Reaction to Buchanan "your boy" and Lamborn "tarbaby" comments illustrates an important point

[Empowerer]

that I've tried to make here in the past, to the often hostile reaction of some. See, for example: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x724495

Some of the responses to Buchanan's and Lamborn's bigoted comments have been appropriate, but some have been very troubling.

As I've previously noted, it is very disconcerting that some progressives will dismiss and/or defend bigoted comments such as Buchanan's and Lamborn's, sometimes going so far as to blame those of us who are offended for being overly-sensitive or looking to stir up controversy where non exists.

Among other things, we are accused of attacking people and unfairly calling them racist merely for stating a policy difference with the President (even when the discussion and comments have nothing to do with the President).

But the Buchanan comment had nothing to do with a policy disagreement with the President. It was an out-and-out slur by a right-winger with a history of bigoted and hateful comments. Lamborn's comment may or may not have had a racist intent, but it was grossly insensitive and ignorant and needed to be challenged. Yet, sure as day follows night, some people immediately stepped up to defend both comments as no big deal, offering innocuous alternative explanations for them and suggesting that folks who are offended by them are overreacting.

It really puzzles me that Democrats would so quickly reach past their fellow Democrats to defend a right wing zealot's use of offensive language while attacking folks on their side for questioning them.
Why would Doug Lamborn and Pat Buchanan get the benefit of the doubt while Democrats are criticized and told that we don't know what we're talking about?

I urge anyone who has adopted this perspective to give your fellow Democrats more credit and consideration and apply more empathy to us than you would to the likes of Buchanan and Lamborn.

[MadMaddie]

1. There is no defense of this racism...

He directed his comments at the President, I believe he directs those comments to every black American who has the nerve to become educated and succeed.

I don't care what people here say I know a racist when I hear and see one. My granparents and my parents grew up picking cotten and living in 1 bedroom shacks with dirt floors. The racism they faced was far more open and had blacks had higher probabilities of being murdered without the perpertrator going to jail.

People can deny racism all they want.....I see if for the reality it is.

How many times can people defend people like Buchanan and the other jackass that used "tar baby"? If those that defend these comments are unwilling to open their eyes and ears and really pay attention then as far as I am concerned they are no better than those that spew this filth. Kinda like the "Good Germans"!!

[DevonRex]

2. ITA. I don't understand it either.

And I expect this thread to be hijacked.

[fishwax]

3. k/r

:kick:

[BNJMN]

4. I saw the 'your boy' comment live and my jaw dropped, as Rev. Al's did as well. Then

Buchanan just laughed and laughed. 'Haw Haw Haw!'

Tries to cover it up with 'your man' or whatever,
but you could tell his heart wasn't in it.

[Me.]

5. Want Your Jaw To Drop Even Lower?

How about "nailing that coonskin to the wall"?

Pat Buchanan
29 Jul 2011
What 'Big Deals' Did to America

“Mocked by The Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain as the little people of the "Lord of the Rings" books, the Tea Party "Hobbits" are indeed returning to Middle Earth — to nail the coonskin to the wall.

As even the Journal concedes, the final deal to raise the debt ceiling, worked out by Sen. Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama, backed by Speaker John Boehner, is "The Triumph of the Tea Party."

The Hobbits demanded that the GOP do battle over the debt ceiling, that it not raise the ceiling without equal spending cuts, that the party accept no taxes.

They got it all. The deal cuts spending by $900 billion and raises the debt ceiling an equal amount. It mandates further cuts of $1.5 trillion, to be agreed on by Thanksgiving by a congressional commission of 12, and for those cuts to be voted up or down.”…cont…

http://www.creators.com/opinion/pat-buchanan.html


“

[BNJMN]

10. A dogwhistle the whole world can hear. Wow. And didn't he say, during that mcnbc appearance...

...that he wasn't going to 'get into the briar patch' with Rev. Sharpton? After the 'tar baby' jibe earlier.

Unbelievable!

I think that's what first got my attention. Then the next comment about 'your boy' and I was standing there ...stunned. And he was just laughing and laughing.

No one is stupid enough to do BOTH of those things accidentally or mistakenly. No one. Just disgraceful. Made me embarrassed to be white.

[vaberella]

6. Agreed. But this brings to light the racial divide.

People who claim to be progressive are only progressive to an extent. And Liberal to an extent. Because they say it, as Liberals or it runs in their circle then it's not offensive. Thus making those of us on the receiving end as being overly sensitive or hypersensitive and easily dismissed. This is normal, continuous and annoying to say the least.

[alsame]

7. And this too, from the campaign:

Duncan Hunter on Obama: 'I think he has great teeth'

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/duncan-hunter-obama-i-think-he-has-grea


Matthews: ....all these diversions they've used. The fact that he might be anti-American...this whole thing about socialist. Joe the plumber. What's that got to do with the security issue you say?

Hunter: I think John is wrong in that case. I think he has been tested. He was tested on Iraq. And here was a guy with great teeth, great speaking style, excellent politician and a superb debater, but when it came to the major issues...

Matthews:...we just heard from Congressman Hunter that the winning piece of this man's vocabulary, the winning piece of his resume is that he has a nice smile, he has good teeth. Is that your assessment of Barack Obama, he's the first African American with a real shot to be President of the United States and is 13 points ahead of his Republican rival, that he has good teeth?

Hunter: Also a good debater and very eloquent.

