For the last few weeks we heard in the political debate that the massive opposition to healthcare reform present in American society, visible through the various ‘tea party’ movements, is nothing but a result of blatant racism towards Pres. Obama, organized by the Republican party. This allegation reverberates a shared feeling in parts of sociology that the tea party movement is nothing but a sham to cover racial prejudice and conservative bias. Over at Racism Review I noticed several comments along these lines in the post ‘912 Protesters Fueld by Racism, Hatred of Obama‘
My blog today is long because there’s a lot of errors to deal with in the allegation I have referred to. I apologize in advance for this.
The author at Racism Review notices that the movement is ’99% percent white’, and it would indeed appear that a large part of the tea party movement is indeed white. Other commentators have also noted this. But, to infer that because (A) the movement is predominantly white and (B) has a message contrary to Obama’s it must therefore (C) be racist is, in my view, erroneous.
Not only that, it also reminds me of the Roman statesman Cato the Elder who ended each and every speech with the comment ‘Carthago delenda est’ known in English as ‘Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed’. He was so set on achieving this goal that each speech he gave had the logical conclusion that Carthage deserved destruction. No matter what the topic had otherwise been. Many of the comments on Racism Review left me confounded and wondering whether they were observing the movement as it was or as they wanted it to be.
The author, Jessie Daniels, a professor at Hunter College, concludes that much of the movement is racist because she has found an alleged protest sign — on a left-wing website dedicated to ousting conservatives mind you — that depicts a monkey. Perhaps I am just damaged from my work in the criminal courts in Copenhagen, but the term prima facie comes to mind.
Often what I do when I try to draw conclusions in social science based on sources and evidence is ask myself ‘would this hold up in a court of law’? It doesn’t mean that it has to be scientifically bulletproof, it just means that it has to be a fair and well-founded scientific conclusion based on the evidence available. If it’s not, then it’s probably bad social science.
Unlike the writers at Racism Review, who have chosen their source material from what they can find at the websites they choose (which is no guarantee of authenticity!) I actually took the time and effort to see with my own eyes what the protest in D.C. was all about. Whenever some 250.000 people from across the country march down the streets of Washington D.C., the social scientist should be intrigued.
I was there for hours blending in with people and asking questions. ‘Where are you from’, ‘why are you here’, ‘how did you get involved’ and so on. In other words, I was doing what a social scientist should do: observing, without prejudice towards that which he is observing, and asking questions. Mist if all it reminded me of the Anti-War movement, which is a series of loose networks, spontaneous order and multitude of backgrounds that characterize a coming together.
It turns out a lot of people came from out of state. Some 20 busses had been loaded up in Ohio by one group of people and driven all night to be in D.C. next morning. Other people came from as far away as Oregon (WA), Tallahassee (FL) and Montgomery (AL). Many were in D.C. for the first time and had brought their families. Most had shared the expense of the busses with the other participants through their local tea party organization, others had paid for their own gas, flight tickets and so on. In other words, there was no indication that this was a centrally coordinated activity carried out by the Republican party more than the Anti-War movement is an arm of the Democratic party either.
The tea party movement is definitely ethnically homogenous, but geographically it is very diverse, as well as politically. There were so-called blue dog democrats, moderates, religious conservatives, traditional conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, classical liberals and anarchists at the demonstration, as well as people who were just as fed up with Pres. Obama as they had been with Pres. Bush. I asked around and people didn’t agree, except on disagreeing with the current politics.
In many ways the most popular flag I saw, the famous Gadsen flag with its coiled rattlesnake and the words ‘Don’t tread on me’ printed underneath, summed up what ties this movement together. A common opposition to universal healthcare, higher taxes and increased government spending, but for a number of different reasons. There might have been a racist element in the demonstration, but if there was I didn’t notice it, and I was there for a long time. I therefore wonder why so much time is being spent on discussing this.
Furthermore, I have been to many demonstrations, and I have also been to violent demonstrations as an observer. I know what a demonstration looks like when the crowd is angry, destructive and feelings of hatred and racism boil over. This happened, e.g., when I was doing field studies among soccer hooligans in suburban Copenhagen and when confrontations with the police occured. When the crowd becomes one large mass of its own identity or when angry feelings of ‘them vs. us’ and racism surface. This was not such a demonstration. If anything it was surprisingly friendly.
