RACIAL CODE WORDS used by the repblican paty & its hopefuls

[natina]

How To Read Political Racial Code


Using certain words to invoke stereotypes and racial fear is a reprehensible but time-worn tactic

Part of my job when I speak about politics is to speak up for black people and say things black people need said. This mission has rarely felt so necessary as it has when racial code words recently entered the Presidential election. These code words are ancient racial stereotypes in slick, modern gear. They are linguistic mustard gas, sliding in covertly, aiming to kill black political viability by allowing white politicians to say ‘Don’t vote for the black guy’ in socially-acceptable language. Sometimes the code comes directly (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57488394-503544/romney-accuses-obama-of-taking-the-work-requirement-out-of-welfare/) out of a candidate’s mouth. Sometimes it comes from supporters, or can be found in advertisements.
(MORE: Inside the Racist Mind (http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/19/inside-the-racist-mind/))
Do not be fooled by the canard that both parties do it. That was former RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s response when I asked him about it on my MSNBC show “The Cycle.” Using certain words to invoke racialized fear and scare white working class voters is a long-established part of the Republican playbook. The GOP is a 90% white party and has been (http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/03/the-bucket-list-why-older-whit.php) for decades. According to Ron Brownstein of the National Journal, Mitt Romney will need (http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824) over 60% of white people to vote for him or he will lose. “That,” Brownstein says, “would be the best performance ever for a Republican Presidential challenger with that group of voters.” Given that math, in a base turnout election where Romney has a big lead among white, non-college educated men, it’s understandable why he’d try to motivate those voters with code words that remind them of their racial difference with Obama and stigmatize that difference. In this effort a word like “welfare” is extremely valuable. Sure there are more white than black Americans on welfare, but when a candidate says ‘welfare’ many whites think of their tax dollars being given to blacks.
So when Romney began running ads about Obama “dropping the work requirement from welfare” — ads which are still running even though the claim has been thoroughly debunked (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/28/rick-santorum/Santorum-Romney-claim-Obama-ending-welfare-work/) — he was merely updating Ronald Reagan’s old “welfare queen” meme. Both are designed to create racial resentment around entitlements. This tactic is bolstered by the classic stereotype of blacks as lazy. A recent Pew Research Center poll, for example, found (http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/) that 57% of Republicans believe people are poor because they don’t work hard. When a recent Washington Post poll (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-republican-convention-emphasizes-diversity-racial-incidents-intrude/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story_1.html) asked “Why do most black voters so consistently support Democrats?” the second reason given by Republicans was “black voters are dependent on government or seeking a government handout” while for Democrats it was that “their party addresses issues of poverty.” (The top answer for members of both parties was “Don’t know”.)
(MORE: Romney Plays the Race Card (http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/12/romney-plays-the-race-card/))
Another classic code word — that hasn’t cropped up in this election yet — is “crime.” Like welfare, even though more whites commit crimes than blacks, the word is more associated with blacks who have historically been stereotyped as wild, violent, animalistic and immoral. As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow, “What it means to be criminal in our collective consciousness has become conflated with what it means to be black, so the term white criminal is confounding, while the term black criminal is nearly redundant.” The classic example is President George H. W. Bush’s famous ad using inmate Willie Horton as a way to portray Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime and thus unable to protect us from wild black criminals.
There’s also the cornucopia of terms and concepts created to de-Americanize Barack Obama, from calling him “Muslim” or “Socialist” to Romney surrogates like John Sununu saying things (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/john-sununu-obama_n_1679803.html) like, “I wish this President would learn how to be an American.” There is also a return to birtherism, with Romney recently joking (http://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/nobodys-ever-asked-to-see-my-birth-certificate/), “Nobody’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.” The subtext of all this is: Obama, like other blacks, is not one of “us.” He is other.
Do Democrats use racial code? No. The Democratic party is a racially diverse coalition. There would be no value to playing this game. In fact, the party has risked alienating white working class voters by fighting for people of color, a tightrope perhaps best symbolized by President Johnson signing the 1964 Voting Rights Act and then famously, and presciently, saying to an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.”
(MORE: Will Black Voters Punish Obama For His Support of Gay Rights? (http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/09/will-black-voters-punish-obama-for-his-support-of-gay-rights/))
If Johnson could see the modern electoral college map he would recognize his continuing impact in a solid red South, but many say that a white-dominated political party leaning on racial appeals to survive will not work much longer. The Hispanic population in America is rising rapidly and as Brownstein points out (http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824), “Whites have declined as a portion of the electorate in every presidential election since 1992, according to exit polls.” Those are two frightening trends for the future of the GOP and even prominent Republicans are publicly admitting it. “The demographics race we’re losing badly,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently told (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html) the Washington Post. “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
But for now, as the GOP paddles furiously trying to stay viable as an all-white party, we must shine a harsh light on their attempts to use old racial stereotypes to win votes.