[my2sense]

8. k & r

[my2sense]

9. As Martin Luther King Jr. said

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” -

[Enrique]

11. i dont think its a problem

i saw those "defenses." I disagreed with them because of what I know about Pat Buchanan. I made the same judgement you made.

Other people made a different judgement. I dont see that as a problem. And by the way, it was very very few people that didnt see it our way.

[Empowerer]

12. I'm not talking about be people who just have a different judgment

I'm talking about those who actively defend such comments and attitudes and criticize Democrats for being offended by them

[Supersedeas]

17. It was very few, but for those who ignore Buchanan's history and can't

otherwise substantiate and defend the basis for their difference in judgment, then there would be a problem.

Like you, I do not see a problem with folks who come to a different conclusion, but who can also substantiate and show some logical justification for reaching a different judgment.

[EffieBlack]

13. So true . . .

Let's hope people here recognize and learn from it.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mkultra]

22. wouldn't a call out be by name?

are you just trying to silence this opinion?

[Igel]

15. There was a good article, I want to say in the NYT in the last 2 years.

It concerned racial (and other) epithets and their quirky use. I don't think it answered many questions, but it certainly raised quite a few. (It tried, IIRC, to answer some, but failed.)

Context doesn't matter. The word is taken to be a stand-alone utterance. Context can be historical, it can be geographical, it can be by speech community. The only context that matters is the identity of the speaker: It's not an insult or term of abuse if there's perceived solidarity between the speaker and the hearer. The offended find it almost impossible to believe that their sensitivity to a term isn't shared by all other speakers of the language, whether in Britain, Australia, or in 1920.

They're not quotable. You can say anything you want to in a linguistics class. "Fucking" has some really neat syntactic pecularities. No problem. Racial epithets? Can't quote them, unless you bend over backwards to make clear that no offense is intended, apologizes are offered, and the "affected" minorites give their assent. Even then, it's touch and go. Works with other terms, too. "Fuck" is fine. The "c-word" is risky. For all the same reasons, it seems.

Attributed intent matters. Actual, even demonstrated intent by the speaker doesn't. There is no benefit of the doubt; only very idiosyncratic certitude. Judgment is rendered almost instantaneously--you don't even have to finish processing the sentence to see if the term's used in a way that *could* be a racial epithet. Once rendered, it's iron-clad. It took two of us quite a while to convince two black students in class that referring to "coloreds" in a story wasn't an insult: They insisted the only correct term was "African-American" and really had trouble getting past their rage to understand that the story was written in 1913, translated in Britain in 1923 or so, was reporting fictional speech from about 1870, and dealt with black villagers in some unnamed part of Africa. Their cerebral cortex shut down; their brain-stem was doing all the talking. I've read posts on DU that took umbrage with the use of "colored" in South African English: As though African-Americans get to dictate English standards to the world.

On it went. Oddly, a lot of the terms don't even need to be current; the listener need never have been subjected to them personally. Vicarious abuse is sufficient (but you get a lot of that).

Makes life tough. Either you have to assent to the idea that some groups have rights and privileges that others could never have, or you're not progressive. I think there is a problem, but a lot of it is just highlightening and accentuating group boundaries. It's a primate thing.

[Betty Karlson]

16. One perspective that is missing:

Quite a few people around Obama have betrayed a homophobic streak in recent years, varying from the equation of homosexuality and bestiality (which Holder allowed to go through) to Miss Jarrett"s "gay is a lifestyle".

I suppose that pots should be very careful when a cattle calls them black. Insensitive comments are not just made by Republicans, and not just at the expense of African-Americans. If you keep telling people "get over it, we just misspoke", how can you feel indignated when they tell you to get over it if your feelings are hurt?

The answer is that indignation and sensitivity should be all-inclusive. A sentiment noteable absent from this administration, although not from its defenders.

[Betty Karlson]

18. One correction

I meant, of course, the Kettle, not the Cattle (although Mr Buchanan definitely has bovine characteristics).

Thanks to Behind The Aegis, who averted me of my spelling misstake.

[Blue Owl]

19. M$NBC should require Pat to don the white hood whenever he's on air

n/t

[mkultra]

20. there are lot of bigots left in the party

and a lot of trolls on this board.

[ItNerd4life]

21. Who is questioning the racism of these statements?

I don't think anybody is. This is true racism, however many Democrats scream racism where there isn't.

This is a good example of racism, and it is disgusting. But when people cry racism on every little slight, that degrades the argument
and makes people less likely to pay attention when racism does occur.

[Empowerer]

23. Plenty of folks

Check out some of the other threads on this to see folks claiming that calling the President "your boy" is not racist because that term is sometimes used to refer to white people . . .

And the argument that pointing out racism makes it harder when racism REALLY exists is just not tenable. That argument ALWAYS crops us WHENEVER people point out racism -as if we're too stupid to recognize racism and need to be instructed on when it is and isn't appropriate to mention it, usually by people who have never directly experienced it.

You probably don't mean it that way, but such admonitions are insulting. I don't need to be "warned" that I am "making it harder" to address racism because I happen to see it in this instance. And I don't need to be told every time I point out instances of it that I am "degrading" discussions of racism by "crying racism on every little slight."

Discussion of racism are degraded, not by those of us who try to discuss it but by those who claim to be the arbiters of when it is a valid topic of conversation and seem to believe that it NEVER a good time to talk about it.