Psyche, Science, and Society

Renounce Hillary Clinton’s racism

May 8th, 2008

I feel obligated to express my disgust, to put it mildly, with the racist turn in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Not being sure of the best way to do so, I’ve decided to copy and post this entry from Talking Points Memo:

Pretty Black and White

TPM Reader AB is having a hard time reconciling Hillary’s remarks on Obama’s support among working class whites:

It seems to me that every progressive voice in this country should be outraged - jumping up and down - shouting in print and word - to repudiate Hillary Clinton’s remarks that Obama “is having trouble winning over blue collar “white” voters… “white Americans”…It is a disgraceful, shameful tactic to justify her own non-candidacy. This is a remark I would expect from a politician from Mississippi or Louisiana - not from our New York State senator… I am outraged, I am deeply embarrassed that my children have heard this reported on the news…and I regret that have I ever gave her one hard earned nickel.

All the while she touts the glass ceiling as a woman but when her chips are down, the racism springs forth fully formed.

AB is right. Maybe it’s general campaign fatigue, or the sense that the race is all but over now, but a month ago her remarks would have been a huge story, the dominant political story of the day.

The political press spent weeks trying to divine whether the Clinton camp was really attempting to cast Obama as the black candidate, a favorite son candidate of the African American community. The Clinton camp vehemently denied it then and even as recently as a few days ago Bill Clinton claimed it was the Obama camp playing the race card against him.

Race has been the subtext of much of Hillary’s argument for her own electability. But now she’s thrown it right out there in the open: Obama can’t win because he’s black. Vote for me instead.

You don’t have to believe that Hillary’s a racist (I don’t) to conclude that a combination of the rigors of the campaign trail and her own powerful ambitions have clouded her judgment and curdled her spirit. It has certainly soured what had been a historic relationship between the Clintons and the black community.

Hers is not an appeal we’d tolerate from a Republican candidate, nor should we from a Democrat, no matter how sterling her progressive credentials might otherwise be.

There’s been a lot of talk about the damage Hillary will do to the party by staying in the race this long. Perhaps she should consider the damage she’s doing to herself.

–David Kurtz

The one thing I would disagree with is the formulaic statement that David doesn’t think Hillary is racist:

You don’t have to believe that Hillary’s a racist (I don’t)…

After all, we psychologists, and any thinking person living in this society knows that, at some visceral level, we all harbor racist impulses. So, if the term “bot a racist” is to mean anything, it should mean one who fights against those impulses. Someone who chooses, for expediency, to fan these impulese, is a “racist.” After all, the same argument was made about George Wallace, that he wasn’t a “racist,” but only used racist themes for political expediency. And we know that Strom Thurmond had a complex relationship with race, with his mistress and child and all. To accept these arguments is to reduce “racism” to a personal predilection, and ignore the social and systemic aspects that make it so pernicious. Whether Hillary Clinton dislikes black people, or simply chooses to increase hatred of them for her benefit is irrelevant, except to biographers. If she chooses to unleash racism, she’s a racist.

So I would argue that anyone who deliberately appeals to racism for personal benefit, especially in a way likely to increase racial animosity, is a racist. We should not let Clinton, either one of them, off so easy. And we should should shout it from the rooftops. To do any less is to become complicit in the inexcusable.

Entry Filed under: Discrimination, Electoral Politics, Politics