About Racism: First When It Isn't Then When It Is

IF GOVERNOR JANET MILLS of my state follows through and does what she proposes her explanation of her controversial veto of, LD 2004,  concerning the status in relation to the Federal Goverment of Native American Tribes in Maine, her veto will be proven to have been made in good faith.

In her statement about her veto she said,  "I want to focus on the specific problems and the specific Federal laws the Tribes may not be benefiting from, and work together with them and Maine’s Congressional Delegation, and make those laws apply where we think they make sense,"

The purpose of the bill was, as she put it, "ensuring the Wabanaki Nations can access benefits that are generally available to other Federally recognized Tribes."  While I agree with the intention of the legislation and was initially very angry that she vetoed it, if she sincerely tries to do what the bill intended while avoiding the legal tangles she said would come of it as written, that would be to the good of everyone.  The outcome of the landmark 1980 settlement with the Tribes in Maine does, in fact, make things somewhat different and more complicated in Maine than it would otherwise be.  Though we will have to see how this works out, too.

The comment I heard from another person angry about the veto attributed to her the racism against indigenous people which is shockingly present in much of Maine.  But that is contradicted by the other bills she did sign into law last week but which the media has not concentrated on nearly as much:

"I signed into law the historic Mi’kmaq Restoration Act to extend to the Mi’kmaq Nation the same rights and benefits enjoyed by other Wabanaki Nations in Maine. I signed into law the Maine Indian Child Welfare Act to preserve the rights of Indian families during custody and child welfare proceedings involving Indian children. And I signed into law An Act Regarding the Maine Indian Tribal State Commission to improve the functioning of the Commission at the request of the Tribes and legislative leadership."

The electronic media in Maine, including public radio and TV, is mostly controlled by partisan Republicans, so it's not surprising that they would try to discredit her with her constituents, though the Republicans they support would almost certainly never have signed the law she vetoed, either. I doubt under Republicans as they are today any of those laws would have been adopted.

I don't think attributing to her the often crude racism that I heard on the playground in Southern Maine when I was a kid is valid on that basis.  The points she made in her explanation of the veto are things that an experienced lawyer like her is would think of.  Those wouldn't occur to most non-lawyers, even those in the legislature who supported the bill as it was written.  As she explains herself, though, and if she really does want to do what the bill intended while avoiding the problems she anticipates, she will try to pass a bill as soon as possible which will do that.  

After suffering through the putrid two terms of the vile and flagrantly racist Paul LePage, the incompetent Jock McKernan, I've had so many instances to be grateful we had her as governor instead of the alternatives, especially during Covid, that I'm willing to see if she does or just tries to do what she committed herself to doing.  I am certain that now that she has said that's what she wants to do, that she will carry through, though its success depends on the others working toward that end, as well.

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Thinking about this in the wake of the Roberts Court's recent actions, especially the comment on the flagrant racism that is too common in Maine, remembering how shocked I was to hear not only university students at the University of Maine but, also, white collar professionals, particularly from Northern Maine sounding like the crude little brats I used to hear spouting racism on the playground when I was a kid, it got me thinking about the stereotype of "racist white trash," and how it stigmatizes poor white people as a group while letting off the worst racists who are affluent and who never use racist language, themselves.

Some of those who always have a clean shirt on and who would never use a racial invective are, in fact BY THEIR PROFESSIONAL ACTIONS the most damaging racists there are.

John Roberts and his Supreme Court Colleagues by destroying the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action have done more to harm more Black People, Native Americans, and members of other discriminated against minorities than all of the crude blue collar and near destitute racists I've ever heard in my lifetime combined.  And it should never be forgotten that not all of those who did that were Southerners like Roberts.  Some of the worst have been from the North East, Mid-West and West, though all of them on the Court had an Ivy League, prep-school education.  If they didn't start out as affluent and privileged, they certainly worked or pimped themselves to attain that status.  None of them started off as poor or destitute, they got their vicious racism from those with money, probably all or most of them had been to elite schools.  Much of the racism most vicious in its impact is as thoroughly genteel as can be.

I think Roberts, Alito, George H W Bush,* . . . certainly should be thought of as "rich white trash" or some other such construction.  Rich whites are a smaller group than poor whites and far more accepting of the racists among them so why shouldn't they all suffer that stigma?  They've certain escaped the stigma of "white trash" through being considered to be well spoken and educationally credentialed -it is worth wondering why anyone would consider a racist lie delivered in proper English as being "well spoken"** - and affluent and successful in their elite careers, though there are certainly those who have made that THE major focus of their professional lives.

