Color-blind Race Baiting

Last semester, I had a couple of virulently racist white guys in one of my classes. But their racism was never expressed directly. Saying things like "why do we have to study blacks instead of the working class" or "criticizing racism is what causes racism," these guys stayed within the bounds of color-blind language as they were engaged in race-baiting. In fact, color-blind language is used to justify police shootings of blacks, the kind of mob violence against blacks that occurred on Long Island in the eighties, the exclusion of blacks from stores, and racial profiling. In The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Patricia Williams, an African-American law professor, provides a detailed personal account of the wrenching humiliation that color-blind racism created for her as an African-American.

I'm beginning to wonder if the Democratic victory in 2006 isn't sparking another wave of race-baiting from the right. The right-wing race baiting campaign against Obama has already begun. When the right baits Barack Obama over his name or circulates lies about Obama's schooling, what they're trying to do is create suspicion over Obama's race--whether he's really like "us" or whether he can really be "trusted." The fact that Obama's black and a liberal makes him even more of an enemy to the right than Osama bin Laden. While the Republicans were on top, the right-wing seemed to take a break from race-baiting in the name of cementing a Republican majority. Now that the Republicans are in the minority again, the right seems to be returning to its racist roots.

Anti-immigrant zealot Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado is joining the race-baiting fun. According to today's Denver Post, Tancredo is calling for the disbanding of African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-Pacific minority caucuses to be disbanded in the name of color-blindness, claiming that the minority caucuses equal "racial segregation." What Tancredo is trying to do is to use the pseudo-liberal language of color-blindness (pseudo-liberal because it "sounds" liberal even though it was invented by conservatives for conservative political purposes) to forbid blacks and other racial minorities from associating together to further their interests. For Tancredo, business is a legitimate interest, abortion is a legitimate interest, and opposition to immigration is a legitimate interest, but blacks, hispanics, and Asian-Americans can have no legitimate group interests. It's just a subtle way to exclude racial minorities from political life.