Little-Acorn
10-06-2008, 02:28 PM
http://opinionjournal.com
from "Best of the Web Today"
by James Taranto
Free-Associated Press
A reporter accuses Palin of racism--and gives us a glimpse into his own prejudices.
Over the weekend Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around" with terrorists--a reference to his longstanding friendship and professional association with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, husband-and-wife Chicago college professors who are unrepentant about their activities in the Weather Underground gang.
According to an "analysis" by Douglass Daniel of the Associated Press, "[Palin's] attack was unsubstantiated." Palin said she got her information from the New York Times, and we suppose it says something that this isn't good enough for the AP. Odder still is Daniel's claim that Palin's statement "carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret."
Reader, Mr. and Mrs. Ayers are persons of pallor. What could possibly be racist about Palin's criticizing Obama for associating with a couple of despicable characters who are white? This question brings us into the weird world of Douglass Daniel's imagination:
Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Daniel does no reporting to back this up. He accuses Palin of racism because in his mind, terrorist implies Muslim, Muslim implies dark-skinned, and dark-skinned implies black.
This exercise in free association scarcely qualifies as analysis. Nonetheless, let us consider it step by step:
Terrorist implies Muslim. It is certainly true that America's terrorist enemies today are Muslims who justify their actions in Islamic terms. The terrorist fringe of the 1960s far left, by contrast, has withered away (or "sold out," in the parlance of the times). But there is nothing distinctively Islamic about tactics like bombing and kidnapping, which were used by outfits like the Weather Underground in their time and are employed by al Qaeda and its ilk today.
Moreover, as we have noted, the AP is sometimes at pains to avoid drawing a connection between terrorism and Islam when reporting stories about Islamic terrorism. Why does Dennis make the connection so casually here, when it is not even relevant?
Muslim implies dark-skinned. In fact, "Muslim" is a religious identifier, not a racial or ethnic one. Muslims are of all races and ethnicities. Dennis must be conflating Muslims with Arabs, the ethnic group to which the Sept. 11 terrorists belonged. Arabs do generally have darker complexions than people of Northern European origin.
Dark-skinned implies black. The racial identity of Arabs was a matter of some legal controversy in the U.S. early in the last century, but the courts generally concluded that they were white and thus eligible for naturalization under the racially discriminatory immigration laws in effect at the time. Arabs also are classified as white under the Census Bureau's racial taxonomy.
So Dennis seems to be saying that it is racist of Palin to note a nonracial commonality between Obama's white pals and the white men who attacked America seven years ago. Can you make any sense at all of this?
Neither can Dennis, so he changes the subject:
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain's purpose so well. As the fallout from [Jeremiah] Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.
Wait, didn't the Jeremiah Wright controversy prompt Obama to give the most magnificently brilliant speech on the subject of race since Martin Luther King, or at least Abraham Lincoln? That's what it said in the papers, anyway.
Getting back to Daniel and Palin, it seems his claim is that her speech was racist because it somehow called attention to Obama's race. To be sure, there are people who are prejudiced against Obama because he is black. Shame on them. People like them used to have a lot more influence on elections than they do now, both because they were more numerous and because in many parts of the country they disfranchised blacks (including through terrorism!).
Yet we'd venture that there are voters who are troubled by Obama's palling around with terrorists irrespective of his, or anyone else's race. Does the public not have a right to know because some part of the public may be racist?
Furthermore, let's assume for the sake of argument that an actual racist has the brainpower to puzzle through the complex twists and turns that led Douglass Daniel from the information that Obama pals around with terrorists to the conclusion that Obama is black.
Isn't it a good bet that he already knew?
from "Best of the Web Today"
by James Taranto
Free-Associated Press
A reporter accuses Palin of racism--and gives us a glimpse into his own prejudices.
Over the weekend Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around" with terrorists--a reference to his longstanding friendship and professional association with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, husband-and-wife Chicago college professors who are unrepentant about their activities in the Weather Underground gang.
According to an "analysis" by Douglass Daniel of the Associated Press, "[Palin's] attack was unsubstantiated." Palin said she got her information from the New York Times, and we suppose it says something that this isn't good enough for the AP. Odder still is Daniel's claim that Palin's statement "carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret."
Reader, Mr. and Mrs. Ayers are persons of pallor. What could possibly be racist about Palin's criticizing Obama for associating with a couple of despicable characters who are white? This question brings us into the weird world of Douglass Daniel's imagination:
Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Daniel does no reporting to back this up. He accuses Palin of racism because in his mind, terrorist implies Muslim, Muslim implies dark-skinned, and dark-skinned implies black.
This exercise in free association scarcely qualifies as analysis. Nonetheless, let us consider it step by step:
Terrorist implies Muslim. It is certainly true that America's terrorist enemies today are Muslims who justify their actions in Islamic terms. The terrorist fringe of the 1960s far left, by contrast, has withered away (or "sold out," in the parlance of the times). But there is nothing distinctively Islamic about tactics like bombing and kidnapping, which were used by outfits like the Weather Underground in their time and are employed by al Qaeda and its ilk today.
Moreover, as we have noted, the AP is sometimes at pains to avoid drawing a connection between terrorism and Islam when reporting stories about Islamic terrorism. Why does Dennis make the connection so casually here, when it is not even relevant?
Muslim implies dark-skinned. In fact, "Muslim" is a religious identifier, not a racial or ethnic one. Muslims are of all races and ethnicities. Dennis must be conflating Muslims with Arabs, the ethnic group to which the Sept. 11 terrorists belonged. Arabs do generally have darker complexions than people of Northern European origin.
Dark-skinned implies black. The racial identity of Arabs was a matter of some legal controversy in the U.S. early in the last century, but the courts generally concluded that they were white and thus eligible for naturalization under the racially discriminatory immigration laws in effect at the time. Arabs also are classified as white under the Census Bureau's racial taxonomy.
So Dennis seems to be saying that it is racist of Palin to note a nonracial commonality between Obama's white pals and the white men who attacked America seven years ago. Can you make any sense at all of this?
Neither can Dennis, so he changes the subject:
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain's purpose so well. As the fallout from [Jeremiah] Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.
Wait, didn't the Jeremiah Wright controversy prompt Obama to give the most magnificently brilliant speech on the subject of race since Martin Luther King, or at least Abraham Lincoln? That's what it said in the papers, anyway.
Getting back to Daniel and Palin, it seems his claim is that her speech was racist because it somehow called attention to Obama's race. To be sure, there are people who are prejudiced against Obama because he is black. Shame on them. People like them used to have a lot more influence on elections than they do now, both because they were more numerous and because in many parts of the country they disfranchised blacks (including through terrorism!).
Yet we'd venture that there are voters who are troubled by Obama's palling around with terrorists irrespective of his, or anyone else's race. Does the public not have a right to know because some part of the public may be racist?
Furthermore, let's assume for the sake of argument that an actual racist has the brainpower to puzzle through the complex twists and turns that led Douglass Daniel from the information that Obama pals around with terrorists to the conclusion that Obama is black.
Isn't it a good bet that he already knew?