On another way to look at a defining recent moment.
In the
final post in that 2011 series, I wrote about George Allen’s “macaca”
moment as an exemplary one, not only in terms of that particular election
but also as an illustration of changing trends in the state and nation overall.
I wrote then that President Obama had won Virginia in the 2008 election,
becoming the first Democratic candidate to do so in decades; he did so
again in 2012, making clear that those political trends have continued. As
with many other formerly solid “red states,” changing demographics and
communities, among other shifts, have put Virginia in play—and as I wrote in
that post, the “macaca” moment concisely highlighted both the political and the
demographic trends (as well, of course, as the power of the
intertubes to influence 21st century politics and society).
If all those trends have helped define the last half-decade or so in
American political and social life, however, an honest assessment compels me to
add another and far more pessimistic complement, and also one evident in the “macaca”
moment: that overt racial and ethnic bigotry has made a comeback over those same
years. I’m not arguing that there’s any more such bigotry today than there was
a decade ago, but I would say that the bigotry has come to the surface more
easily and consistently in recent years; that the gradually increasing sense of
shame which seemed to be associated with racism has, in many cases, apparently
given way to a kind of warped pride, a perspective that the speaker will no
longer let “political correctness” dictate his or her views. Nowhere in this
clearer, to my mind, than in the responses to the Trayvon
Martin/George Zimmerman trial—or even in the simple fact that so many American conservatives are
overtly rooting for Zimmerman to be found not guilty (a position, I will
admit, that seems inescapably tied to Martin’s race).
S.R. Siddarth, the young man to whom Allen was referring, was the American-born
son of Indian immigrants, and Allen’s “welcome to America” nonsense was thus
quite distinct from anti-black racism such as that directed at Trayvon Martin. But
having been on the receiving end of daily Tea Party emails for many years, I
have to say that one of the most defining elements of those messages is a
profound equivalence between a wide variety of ethnic “others”—President Obama,
Muslims, the New Black Panther Party, illegal immigrants from (in most such narratives)
Mexico, and, frankly, all those who seem by the color of their skin, their
linguistic or religious heritage, their ancestry, their identity to occupy a
space outside of what Allen called “the real Virginia.” The truth, of course,
is that all such Americans have been a part of Virginia for (at least) decades,
and are only coming to define its reality more fully as the 21st century
evolves. But as they do, a substantial community of Americans seems
increasingly comfortable calling them, well, “macaca.” And that’s a national
problem, and one we had better start acknowledging and addressing.
Crowd-sourced Virginia connections this weekend,
Ben
PS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s
posts? Other Virginia connections you’d highlight and share?
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