Several weeks ago, I challenged the Field Negro blog to find racist supporters of the Republican Party in the blogosphere. It didn't go very well. Only one or two people bit my provocative worm. I was fishing for a blogswarm and also chastising FN folks for being asleep at the wheel. These days I'll think better of engaging the 'sphere on any level.
In the days and weeks that have followed, however, several of the blogs I read and those within a degree of separation have boiled over on the candidacy of Ron Paul. I think he's a crackpot for a number of reasons and first sniffed out something fishy months ago. But, like most people who are not cicada-like on politics, I ignored his appeals. Now it is pretty much a matter of blogified record that Paul doesn't seem to mind at all the company of Neo-Confederates. That of all the candidates from either party in this presidential race, it is Ron Paul who gets the dubious distinction of being the most probable racist of the bunch.
It's an interesting set of circumstances. Paul, through all this, tends to not disassociate and so therefore some of the racist stink attaches to him. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that Paul is of the same mind, right thinking Republicans must be of him, which is that such associations are too unimportant to matter. In other words his attitude towards the real racists in his constituency are that they are such a small fraction that it's not worth it to diss them. And my attitude in July was that Paul was such a small candidate that it wasn't worth it to concern myself that he might have a racist agenda. Similarly, I take it that the Field Negro took my challenge to be so obdurate that for whatever racism they might find it wasn't worth it to march under my banner.
So there you have a bunch of more or less reasonable people not finding it worth the trouble to suss out racists in the Republican Party. Is this as deep as it gets?
My answer is, oddly, yes. In this country, symbols of racism are more important than 'real' racism. That is because some broadly assume that the truly ugly stuff is suppressed in the media and every Shaquanda Cotton is only the tip of the iceberg. Some others assume that Cotton is the entire Atlantic Ocean of racism and there is nothing else to see. I'm somewhere in the middle, but only looking through a telescope in Hawaii.
It seems as only the obsessives are going to be on the case 24/7 meaning Sharpton.com. agggregator of all virtual racism with no brick and mortar offices anywhere in America. And since symbols will be endlessly manipulated, that makes things all the more dangerous, especially for real victims of first class racism who will not get the support and defense they deserve while media hogs suck up the oxygen and people pose for pictures. It also adds to the wishful thinking about the candidacy of Barack Obama, because all of us are secretly or openly hoping that his success will fundamentally change the nature of the symbolic medal count in the Olympics of racial tea leaf reading.
if indeed there is a Bradley Effect, then the direct opposite of it must also be in operation which is the Magic Negro Effect. Some people will claim to vote for Obama to prove they are not racist when they actually vote for someone else. That would be the Bradley Effect. But is the opposite any better? Clearly some people will actually vote for Obama thinking that actually proves they are not and America is not racist. You'll hear it 40 years from now like "I marched with Dr. King", I voted for Obama. Alternatively, it was my party that floated Obama. One way or the other, it's still tokenism. It's still manipulation of a symbol that has very little to do with actual anti-racist combat.
I know that nobody is going to investigate Obama supporters to determine if they are only voting for them because he's black. It's ridiculous on its face, despite the fact that the common wisdom is that he's going to sweep North Carolina. Blackfolks don't vote for candidates simply because they're black, nor do whitefolks. Racial determinism in electioneering is overblown despite the numbers of real bigots in the electorate and their dog-whistle politics.
One of these days, like maybe never, I'm going to get over my lament on the failure of anti-racist politics. Only because I have spent so much time of my own focused on its perfection. I could have been a much better bass guitar player by now, but something down within me thought the world was hostile to the funk. That something, as small as it may be, is always a factor albeit small. We all have our racial insecurities and they always influence us in some way. But when it comes to real work dedicated to identify, isolate and put insidious influence on the spot, the overwhelming majority of us take a pass or wish somebody else would do it, or blame somebody else. It is our luxury to have such ease due to an infrastructural improvement provided by heavy lifting done by a prior generation. I'm perfectly happy to debate Bradley Effects and Magic Negro bounces in the blogosphere. Sure beats working.
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