Health Care, Birthers and the roots of (White) rage
I’m sure that Carolyn Doric, of Harrisburg, Pa., spent hours trying to get inside Sen. Arlen Specter’s Town Hall meeting. She didn’t get in to talk to the Senator. But I hope he reads her comment in the New York Times. It’s the most trenchant analysis of white rage I’ve heard.
“This isn’t just about health care,” said Carolyn Doric of Harrisburg, “it’s about political power and a means to regain political power.”
I agree with her except for a single word. The rage isn’t about political power. It’s about power, and a means to regain power.
I say this because I’ve learned that no one exchanges power for parity: not even you. Not even me.
And white people have successfully taken and maintained power in (what is now) the United States since the English settled in Jamestown, Va., in 1607.
My reading of American history convinces me that white Americans’ very identity rests upon the notions of power as an entitlement, and their innate superiority as a given. When that foundation begins to crumble, things get nasty quickly.
Take for example, the race riots that started in the 1890s, and continued well into the 20th century. Although segregated, the black communities of Tulsa, Okla., Atlanta, Ga., and Wilmington, North Carolina, were prosperous and self-reliant. Their very existence defied contemporaneous views of Negroes as sub-humans who were intellectually, emotionally and physically unable to compete with whites.
Yet, here were entire communities of residents who were surpassing whites socially and economically. In Wilmington, North Carolina, the threat to white dominance was even more serious because blacks were gaining political strength.
In Wilmington, in a move unparalleled in U.S. history, a coup d’etat replaced the city’s duly elected officeholders with white supremacists. An unknown number of blacks were killed. …In the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, the white gentry class and businessmen merged to retain control of Wilmington. But the rise of black political power through alliances between Republicans the party of Lincoln and Populists, a grassroots political movement, led to a dramatic shift in power in Wilmington after the elections of 1894 and 1896. The 1898 riot on Nov. 10 placed white supremacists in firm control of the city. (from the press release of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission)
In Wilmington, the White Supremacists – who, by the way, were Democrats – created a sophisticated campaign that used the printed and spoken word to incite their supports. They also helped establish a militia, the Red Shirts, that intimidated and harassed African Americans and their supporters.
The fire was fanned higher when the editor of the city’s African American newspaper wrote a satirical response to a speech urging white men to protect (white) women against black men. His editorial “addressed miscegenation and stipulated that white women enjoyed the company of black men as much as white men enjoyed that of black women.” (View powerpoint here. Slides display best in IE)
Although Election Day in 1898 was calm, two days later, the fires blazed. the chaos might have appeared spontaneous. But historians are clear. “This research demonstrates unequivocally that the Wilmington Race riot was not a spontaneous event, but was directed by white businessmen and Democratic leaders to regain control of Wilmington,” says Dr. Jeffrey Crow, deputy secretary of the N.C. Office of Archives and History.
Do I expect to see armed racial combat in the streets of the United States again? I hope to God, no. But Obama is the nation’s first African-American president, and his administration looks like a promo for a Rainbow Coalition. White America is watching power slip from its hands.
The cynical, calculated mutterings of folks like Glenn Beck (who unashamedly chants about Obama’s alleged “deep-seated hatred of whites”), Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey and others (who imply that health care reform might lead to mandatory euthanasia) are too dangerous, and effective, to ignore. They bear an uncomfortable resemblance to tactics used in North Carolina over a century ago.
Those tactics worked then. And they’re working now.
So I’m skeptical that the rise of the birthers and the town hall disruptions are spontaneous responses toeconomic insecurity. Carolyn Doric told whomever is willing to listen that none of the screaming, shouting and divisiveness are about health care. Or taxes. Or money.
The rage is about losing power, and getting it back. By any means necessary.
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This is a penetrating analysis of the state our nation finds itself in right now. I’m waiting for young people to start to gain some power. That is going to get really ugly.
Afi I agree with everything you’ve said here except for your use of the term “White America” This white American voted for President Obama along with millions and millions of other Americans and am proud that we in the country reached a point where an African American has been elected to the highest office in the land. I also agree with you that the birther movement is racist driven, but please don’t paint all white Americans as being of a birther mentality.
Brian, you have a point and I struggled with that. I thought about saying white working-class rage, but I’m not sure that the rage is limited to class.
Thanks for reading and commenting. Thanks for being civil. It’s too bad that, in this day, such civility is the exception rather than the rule.
In response to another comment. See in context »I read all your threads!
In response to another comment. See in context »Hi Afi,
thank you for the heads up on Facebook about this commentary.
In response to another comment. See in context »“Everybody’s flyin and no one leaves the ground.
everybody’s cryin and no one makes a sound
There’s a place for us in movies you just gotta lay around
Nobody told me there’d be days like these… strange days indeed… quite peculiar momma..”
John Lennon- Nobody Told Me
I understand NYC’s sentiment about not lumping White America together in this power struggle, however to me Obama’s ascent to the White House is tantamount to the coming of the age of Aquarius. You know, “when the moon is in the 7th house and the Jupiter aligns with Mars…” In order for Obama to get elected a whole lotta shtuff had to line up and my only comfort is that the Iowa caucus birthed his run for the White House. We had to have: a 2nd term president who aggressively attacked our civil rights; turned a govt surplus into a huge deficit; was blamed for our present recession/depression which in the banking/housing realm seemed to be a case of republican “less government gone wild!”; started an unpopular preemptive war with no WMD; a pres. who because of circumstance shook American voter apathy(good thing) via his brother’s Florida debacle; a McCain with a dubious moral past compared to a pristine Obama; a republican nominee (I hear that McCain is a baaad- shut yo mouth!…still talkin bout McCain)who ran one of the worst campaigns in recent memory; a Palin vp nominee who seemed to be less than qualified… way less; a republican nominee who graduated at the bottom of his class in Naval Academy; and an Obama who is quite the opposite starting with the Harvard Law Revue. I could easily write a few more paragraphs of gargantuan valley vs. mountaintop differences that would make it a no brainer had McCain been Black and Obama White…. and it was STILL a race for a minute. That scares me because I have republican acquaintances I respect and think are intelligent thinking folk who were ravenous for some McCain/Palin in the White House. It wasn’t like lesser of two evils vote for McCain it was like Great White Hope” vote for McCain. These people comprise no small number. What else has got my panties in a bunch? Obama is 7 months in office and not even accepted as an American by people who have access to the media. This is NOK (Not Our Kind) propaganda in full effect. There are plenty of everyday folk behind this but ignorance isn’t republican or democrat or independent which is also a frightening thought considering the amount of info one has to overlook to remain ignorant.