Operation: Uncle Ruckus
I don't think Sen. Hillary Clinton or former President Bill Clinton are racists. I don't believe that the higher-ups in their campaign are racist. But I do think that they realize that there are enough voters in America (whether Democrat, Republican or Independent) that are somewhere between "fearful of minorities" to "overtly racist" who can help them win the Democratic nomination.
Racism is something born of fear, hatred and misinformation. Some people fear that black people will rob them, kill them, and/or rape them. Some people hate the fact that there are rules that essentially say that if two equally qualified persons apply for a job and one is black and one is white, that the black person should get the job. Some people have the misconception that chicken and watermelon are a crucial part of a black person's diet, that black people cannot swim, and that black people lack the intellectual capacity to do anything beyond physical labor.
Nevertheless, many these people still have the legal right to participate in the electoral process. So the question remains: "How does one channel those votes without coming across as racist?" Well, one way is to invoke something else that, like racism, is born of fear, hatred and misinformation. Another way is to use a code, something that has the connotation of saying, "race is a factor" without explicitly saying that race is a factor.
Which brings me to the Boondocks character known as "Uncle Ruckus." In the very first episode of the TV show, the Freeman Family move to a new neighborhood and are introduced to Uncle Ruckus: a bombastic, self-loathing man of color. Upon meeting the Freemans, Ruckus goes off, seeing them as a threat to the predominately white community. To his dismay, the townspeople are so preoccupied with their own privileged lives issue of race barely concern them, so Uncle Ruckus decides: to take matters into his own hands:
Now, with Uncle Ruckus, the goal was obvious: paint the Freemans as untrustworthy. The best way to do that was to label them as "new," meaning, "You may have met black people before; even hung out with one or two...but these new black people are nothing but trouble."
Nothing Camp Clinton has done is as overt as Uncle Ruckus' "song," but in politics subtlety is the name of the game. Looking at the infamous 3AM ad:
I can't help but see a similar message being relayed: "It's not that Barack is black, it's that he's the new black guy, and we shouldn't put our trust in the new black guy with so much at stake." Notice that the family isn't black, Latino, Asian or interracial; they're all white. And it's no coincidence that Clinton's strongest demographic is old white women, a group that's prone to being susceptible to such imagery.
If Obama was a white guy with the name "Tom Franklin," there's no way this ad works (just like the "Playboy Mansion" ad in Tennessee wouldn't have worked on Harold Ford Jr.).
Racism is something born of fear, hatred and misinformation. Some people fear that black people will rob them, kill them, and/or rape them. Some people hate the fact that there are rules that essentially say that if two equally qualified persons apply for a job and one is black and one is white, that the black person should get the job. Some people have the misconception that chicken and watermelon are a crucial part of a black person's diet, that black people cannot swim, and that black people lack the intellectual capacity to do anything beyond physical labor.
Nevertheless, many these people still have the legal right to participate in the electoral process. So the question remains: "How does one channel those votes without coming across as racist?" Well, one way is to invoke something else that, like racism, is born of fear, hatred and misinformation. Another way is to use a code, something that has the connotation of saying, "race is a factor" without explicitly saying that race is a factor.
Which brings me to the Boondocks character known as "Uncle Ruckus." In the very first episode of the TV show, the Freeman Family move to a new neighborhood and are introduced to Uncle Ruckus: a bombastic, self-loathing man of color. Upon meeting the Freemans, Ruckus goes off, seeing them as a threat to the predominately white community. To his dismay, the townspeople are so preoccupied with their own privileged lives issue of race barely concern them, so Uncle Ruckus decides: to take matters into his own hands:
Now, with Uncle Ruckus, the goal was obvious: paint the Freemans as untrustworthy. The best way to do that was to label them as "new," meaning, "You may have met black people before; even hung out with one or two...but these new black people are nothing but trouble."
Nothing Camp Clinton has done is as overt as Uncle Ruckus' "song," but in politics subtlety is the name of the game. Looking at the infamous 3AM ad:
I can't help but see a similar message being relayed: "It's not that Barack is black, it's that he's the new black guy, and we shouldn't put our trust in the new black guy with so much at stake." Notice that the family isn't black, Latino, Asian or interracial; they're all white. And it's no coincidence that Clinton's strongest demographic is old white women, a group that's prone to being susceptible to such imagery.
If Obama was a white guy with the name "Tom Franklin," there's no way this ad works (just like the "Playboy Mansion" ad in Tennessee wouldn't have worked on Harold Ford Jr.).
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