Hanging an effigy of our first black president openly evokes lynching, and not by accident. What does this say about where we are as a society?
All too predictably, a moderately well-known preacher of hate has lynched President Obama in effigy. And, even more predictably, he’s said there’s no racial overtones to this display.
My entire ass.
The right wing in this country has a weird relationship to racism at this historical moment. Since their ideology has long since collapsed down to “the opposite of whatever we think liberals want today, updated daily”, they have to be generally in favor of racism, or at least firmly opposed to anti-racist efforts. Anti-racist education and action are, after all, “liberal”, and they can’t have that.
Thus, racist symbolism becomes a tribal marker, a shibboleth, a way of demonstrating affiliation and where one’s ideological allegiance lies. It’s a way of distinguishing Us from Them, like teenagers defining cliques by which band’s T-shirts they wear. If there weren’t racial symbolism to Mr. Jones’ outrageous bullshit, there’d be no point in doing it. Of course it evokes the brutal history of murder and domestic terrorism that is symbolized by lynching. It’s supposed to. By evoking that, it’s telling people “We’re not like those other people, the ones who object to lynching and racism and homophobia, those bad Other people. We’re good folks, folks like you, who know that Obama is evil, gay folks are also evil, and lynching was not some big deal to complain about.”
This really is structurally identical to the deep rap vs. metal dichotomy that divided my junior high school. (It was 1990, we couldn’t help that.) By clothing and haircuts, we signified our allegiance to one of the two tribes, agreeing on the sole point that New Kids On The Block sucked. (For our younger readers, NKOTB was what we called Justin Bieber in 1990. Same thing.) This profound ideological gulf determined where you sat on the bus, who you ate lunch with, and which godawful radio station you said was better than the other godawful radio station. (Younger readers may Google “radio station” at their convenience. They were real things once.)
I know, it sounds like I’m making light of this appalling display of open racism. I’m actually not. We, as a species, love dividing ourselves into opposing tribes. In ancient Rome, it was which color chariot team you rooted for. In Britain, it’s which football club you support. And in American politics, it’s whether you’re one of those liberals who objects to open racism, or one of those conservatives who’s basically okay with it because it proves you’re not a liberal.
The tragedy is not that we have two stupid, childish tribes defining our national political discourse. That’s just how human beings work. The tragedy is that one of those tribes is totally okay with being pro-lynching, even if they have to say they’re not racist about it. That they have to make that claim is evidence that we have grown a little wiser as a people. That everyone knows that they’re lying is evidence that we have a long way yet to go. As long as being anti-racist is a tribal marker rather than a bedrock principle, we’ll continue to get lip service from one tribe about it, while their actions belie their words every day. We’ll continue to see displays like this, and we’ll continue, to our own horror, to get used to them.
Photo—minds-eye/Flickr
About Noah Brand
The right wing in this country has a weird relationship to racism at this historical moment.
The left wing in this country has a weird relationship to racism at this historical moment. They have supported and gotten elected the first black president ever to lead this nation, which has an ongoing history of institutionalized racism. He is now the leader of an administration which is killing and imprisoning racial minorities en masse, both overseas and domestically, rather than ending the madness.
While the preacher in question lynched Obama in effigy- i.e. not actually Obama himself, but only an inanimate representation of him- Obama is having real live human beings outright killed, maimed, or locked in cages, often indefinitely without any recourse. They don’t have Secret Service to protect them from Obama’s Kill List, Guantanamo, the war on drugs, and so on. They don’t have the ability to disappear or imprison anyone who offends them or gets in their way. Obama is well-equipped to defend himself from this pustule on the butt of society, but who can protect his victims from him when he has the entire U.S. military, the inappropriately named Department of Justice, and so on at his beck and call? And, yes, I railed for a good 8 years against George Bush, The Shrub for pretty much the same reasons.
Do I want to see Obama lynched in effigy? No.
But does that rate on my radar of what concerns me in this world ANYWHERE NEAR the killings and maimings of innocent, mostly non-white foreigners, especially children, or with the mass incarceration people, mostly young black and Hispanic males, for the same kinds of victimless drug offenses Obama has himself committed? Not just no. HELL NO!
Priorities, people. My list of prioritizes innocent, harmless people being harmed in reality-even to the point of death-with nobody powerful to stand up for them above the politically powerful, well-connected, well-protected, wealthy politicians harming them.
I don’t understand how so many on the left are so concerned about Obama but so unconcerned about his innocent victims. The weirdness regarding race isn’t a phenomenon isolated to one end of the political spectrum.
The Left in the united states is depressed, isolated, and tiny. Liberals seem to understand that the benefit from colonialism and white supremacy and all that jazz and just want to express their moral objections so they can get it off their chests and let life continue as normal. They aren’t really leftists at all. It’s all petitions and permitted marches with a big hue and cry every time anyone does something that might be effective. They don’t even bother playing good cop / bad cop like their idols MLK and Gandhi did. It’s an identity like the piece said. The Domocratic Party is centrist at best. It’s usually just a Coke vs. Pepsi style marketing war selling the same crap under different labels.
I sat down this morning with my coffee and bagel only to be greeted by the following local news: Immigration offical in racist email flap going back to work.
Long story short: the most senior federal immigration official in the state of Montana, who controls all ICE operations in this state, forwarded an anti-Muslim e-mail to an immigration attorney, who is from a Muslim family of Pakistani descent. The e-mail contained a vile essay advocating Arab and Muslim American’s be subjected to a loyalty test as a condition to qualify for equal rights as other United States citizens. He was suspended for eight months while the complaint of the attorney was investigated. He is now back on the job in the exact same senior position. ICE refuses to comment on any disciplinary action or corrective action taken.
Why is this allowed? Why is it not the policy of the Obama administration that racists not be allowed in any, let alone THE MOST SENIOR positions, especially in racially and ethnically sensitive wings of his administration?
And this is not an isolated case. The anti-Muslim shenanigans of Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigations are well known. For instance, just this past week it has come to light that U.S. born citizen and Iranian-American anti-war activist Kevin Iraniha was put on the No Fly list after failing to respond in the desired way to FBI pressure for him to become an informant. So far fifteen American Muslims have filed suit after being subjected to this known tactic the FBI uses against Muslim-Americans. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reports dozens of such complaints against the FBI reported across the country.
Why is this blatantly discriminatory and malicious abuse of the law allowed on Obama’s watch?
Again, these aren’t just showy symbolic acts being taken against one of the most powerful and politically well-connected people on the planet. Ordinary human beings without political power, unlimited funds, and a personal protection detail following them everywhere are being put at REAL risk and are REALLY being harmed.
Some retrospection by those on the left worried about Obama and not so much about the little people being harmed under his administration would seem to be in order.
I don’t know anything about what this preacher has done but it is clearly offensive, hatefu,l and racist, even if that was not the intent – which is very highly doubtful. However, to be clear. . .
BOTH the left and right collectively are responsible for the mess we have. They are both equally guilty.
The left can legitimately point to the right’s enduring harm and damage it has historically done and continues to do to the most vulnerable and disenfranchised.
AND
The right can legitimately point to the left’s enduring harm and damage it has historically done and continues to do to the most vulnerable and disenfranchised.
Trouble is, they’re all we’ve got. Today’s moderates are not uniters in search of common ground, they’re just passive and sheeplike.
“The right wing in this country has a weird relationship to racism at this historical moment.”
I’m not sure if that isn’t equally true of the left. The left and right look at racism like cholesterol. There’s good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. The left believes there’s good racism and bad racism just like the right does. They just have a different idea of which is good and which is bad.