Touré is the author of four books, including Amazon.com: Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now (9781439177556): Touré, Michael Eric Dyson: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ezeyeCIRL.@@AMEPARAM@@41ezeyeCIRL (http://www.amazon.com/Whos-Afraid-Post-Blackness-Means-Black/dp/1439177554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318214758&sr=1-1) and the co-host of MSNBC's The Cycle. The views expressed are solely his own.

Related Topics: black (http://ideas.time.com/tag/black/), black voters (http://ideas.time.com/tag/black-voters/), crime (http://ideas.time.com/tag/crime/), Obama (http://ideas.time.com/tag/obama/), racial code (http://ideas.time.com/tag/racial-code/), romney (http://ideas.time.com/tag/romney/), stereotype (http://ideas.time.com/tag/stereotype/), welfare (http://ideas.time.com/tag/welfare/), white voters (http://ideas.time.com/tag/white-voters/), Elections (http://ideas.time.com/category/politics/elections/), Politics (http://ideas.time.com/category/politics/), Uncategorized (http://ideas.time.com/category/uncategorized/)






Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/06/how-to-read-political-racial-code/#ixzz262X284zw


http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/06/how-to-read-political-racial-code/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

[natina]

http://weaselzippers.us/wp-content/uploads/Screen-shot-2012-09-09-at-10.46.05-AM-550x156.png

[Quiet Reflections]

You are so well spoken Natina! You are one of the good ones.

[Prospero]

Good post Natina

This is from today"s Guardian in London. A well argued piece.


As Republicans were promoting themselves as a multiracial party from the platform in Tampa two weeks ago, an ugly incident on the convention floor suggested not everyone had got the memo. From the podium a range of speakers of Haitian, Mexican, Cuban and Indian descent spoke of how their parents had overcome huge barriers so they could succeed in the US. In the audience, a successful black woman who works for CNN was being pelted with peanuts by a convention-goer, who said: "This is how we feed the animals."

The tension between the projection of a modern, inclusive, tolerant party and the reality of a sizeable racially intolerant element within its base pining for the restoration of white privilege is neither new nor accidental. Indeed, it in no small part explains the trajectory of the Republican party for almost the last half century. In his diary, Richard Nixon's chief-of-staff, Bob Haldeman, described how his boss spelled out the racial contours of a new electoral game-plan to win southern and suburban whites over to the Republican party in the wake of the civil rights era. "You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks," Nixon told him. "The key is to devise a system that recognises that while not appearing to."

This could be the final hurrah for what became known as Nixon's southern strategy in what is shaping up to be the most racially polarised election ever. Black support for the Republican party literally cannot get any lower. A recent Wall Street Journal poll had 0% of African-Americans saying they intend to vote for Romney. At 32%, support among Latinos is higher but still remains pathetically low given what Republicans need to win (40%) and what they have had in the past – in 2004 George W Bush won 44%. As a result, the party of Lincoln is increasingly dependent on just one section of the electorate – white people. To win, Romney needs 61% of the white vote from a white turnout of 74%. That's a lot. In 2008, John McCain got 55% from the same turnout. "This is the last time anyone will try to do this," one Republican strategist told the National Journal. And Republican consultant Ana Navarro told the Los Angeles Times: "Where his numbers are right now, we should be pressing the panic button."

