I See Black People

I just came across a BBC article, titled Why do people vote against their own interests and the people referenced in the title are American voters. The article appears to be a text version of a BBC radio program called Turkeys Voting for Christmas. Both titles convey the same message, but the latter does it with a bit of wit. Obviously, the irony is directed at a British audience because the Turkeys are voting for Christmas, and not Thanksgiving. We Yanks still get it, but it isn't quite as funny once it crosses the pond.

We all remember the man who showed up, to protest a Health Care Reform Town Hall meeting, with a handgun strapped to his leg. As Stephen Colbert so memorably put it "Of course he needed a gun, someone might have tried to offer him free dental insurance.". And that one throwaway line from a late-night satirist perfectly captures the absurdity of political life in these United States. And while examples such as the one I just cited abound, explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior are harder to come by. But, the BBC does an admirable job of putting it all in perspective. I particularly appreciate the sentiments that they attribute to Richard Hofstadter, although they immediately go on to say it would be a mistake to blame it all on what Hofstadter so famously described as the "paronoid style" in American Politics.

The article boils it down as follows: "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington." It certainly isn't difficult to find examples of this disorder and I happen to disagree with the BBC on this one. The "toxic stew" that they invoke can indeed be employed in order to make sense of ugly and hate-filled behavior. I remember reading that opposition to President Truman's own health care initiative, on the part of conservative Southern Democrats, was driven by racial fears. The fear was that any health care program run out of Washington would result in the desegregation of health care facilities in the segregated south. It would be a mistake to discount the role that race continues to play in American Politics today.

I can only reach the sad conclusion that, regardless of what Obama did or didn't do, the opposition to the man and his policies would continue to be driven by primal racial fears. To many white Americans, the face of government that they personally experienced, even before Obama's arrival on the scene, was often a black face. What I mean is that government offices often seem to be disproportionately staffed by minority employees. That can be explained by the fact that, in a time when private employers still openly discriminated against blacks, government jobs were available by virtue of the fact that government hiring practices were subject to anti-discrimination laws. Therefore, many blacks took advantage of the opportunity to obtain gainful employment in an environment that was, at least officially, a colorblind one.

The most obvious manifestation of this would white American's attitudes towards both the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Post Office. These government offices are typically where most people interact face-to-face with government employees. And we all have heard the whining and complaining about how slow the service was, and how surly the person behind the counter was. Most people's personal experiences would probably contradict this stereotype, but no matter. The incessant drumbeat of anti-government rhetoric has accomplished the purpose of convincing a sizable minority of American voters that government is indeed the problem.