Patterico's Pontifications

1/30/2012

You Might Be a Racist If…

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:58 pm



Juan Williams:

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

Yeah, any time I hear someone talk about the “Constitution” I can tell they’re racists.

The fact is, if you hear the n-word every time someone talks about our entitlement society, the person with the race problem is YOU. If you hear “American values” and think “bigot” then the person with the race problem is YOU. If talking about the Founding Fathers seems racist, the person with the race problem is YOU.

If everything sounds like racism to you, Juan Williams, you might be a racist.

70 Responses to “You Might Be a Racist If…”

  1. Racists

    Patterico (d508e7)

  2. Plenty of white people on food stamps, Juan. Plenty of white people clamoring for their various entitlements.

    Going this far to identify racism seems to show a mission of finding racism whether or not it’s there to be found.

    Dustin (401f3a)

  3. I think it’s about time we just admitted we’re racists and got defiant about it. If that’s your definition of racism, then what’s wrong with it? If that’s your definition of racism then I’m proud to be a racist. The game the left is playing is an old one: get universal agreement that X is bad, and then slowly shift the definition of X to include more and more things that were never agreed to be bad. The syllogism goes “If X is bad, and Y is X, then Y must be bad.” But the correct response is “Y was never bad before, and it doesn’t become bad by defining it as X. X is only bad if it doesn’t include Y. If X includes Y, then only some instances of X are bad while others are good.”

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  4. It’s part of a general leftist philosophy of elevating words above substance. Because they deny that substance actually exists; that we can know any absolute truths. All “truths” are really about language, so by manipulating language we can make whatever we like become true. Hence Focault.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  5. Any argument about “code words” is intrinsically insulting, and instantly reveals the arguer to be arguing in the worst of bad faith. If anything I say can be reinterpreted at will by the person arguing with me, then that person might just as well be engaged in a monologue, and I’m completely superfluous to his own self-stimulation.

    Williams has had better days that this, even for a reliable leftie. How quickly he forgets his treatment at NPR!

    Beldar (493372)

  6. he is totally totally totally the food stamp president his ne’er-do-well mama raised him on the food stamps and he has recipes

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  7. “To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.”

    It only applies some of the time, and to some of the people.

    Dana (4eca6e)

  8. The reason why people praise the movie Evita is because it portrayed a Marxist in a positive light.

    Juan Williams deserves to get a barium enema.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  9. Can we please give it a rest there is no oil in the gulf anymore………..alright liberals or is that too hard?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  10. Damn right I’m a racist…I love NASCAR!

    Gazzer (1aa3de)

  11. Race is always a trigger in politics, but now a third of the nation are people of color — and their numbers are growing. With those minorities solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president, the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics.

    the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics really?

    who thinks like that?

    Stupid people.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  12. Don’t forget what one of the august members of the Congressional Black Caucus (was it Charles Rangel or John Conyers or someone else?) told us about twelve years ago: tax cuts are code words for institutional racism.

    If you can’t understand how this all works, just remember the old joke: What’s the definition of a bigot? Someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.

    JVW (4d72aa)

  13. Only the useful idiots.

    Honestly the cult of personality over Obama is the same as with the perons.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  14. Regardless of how they were intended, poor people and minorities sense that with those comments Gingrich is winking — some call it “dog whistling” — at certain white audiences by intimating that black people are lazy, happy to live off the government and lacking any intellect.

    Isn’t this about intentionalism? The intent of the speaker does not matter; what determines the actual meaning of the statement is how a select group of people interpret them. But it also doesn’t matter that the select group of people already have their own presuppositions and assumptions solidly in place about the speaker and his assumed views before they even hear the statement.

    Dana (4eca6e)

  15. Juan Williams was on O’Reilly tonight defending Occupy Wall St. assclowns as speaking for America. Economist/actor Ben Stein agreed that California would vote for Urkel in a big way because of ethnic groups Obama relates to. Cannot that be deemed racist? Soros seems to think Romney is another Obama and told the Euroweenie libtards not to fear Romney in the race. I keep hearing that Obama is a great salesman but cannot fathom why people seem to think so, other than he managed to push through Obamacare and paid off his cronies and contributors through stimuli funds. Seems people are just ignorant about the eventual effects of printing money. Sooner or later the kaka will hit the fan. Personally I’d like to see the DC pols and banking crooks hanging in the fashion of Mussolini

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (cf92ce)

  16. Ping (although it doesn’t substantively add anything to what I said above in #5 above).

    Beldar (493372)

  17. ____________________________________________

    Williams is almost 60 years old, and, again, keep in mind the well-known phrase about a person being a conservative when he’s 20 years old (and supposedly not having a heart), and that same person being a liberal when he’s 40 (and therefore lacking a brain).

