You can have a lot of fun with someone if you know they are hiding something from themselves and they are afraid that they might find it out. For example many Americans hide a lot of negative stereotypic thinking about other races. Educated people, especially, never want to admit to these thoughts.
However, the election of Barack Obama brought a lot of deeply buried racism uncomfortably close to the surface at all levels of American society. And so it can be an interesting hobby coaxing angry racism into the light. In this instance I am talking about an Internet social media discussion with a group of older, white Ivy League conservatives. I have been involved in online banter with them for three months.
I do not accuse them of racism. That would be impolite; and I am sure some of them are not racist at all. Some of them suggest that what I have to say is not welcomed in the discussion, but anything more than a suggestion would be equally impolite. So I stay and we play. They're funny. When the black candidate, Herman Cain, was riding high, one of them said we should support Cain. "Why don't we let our black guy fight their black guy (Obama)."
I asked how many others felt that way. They sensed a trap. No one responded. "How wide spread do you think that belief is"? No answer. I reminded them again that, according to a 2010 Harris Poll of rank and file Republicans:
- 67 percent believe that our President is a socialist.
- 57 percent believe that our President is a Muslim
- 45 percent believe that our President was not born in the USA
- 38 percent equate many of our President's actions to those of Hitler
- 24 percent say our President "may be the Antichrist."
Still no response but several of them disappeared from he discussion for a while.
Once they were comfortably back in the discussion again. I toyed with another hidden cat in the bag. I suggested that their political impotence was affecting them personally; and Obama's election had shaken the authority and hierarchy upon which their identities were established. "This is why educated men like you have attached your hopes of salvation to a series of potent male video game avatars-Cowboy Rick Perry, Big Daddy Herman Cain, and Bomb Thrower Newt Gingrich.
"The avatar that opposes Cowboy, Big Daddy, and Bob Thrower is a smooth and handsome guy named Chicago. Why is he the villain in this game"?
"George, you're confusing and amusing," one of them said.
"Obama represents a libidinal threat. That's why you choose symbols of the super-masculine male to defeat him," I joked. We were all pretending to be having great fun with this online banter, but for both sides there were deeply hidden feelings.
Beneath their banter was a seething anger at the Obama family's being in the White House. It was anger at the level of "I would rather destroy this country than to have to watch that blankety-blank riding around for four more years "in big cars and living in a big house." I took that to mean the Presidential motorcade and the White House.
imagined how odious it was for certain people to watch that jaunty little run that Obama sometimes makes up to the podium to stand behind the seal of the most powerful office in the world.
This group of men would not name one good thing that President Obama has done. Not one! Even after I gave them an amazing list of accomplishments of the President, they would not agree that anything on the list was praise worthy. Beneath my banter was an urgency to see how much racism could be brought to the surface and dealt with for the good of the nation.
Their anger made it easy for me to sell them on my claim that I had "A Foolproof Plan for Republicans to Win the Presidency in 2012." Across cyberspace I could sense their interest peak -What is it? What is it?
I kept promising to give the plan and then saying that I had to do more work on it, but it was absolutely fool proof. I knew I had their attention so I had a wonderful occasion to communicate my urgency. "With it's Southern Strategy started 50 years ago the Republican Party has committed to winning elections by appealing to voters using" the anger-producing, social diseases of the past: racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, super nationalism, militarism, greed, and evangelical hatred.
I knew they would not have paid attention to me without the foolproof plan dangling in front of them. "Your hero, President Reagan became a masterful user of this strategy. Why else would he begin a campaign for President in Philadelphia, Miss., a town famous for only one thing: the murder of three civil rights workers. Why didn't Reagan start his campaign in Los Angeles, where he lived, or his hometown, Tampico, Illinois?
I could imagine their mood: "Okay, Okay, we're listening, but what is the foolproof plan?"
So I could continue: "Why else pepper campaign speeches with negative stereotype-filled imagery of black folk like 'Welfare Queen' and 'strapping young buck' using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, as Reagan did?
"But just as Richard Nixon was so strongly associated with anti-communism that he could visit Communist China in 1972, when a Democratic president would not have dared, the Republican Party in 2012 is so strongly associated with the anti-social diseases of the past, it can speak and act vigorously against them as no Democratic President, and especially not Obama, can.
"That is the Republican advantage in 2012: This ability to act against racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, super nationalism, greed, and evangelical hatred. So I'll give you the Foolproof Plan for Republicans to Win the Presidency in 2012 right after the Iowa Caucuses, and it is absolutely fool proof, I said.
I knew that they would wait 3 days and pay more serious attention to my banter. While waiting for the reward they might think about some of the opinions I was expressing.
(For the simple foolproof plan see the next post in two days)
Previous posts in this series on "From We Shall Overcome to Yes We Must" are:
President Clinton, Blackness, and the American Dream
Obama's Dilemma
When Michael Jackson Met Ronald Reagan
Foot Soldiers of the Reagan Revolution
The Coming of the Reaganites
Undoing the 1960s
Will the 60s Revolution Be Undone?
Should President Obama Have Gone the Way of LBJ?
New posts in this series are coming soon.
George Davis is creator of the series of world-sourced, interactive books, Barack Obama, America and the World. This series contains the background reporting, drawn from sources across the nation and around the world, that give deeper meaning to the ideas in this post.
