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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

This post is not about Katrina

Because I just can’t take it anymore.  I don’t want to get all pessimistic and shit on this happy-go-lucky blog, but as Janet said today, “I think we should get ready for one vicious, racist backlash,” and you know, I think she’s right.  That backlash will establish its “intellectual” home base at the National Review, which, after all, spent its first decade or two arguing that Negroes weren’t ready for integration.  Earlier today, Roger Ailes (the good one) spotted Jonah Goldberg saying this while railing about Kanye West:

The danger here is real. Tens of thousands of black New Orleaneans persevered with dignity and sacrifice in the face of Katrina. But a sizable minority of blacks—including police—behaved reprehensibly in the aftermath, shooting at rescue workers, raping, killing and, yes, looting (though no cannibalism).

No cannibalism! Ha ha, that’s a good one.  What about the old bone-through-the-nose joke?  That always gets ‘em going over at the American Spectator, especially when it’s applied “evenhandedly” to black police officers.  But note:  strangely enough, Jonah’s complaint about “racial generalizations” does not mention the important scholarly work of his colleague at the National Review, John Derbyshire, who has recently cited with approval the claim that African-Americans “tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups,” and “need stricter moral guidance from society.” As I noted in a comment on Roger’s site, here Goldberg is carrying not only Derbyshire’s water but the torch passed to him by William F. Buckley—and the hood, too.

Within two weeks, Andrew Sullivan will issue a passionate denunciation of far-right Christian preachers’ ravings about gays and lesbians in the Crescent City, while pointing out the public service he performed, while editor of The New Republic, in giving Charles Murray’s and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve a fair and balanced hearing.  Following a suggestion made on this website by Ophelia Benson, Rick Santorum will introduce a bill on the Senate floor, requiring 100,000 New Orleans evacuees to work at Wal-Mart for $5.15/hr, 6 days/wk, 51 wks/yr, for 95 years (do the math!) in order to pay off the $150 billion they cost us by not leaving the city when they were told.  John Stossel will blame the bleeding-heart New Deal for the debacle.  Tom DeLay will blame the teaching of evolution, just as he did after Columbine.  And every last wingnut in the country will turn with fury on the looters and the thugs who prevented Bush, Chertoff, and Brown from delivering the aid they so desperately tried to deliver.

For this, folks, is the American right’s massive Ward Churchill moment, the moment in which they get to blame the underclass victims of Katrina for the devastation the Gulf Coast has suffered these past two weeks.  One difference between our Ward Churchill moment and theirs is that we didn’t even know ours was happening at the time:  Churchill’s ravings about the “little Eichmanns” of 9/11 appalled their tiny original audience in September 2001 (scroll down to the “update” on Kevin Drum’s post) and circulated for three years only on lunatic-fringe websites, the kind of places where readers could also learn that the Trilateral Commission killed Bruce Lee on secret orders from Queen Elizabeth.  Another difference, of course, is that their Ward Churchill moment will quickly become the stuff of national policy.  For it’s perfectly all right to blame the victims of a catastrophe—so long as they possess poor (ahem) native (ahem, ahem) judgment.

Digby has more on this theme, ably assisted by Rick Perlstein.  Just so you can’t say, as did the Incompetent Horse Whisperer and his friend The Devil, that you weren’t warned.

UPDATE:  In comments, Glaivester notes, “Actually, Jonah’s ‘no cannibalism’ quip was probably not a gratuitous reference to a racist stereotype, but rather a reference to claims (later retracted) made by Randall Robinson that blacks in New Orleans were being reduced to cannibalism to survive. Point taken, Glaivester, and thanks for making it.  I’m willing to believe that Goldberg’s remark was not quite the gratuitious, racist quip I had taken it to be.  And it was foolish of Mr. Robinson to open a post with such an incendiary, unsubstantiated, and dubious claim.  I think Goldberg was having a little fun with the claim nonetheless, and frankly, after reading his remarks on the “Thunderdome” in New Orleans, I was willing to suspect the worst.

But I urge you all to read the comments in response to Robinson’s post.  Many of them are chilling: 

Most of these people CHOSE to stay in New Orleans, and now they’re regretting their poor choice.

Only the most foolish of morons would stoop to call this a race issue. Please. Spare me. All the race baiting does nothing. FOUR days before the hurricane, people were told to leave. They chose not to. Now, I am not saying that their suffering is to be ignored, but when the government tells you to leave, you ignore them, and then you blame the government for your suffering? That is beyond ignorant. What happened to Americans being about personal responsiblity?

If you want to blame someone, blame the people “running” Louisiana’s government. Blame the incompetent mayor. Blame the people that ignored their warning.

And some are worse:

This is just chlorine in the genepool, dummies too stupid to leave deserve what they get.

This is not about race, this was a natural disaster, and I am so tired of race hustlers like you not taking responsiblity for yourself, your actions, and your communities. This was a double pronged natural disaster ( hurricane + flood). You would have to live on Mars to not know a category 5 hurricane was bearing down on New Orleans. Where the hell is people’s common sense. If they didn’t have it before they just learned a very hard lesson. It is so easy to monday morning quarterback this thing and say that because of race, they were left behind. It looks to me, and to most Americans that I have talked to, that they made a conscious choice.

These remarks would be beneath notice—and beneath comment—under ordinary circumstances.  They do not represent the sentiments of the vast majority of white people—or, indeed, the vast majority of sane people of any hue.  (On the contrary, the vast majority of white people are donating their time, money, labor, and homes to help the evacuees.) But the echoes of these remarks can be heard in much more “respectable” places—in the words of Mike Brown (blaming those who did not leave) and John Derbyshire (attributing that “choice” to their race).  The backlash of which I speak is not a mass phenomenon; but the O’Reilly-Hannity-Limbaugh crew are saying things that are very much like these comments, and there’s no telling where that might lead.

__________

Blogtending Notes: Theory Tuesdays will return eventually.  John McGowan will post tomorrow—his last Thursday under the Bérubé-McGowan Comprehensive Co-Blogging Agreement of 2005.  After that, John will post on every other Tuesday.  Yeah, I know, his posts have been better than great, but he’s got other work to do, as do I (though I haven’t been doing some of it lately, for obvious reasons).  When we met with Roxanne Cooper in DC we promised each other we’d keep our posts under 2000 words from here on in.  This we solemnly swear to you, even as our government descends to tinhorn-generalissimo standards of behavior.  I’ll be on the road again for the next few days, with Internet access here and there.  In the meantime, check out Gary and Julia for all the things I can’t even begin to catalog here. . . .

Posted by Michael on 09/07 at 10:32 PM
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