    Even more so given the flap Williams experienced not long ago, there has to be something truly defective about him or anyone else who’s well past his or her teenage or college years — or certainly well past his middle years — who still clings to, or is infected with, liberal biases. How else can one understand the cognitive dissonance, bratty dishonesty and immature judgment of people like Williams?

    dailymail.co.uk, October 2010:

    National Public Radio sacked news analyst Juan Williams after he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that when he sees Muslims on planes he gets ‘nervous’ and ‘worried’. But outraged commentators on both sides defended Williams as being honest about his feelings and saying what others are thinking.

    Williams, 56, responded that too much political correctness can get in the way of reality.

    ‘I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country,’ Williams said.

    ‘But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.’

    Mark (31bbb6)

  18. My name is Drew, and I’m a Racist!

    AD-RtR/OS! (c544cc)

  19. It is just as racist to vote for someone because he is black as it is to vote against someone because he is black.

    Racists.

    tyree (84087f)

  20. Juan Williams is just upset about the fact that while 40 per cent of welfare recipients are white, 41 percent are black. See, Juan remembers that blacks are like 12.5 per cent of the U.S. population. Whites are like maybe 75 % and shrinking. That’s why he’s so upset with Gingrich, because anyone can see that this huge percentage difference is Gringrich’s fault. Anyway, I’m not voting for Newt, but Juan’s criticism has nothing to do with it.

    DV1252x (045cef)

  21. On This Week, Donna Brazille, a black lady, said Gingrich whipped her once.

    wesson (1dbab0)

  22. Hi Drew!

    Icy (ad8d03)

  23. Juan Williams is haughty and presumptuous.

    Icy (ad8d03)

  24. You might be a racist if:
    — While running to be the 44th President of the United States you tell 300 million people that your WHITE grandmother was afraid of black men.
    — You are the 39th President of the United States and you categorically state that people who criticize the 44th President of the United States are doing so because of the color of his skin.
    — You are the 42nd President of the United States and in explaining why your wife lost the South Carolina primary you say: “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.” And when criticized for making that comment responds by accusing the campaign of his wife’s opponent of “playing the race card on me”.

    Icy (ad8d03)

  25. I confess. I’ve always had a strong bias against SOBs, especially dumb ones. I’m kind of feeling that way, right now, about old Juan.

    PE (0609ab)

  26. When your only tool is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts looking like a nail.

    Maybe it’s time for Williams to take that huge racism chip off his shoulder.

    ‘Course, I’m probably a racist for saying so…

    bobdog (166386)

  27. Denounced and condemned.

    JD (48f69a)

  28. Rest assured, any of you who may have thought that Juan had an awakening of sorts after the NPR kerfuffle.

    He’s still asleep.

    Colonel Haiku (a2233a)

  29. the pods are still in the backyard.

    narciso (87e966)

  30. So… um… does that mean all the liberals who said Bush was shredding the constitution, etc. for 8 years were all racists?

    Then again, they DID like to portray him as a monkey… hmm…

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  31. Racism is the excuse lazy minority bums use to evade responsibility for sponging off taxpayers.

    ropelight (18b0e1)

  32. I try to keep things simple as is the Declaration of Independence being one page and the Ten Comandments being one page (no lawyers).

    My right to freedom of speech is basic and my right and people have shed blood and died in wars to protect my rights.

    Now, those who have not shed blood are trying to take away my rights.

    GreenLeaf (90347c)

  33. It doesn’t matter what we say. All they hear is racism.

    Group-think is a very effective means of control.

