Bigotry

We've seen in recent days some public shaming and exposure of the overt racism that undergirds and infects factions of the Tea Party movement. Sarah Palin's role in this, of course, was to attack the NAACP for calling attention to what proved to be a very real problem.  Then Palin "tweeted" against the building of a Muslim community center near the 9/11 site as some sort of affront to "heartland"  Americans - asking Muslims to "refudiate" their "stab in our hearts", i.e. building a meeting place for the mainstream Muslim community of New York City.  Aside from the flagrant bigotry, it strikes me that the construction of a center for Muslim Americans in the "Ground Zero" neighborhood would be a statement of precisely what it is that set us apart - at our best - from our enemies.  Instead, the right-wing wants to invoke the same fundamentalist fear-mongering that drives the Islamist extremists who attack us in the name of their religion.

Now, with the obvious backing of high-profile "conservatives" like Palin, this bigotry and petty pandering to prejudice is spreading:

In big cities and small rural communities, from New York to Tennessee to California, the right-wing fear machine is spinning up to take on the construction of mosques and Muslim community centers. In each case, the argument is essentially the same, when the hedging is peeled away: you don't necessarily have to exercise your freedom of religion in the privacy of your own home, but hey, you can't do it in public here either.

July is proving to be the month where the tea party movement is finally coming to grips with -- and rebuking -- some of its more racist elements, a move that many observers would say is a long time coming. But at the same time, plans to build an Islamic community center near the Ground Zero site in New York City has brought to the surface a different kind of bigotry among some conservatives -- namely, the idea that if Muslims are allowed to worship where they want, terrorist violence will spread across the country.  (More HERE at TPM.)

Comments

[Jamie]

What better symbol of why America, despite it's problems, really is a great country? What could possibly be a better rebuke (refruberation?) to the ideology of Al Queda? Even with Palin's child-like understanding of the world, her tweet contains the assumption that at least some Muslims are peaceful (which is actually a moral/intellectual stretch for some in her circles), so how is it categorically wrong to build a mosque at Ground Zero?

[pablo]

Does any of this really come as a surprise?...What is a little racism to the party of torture?

Reg must have remembered GHWB running on Willie Horton?

As for teabaggers "finally coming to grips" with overt displays of racist bahaviour means that it is still open season for dog-whistle racists to publically ply their trade.
This ranges from a black professor arrested on the charge of entering his own house, gunning down a black rider on the Oakland train, disproportionate sentencing for cocaine possession, and an incarceration rate which leads the world.
These being dog-whistles as loud as vuvouzelas.
Now I have heard that Volvo is reducing the sound of horn in its autos to the decibel beneath that of the dog-whistle. New Volvos will be equipped with an economic policy
which will protect the largely white middle class but has proven in tests not to warn or protect the poor. Liberals seem content with the change.

[Jamie]

I think the difference is that after the Civil Rights movement, it seemed like the US was heading towards a sort of racial "cold war" in which systemic forces like police brutality, poor educational opportunities, economic divides, etc. were stacked against minorities, but that it was not acceptable in the public discourse to just say "we don't like the darkies". It seems like the right wing has recently turned a corner on overt racism. Not to make light of the pre-Tea Party brand of US racism, but at least the wolf felt the need to wear a wool coat when it was in the chill of a national spotlight.

I wonder if this is a product of Obama's election scaring people with racist predilictions into action, or of economic troubles that bring out the worst in people, or even a top-down manipulation of the fringe elements by the GOP when their centrist support is waning. Maybe a little of all three.

In any case, I feel like the political discourse has gotten both more simple-minded and more tolerant of overt racism in the last year. Racial profiling, literacy tests for voting, commenting on a politician's racial background, taking issue with anti-discrimination laws - these are now somehow legitimate points of debate, whereas before I believe they necessarily existed off the record.

[reg]

Pablo - your obsession with Volvos is totally 1980s. It was done to death. SUVs pretty much replaced Volvo's in the phony liberal landscape. You seem stuck in a timewarp. In fact, I think the 1980s was also the last time I heard anyone invoke Louis Althusser.

[pablo]

Libs...Maddow Libs...ascribing racist attitutes to the far right... as if they draw breath from a seperate atmosphere..is denial..an utter failure to understand the culture of Volvo drivers who take their orders from Saab.
One assuages one's liberal guilt on a codification of the level playing field and then puts into place economic policies which keeps the tilt in their own direction: one of these ways is economic policy; another is empire (the necessity thereof for democracy).
Libs may decry the overt racism displayed by those with no education, money, or political power, while embracing the racism of the dog-whistle...