The Race Card and Joe Wilson

Or "Of Course It's Racism You Idiot"

During President Obama’s speech before the Congress last week, South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson (R), could no longer stand it as his and his associates’ lies were called lies by Mr. Obama. Mr. Wilson shouted out, “You lie!” when Mr. Obama repeated that healthcare reform did not include illegal aliens. I'm pretty sure he yelled it the first time the President made this statement but the second time he was shouting into a relatively quiet hall.

This is the most egregious break in decorum ever heard during a Presidential speech before both branches of Congress. There actually are rules of decorum and calling the President a liar on the floor of the House is definitely against those rules. In typical form the Republicans try to equivocate Wilson’s outburst with George W. Bush being booed (which also happened to Obama during this speech) but this is similar to them comparing La Raza to the KKK (more on that in a future post). It is false, like most of what comes from the right these days.

Now the accusation has been made that Wilson’s outburst was a sign of racism. Jimmy Carter is perhaps the highest profile individual to make this claim. Let me join him and others by saying, “Of Course it’s racism.” Joe Wilson is a wealthy, southern, Repbulican, white man and the chances of him not being a racist are so small an angel would have trouble dancing on them. If you haven’t lived in South Caronlina, Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi and you disagree with me I can tell you that you have no idea what you’re talking about. The plantation mentality is alive and well in the Deep South. It is still common in Joe Wilson’s hometown for one white man to start a conversation with another by saying, “God I hate a nigger” just like a northeasterner might say, “Looks like it might rain.” Don’t believe me? Go live down there and spend some time with “regular folks” that are white. You tell me how long it is before you hear someone say about a recently deceased black person, “Just another dead nigger.” I can guarantee you that was said millions of times about Michael Jackson.

But Wilson’s crassness was not 100% racist, I’ll admit. A small amount of his anger was personal, a small amount was political, but the part that boiled him over was the fact that a black man was calling him out for his bullshit. His obsession with illegal immigration is inherently racist, his support for keeping the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina State House is inherently racist, but some of his opposition to Obama is simple partisanship. The thing is, his frothing fury is fueled by his racism. He hates the fact that a black man is his superior and his anger and loathing is race based much more than any concerns about socialism or border security.

The “tea party” protests are vitriolic racist hatred under a very thin veil of political protest. Much offense is taken by the right wing when this is suggested (they protest too much, perhaps?) and they immediately claim that the same kind of protests were made against Bush. This is false equivalency. Bush was an idiot, his policies were evil, and he fucked this country up worse than any President in history. Like all Republican Presidents (with the slight exception of Reagan) he left the country in worse shape than when he started (Reagan’s GDP was only slightly higher in the end than under Carter and it was worse than under any other Democratic President), he left us less safe as we are hated by more of the world than ever before and our infrastructure decayed horribly under his watch while we pissed away our wealth in stupid wars.

There were legitimate reasons to protest Bush, and people did protest and loudly. If you go back and look at the pictures of anti-Bush protests, there were a few mean posters with him and a chimp or him and with a Hitler mustache, but most were topical like “No More War” or whatever or “Torture is Wrong” or like that. With these “teabagger” protests, however, the signs are mostly offensive, and deeply so. There are many Confederate flags (an absolutely racist emblem), signs accusing him of not being a citizen (stupidity rooted in racist mistrust), etc. There were a few assholes mixed in with the liberal protestors against Bush. There are a few non-racist conservative protestors mixed in with the racist shitbags at these “tea party” protests. It really bothers me that anyone can stand alongside someone shouting that the President should go back to Kenya and not hang their head in shame… that is, anyone that’s not a racist.

The same arguments are being made against the Obama administration in general that were made against desegregation in the 60’s. “Communist” and “Socialist” are descriptives hurled at anything suggested by Obama and these same words were used to describe the abolition of Jim Crow laws in the South. These “teabaggers” are the same people. They cannot see they are gaining more than they are losing. All they can see is they have lost power to people that would vote for a nigger* and that is more than they can stand.

I don’t know that Joe Wilson dresses up in white robes and burns crosses on the weekend. I’ll even go out on a limb and say he hasn’t done this in the last 30 years, and may never have. I’m not going to say that he regularly goes out with his Confederate friends and salutes a Confederate flag, the emblem of slavery and violence against blacks. He might even have some black acquaintances with whom he is civil. But I’ll betchya he’s been a member of an all white country club. I’ll bet he has no black neighbors. I’ll bet he uses the word “nigger” in private. I’ll make these bets because I’ve lived in the Deep South and from personal experience I know that most wealthy southerners are racist through and through. Racist in that casual way that is easy to hide until you are forced to sit there and be called a liar by a black man.

*their word, not mine.