There are two main reasons for this panic. The first is that the "system" Nixon referred to is now recognisable by most – particularly with a black president in the White House. As people have become more attuned to the frequency of the dog whistles, the tone has necessarily become more shrill. During the primaries, Rick Santorum told a crowd in New Hampshire: "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money." Newt Gingrich branded Obama "the food stamp president". Just a few weeks ago, in a clear nod to the "birthers", who insist Obama was not born in the US, the party's nominee, Mitt Romney, went to Michigan and joked: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." This is rhetorical peanut throwing. When everyone can hear it, you've transitioned from a dog whistle to a straight-up whistle.

Second, with white people destined to become a minority in a few decades, the strategy is no longer an anchor but a millstone. Tying Republican fortunes to the white vote made electoral sense in the early 1970s. Since 1980, the white share of the electorate has fallen in every consecutive election bar one – 1996, when Ross Perot ran. The more black and Latino voters the Republicans alienate, the more white voters they need to replace them. The trouble is they are fishing for a larger number in a smaller pool, which demands ever more juicy bait. "The demographics race we're losing badly," said Senator Lindsey Graham, acknowledging the problem. "We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."

But that's not for want of trying. In just one example, the New York Times' Thomas Edsall analyses a Romney ad lambasting Obama's healthcare reform. The ad states: "You paid into Medicare for years – every pay check. Now when you need it, Obama has cut $716bn from Medicare. Why? To pay for Obamacare. The money you paid for your guaranteed healthcare is going to a massive new government programme that is not for you."

Leave aside the fact that the ad is judged by Politifact as only half true and that the Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan has proposed a budget that would cut a similar amount from Medicare without healthcare reform. More than three-quarters of Medicare recipients are white; more than half those without health insurance are not white. By linking the two in this way, "Obamacare" thereby becomes a transfer of resources from hard working white retirees to indigent minority ethnic people. Meanwhile, Larry McCarthy, who produced the now infamously racist Willie Horton ad for George HW Bush's campaign in 1988, is working for one of the Super Pac's backing Romney.

Describing the evolution of the Republicans' racial appeal, the late Lee Atwater, one-time chair of the Republican National Committee and member of the Reagan administration, said in 1981. "You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger'. By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing [and] states' rights. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites … obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'nigger, nigger'."

Reflecting on her experience in Tampa, Patricia Carroll, the CNN camerawoman who had peanuts thrown at her said: "I can't change these people's hearts and minds … This should be a wake-up call to black people … People were living in euphoria for a while. People think we're gone further than we have."

[onmyknees]

505251

How To Read Political Racial Code






Using certain words to invoke stereotypes and racial fear is a reprehensible but time-worn tactic

