Lee Atwater, 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, states’ rights and all that stuff. 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. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because 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.”
A focus group guest on the Sean Hannity show:
“The people at these town hall meetings, it’s not really about health care. These words, these loaded words. … These words like ‘un-American,’ ‘socialism,’ that you use, Sean, I think it’s really code word for — it’s the new N-word, basically. They’re scared of a black president.”
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the government messing with the healthcare system. But what we’ve seen so far is that a number of the concerns that are at the forefront of the debate, the “death panels,” the fear of government getting its hands on…government provided health care, are completely detached from reality. At the same time, a number of reform opponents have taken to apocalyptic rhetoric about things that have nothing to do with health care at all, such as the supposed “dismantling” of the country.
It’s clear that health care reform has become a venue for the right to vent its cultural alienation stemming from the loss of the last election and the rejection of their political agenda. Americans of all stripes take such things personally–How many liberals thought Michael Moore asking “Dude Where’s My Country?” was out of line? And yet at the same time it seems obvious that there is a racial element to this opposition–just ask Investor’s Business Daily about “reparations” or how anti-immigration activists see an opportunity to derail health care reform by stroking anti-immigrant animus.
The problem is, for the same reasons that Obama couldn’t win the election if race became a primary factor in the election, Democrats won’t win the debate over health care by putting race at the center of the argument. It’s simply a matter of demographics and perspective. While it may be true that some reform opponents are motivated in part by race, the accusation of racism will provoke more anger than the racism itself, meaning that Republicans, once again, are likely to end up with the larger half.
The bottom line is, as Kai Wright explained at The Root, that failing to pass a health reform bill is going to hurt a number of these angry, confused people as much as anyone else. Race has always been an effective tool for bamboozling the less wealthy of all backgrounds–that’s no less true today than it has been in the past. The question is what to do about it. Obama won the election partially by not taking the bait and shrugging off the racial subtext of his opposition–as frustrating as it might seem, it might be best for Democrats if they do the same.
— A. Serwer
