Why is it there, then? Ibbotson could just as meaningfully have said something like: "Rural voters, the vast majority of whom speak with a rural accent....", or "Rural voters, the vast majority of whom are native earthlings....", but then the absurdity would have been too obvious. Why not in this case? The answer, sadly, is a sick political phenomenon on the liberal-left called "racialism", which is increasingly defining itself by its demagogic use of "race" as a simple club in any kind of political issue. What Ibbotson is doing here, then, is signaling. He thinks that by waving this sort of phrase he can tell people, at least his people, the bien pensant lib-lefties, that a) he himself is not a bigot -- because notice how racially hyper-aware he is, bringing up race even when it has no particular application, but b) the people he's talking about could very well be bigots (the "vast majority" are white, after all), and so the side of the issue they favor, whatever the issue, is plausibly the bigoted side.
It's fast becoming the story of the boy(s) (and girls) who cried "Race!", of course, and with the same sad result. That they can't see such a result, and resort so easily to such crude and ridiculous racial signaling, is an indication of just how impoverished the liberal-left has become.
For an alternative view of race itself, see this brief clip from a Morgan Freeman interview.
Thanks to SDA and Unambiguously Ambidextrous.
It's fast becoming the story of the boy(s) (and girls) who cried "Race!", of course, and with the same sad result. That they can't see such a result, and resort so easily to such crude and ridiculous racial signaling, is an indication of just how impoverished the liberal-left has become.
ReplyDeleteThe racial allusion did seem a bit off-topic as they say, yet not completely irrelevant. Many liberals, or phony liberals tend to rely upon racial signaling or use it in hopes of obtaining a superficial credibility (this may be seen with the mosque issue as well). That's S.O.P. with sites such as d-Kos.
At the same time, the US has not exactly become milk and honey-land in terms of racial relations. A skinhead moron currently in the running for a trustee position or something in Riverside broadcasts videos with a swastika flag behind him, and he has a blog featuring his nazi heroes--and he actually has quite a bit of support.
After a few decades (or centuries) of white nazis or klansmen (ie most baptists and mormons), you're likely to get a backlash ...from non-white, non-nazis. Dialectical-like, metamorf.
J: At the same time, the US has not exactly become milk and honey-land in terms of racial relations.
ReplyDeleteNo, and racialism has become the primary means of ensuring it never does. Click the Morgan Freeman link at the end of the post for some ideas about how to, you know, actually improve matters as opposed to using them for political gain. Or, of course, liberals can go on looking under their beds for racists, just as conservatives used to do for communists.
While I agree many leftists rely on race-baiting, that doesn't mean that racism has become non-existent. We should object to facile generalizations--including racial or ethnic or religious sorts. However, when your neighbors are mostly WASP republicans who drive Fords and attend the baptist or mormon church, some reasonable people might make inferences--like, they're racists if not crypto-nazis (and many are). It's Pollyannaish to say otherwise, as are most of the d-Kossack collegetown types proclaiming their Wuv for an Al Sharpton (or...ML King for that matter).
ReplyDelete