Freedom Rider: White Guys with Guns
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
"White
people don't need economic insecurity to revert to primal racial hatreds and
fears."
Gun loving white men are the most sought after demographic
of Democratic presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton claims to have been shooting
critters since she was just knee high. "I've hunted. My father taught me
how to hunt. I went duck hunting in Arkansas." Who can forget John Kerry
impersonating Elmer Fudd during the 2004 campaign?
Recently Barack Obama created a brouhaha when attempting to
explain the voting ways of the conservative whites he must placate in order to
win the Pennsylvania primary. He was speaking of the white people who vote for
Republicans when it is clearly not in their interests to do so. He was
speaking of white people who are to say the least hesitant to pull the lever
for any black person when they get behind the voting booth curtain.
Pennsylvania is the next significant Democratic primary
state. Described as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between,"
Pennsylvania has favored Hillary Clinton in early polls. But Obama was gaining
on her, visiting the Alabamian portions of the state and pledging to have a
foreign policy that would be "sometimes like Ronald Reagan's."
According to Obama, these Alabamian/Pennsylvanians just
get frustrated when they lose their jobs, pensions and health care. So in their righteous anger, they keep
voting for the very same people who deprive them of income and security.
"Obama was pledging to have a foreign policy that would
be ‘sometimes like Ronald Reagan's.'"
"So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they
cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or
anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations."
The phony outrage generated by Obama's remarks was
predictable, foolish and didn't begin to address the truly nonsensical aspect
of Obama's statement. Hillary Clinton followed John McCain in labeling Obama an
elitist snob who just doesn't appreciate the beauty of redneckland. The fuming
is completely phony, and misses the truly outrageous nature of Obama's remarks.
The truth is that white people don't need economic
insecurity to revert to primal racial hatreds and fears. This country was
invaded by white people who saw themselves as Gods and therefore felt free to
kill, or steal land or labor, in order to benefit themselves. They always
embraced their own perverse idea of a deity, always loved firearms and never
cared about people "different from themselves," that is to say, non-white
people.
Republicans keep getting their votes because they
instigate their fears of black people or immigrants or in 2004, gay people who
want to get married. There is nothing noble about Rednecksylvania. The
Rednecksylvanians identify with their white manliness, not with their
pocketbooks or anything else. As a result they usually vote for Republican
presidential candidates who boil down every public policy issue into three
words. White guys rule. They will vote Republican even if their own economic
situations improve. Republicans know how to appeal to their reptilian brains
and consequently get their votes whether they help or hurt them.
"Obama has been practicing idol worship of white
America's grandiose visions of itself for some time now."
Obama's clumsy effort to keep sucking up to Rednecksylvania
isn't surprising. Anyone who has been paying attention to his public statements
has heard it all before. Obama has been practicing idol worship of white
America's grandiose visions of itself for some time now. He tipped his hand in
a 2004 interview with
Charlie Rose:
". . . union workers 50, 55 year old guys, who the best
that's being offered to them is retraining to being nursing assistants. These
guys with beards, tough guys who are used to handling heavy machinery. They're
not optimistic about the prospects for them to be able to attain the kinds of
economic security they had under the old system. So they've got insecurity in
their economic life. They don't know where their health care is coming from
they don't know what's happening with their pensions. What they do know is that
they can go out with their friends and hunt and feel a sense of camaraderie and
there is a connection between hunting and them going out with their father to
hunt. Just as there is a connection maybe for their wives going to church and
going with their grandmothers to church."
It is difficult to determine which image is most
sickening, the horrific notion that tough bearded guys might have to assist
nurses, or that of God-fearing women sitting in the pews with granny. So Obama
was hoisted on his own petard. He actually deserves criticism for his
relentless sucking up to the Rednecksylvanians, not for any imagined slight to
them and their praying, hunting, fishing kinfolk.
"Obama was hoisted on his own petard."
This tempest in a teapot will not matter in the end. The
Democratic nomination will end with Obama slightly ahead but not by enough to
rid himself of Hillary Clinton. One of them will be left to fight John McCain,
who isn't fit for any job, but who still gets big love from the media.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, the world banking crisis
continues, and the Iraq occupation morass worsens. The campaign sound and fury
will mean little in the end. Forces beyond the control of anyone in America
will bring the next president face to face with choices he or she didn't
anticipate having to make.
So let the rednecks get red in the neck. This campaign is
their last hurrah and they don't even know it. Let's see how bitter and frustrated
they become when they are hit by forces they didn't even know existed. On
second thought, we won't want to see that. It will be too ugly to watch.
Margaret Kimberley's
Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City,
and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.
Ms. Kimberley maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com.
More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive
page.
Netfa Freeman is an organizer with Pan African Community Action based in Washington DC, which is working on a campaign for community control over the police.
Frank Chapman is Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. That organization led the fight for community control of the police, with the creation of the…
On March 8,1971 a brave group of people revealed the extent of FBI spying, harassment and even the killings of US citizens. More than 50 years later we would do well to remember the significance of…
Revisiting a 1974 editorial on Black women and the international struggle against patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and capitalism on International Women’s Day.
In Africa as in the rest of the world, US machinations undermine its goals and bring other nations together as they seek to protect themselves from a desperate empire.