People were laughing, smiling, playing music and boasting humorous home-made signs. I saw very few standard-printed signs and almost exclusively hand-pained signs, many which had funny punch lines, from the clever ‘Trickle-up Poverty’, to the corny ‘Obamacare makes me sick’ and the more raunchy / dark humour jokes ‘You can’t fix stupid but you can vote it out’ and ‘Bury Obamacare with Kennedy’. A boat was even being paraded down the street with people throwing flowers, and bagpipers were playing ‘Amazing Grace’. A biker couple from out West had shown up on their enormous Harley Davidson bikes in leather clothes and were waiving American flags while playing ‘Proud to be an American’ out of a stereo. To be honest, while the social scientist in me found it fascinating, the personal side of me found it invigoratingly silly.
If anything this crowd had very little experience in marching. For many people it was their first protest ever – and it shone through as they tried to figure out what to chant and whether to treat the protest as a demonstration, a ticker tape parade or a Fourth of July celebration. Furthermore, I didn’t hear of a single arrest in connection with the demonstration.
So rather than dismiss the tea party movement as an all-white, and therefore all-racist, extreme right-wing phenomenon, sociologists should be intrigued by the fact that what has traditionally been called the silent majority in American politics, the predominately white, suburban middle-class families, are suddenly speaking up.
Mind you, I’m open to the idea that there was probably a racist element in the demonstration, and this needs to be identified, but to suggest that movement itself, and the protesters, are extremists ‘fueled by racism’ seems completely over the top.
Extremism is a word thrown around at these days quite carelessly. Quite frankly, to refer to 250.000 people from across the country who march with their families and sing songs as ‘extremists’ or ‘right wing extremists’, as commentators and the blog post referred to have done, not only reveals an extreme unwillingless or incapability to comprehend social phenomena, but also something about one’s own shameless political agenda.
It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, it’s bad social science and it’s another example of ‘Cathago delenda est’. The tea parties are interesting, and they deserve our unbiased attention.
- David Pontoppidan
I think you’ve got it pretty much right David. I do think there’s a racist element within the broader Tea Party movement, but it’s dwarfed by the elements you identify here. Bill Clinton gets it:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/21/bill.clinton.larry.king/index.html
“But I’m a unicorn.”
If racial homogeneity of a group is to be considered an indicator of racism, then a Shins concert could be considered a Klan rally.
It’s been noted that the environmental movement is a white folks movement too.
As for the Tea Pary protests as compared to other protests by those in the Anti-War movement, there is a sense in which the former will theoretically never measure up, morally, to the latter. If even a tiny, tiny sliver of the Tea Party protesters are racist, there is at least some racism present. What is the equivalent normative taboo in the Anti-War movement? Anti-Zionism? There is alot of intellectual will on the left to defend against accusations of anti-semitism on that front, so I don’t think so.
No, the anti-War movement had *at least* a tiny sliver of real, live anti-Semitism in it. That’s not the same as anti-Zionism, but the former was there too.
Whatever the Left’s “will” on that issue, it remains the case that it was an element of some anti-War protests just as racism is a real element of some of the Tea Partiers.
Unfortunately this doesn’t equalize the protesters (not that you were looking to so “equalize”), as any anti-semitism present among the anti-war protesters would be present among Tea Partiers too, to the degree they catch-all racists.
I remember reading somewhere (daily kos?) that the girlfriend of the guy who took over the blog/website of the holocaust museum shooter was involved in the Ron Paul campaign in Michigan, or at least a very vocal supporter.
For a lot of people, display of any opposition to government intervention is in itself enough proof of racism. This line of reasoning goes way back has a respectable academic backing. Consider for example the following article:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3791704
The question is “how much of the protests” are driven by racism. A lot of the research on racism and bias, indicates most of it is subconscious, so to merely converse with people, is to only scratch at the surface. Very few people nowadays will put up a racist flag or comment, but many have implicit biases.