Part of my job when I speak about politics is to speak up for black people and say things black people need said. This mission has rarely felt so necessary as it has when racial code words recently entered the Presidential election. These code words are ancient racial stereotypes in slick, modern gear. They are linguistic mustard gas, sliding in covertly, aiming to kill black political viability by allowing white politicians to say ‘Don’t vote for the black guy’ in socially-acceptable language. Sometimes the code comes directly (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57488394-503544/romney-accuses-obama-of-taking-the-work-requirement-out-of-welfare/) out of a candidate’s mouth. Sometimes it comes from supporters, or can be found in advertisements.
(MORE: Inside the Racist Mind (http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/19/inside-the-racist-mind/))
Do not be fooled by the canard that both parties do it. That was former RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s response when I asked him about it on my MSNBC show “The Cycle.” Using certain words to invoke racialized fear and scare white working class voters is a long-established part of the Republican playbook. The GOP is a 90% white party and has been (http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/03/the-bucket-list-why-older-whit.php) for decades. According to Ron Brownstein of the National Journal, Mitt Romney will need (http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824) over 60% of white people to vote for him or he will lose. “That,” Brownstein says, “would be the best performance ever for a Republican Presidential challenger with that group of voters.” Given that math, in a base turnout election where Romney has a big lead among white, non-college educated men, it’s understandable why he’d try to motivate those voters with code words that remind them of their racial difference with Obama and stigmatize that difference. In this effort a word like “welfare” is extremely valuable. Sure there are more white than black Americans on welfare, but when a candidate says ‘welfare’ many whites think of their tax dollars being given to blacks.
So when Romney began running ads about Obama “dropping the work requirement from welfare” — ads which are still running even though the claim has been thoroughly debunked (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/28/rick-santorum/Santorum-Romney-claim-Obama-ending-welfare-work/) — he was merely updating Ronald Reagan’s old “welfare queen” meme. Both are designed to create racial resentment around entitlements. This tactic is bolstered by the classic stereotype of blacks as lazy. A recent Pew Research Center poll, for example, found (http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/) that 57% of Republicans believe people are poor because they don’t work hard. When a recent Washington Post poll (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-republican-convention-emphasizes-diversity-racial-incidents-intrude/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story_1.html) asked “Why do most black voters so consistently support Democrats?” the second reason given by Republicans was “black voters are dependent on government or seeking a government handout” while for Democrats it was that “their party addresses issues of poverty.” (The top answer for members of both parties was “Don’t know”.)
(MORE: Romney Plays the Race Card (http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/12/romney-plays-the-race-card/))
Another classic code word — that hasn’t cropped up in this election yet — is “crime.” Like welfare, even though more whites commit crimes than blacks, the word is more associated with blacks who have historically been stereotyped as wild, violent, animalistic and immoral. As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow, “What it means to be criminal in our collective consciousness has become conflated with what it means to be black, so the term white criminal is confounding, while the term black criminal is nearly redundant.” The classic example is President George H. W. Bush’s famous ad using inmate Willie Horton as a way to portray Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime and thus unable to protect us from wild black criminals.
There’s also the cornucopia of terms and concepts created to de-Americanize Barack Obama, from calling him “Muslim” or “Socialist” to Romney surrogates like John Sununu saying things (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/john-sununu-obama_n_1679803.html) like, “I wish this President would learn how to be an American.” There is also a return to birtherism, with Romney recently joking (http://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/nobodys-ever-asked-to-see-my-birth-certificate/), “Nobody’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.” The subtext of all this is: Obama, like other blacks, is not one of “us.” He is other.
Do Democrats use racial code? No. The Democratic party is a racially diverse coalition. There would be no value to playing this game. In fact, the party has risked alienating white working class voters by fighting for people of color, a tightrope perhaps best symbolized by President Johnson signing the 1964 Voting Rights Act and then famously, and presciently, saying to an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.”
(MORE: Will Black Voters Punish Obama For His Support of Gay Rights? (http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/09/will-black-voters-punish-obama-for-his-support-of-gay-rights/))
If Johnson could see the modern electoral college map he would recognize his continuing impact in a solid red South, but many say that a white-dominated political party leaning on racial appeals to survive will not work much longer. The Hispanic population in America is rising rapidly and as Brownstein points out (http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824), “Whites have declined as a portion of the electorate in every presidential election since 1992, according to exit polls.” Those are two frightening trends for the future of the GOP and even prominent Republicans are publicly admitting it. “The demographics race we’re losing badly,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently told (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html) the Washington Post. “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
But for now, as the GOP paddles furiously trying to stay viable as an all-white party, we must shine a harsh light on their attempts to use old racial stereotypes to win votes.

Touré is the author of four books, including Amazon.com: Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now (9781439177556): Touré, Michael Eric Dyson: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Whos-Afraid-Post-Blackness-Means-Black/dp/1439177554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318214758&sr=1-1) and the co-host of MSNBC's The Cycle. The views expressed are solely his own.

Related Topics: black (http://ideas.time.com/tag/black/), black voters (http://ideas.time.com/tag/black-voters/), crime (http://ideas.time.com/tag/crime/), Obama (http://ideas.time.com/tag/obama/), racial code (http://ideas.time.com/tag/racial-code/), romney (http://ideas.time.com/tag/romney/), stereotype (http://ideas.time.com/tag/stereotype/), welfare (http://ideas.time.com/tag/welfare/), white voters (http://ideas.time.com/tag/white-voters/), Elections (http://ideas.time.com/category/politics/elections/), Politics (http://ideas.time.com/category/politics/), Uncategorized (http://ideas.time.com/category/uncategorized/)






Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/06/how-to-read-political-racial-code/#ixzz262X284zw


http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/06/how-to-read-political-racial-code/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true



"Do Democrats use racial code? No. The Democratic party is a racially diverse coalition. There would be no value to playing this game. In fact, the party has risked alienating white working class voters by fighting for people of color, a tightrope perhaps best symbolized by President Johnson signing the 1964 Voting Rights Act and then famously, and presciently, saying to an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.”





