Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
You know, I didn‘t listen to Rush today, Keith, but here in Washington, I did listen to some African-American talk radio. There‘s another phenomenon out there, which is, in black America, they are noticing that the very first president in the television age to be heckled, the first president to suffer a heckling in that situation is the first black president. That has not gone unnoticed. There is a very particular offense being taken in the African-American community tonight.
While the implication that Mr. O'Donnell spoke of was already well known in the black community, going back to the campaign in fact, it's still a good to see it being noticed in the white community as well.
But Mr. O'Donnell did not stop there.
He continued on Friday Nights (Sept. 11, 2009) Countdown, along the same lines, with an assist from Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
O‘DONNELL: And finally, Clarence, tell us, how does it land in the black community when a southern white congressman heckles the first black president of the United States in an address to Congress?
PAGE: Well, it doesn‘t sit well, as you well might imagine. I mean, it was interesting to see the cameras swing over. Look at the picture of Joe Wilson there that was caught in action and what you see, one white guy in a suit surrounded by white guys in suits.
I mean, as much as people say, well, race doesn‘t matter and I don‘t see race, blah blah blah, hey, Republican leaders can‘t be so naive that they don‘t see that that‘s not the kind of image that they want to put forth at a time they‘re trying to broaden their appeal.
So this is something that, as far as African-Americans are concerned, and a lot of other people—I've had more white people come to me saying, wasn‘t that outrageous, what happened? Don‘t you think that‘s racist? It‘s really quite remarkable.
I‘ve told several friends, well, welcome to my world, you know. I get accused of seeing things through a lens of race, but that‘s kind of the way African-Americans have learned the hard way to see developments in America.
And you have to wonder, the first time somebody has called the president a liar to his face in a joint session, it had to be the black president.
While Laurence O'Donnell stopped there...it hasn't stopped there.
Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.
Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.
For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.
Glenn Greenwald, of course, think race isn't that much of a factor. (Which is why I continue to think he's a self-serving moron).
Other than the fact that Obama's race intensifies the hatred in some precincts, nothing that the Right is doing now is new. This is who they are and what they do -- and that's been true for many years, for decades. Even the allegedly "unprecedented" behavior at Obama's speech isn't really unprecedented; although nobody yelled "you lie," Republicans routinely booed and heckled Clinton when he spoke to Congress because they didn't think he was legitimately the President (only for Ted Koppel to claim that it was something "no one at this table has ever heard before" when Democrats, in 2005, booed Bush's Social Security privatization proposal during a speech to Congress).
Ta-Nehisi Coates, partially responding to Glenn Greenwald. (Oh, and yes...he's black, as if you couldn't tell).
If we concede, as most reasonable people do, that racism is a factor--not the factor but a factor--in resistance to Obama, then in fact, what we've seen this year is, by the very nature of an Obama presidency, unprecedented. Put simply, we've seen the crazy-tax, of which race is a portion, before. But we've never seen the crazy-tax intensified by race. We have not seen it accompanied by watermelon jokes, by Congressmen referring to him as boy, by clucking heads claiming that the president "has exposed himself as someone with a deep-seated hated of white people." We've never seen the whitey tape, before.
There's a tendency to lump anti-black racism in with all the serious problems presented when you try to make a democracy work. There is always a danger of becoming single-minded, of bringing to bear a myopic analysis which sees one thing in everything. Moreover, watermelon jokes are a long way from red-lining, and in seeing how far we've come, the temptation is to dismiss how far we have to go. But from a black perspective, it's a temptation you can ill-afford. Racism cost us dollars a half-century ago. Today it costs us quarters--but it still costs.
Don't let the grinding familiarity of Obama blind you to the profound times we live in, and the work that's still left to do. We've never had a black president before. This is without precedent. We've also never had anti-Semitic white supremacists shooting up the Holocaust Museum. This, too, is unprecedented.
