The key that unlocks all the mysteries (including what's wrong with Kansas) to the rightwing political success is no mystery. It's just been coded and re-coded until any direct reference has virtually disappeared from the printed and spoken word---which ironically is typified by this article in its glaring omission.
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Yeah, I think you’re on the mark here Chuck but as I’m sure you know, discussions about racism have become a bit of a muddle here in the fun lovin USA.
One of the things that make it so difficult to sort out is the fact there are multiple streams of reality uneasily moving in parallel and so it’s not possible to accurately speak of a single, unified racist POV dominating American society and political culture.
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There is the first circle of hell – that stream of existence in which a White guy refuses to drink from the same glass as a Black guy because, you know, he’s an untermenschen and diseased in some vague way. This is where the supremacists live.
Moving over to another thread we meet folks who wouldn’t dream of firebombing or lynching but see no need for ‘integration’ because White folks are comfortable with White folks and Others, not fortunate enough to be White, are surely comfortable only with their fellow Others. This is the thread of polite but distant ‘peaceful co-existence’. Beneath the surface of this apparent reasonableness however is a ferocity that’s quickly manifested if the worlds seem to be merging (so-called “inter-racial dating” is a trigger for example).
Moving along again to yet another stream we have the folks who’re happy to work and socialize with the Other and who, indeed, often count a few Others as respected friends and colleagues. These people have mastered the capacity to hold at least two contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time. For example: ‘Blacks are lazy, welfare recipients who talk funny and live in horrible, crime blighted areas but my friend Tom, who happens to be Black, is a great guy – smart, funny and good looking.’
In this very polite place, the ‘lazy, welfare recipient’ stuff is often coded, as you say Chuck. But (and here’s the innovation) with special ‘doesn’t apply to you’ passes handed out to members of the circle of empathy who happen to be Other.
The brightest thread I’ve seen so far (and the most thinly populated) is the place of analysis and awareness. Here, people know they harbor all sorts of absurd ideas, including racism – an occupational hazard of being human it seems – and consciously work to correct those notions.
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Now I think the primary achievement of the civil rights movement has been the expansion of the membership of the friendly association thread – where coded ideas about 'urban' equaling crime equaling Black (for example) are retained but ‘you’re okay: fill-in-the-name-of-your-favorite-Other’ passes are given to more and more non-White people.
And this is what makes discussions about racism – and the role it plays in American political culture – so very hard. When the word “racist” is brought out and placed on the examination table we have an idea fixed in our minds of total violence and unreasoning hatred; of firebombed homes and bodies swinging from trees and men dragged behind cars and swastikas in Chicago and so on.
When the full situation falls short of this total eclipse Americans become confused and either incorrectly insist nothing’s changed since 1904 (a certain sort of activist reflexes to this position) or declare the situation to be solved and demand everyone ‘move on’.
Only when we accept that there are multiple streams – that one place in the US is at one level whereas another place, perhaps not even all that far away, is at another – will we begin to have a handle on the present configuration of racist thought in America and, as a result, be better equipped to understand the racist impulse’s multi-layered effect upon political life.
.d.