Dain: I don’t accept your assumption that all racists are anti-Semitic. I saw racist signs among the 9/12 protests but not one that I would even remotely call anti-Semitic. And believe me, if those were there, they would have been all over the Web. I have plenty of Jewish family members who are racists but not anti-Semites!
And you don’t have to convince me that there’s racism among Ron Paul supporters. I wrote about this, to my own peril among libertarians, in Jan of 08: http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/45044.html But that leaves unanswered the degree to which Tea Partiers are Paul supporters, and the evidence that I’ve seen suggests that some are but many weren’t.
Thabo: That is the right question and I agree that there’s probably more subconscious racism than was in evidence from the overt signs. But is that unique to the Tea Partiers? And without the clear evidence that racism is behind the protests, isn’t the responsible thing to assume good faith disagreement and revert to racism only when such evidence is reasonably clear?
That’s a well-thoguht-out answer to a challenging question
David,
I think that this is a great post.
The author from the Racism Review, a considerable number of sociologists, and members of the Congressional Black Caucas, etc. have all averred that the Tea Parties are “racist.” I certainly disagree with this charge.
But, the following reasons should enter your calculus prior to inveighing against the Racism Review author:
Try viewing this charge from the perspective of a minority. For example, where were the Tea Parties when G.W. Bush elected to undertake two (quite expensive) wars? Where were the Tea Parties when Bush gave massive handouts to steel corporations? Not to mention the massive healthcare expenditures on Medicare and Medicaid in 2007. I can go on; but, you get the point.
Minorities may believe the following: Why not healthcare for everyone? Everyone, or nearly everyone else, for example,, gets something from government, why can’t government include healthcare? Oh, I know, say minorities, because blacks, Mexicans, etc. may be able to benefit from the massive government spending that our federal government already does.
Yes, the Racism Review may be commiting what we call an ecological fallacy by claiming racism due to the skin complexion of the members of the Tea Parties present. But, this is the inevitable minority public opinion result of government spending for (a), (b), … (x), (y), but not (z).
Finally, I actually agree with many aspects of the “bailout” or the stimulus package (and no, I am not an inflationist). However, once government spending is devoted to something, public opinion will ask this: Why can’t the state extend spending to something else.
Best
Brian, I totally agree that we should look at the subjective perception of minorities in order to explore why this perception has come about, but the authors at racism review are a couple of white professors. They’re not interested in interpretive sociology, they looking to score political points against ideological opponents. David used the post on the tea party as an example, but they do this for just about every subject.
As I said in the comments over there, the ad hominem attacks of an earlier Marxism have changed from “vulgar economists are just sycophants for the bourgeoisie” to the Crit attack of “angry white protesters are just sycophants for the racist white power structure.”
@Steve
“Good faith” is a difficult one for me to use. I guess you can put it down to being a black man growing up in Apartheid South Africa.
I think of it in the same way as “climate change”, if you wait until you are 100% sure, it will be too late to do anything about it.
I think the reason these protesters weren’t holding such rallies during the Bush years is that they aren’t sophisticated enough to know that heuristics such as the label of “Republican” or “Democrat” are poor devices to understanding whether someone is “big government” or not. They just go with the cliche.
Chalk it up to public ignorance of political matters, which is extensive.
And for those at the protest who are fed up with both parties, I don’t see why waiting until now to protest is indicative of racism, subconscious or otherwise. It could be that Bush + Obama – who was expected to be different – is the straw the broke the camel’s back.
I’d have been more in agreement with the stimulus package had it actually followed what I believe to be the advice of Keynes, but as far as I know most of it went to industries that were politically saavy, not those that were actually suffering the most or disproportionately responsible for much of US employment.
Nobody suspects nearly all white environmental protests to be harboring racists because the left likes that cause. Since they dislike free markets and anti-government crowds, these crowds may as well be racist too.
I believe it was historian Thomas Leonard who disputed Richard Hofstadter’s thesis, now widely popular, that free markets and racism in the American context are inherently linked.
This partly explains motivation to frame these protests as racist in nature. Unfortunately, there is undoubtedly more actual racism within them than at an environmental protest (unless one construes some of the extreme misanthropy as equal opportunity racism, i.e. anti-humanism).