Much of the media who have promoted racism, paving the way for the Roberts Court destruction of the legal progress against racism are as worth thinking of as "rich white trash" because the media, especially the entertainment division of it, is pervaded by racism.  Some of it is overt though much of it is somewhat covert.  The racist history of The New Republic has been commented on extensively though I would doubt there are many long standing media companies which don't have at least a significant record of racism, as well.  The news divisions of all of the networks certainly have questionable practices in their past and many in their present.  Though, of course, few can match the record of FOX New. . . no, as proven by their recent massive libel settlement they should forever more be called "FOX Lies," CNN and the past of even the far improved MSNBC.  Even PBS and NPR which have featured such genteel ones as William F. Buckley and at least such rich ones as Tucker Carlson, so them too.  The cabloids and the current "conservative" media are a throwback to the worst of our media past and they have certainly brought the rest of it along to more and lesser extents.  The direction the corporate media can generally be counted on to take only goes down. That some of them, like the rich white trash Republican criminals who put Clarence Thomas on the court, have hired black faces to deliver their racism, that is a long standing practice of white supremacy in America just as male supremacy has often solicited females to reinforce the worst of misogyny to the public.

I think, given the long history of both promoting racism among "poor white trash" by writers, playwrights, screen writers, directors, producers, etc.*** who certainly have promoted it as the way to be for poor whites (all those "redneck" movies which inevitably featured the American swastika, the Confederate flag) and who, then, use that stereotype as a cover for the really effective white racism among the affluent, the powerful, the white collar professionals, owe it to us to really do a deep and long investigation into the John Roberts, Bush family, Ivy League racists.   

They certainly have promoted racism to, especially, the white middle class as well.  If they hadn't paved the way Trump would never have gotten out of the criminal rackets where he and his father prospered. And by them I would include the owners and producers of the New York Times and other media in the North East who publicized Trump and thereby sold Trumpism to the country.   His style was sold to his cult by the media, to start with, just as that of Ronald Reagan - certainly another major figure in the revival of rich white trash racism - they were sold through the media, entertainment and the "news" divisions, too.   

*  Just off the top of my head, Charles Murray, Marty Perez, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney-Barrett, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron Desantis, . . . pretty much anyone prominent in the Republican Party and in most of the conservative and in most of the "moderate" media.  I doubt a real anti-racist could remain there long because they couldn't agree to cover up for their colleagues, and, more so, their bosses. They'd get fired if they didn't quit or leave the party or company in disgust.  They probably wouldn't be able to stand working in Hollywood, though so many swallow their mildly held morals for the money there.

** It's worth considering how any kind of well-spoken racism would be considered intellectually or academically respectable and deserving of the bestowal of respectability, such as that given to those credentialed by the grad schools and law schools of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc."  Academic racism is pervasive, I know it is at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc. though that's only through familiarity with their faculties and what they and their alums and faculties write.  The racism in academic guise, the social sciences, etc. is some of the most damaging exactly because it is camouflaged in language that's supposed to mark something as more worthy of belief.  Hardly anyone mistakes it for what it is when it's expressed in non-standard grammar and avoids crude words but sell it as scholarship or science and even those tending towards non-racism are suckers for it.  I think the way that "academic freedom" functions as a protection for racism is certainly worthy of some academic attention.  Such freedoms can cut both ways, the freedom allowed promote racism is certainly cannot morally protected from the informed criticism of it.

Though there are certainly anti-racists who can, somehow, stand working at or going through the Ivies.  It has to come as a shock to them as much as it was to me as a student at the University of Southern Maine a half a century ago.

*** It's such a staple of entertainment media that it's used by self-regarded  liberal anti-racists in the media who think they can diminish it by ridiculing "white trash." It was intended to be that by those who did "All In The Family" though they  never noticed it doesn't work to do that.  No more so than the similar show biz insulting stereotyping of "Amos and Andy" changed anyone's behavior. If you want to point out that Amos and Andy were done by white people presenting negative stereotypes, well, those who produced All In The Family considered themselves outsiders of the milieu they ridiculed, too. The constructive use of comedy as a means of social, political and legal reform is one of the most extravagantly proclaimed and fervently believed in myths current among academically credentialed suckers.

When you present that kind of stereotype to even the comparatively privileged poor whites, you give those among them so disposed the permission to repeat what they hear and expand on it even as it provokes their resentment of the mostly wealthier white guys who ridicule them.  I don't think there is any great mystery in why the expression of racism in America became MORE regularized and steadily rose in frequency for the more than fifty years after All In The Family aired. It was either entirely ineffective in its intentions or it actually was counterproductive.  Media works to peddle anything, especially bad things.  Even what is promoted between commercials. Even what is unintended by those who write it.  Comedians aren't generally the brightest bulbs, I learned that when I heard the playground comics of my childhood mentioned above.