What a crock of shit...........Did you hear about the lib who thinks feeding peanut and butter and jelly sandwiches to black kids is racist, or when Romney referred to our economic condition as falling into a black hole...he was signaling the racists in his party as a call to arms? You can't take you people seious anymore. She sheer volume of racial charges from MSNBC has so watered down what is and what isn't racist, it's become like a comedy skit.

This just in....One of the preeminent liberal columnists writing for the preeminent liberal newspaper in the countey...a vile anti Semite in plain sight. Who's doin' the hatin' now? So Dems don't use racial code...they're just anti semites? This is so rich....a lib accused of hate.

Maureen Dowd meets anti-Semitism charge


105 (http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/09/maureen-dowd-meets-antisemitism-charge-135700.html#)





Comments (134) (http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/09/maureen-dowd-meets-antisemitism-charge-135700.html#comments)
By DYLAN BYERS (http://www.politico.com/reporters/DylanByers.html) | 9/16/12 6:42 PM EDT


New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd set the Jewish political community on fire today with a column (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/dowd-neocons-slither-back.html?_r=2) about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals that, according to her critics, peddled anti-Semitic imagery.
Dowd fairly observed that neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan are experts in the field of foreign policy, but asserted their strategy was orchestrated by a "neocon puppet master" who was leading the neocon effort to "slither back" into power.
Such language, to say nothing of the questionable legitimacy of her claims, struck experts on American-Israeli relations as an inappropriate (though perhaps unintentional) appeal to anti-Semitic stereotypes, and especially offensive ahead of the first night of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.
"Dowd's use of anti-Semitic imagery is awful," Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote (https://twitter.com/stevenacook/status/247326460107436033) on Twitter.
"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews," Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic columnist and leading journalist on Israeli issues, wrote (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/happy-new-year-puppet-masters/262437/).
"[A]mazing that apparently nobody sat her down and said, this is not OK," Blake Hounshell, the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, tweeted (https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/247326633751621632).
On the right, The Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper called it "outrageous (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/outrageous-dowd_652445.html)," while Commentary's Jonathan Tobin described it as "particularly creepy (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/09/16/liberal-smear-romneys-war-for-the-jews/)."
"Dowd’s column marks yet another step down into the pit of hate-mongering that has become all too common at the Times," Tobin wrote. "This is a tipping point that should alarm even the most stalwart liberal Jewish supporters of the president."
Dowd did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday afternoon. New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson referred POLITICO to the paper's editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, who did not comment prior to deadline.
Dan Senor, a top Romney adviser and former George W. Bush administration staffer, and the principal target of Dowd's column, declined to comment. (Though he did tweet a link to Goldberg's column.) The Romney campaign also declined to comment.
Beyond Dowd's laguage, critics took issue with the factual accuracy of her thesis -- that Romney and Ryan, like George W. Bush, are devoid of the ability to think for themselves and are instead controlled by Jewish forces working behind the scenes.
In her column, Dowd called Ryan a "foreign affairs neophyte" and suggested he was merely "moving his mouth" while laying out Senor's "neocon" rhetoric on American foreign policy. Yet back in mid-August, just days after Ryan was chosen as Romney's running mate, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote a column (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444318104577587322446430152.html) titled "Paul Ryan's Neocon Manifesto," in which he credited Ryan with delivering "one of the most thoughtful speeches in years about America's global role and the means required to maintain it."
Dowd's assertion that Jewish neoconservatives -- chiefly Paul Wolfowitz -- dictated the Bush administration's handling of Iraq also ignored the influences of the other individuals most often credited with that responsibility, namely Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice -- none of whom are Jewish. (As Future of Capitalism's Ira Stoll points out (http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2012/09/maureen-dowd-on-neoconservatives), Dowd also ignored the fact that during the Iraq war Senor was more closely aligned with Paul Bremer, who opposed the neocons.)
Finally, Dowd's column suggested that Senor got "out over his skis" when he said Romney would respect Israel's right to make a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Yet Goldberg notes that Romney's stance on the issue varies little from President Barack Obama's, who has acknowledged Israel's sovereign right to defend itself as it sees fit.
Those and other questions about Dowd's column led many to criticize the columnist not just for style, but for substance.
"[The] weirdest part of the anti-semitic tropes on the Dowd column is how lazy they are," Max Fisher, an editor at The Atlantic who is leaving to launch a foreign policy blog at the Washington Post, tweeted (https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/247375581950402560).
The Obama campaign, which tweeted (https://twitter.com/truthteam2012/statuses/247410314973442050) a link to Dowd's column on Sunday afternoon with the message, "Why Romney and Ryan’s foreign policy sounds 'ominously familiar,' did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


