Unspinning Biden—narratives, not epithetsI have no desire to talk about Joe Biden and his doomed presidential run; but I wouldn’t mind taking Biden’s words and using them to explore and explode some of the false narratives that dominate the national discourse on race. I wouldn’t mind talking about how certain stylized ideas and images—not mere slurs or epithets—rather, entire psychic complexes of associative ideas and images, conspire to inform a normative racist worldview, which perpetuates itself through the repetitive mass-hypnotic invocation and reinforcement of those very ideas and images.
So here’s what Biden said: “I mean, you’ve got the first sort of mainstream African American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a story-book, man.”
As far as I could tell, here’s the subtext he was invoking:
Blacks aren’t mainstream like you and me, man. I mean, most Blacks have trouble speaking proper English and seem kind of yucky and not very bright, and you just can’t trust a lot of those inner city types. But I mean, this Obama guy seems So Safe To White America that he possibly even has a shot at winning, though I doubt it, man.Comment: See my comment at the end of this posting on Racialicious. As I said there, this analysis applies to Native stereotyping, too.
9 comments:
This was so ridiculous of Biden to say. Jesse Jackson has previously been someone who might come to mind first when thinking of an African American in politics. Whatever you think of his political views, Jackson has a skill with language and oratory that few of any color or political stripe can match.
Writerfella here --
As posted earlier and elswhere, writerfella said that Borat Osama, um, er, uh, Barack Obama, cannot be elected in the coming race. One only has to examine the history of American politics. Women got the vote first, then Blacks also got the vote. Thus, there will be a woman President first, and then a Black person could become President later. This is not an opinion, but rather is an observation based on historical truths. Argumentation can succeed only if the above truths are ignored...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Uh, blacks got the right to vote with the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1869. No doubt the first blacks voted soon after that.
In fact, we know who the first black voter was. It was David Strother, who voted in El Paso on April 4, 1870.
http://history.alliancelibrarysystem.com/IllinoisAlive/files/bp/htm8/bptxt012.cfm
There's no connection between when a group started voting and whether people will vote for someone in that group. Whether we elect a black or a woman first, it won't be for that reason.
Writerfella here --
Examine whether or not a 'right' happened first, or the reality of that 'right' happened first. Ever hear of a poll tax? Ever hear of 'competency tests'? Even in the 2004 elections, 'residency tests' were employed to prevent Blacks from voting, or else they were beinjg told that their voting precincts were changed and they were sent to polling places other than the ones where they had voted before. Rights in the United States are not always secure or secured, if one is a person of color. Same dance, differing song, but you know that...
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Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM -- There were 'competency' tests, to be sure, but what writerfella wanted to indicate were the plethora of 'literacy' tests that sprang up as means to prevent a majority of Blacks from voting. These eventually were struck down but not until they had existed for a goodly number of years...
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Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM II: does anyone really think the U.S. electorate will be electing its first Muslim President? Then, over this past weekend, Obama did the 'advance damage control' thingy by admitting to serious drug abuse when he was younger. What one may not realize is that the difference between drug abusers ('Hello, my name is Leon, and I am an alcoholic...') and reformed drug abusers ('Hello, my name is Leon, and I am a former alcoholic...') is that there is no difference. Once having so abused the pleasure centers of the brain, the physical impetus for more of the same never goes away. True, some may say that continued sobriety means a strong character, but that belies why the admitted events ever happened in the first place.
writerfella loves his beer and makes no bones about who knows of that. But a lifelong abhorrence of needles and having supremely severe allergic reactions to plant substances, certain foods, and pharmaceuticals ensured that he never would do illegal drugs at all. There was an instance, however, when drug addictions came his way and that was when he survived the missile facility explosion while in the USAF. Hospitalized and delirious, writerfella was administered morphine for pain for five or six days running. Then it was stopped, and writerfella knew the mild horror that he would have done anything to get more. Then he and his fellow survivor Bob Burke were kept on barbiturates for two weeks thereafter to keep them from moving around in bed. Then those were stopped and both writerfella and his friend would have given anything to get more. Fortunately the episodes were brief, surpervised, and physician controlled. Thus, having medically experienced dependencies on drug substances became the final hay strand in the needlestack. Nope, no drugs please, we're British!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Literacy tests and poll taxes prevented some blacks from voting, but not others. Many blacks voted before women got the vote, which invalidates your assertion about women voting first.
Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. He was exposed to both religions growing up, but he remained an agnostic until he embraced Christianity. Here are the details on his religious upbringing:
http://www.examiner.com/a-534540~Can_a_past_of_Islam_change_the_path_to__president_.html
“I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won,” he wrote.
But after much soul searching, he eventually was baptized at Trinity United Church of Christ.
Writerfella here --
No one said all Blacks were deterred or prevented from voting, but the historical fact that forces have been at work for 138 years to deter and prevent the free exercise of their franchise shows the difference between paper ideals and reality.
And, perhaps a tenuous faith is much more an appreciable quantity and a dependable quality than would be a pronounced devotion to any given religion or a pronounced denouncement of any given religion. writerfella himself knows that he struggled through the Baptist form of Christianity espoused by his Kiowan family and, upon reaching age 18, then shed his connection to same and took up the Plains beliefs that his Kiowan family still maintained in spite of their Christian orientations. This never was held against him, fortunately, if only because the rest of his family envied his decision.
It still will be a factor that Obama acted the dilletante concerning his own religious decisions and that he actually dallied with a form of religion now considered anathema by today's American public. And you won't have to wait long before the fit hits the Shan.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Poll taxes and literacy tests were imposed primarily in the South. Blacks elsewhere didn't face these barriers, although they sometimes experienced other forms of intimidation. The point is that your statement, "Women got the vote first, then Blacks also got the vote," is false in reality as well as on paper.
Here are some facts on the history of the poll tax:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment24
Property qualifications extend back to colonial days, but the poll tax itself as a qualification was instituted in eleven States of the South following the end of Reconstruction, although at the time of the ratification of this Amendment only five States still retained it.
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