I thought it was really nice of Rudy Giulani to take a few nights off from his mistresses and having his goons sodomize unarmed men with broom handles to give a very effective speech last night. Giuliani was never going to be president, but this line should remind everyone of exactly what allows a cross-dressing pro-choice mayor of a major city to appeal to the Republican base, namely contempt for black people.
A few years later, he ran for the U.S. Senate. He won and has spent most of his time as a “celebrity senator.” No leadership or major legislation to speak of. [Obama’s] rise is remarkable in its own right – it’s the kind of thing that could happen only in America.
This statement wasn’t meant to praise Barack Obama, or even acknowledge the historic nature of his candidacy it was meant to belittle him and what he’s done. The implication was that in America, black people don’t have to do much to succeed. Even the contempt the former mayor of the biggest city in America displayed for Obama being “cosmopolitan”– literally refers to him being, like New York, being a product of miscegenation, of race mixing, of people of different cultures living with and loving each other, something Rudy scorns as sincerely as George Wallace.It’s one of the more unfortunate side-effects of our two dimensional conversation on race that it focuses largely on the South, politics in New York regularly devolves into racial demagoguery. Giuliani’s mayoralty, and the language and behavior he displayed towards his black constituents merely brought it to the surface. There was a line in the speech last night when he mocked community organizers–Why wouldn’t he? These are the same people who helped organize the folks who refused to allow themselves to be brutalized in silence by trigger-happy cops murdering unarmed black men in the streets. Giuliani merely sneered–by being black and poor, they had forfeited their right to be protected by police.
There is perhaps no one more skilled at stirring white resentment towards a political goal, or a more appropriate surrogate for attacking Obama for the color of his skin. After all, to Rudy, he’s just Amadou Diallo in a suit.
Unlike the whining of the McCain campaign over actual reporting being done on Sarah Palin‘s record, there will be no accusations of racism, no complaints, and no whining from Obama on this point. He can’t. While white racial grievance is an effective political approach, the demographics of the country make it impossible for Obama to play the victim and muster similar outrage among voters.
But even if it was, he wouldn’t do it.
–A. Serwer