    Looney Newt (b120ce)

  34. I think Obama causes jock itch.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  35. “I can unboil an egg… I fought the law and I won… I put my contacts in with a nail gun… I won a game of Scrabble with all Z’s…”

    Charles Rangel (fe1432)

  36. The writer of this article might take his own advice, and look to himself for seeing the racism in Juan Williams.

    tadcf (ead2bd)

  37. When the economy collapses the recession won’t be cleaned up.

    Nice try though with your optimism leftys.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  38. tadcf

    How does that even make sense?

    In what way has patrick treated people of a different color differently?

    Otoh, did juan williams ever say that the people accusing bush of shredding the constitution are racist? and if not, why not?

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  39. The writer of this article might take his own advice, and look to himself for seeing the racism in Juan Williams.

    And tadcf might look to himself, for seeing the racism in seeing the racism in seeing the racism in believing in the Constitution.

    Did I stutter?

    Patterico (d508e7)

  40. As I said:

    Racists

    Patterico (d508e7)

  41. It’s rather ironic that all these “racist dog whistles” can only heard by liberals….

    Manfred (3379b8)

  42. I suspect Juan Williams got a lot of “now you’re just a sellout on Fox” flak from the left after the NPR dustup. Now he’s trying to show he can still be every bit the idiotic, racist lefty he was before. Fie on him.

    Mitch (29964e)

  43. As far as I can tell, according to Juan Williams, anyone whose beliefs or statements veer off the liberal plantation (yes picked that word intentionally) is automatically, forever after, a racist. So fine. I grew up I’m the 60s and 70s and lived through the horrors of Carter; therefore, I am as conservative as they come. So I respect the constitution, the bill of rights and the rule of law, including equal protection under that law. And for that alone, I am quite positive that Williams would consider me a racist. Hogwash, he just sees the reflection of his own race based views on everyone else. I would suggest that he stop worrying about the splinter in another’s eye and instead worry about the LOG in his own.

    TexasMom2012 (cee89f)

  44. Tadcf can go eff himself.

    DID I STUTTER?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  45. For those who may need a bit of brushing up on their history — and to clarify that associating blatant bigotry/racism with the Democrat Party is not restricted to generations ago, when Lincoln was in office and fighting the Civil War — the odd contradictions with liberals/Democrats behind closed doors and the way they are in public deserves to be illustrated…

    calvin-coolidge.org:

    Although Woodrow Wilson [Democrat/liberal and 28th president of US] received only 5% to 7% of the black vote (in the states where they could vote) [black activists] [Monroe] Trotter and W.E.B. Dubois had backed him, believing anything would be an improvement over the two previous Republican presidents. They were wrong. The new Democratic Congress immediately enacted laws barring racial intermarriage in Washington, DC. Wilson went along.

    Signs bearing the words “whites only” and “blacks only” began appearing above toilets and drinking fountains throughout the city. Jim Crow practices crept into federal agencies. The number of black presidential appointees dropped sharply-from 33 to 9. Blacks only divisions were created, beginning with the Departments of Treasury, Post Office, Navy, and later the Interior, all headed by Southerners.

    When black leaders voiced concern [about blacks-only windows being created in post offices], Wilson told them segregation was necessary because of the friction between [postal] clerks of both races. When Trotter reminded the president that for fifty years, clerks had worked together harmoniously–even during the previous Democratic administrations of Grover Cleveland – Wilson, by his own admission, lost both his temper and his judgment.

    [D.W. Griffith’s film, “The Birth of a Nation”]…had been based on a novel, The Klansman, [a sympathetic portrayal of the KKK] by Thomas Dixon, a friend of Wilson’s. The President said the production was “like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it’s true.” Others called it “history upside down, complete inversion of historical truth.”

    A representative of the Irish American League proclaimed the production a “disgusting, brutal, libel on the colored people of the country.” Harvard’s President Emeritus Charles Eliot denounced the movie as “false history.”

    ________________________________________

    Seattle Times, November 1991

    Harry Truman, who made civil rights a federal priority for the first time since Reconstruction, expressed strong racist sentiments before, during and after his presidency, a historian says. Although Truman toned down his racist expressions after entering the White House in 1945, he continued to use racial slurs in private conversation for the rest of his life, said William Leuchtenburg, president of the American Historical Association.

    In 1911, the year he turned 27, Truman wrote to his future wife, Bess: “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a n—er or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a n—er from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman.”

    “(Uncle Will) does hate Chinese and Japs,” Truman continued. “So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.”

