Jimmy Carter and racism debate

ONCE AGAIN, MEDIA OUTLETS AVOID DISCUSSION OF RACISM
INACCURATE REPORTING CREATES FUROR


By MC Burton

The headlines on September 16, 2009 were predictable:
· “Jimmy Carter says racism behind animosity to Obama.” (Washington Post)
· “Racism behind anger toward Obama: Carter.” (AFP)
· “Are Obama’s critics racist? Jimmy Carter thinks so.” (L.A. Times)
· “Carter blames racism for anger against Obama” (NBC News)
· “Carter’s ‘racism’ claim draws widespread criticism.” (FOX News)

Contentious stuff – a former president claiming racism is behind the motives of those who disagree with the current president. There’s only one problem: He didn’t say that.
In an interview with a NBC reporter on September 15, Former President Jimmy Carter said this:
“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American,” Carter said. “Racism…still exists and I think it has bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply,” he said.
If you read that statement closely, the former president did not say that the majority of people who oppose the current Administration’s policies are racist. He did not even say the people out in the picket lines and demonstrating against the president are racists. What he said was that the majority of the most extreme protests – the most “intensely demonstrated animosity,” have an underpinning of racism. This is an important distinction the mainstream media missed, and I believe they intentionally missed it to create confusion and avoid dealing with the issue they’ve skirted around and marginalized since the presidential primaries.
Although MSNBC did not release the full interview with Carter, it set the tone for how the other mainstream news outlets handled the story. The network news editors framed the story as that of a controversial politician who invoked racism to “discredit the critics” of the current president. NBC’s Matt Williams acted shocked and chagrined at Carter’s comments: “Why does race have to be made part of it (the public debate over healthcare)?” he asked. NBC’s White House correspondent called the remarks “pretty striking” and reported it purely in terms of how the White House would respond.
Most other news outlets followed suit and framed the issue as a political one the White House had to address. Many, like Johanna Neuman in the LA Times, reported the comments even more out-of-context, leaving off the key words in Carter’s sentence (“the most intensely demonstrated animosity’) in lead paragraphs.
Because of the way it framed the issue, the media expanded the already fractured schism between political opponents and further eroded open dialogue that is needed in this country. Janet Daily in the Daily Telegraph wrote that Carter “made an outrageous, unfounded, and potentially inflammatory remark about race.” Bloggers were incensed, writing comments such as this: “If you don’t agree with blacks, you are a racist!? Thank you, Mister Carter, for downgrading the USA!”
Most Democrats quickly downplayed Carter’s remarks under a furor of criticism. Then the media moved on to cover the controversy it created by its inaccurate reporting. The cycle helps declining circulation and low network news ratings, while fueling partisan agitators on the Internet. This allows national reporters to keep failing to address the issue of racism that is still prevalent and is growing more open by the day.
Around the country, protest groups are marching with placards of President Obama in white face (as the Joker from the last Batman movie), signs saying he should ‘go back to Africa,’ and constant references about his “dubious” U.S. citizenship. At a recent protest rally in Washington, protestors paraded the streets with signs that read “Obama is a Muslim,” “Obama is the AntiChrist,” “The zoo has an African (picture of a lion) and the White House has a lyin’African,” and “Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy.” Over the Internet, emails and web blogs compare the president or his wife to a monkey. T-shirts are sold with Obama’s image that says “Somewhere in Kenya or Indonesia, a village is missing its idiot.”
Hate speech on talk radio has emboldened many of these bigots. Remember when Rush Limbaugh played a song called “Barack the Magic Negro” on his radio show during the primary campaign? The song was the brainchild of Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman, former national campaign manager for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who sent it to Republican National Committee members as a Christmas present. He defended the tape as satire.
Since prejudice is no longer underground, it is easier for the extreme zealots to express their views overtly in the debate over healthcare reform. For example, Rep. David Scott of Georgia received emails and faxes from his constituents that were tinged with racial hatred. One fax used the common image of Obama as the joker, this time with the hammer and sickle stamped across his forehead, with the message: “Death to Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!” Below that, it addressed the Congressman directly with a variation of the ‘n’ word before rattling off a lengthy diatribe which included this phrase: “The folks are not going to stand for socialized medicine even though most Negros (sic) refuse to stand on their own two feet.”
A friend of mine is an editor of a community newspaper in Louisiana. The main reason for the extreme vitriol against President Obama, he says, is due to racism.
“I grew up in Jim Crow times, and I know all the all code words, and I hear them here. It is so sad. This whole thing with his speech to school kids is not about socialism or indoctrination. A lot of these parents just don’t want a black person telling their kids what to do. It’s sad. I thought this country had gotten over all that. I may be talking through my hat here, but I can’t help but see it this way.”
Jimmy Carter is right. Much of the criticism of the president is beyond the bounds of acceptable political discourse, something no other president has encountered. Why was he excoriated for saying the obvious – that the radical fringe element of the Republican Party is influenced by deep-seated racial fears and animosity? Those who accuse our president as being un-American, a terrorist, a Muslim, an Arab, or something less than a person are not attacking his policies, they are attacking something else, and we have a name for that behavior– racism.

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