People for the American Way
Right Plays the Race Card :
Right Wing Leaders Foment Racial Resentment and Point Fingers to Avoid Accountabilityhttp://site.pfaw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=rww_in_focus_right_plays_race_cardAt the recent How to Take Back America conference organized by far-right doyenne Phyllis Schlafly and her heir-apparent,right-wing radio host and activist Janet Folger Porter, a panelist attacked health care reform saying it would amount to a reenactment of slavery by our first black president, this time with doctors being enslaved. Bishop Harry Jackson, the Religious Right's favorite African American minister, has denounced health care reform proposals that he claims would divert health care resources from wealthier to poorer Americans as "reverse classism."
Two academics, Marc Hetherington of Vanderbilt University and Jonathan Weiler of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently found an "extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform," a relationship that did not exist during the Clinton health care debate.
Blaming the Black Church for the Obama 'Curse'Religious Right leaders have long tried to build alliances with the Black Church by focusing on areas in which many churchgoing African Americans hold more conservative views than many of their progressive political allies. But in a strange twist on this strategy, some Religious Right leaders, black and white, are suggesting that Black churchgoers must repent for having voted for Obama. Before the election, Bishop Harry Jackson and others suggested that voting for Obama would be voting against God. But because America did elect Obama, the nation is now living under a curse, declares Janet Porter, and America must repent. At How to Take Back America, Porter recounted the story of attending a showing of a new "documentary" portraying legal abortion as black genocide, after which a speaker urged people to confess if they had voted for pro-choice candidates like President Obama. An African American woman, Porter says, rose and prayed, "Forgive me Lord, for putting race over you."
Other race or race-coded strategies from the Right
The "birther" movement - the ongoing theory and ludicrous legal campaign alleging that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not a legitimate president - is all about portraying the president as an African usurper, not one of us. While some right-wing pundits and political leaders have distanced themselves from the "birthers," there has been no real fallout for those who continue to insinuate that Obama is not an American: birther Janet Porter was recently lavished with praise by presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee and members of Congress who attended her conference.
Another thread of right-wing attacks on Obama is that his Christianity is a fraudulent cover and that he is a secret Muslim. Author Frank Gaffney, also welcomed at conservative political conferences, has even accused Obama of sending coded signals to Muslim extremists indicating that he's willing to accept Sharia law (of course this anti-Obama theory is wildly inconsistent with right-wing complaints about Obama's support for LGBT equality, but that's never been a problem for the Right). The depth of anti-Muslim hostility and hysteria were reflected in wildly inflammatory charges that the Council on American Islamic Relations was infiltrating Congress with spies and putting national security at risk, all based on an organizational memo that it was seeking to place young people in internship positions.
Still another theme is the return of "states' rights" on steroids, such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry earlier this year suggesting that Texas should consider seceding.
Other Racial Politics on the RightIn addition to the multiple-front efforts to diminish support for the Obama administration by fanning racial resentment among working class white Americans, Religious Right leaders continue to wage wedge campaigns designed to use issues like abortion and marriage equality to try to divide churchgoing African Americans from the progressive movement. Of course, it's a challenge to pursue both strategies simultaneously. Thus we were treated to the somewhat astonishing display of Harry Jackson pleading with right-wing activists at the Values Voters Summit to stop sounding so racist in their attacks on Obama because it was getting in the way of his ability to mobilize black clergy for his anti-gay campaign in the District of Columbia-a campaign which itself fans racial and class divisions in an effort to defeat marriage equality.
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