems to be more evidence that he is a racist. We are talking about the people who gleefully elected Strom Thurmond to office repeatedly. Whether we like to admit this about our fellow Americans or not, there are large parts of the country where the mainstream white culture is overtly racist. As a white person living in a red state, I'm sick of pretending that this doesn't create plenty of occasions where conservatives will say the most hair-curling racist things when they think they're out of the earshot of anyone that will confront them on it.
And why would we doubt it? The white reaction to the civil rights movement didn't happen in some other place and time. The violently angry white reaction happened within Joe Wilson's memory, around the time of his adolescence in South Carolina. In fact, according to his biography, he immersed himself in the Republican party at just the point in time that pro-segregation Southern Democrats were switching parties. With Google searching, all the information I could find on when exactly Wilson worked for Strom Thurmond was unsurprisingly and conveniently hazy, but it seems that it had to have been in the mid-'60s, right after Thurmond switched party affliations as a protest against racial equality, and just a few years after Thurmond held the longest filibuster in history to halt civil rights legislation.
It's not impossible that political views reverse within a person's lifetime, but despite our highest hopes for ourselves, it's rare. It's believeable that Robert Byrd turned around on race, because he actually made an effort to fix the damage done by racism. But for most racists, what's happened is they've decided they're victimized by the "P.C." culture that shames them for overt bigotry, and so they get a lot of pleasure out of constructing a set of code words and signals to demonstrate allegiance under oppression, fancying themselves something closer to the anti-Nazi Resistance than to the hose-turning, screaming segregationists they were just a generation ago. It's an absurd fantasy, but one that Wilson is feeding by showing one face to a national audience and another to his base.
The only real reason to quit hammering Wilson is that it's a distraction from policy issues, and it feeds the white racist victim complex. But there's a real danger in setting the bar so high on what we call "racism" that associations, symbols, and behavior aren't enough proof to at least suggest that's the most likely explanation. That functionally erases racism as something that it's polite to acknowledge, and the people who bear the burden of that silencing are the actual victims of racism, the non-white people who have to suffer the abuses and obstacles that racist attitudes cause. It shouldn't be worse to call someone a racist—especially if the evidence has piled high and deep—than to be a racist.
Photograph of Joe Wilson by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
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Thank you Amanda
By: Utena H | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 15:35
I didn't appreciate Hanna's article, especially since Joe Wilson is now the poster child for the Conservative movement currently. Because of this, there is no avoiding him and there is no giving him slack or laying off, especially since he's using his new found fame to get money for his campaign. There's no doubt people are going to hear "YOU LIE!" for years to come so even if I try to avoid Wilson, I know I'm going to be unsuccessful. Amanda is right when she writes that talking about Wilson is nothing more than a distraction from real talks about health care policy. That and he sets an example of disrespect and arrogance during a formal session of Congress. Saying he's a passionate person is a fail. Passion leads people to do more than what's right, it can downright lead people to do things that are just wrong. Defending Wilson because of his behavior is nothing more than a excuse for people to ignore rules and decorum. Thus, when anyone is doing a speech, we can use Wilson as an excuse for disruption. I'm not sure anyone would appreciate being yelled at while doing public speaking. Wilson doesn't deserve anyone's sympathy or pity.
@ k re racism in the South
By: Jim Pivonka | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 14:12
There was no implication that racism is a problem only in the South or the Carolinas. The mainstream of Southern life is markedly less racist than 50 years ago, and facing down the past in those states leaves many citizens there more aware, and even more tolerant than people from states which have had lesser problems in the past. Unfortunately that fact does not mean that there are not pockets of deep racist feeling and even racist action in Southern and other states.
The problem of racism and race relations on Long Island is well known and is the subject of newspaper articles and other news reports in the media there, as well as of efforts by community and government leaders to address it. It is also true that attitudes about race are reflected in remarks made there by people opposing the President's policies, and I believe some of that opposition is influenced by, if it does not originate in, feelings about his race.
Racism is a problem throughout the United States. One only has to look at a map of racist extremist organizations and cells such as one, prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report ( http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp )to see how widely distributed it is.
@ k re racism in the South
By: Jim Pivonka | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 14:14
DUPLICATE POSTING ERROR - REMOVED TEXT OF DUPLICATE
Great article
By: tom99 | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 14:03
Thank you for summarizing everything flawed about Hanna's "logic" much more eloquently than I am able to.
@k
By: Kit-Kat | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 12:46
Where does Ms. Marcotte say that "only" the South is racist? She said, "there are large parts of the country where the mainstream white culture is overtly racist." She did not say that all of those parts are south of the Mason-Dixon line. Her article discussed South Carolina, which is the home state of Rep. Wilson, but I didn't see anywhere where she said that only Southerners are racist.
Dead on
By: Kit-Kat | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 12:43
"It shouldn't be worse to call someone a racist—especially if the evidence has piled high and deep—than to be a racist." Do some people "play the race card" too quickly and on insufficient evidence? Yes. Does that mean that there are no racists, or that we shouldn't call out racism when confronted with evidence that it exists? No. Excellent article.
I'm pretty sick of hearing
By: k | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 12:47
I'm pretty sick of hearing about how only the South is racist. Within the first six months of moving to Long Island I heard the following three comments:
"You don't want to move to Uniondale -- that's where all the black people live."
"That hootchy-cootchy little Spanish mama who was in here earlier . . ."
"Some of our clients have worse handwriting than Chinamen." (Yes, she really said "Chinamen.")
The latter two comments were made by my coworkers to my manager, who laughed at both of them. When I tried to protest, his only response was "what does does 'pejorative' mean?"
The only similar comment I heard during my 23 years in the Carolinas was "the damn Chinese are stealing all our oil" and the guy who said it was promptly glared down by everyone in the room, scolded, and not invited back.
So -- one comment in 23 years that was immediately rejected by others in the "racist" South, vs. three comments in six months that were completely accepted (in the workplace, no less) in the "enlightened" North. Can we dispense with the holier-than-thou?
Bravo!
By: MrJM | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 12:39
Your application of elementary logic to the facts at hand is admirable and all too rare.
Thank you.
-- MrJM