Nobody is a racist

[randy_byers]

Obama rubs the Hortons the wrong way because they think he's arrogant. It's the same thing you hear from voters in a lot of the parts of the country where Obama's infamous remarks about bitterness would probably also apply. But that's not his only problem in rural West Virginia. "They won't go for a black man, that's just it," R.K. Horton, a retired heating and air conditioning business owner, said of his neighbors. "I don't think it's being racist necessarily, they just don't like black people that well." For that matter, it's not just his neighbors. "The arrogance and all that bothers me more than black, but black is a close second," he said. "Our generation was back when blacks were the back of the bus, and it's hard to change that outlook. I just feel like I couldn't vote for him."

-- from Can Barack Obama win in West Virginia? in Salon

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to step very carefully in this here minefield here: if you have any southern background at all, these remarks sound very different. My late grandmother (born in Alabama, raised in Georgia, lived in Florida for the rest of her life, from 17 to 87, except for about 45 years that hardly counted in Ohio) eplained to me once, near the end of her life, that when she was young, they were Negroes (and then she explained that in her family, they never used the vulgar term because it was vulgar). Then they became colored people, and they stayed colored people for many years. Toward the end of her life, they became blacks or Blacks or African Americans, and then toward the true end of her life, as she had more and more medical care, much of it provided by people of color, they really became people to her, people she liked, respected, and trusted with her life, and she understood as she never had before what had been so wrong about how she had seen them for the first 80 years of her life.

That's a long, long journey.

How I read Mr. Horton's remarks: he's come far enough on that journey that he sees blacks as people, even if he doesn't like, respect, or trust them with his life. He may not travel as far along that road as my grandmother did, but he's a lot further along it now than she was at his age, and that in turn gives me some hope for the South.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I think that's a good way to make sense of what appears to be a self-contradicting remark on Mr. Horton's part. However, I do think it's self-evidently a racist attitude, even if it's trying not to be. But I have to admit that I get very confused by some of the discussion of, say, Geraldine Ferraro's remarks about Obama and race ("he only got this far because he's black" and "they're attacking me because I'm white"), which seemed to be clearly racist to me and yet apparently don't seem that way to lots of people I respect.

There's no doubt it's a complicated subject, and I'm resisting the urge to write about the first time I saw a black woman as a child visiting Denver from lily-white Oregon, or about the idiotically racist thing I once said in front of the one black guy in my high school class of 400. Or for that matter what it felt like to be the only white kid in my elementary school classes out on Yap.

I will say, however, that one of the many things that excites me about Obama's candidacy is that I think we may finally see a presidency that doesn't need Mr. Horton's vote. (Which Bill Clinton *did* need, for example.)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course it's a racist attitude. And also of course saying that something is better than it used to be is not to say that it's good, or that it can stop there, or that it's close to okay.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

By the way, here's some more nuance from a WV electoral projection by Poblano (which I discovered via DailyKos):

I do want to write a little bit more about the notion that West Virginians are racist. The longer version will have to wait until later today or tomorrow. But the short version is: yes, there are racist voters in West Virginia, but there are racist voters in every state. The primary determinant of the extent to which racism tends to be more manifest is education levels, and so the effects may be more noticeable in West Virgnia, a state with poor academic achievement. But there is no reason to believe that West Virgnians are particularly racist, relative to their education levels.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I suspect that Mr Horton defines "racist" as meaning that you hate black people rather than just thinking they're inferior. As you say, it's an attitude that takes a very long time and some personal circumstances to change.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's a very succinct way to put it. He explicitly opposes "racist" with "not liking that well," so it would make sense that racist=hatred in his formula, with "not liking that well" being less extreme in his view.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Well explained. My late grandmother (b. 1892) was from and lived most of her life southern Missouri, although she lived a long while in Southern Kansas. Her attitude was much the same, but she never got to the point where people who were not white were people, as far as I know. Your grandmother made a very long journey that most people do not make.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

That's beautifully told and full of insight, Kate. Thank you.