And by all means if you like 20% adult unemployment, 50% young worker unemployment , 70% of babies born out of wedlock, failing schools with no chance of school choice, 47% of black mothers on welfare, 40% of young black men in jail, .....it must be racism, so vote against the racist white guy. Seems to be working out so far.

[trish]

How To Read Political Racial Code


Using certain words to invoke stereotypes and racial fear is a reprehensible but time-worn tactic

Part of my job when I speak about politics is to speak up for black people and say things black people need said. This mission has rarely felt so necessary as it has when racial code words recently entered the Presidential election. These code words are ancient racial stereotypes in slick, modern gear. They are linguistic mustard gas, sliding in covertly, aiming to kill black political viability by allowing white politicians to say ‘Don’t vote for the black guy’ in socially-acceptable language. Sometimes the code comes directly (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57488394-503544/romney-accuses-obama-of-taking-the-work-requirement-out-of-welfare/) out of a candidate’s mouth. Sometimes it comes from supporters, or can be found in advertisements.
(MORE: Inside the Racist Mind (http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/19/inside-the-racist-mind/))
Do not be fooled by the canard that both parties do it. That was former RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s response when I asked him about it on my MSNBC show “The Cycle.” Using certain words to invoke racialized fear and scare white working class voters is a long-established part of the Republican playbook. The GOP is a 90% white party and has been (http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/03/the-bucket-list-why-older-whit.php) for decades. According to Ron Brownstein of the National Journal, Mitt Romney will need (http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824) over 60% of white people to vote for him or he will lose. “That,” Brownstein says, “would be the best performance ever for a Republican Presidential challenger with that group of voters.” Given that math, in a base turnout election where Romney has a big lead among white, non-college educated men, it’s understandable why he’d try to motivate those voters with code words that remind them of their racial difference with Obama and stigmatize that difference. In this effort a word like “welfare” is extremely valuable. Sure there are more white than black Americans on welfare, but when a candidate says ‘welfare’ many whites think of their tax dollars being given to blacks.
So when Romney began running ads about Obama “dropping the work requirement from welfare” — ads which are still running even though the claim has been thoroughly debunked (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/28/rick-santorum/Santorum-Romney-claim-Obama-ending-welfare-work/) — he was merely updating Ronald Reagan’s old “welfare queen” meme. Both are designed to create racial resentment around entitlements. This tactic is bolstered by the classic stereotype of blacks as lazy. A recent Pew Research Center poll, for example, found (http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/) that 57% of Republicans believe people are poor because they don’t work hard. When a recent Washington Post poll (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-republican-convention-emphasizes-diversity-racial-incidents-intrude/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story_1.html) asked “Why do most black voters so consistently support Democrats?” the second reason given by Republicans was “black voters are dependent on government or seeking a government handout” while for Democrats it was that “their party addresses issues of poverty.” (The top answer for members of both parties was “Don’t know”.)
(MORE: Romney Plays the Race Card (http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/12/romney-plays-the-race-card/))
Another classic code word — that hasn’t cropped up in this election yet — is “crime.” Like welfare, even though more whites commit crimes than blacks, the word is more associated with blacks who have historically been stereotyped as wild, violent, animalistic and immoral. As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow, “What it means to be criminal in our collective consciousness has become conflated with what it means to be black, so the term white criminal is confounding, while the term black criminal is nearly redundant.” The classic example is President George H. W. Bush’s famous ad using inmate Willie Horton as a way to portray Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime and thus unable to protect us from wild black criminals.
There’s also the cornucopia of terms and concepts created to de-Americanize Barack Obama, from calling him “Muslim” or “Socialist” to Romney surrogates like John Sununu saying things (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/john-sununu-obama_n_1679803.html) like, “I wish this President would learn how to be an American.” There is also a return to birtherism, with Romney recently joking (http://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/nobodys-ever-asked-to-see-my-birth-certificate/), “Nobody’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.” The subtext of all this is: Obama, like other blacks, is not one of “us.” He is other.
Do Democrats use racial code? No. The Democratic party is a racially diverse coalition. There would be no value to playing this game. In fact, the party has risked alienating white working class voters by fighting for people of color, a tightrope perhaps best symbolized by President Johnson signing the 1964 Voting Rights Act and then famously, and presciently, saying to an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.”
(MORE: Will Black Voters Punish Obama For His Support of Gay Rights? (http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/09/will-black-voters-punish-obama-for-his-support-of-gay-rights/))
If Johnson could see the modern electoral college map he would recognize his continuing impact in a solid red South, but many say that a white-dominated political party leaning on racial appeals to survive will not work much longer. The Hispanic population in America is rising rapidly and as Brownstein points out (http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/obama-needs-80-of-minority-vote-to-win-2012-presidential-election-20120824), “Whites have declined as a portion of the electorate in every presidential election since 1992, according to exit polls.” Those are two frightening trends for the future of the GOP and even prominent Republicans are publicly admitting it. “The demographics race we’re losing badly,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently told (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html) the Washington Post. “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
But for now, as the GOP paddles furiously trying to stay viable as an all-white party, we must shine a harsh light on their attempts to use old racial stereotypes to win votes.

