Non-Racist Imagery in a Racialized Society

Steve Benen noted a peculiar line of attack coming out of the Bush White House against Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama, accusing him of "intellectually laziness." It is, as I said, an odd charge, given Obama's pedigree of a Harvard Law degree, President of the Harvard Law Review, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, and author of two works of non-fiction. And of course, one shouldn't throw stones from glass houses, which is what immediately springs to mind when anybody from this administration decides to put down the intellectual acumen of others.

But Benen also approvingly quotes Brendan Nyhan, who writes:

I'm also troubled by the use of "laziness" as the grounds to attack the first serious black presidential contender. I assume it was unintentional, but can't we talk about Obama without language that echoes racist stereotypes?

And, in all seriousness, I have to ask, can we?

When one truly dives into it, the sheer breadth of the terms and stereotypes White America has used to categorize its Black denizens is really astounding. Nearly every negative stereotype in the book has, at one point or another, been associated with Black people in America, without regard to truth (obviously) or even internal consistency. We have a long-standing image of Black people as uncontrollable, violent, maniacal brutes, and alongside it we have another long-standing image of Black people as good-natured, happy-go-lucky, simple sambos. Blacks are portrayed as lazy and unable to learn difficult concepts, flashy and unsubstantive, sexual "players" always lusting after White women, untrustworthy (especially with money), and yellow-bellied cowards. Put simply, there are very few negative terms in the American political lexicon that have not been enlisted as part of the White supremacist project aimed at keeping Blacks in a perpetual state of subordination and degradation. The odds are that anyone critiquing a Black political candidate from any direction will stumble into one of them or another; racist discourse has so completely colonized this terrain that it's virtually unavoidable.

In a sense, then, this is a sop to the conservative victim class which loves to wail about how "it's impossible to criticize a Black man without being called a racist!" Of course, these critics fail to see how this is a product of the history of White supremacy whose tentacles remain enmeshed in the warp and woof of our political and social lives. Given the history of race relations in America, there is simply no reason for Blacks (or White allies) to give White critics of Black Americans the "benefit of the doubt" that this criticism is genuine, and not informed by the racist perceptions of the (")past("). What credit, exactly, do we have to cash in so that we deserve such a benefit? But that being said, the point still remains: there is this disjuncture in American political discourse, which cannot be easily healed. It is important that political candidates of all races be made available to the most exacting and incisive criticism. And it is also important that we work to jettison the racial baggage that helps propagate a system where some races are seen as inferior to others, and where some races are perpetually and predominately excluded from the ranks of the powerful and influential. Negotiating these twin desires is an exceedingly difficult task, and I don't fault Benen or Nyhan for not taking it on. But we should be clear about the magnitude of the challenge, one that makes even a facially simple request like Nyhan's -- "don't echo racist stereotypes when talking about Black candidates" -- a monumentally difficult endeavor.