    More than 25 years later, Truman, then a U.S. senator from Missouri, wrote a letter to his daughter describing waiters at The White House as “an army of coons.” In a letter to his wife in 1939 he referred to “n—er picnic day.”

    Leuchtenburg said recently that some scholars have known about Truman’s racist utterances since his letters were opened. “But somehow,” Leuchtenburg said, “this has not permeated the public consciousness.”

    frontpagemag.com: In his book Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter, James Humes, who penned speeches for five presidents, related a little-known but highly revealing story he heard from the prominent impresario David Susskind. Years after Truman left office, Susskind was working with the former president on a television documentary. Wrote Humes:

    Susskind said that each morning he would arrive at Truman’s house at Independence [Missouri]. He would wait on the porch on a cold February day while Mrs. Truman went to inform her husband of his arrival. After about the fourth morning, he asked the president in his walk why he was never asked inside.

    “You’re a Jew, David, and no Jew has ever been in the house.”

    A nonplussed Susskind replied, “I am amazed that you who recognized Israel and championed the integration of the army would say such a thing!”

    “David,” he explained, “this is not the White House – it’s the Wallace [Bess Truman’s maiden name] house. Bess runs it, and there’s never been a Jew inside the house in her or her mother’s lifetime.”

    _______________________________________

    Larry Patterson [Bill Clinton’s bodyguard in Arkansas] confirmed that he frequently heard Bill Clinton use “n—er” to refer to both Jesse Jackson and local Little Rock black leader Robert “Say” McIntosh. Longtime Clinton paramour Dolly Kyle Browning corroborated Patterson on Clinton’s use of “n—er.” “Not only did he use the ‘N’ word, he called him a ‘GDN’ [goddamn n—er], if you catch my drift,” Browning told Fox News in 1999. [NewsMax, 17 July 2000] Brown also told NewsMax that the president would regularly make derogatory comments about African-Americans in private. “He has used the ‘N’ word before. Bill would make snide remarks about blacks behind their backs.” [Carl Limbacher and NewsMax Staff, 17 July 2000]

    Patterson said Hillary was no stranger to the “N” word either. He heard her say “n—er” “probably six, eight, ten times. She would be upset with someone in the black community and she would use the ‘N’ word, like, you heard they’ve got the president’s brother on tape using the ‘N’ word.” [NewsMax, 17 July 2000]

    ^ These are explicit examples of why I believe that liberalism — and protecting and furthering leftism — is far more important to many on the left than whether its leading adherents (including some of the major figureheads of the Democrat Party in the 20th century) are the biggest phonies on two feet behind closed doors.

    BTW, I think there is something truly deranged when anyone, regardless of his or her politics, can speak as crudely as Truman and Clinton did in private. And there’s something not much less deranged when they can rationalize away their blatant desire to discriminate as Woodrow Wilson did. Wilson, btw, was a big promoter of creating what would have been a predecessor to the UN, referring to the League of Nations. So I believe he generally fancied himself as a do-gooder liberal.

    [note: released from moderation. –Stashiu]

    Mark (411533)

  46. I became a Juan Williams “fan” in 1991 after reading his lengthy defense of Clarence Thomas against the bogus accusations against him.

    But it’s always seemed like there’s two versions of Juan Williams.

    There’s there’s the reasonable man who knows the difference between real racism vs. those who piggyback on the Civil Rights movement for political gain (and who edited the civil rights chapter of Ann Coulter’s latest book)…

    … and the guy who feels a need to recover liberal “street cred” by saying ridiculous things.

    Juan knows better than this.

    NJMark (ebc589)

  47. I agree with Mitch and NJMark.

    This is something we’ll see from the more reasonable lefties who ‘sell out’ by appearing on the ‘wrong’ programs.

    Dustin (401f3a)

  48. I knows what Juan is talking about. I is feeling him.
    I knows code words when I hears them too: like “community” and “folk”. I knows and I hears them Juan

    john b (8662d1)

  49. As long as Juan Williams gets to define what is racism, you just can’t win an argument like that. If the definition of racist is saying something supported by evidence but disliked by the Left, then I guess we’re all racists.

    rochf (f3fbb0)

  50. A very important post, although quite brief.

    This needs to get bounced all over the blogosphere.