Touré is the author of four books, including Amazon.com: Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now (9781439177556): Touré, Michael Eric Dyson: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Whos-Afraid-Post-Blackness-Means-Black/dp/1439177554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318214758&sr=1-1) and the co-host of MSNBC's The Cycle. The views expressed are solely his own.

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Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/06/how-to-read-political-racial-code/#ixzz262X284zw


http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/06/how-to-read-political-racial-code/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=trueExcellent post.

[Prospero]

It is lucid to me who the racists on this board are.

[buttslinger]

Reagan’s Racially-tinged Narratives
Reagan’s bogus tales of food stamps chiselers and welfare queens tended to employ racial imagery and often outright racist references to blacks (e.g., in telling a tale about food stamp fraud to a Southern audience, Reagan referred to a “young buck” (“buck” is a derogatory term used in the South to denote an African-American man) using his food stamps to buy T-bone steaks and to northern audiences he spoke of the apocryphal story of the “Cadillac-driving” Chicago welfare queen (Reagan's anecdotes were a wild distortion of the welfare fraud case involving a Chicago woman named Linda Taylor. These bogus stories were a double whammy: 1. They worked to break off a significant chunk of the white working class (the “Reagan Democrats”) by appealing to their worst instincts and fears; and 2. They served as a justification for Reagan’s economically regressive policies (also see the addendum)

What made these narratives particularly toxic is that this race-baiting was justified by the argument that Reagan and his allies were trying to better the situation of racial minorities. Reagan repeated these fabrications years after they were debunked. Having been a Hollywood star, Reagan knew that stories are more powerful persuaders than facts.

[natina]

I know of so many Caucasian males and women who are homeless now and they are CUT OFF FROM WELFARE FOR 3 MONTHS .

YOU GET 3 MONTHS OFF AND 9 MONTHS ON.

so for 3 months they pick up cans and bottles and miss job interviews and potential employment.

they only get about $200.00 a month plus food stamps and a few bus tokens.

[yodajazz]

Great first thread post, Natina! I just happened to turn on Public Radio, during the Republican convention. I heard a speaker talking aobut his life story. He said something like; "I went out and found a job, I did not stay at home waiting on a check from 'Uncle Sugar'." I could not listen to anymore. My most vivid picture of public assistance, is of a good friend. He was in his late 50's, after raising four sons, to adulthood. He was injured on a construction site, and had to spend months in a nursing home. After he got out he began to recieve some assistance money directly and he recieved food stamps. He told me he received $50 a month in food stamps. I calculate that to be $1.67 a day. He worked hard at many jobs during his life, and was injured. I dont see less than $2 a day for food, as living easy. But it seemed important for that speaker to portray people on public assistance as lazy. Like the article said, it was a code word for race.