What too often gets lost in discussions of race and racism is what, in fact, racism is. Racism is not primarily concerned with an individual's feelings or opinions on the status of people of other races. Thus, for example, when Robert Byrd died, I had a conservative blogger challenge me on the difference between Byrd, a former KKK member, and Jesse Helms. Now, I do not know, nor do I really care all that much, what Byrd thought about African-Americans on a personal level. Nor do I really care all that much about what Helms may or may not thought. The difference - and here is where the distinction gets lost - is that one of these two men pursued a career of openness to Civil Rights and the legal and social and political claims of African-Americans after first being opposed to them. The other stood firm in supporting entrenched white power.
Racism is about power. It is about social and political power. Thus, when conservatives point out that, say, black police officers are just as likely to be guilty of racial profile and just as prone to mistreat African-American detainees, this is not a "Ha!" moment. On the contrary, it proves the point that racism is about social power; African-American police officers, by acting out against minority prisoners, are demonstrating their willingness to be co-opted by the state power structure. African-Americans are the target of police violence without regard to the individual status of any given officer.
Thus, again, I am hardly impressed with the revelation from White House taped phone conversations during the Johnson Administration that he was pretty free and loose with bigoted comments about blacks. No President did more, except Lincoln, for African-American legal and social and political rights, and he deserves the thanks of all Americans for his political courage on that score.
The recalcitrance of the power structure is remarkable. Talking Points Memo has a story on a hearing before the Civil Rights Commission. Testifying today is former Civil Rights Division Chief Christopher Coates. Appearing without the imprimatur of the Department of Justice (he's still with them, an AUSA), he is arguing that the Bush DOJ sought to apply the Voting Rights Act in a "race-neutral manner." The thing is - the Voting Rights Act is concerned primarily with race. Applying it in a "race neutral manner" does violence to the legislative intent, the spirit, and many of the letters of that law.
The idea that there is a concerted effort among African-Americans to deny poll access to whites is ludicrous. The idea that there is rampant, even systematic, voting fraud in the African-American community is just not borne out by the facts. Yet, the primary motivation for Coates' appearance was to lament the lack of enforcement of a race-neutral approach to the Voting Rights Act. Precisely because the Voting Rights Act, like Affirmative Action, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, sought to redress particular structural imbalances in matters of access to power, the notion that these laws are to be applied in a "race neutral manner" is simply nonsensical.
Unless you are a white person who feels viscerally threatened by a black person voting.