    A_Nonny_Mouse (57cacf)

  51. What the?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  52. Juan Williams has always been like this so no he does not know better.

    But thanks for expecting him to be reasonable.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  53. “If you hear “American values” and think “bigot” then the person with the race problem is YOU.”

    What if they’re speaking the language of the ghetto? Or saying they’ll talk about food stamps to the NAACP? It’s not even a code word with some of these nuts.

    hafter (5fb702)

  54. The thing about racial “dog whistles” is only liberals can hear them.

    Then there’s this:

    The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants,

    It’s the illegal immigrant advocates who carefully lump them together with legal immigrants to try to paint conservatives as “anti-immigrant.” Conservatives always are careful to distinguish between people who came here the “right way” and those who came here illegally. But Juan Williams can’t hear those words; I guess they’re pitched too low so he can’t hear them as clearly as the “dog whistles.”

    Herman Cain was right about the brainwashing, but he was wrong to confine it just to blacks. You can see the effects of the same brainwashing on Chris Matthews or, indeed, any opinion show on MSNBC.

    Anyway, you might be a racist if….

    you think it’s OK for the GOP to run any candidate against the historical firstest, bestest, Black President at all!

    Anybody want to take bets that I’m wrong?

    Steve (32257e)

  55. Founding slave owners. Fixed that for you

    Eli Rabett (265174)

  56. I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country,’ Williams said.

    Translation: “I’m not a bigot and the evidence is in my books. So it’s beyond the pale to read anything into my comments. But those klansmen named Romney, Gingrich and Santorum dog whistling up the redneck cracker vote? They’re fair game.”

    BTW, sorry Manfred. I didn’t see your comment @ #43. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said the same thing in my earlier comment.

    I can guarantee it’s a thought that has occurred independently to millions of voters for quite some time all over the country as they watch the media ramp-up the dogwhistlepalooza.

    Maureen Dowd, NYT, talking about what she heard at Obama’s 2009 Health Care speech:

    Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
    But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

    Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/09/13/maureen-dowd-joe-wilsons-you-lie-outburst-all-about-racism#ixzz1l4tGG4t4

    Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC, talking about what she saw at the Brewer-Obama tiff on the tarmac:

    MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: The fact is, when I see that still, I cannot help but to be reminded of the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. And the reason I bring up that image is because what we’ve come to know about Hazel in the years later is that as a young woman, Hazel, the young woman who was screaming at Elizabeth Eckford, was not herself sort of particularly, you know, full of racial animus or anything like that. But she was, she was caught up in this moment of racial anxiety, of making this point against these people who were coming in and trying to force their way into the school, and she sort of enjoyed the show or being able to yell at Elizabeth Eckford in this moment. But that image captured all of the ugliness, all of the nastiness of the larger political milieu, and I feel that this picture does as well.

    Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/01/27/new-msnbc-anchor-likens-brewer-obama-face-1957-integration-confrontat#ixzz1l4tr6QqA

    We used to lock up and medicate people who heard voices in their heads or saw things that weren’t there. Now they get jobs in the media.

    Steve (32257e)

  57. you might be a racist.

    You keep using that word, “might”.

    I do not think it means what you think it means.

    Smock Puppet, 10 Dan Snark Master (8e2a3d)

  58. Eli Rabbett is a fag.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  59. A lit one?

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  60. And why aren’t our coroners being arrested by the feds for malfeasance?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  61. Africa for the Africans,Asia for the Asians,white countries for EVERYBODY!

    Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.

    The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.

    Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.

    What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?

    How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?

    And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?

    But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

    They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.

    Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.

    JakeBennington (3c0695)

  62. Shut up, racist. Not joking this time. Thanks for the reminder that loathsome racists really do exist, they’re not just a bogeyman invented for the purpose of advancing leftist politics.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  63. Founding slave owners. Fixed that for you
    Comment by Eli Rabett — 1/31/2012 @ 1:49 pm

    — Wrong! The men that gave birth to our nation were NOT the first men in history that owned slaves. Sheesh! Ever heard of fact-checking?

    Icy (d5ef49)

  64. Eli Rabbett is a beeyotch.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  65. Exactly we have a paulnut nazi amongst us.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  66. We have more spambots.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)


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