Racism
In an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric last week, Glenn Beck refused a viewer’s request that he explain a phrase he used in July when he proclaimed Pres. Obama to be a racist.
As a refresher, here’s what Beck said on Fox & Friends:
“This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” Beck said. “I don’t know what it is.”
Following up on Beck’s ridiculous claim, Fox’s Brian Kilmeade pointed out that Obama is surrounded by white advisers like David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people,” Beck said. “I’m saying he has a problem. He has a — this guy is, I believe, a racist.”
(It’s strange that Kilmeade brought up Obama’s advisors but failed to note that Obama was raised in white household for most of his life.)
In the Couric interview, the viewer asked Beck to define what he meant by “white culture,” but he refused. Why? Because while “white culture” can refer to any number of things in our society — including the funny site Stuff White People Like — the term is most closely associated with the white supremacist movement.
In fact, “white culture” is what the Klan and the Neo-Nazis say they are ready to protect using any means necessary, up to and including bloodshed.
When confronted with his own words, Beck squirms as he tries to outmaneuver Couric with cameras rolling because he knows he’s been found out. As has been clear from the outset of this scandal, when Beck called the president a racist, he was projecting.
The problem here, of course, is that Beck is a mess. In both the Fox & Friends and Couric interviews, he comes off as a big, stammering dumbass. But is that who he really is, or — as is more likely — is he sending dog-whistle messages of solidarity to the Republican racist base?
Here’s the transcript of the question from the Couric interview:
COURIC: A twitter question is, adrianinflorida: what do you mean by white culture?
BECK: Um, I, I don’t…
COURIC: You said he had a deep-seated hatred for the white culture, what is that? What is the white culture?
BECK: I guess it’s…gosh. I’m so tempted to make news here today.
COURIC: No no, I’m just curious, this was actually adrianinflorida.
BECK: What to do? What to do? Adrian, Go to glennbeck.com. Listen to it. You can hear all of it.
COURIC: No, but you didn’t really address white culture, I think, in your explanation about President Obama, I haven’t seen the whole show, but can you? Just for our purposes?
BECK: Just for your purposes? So this will be a little secret between us?
COURIC: No, for this show, can you explain what you mean by the white culture? Because some people say that sounds kind of racist.
BECK: Really? It’s amazing to me that, for the first time, I think in history somebody can ask a question and say, “Don’t you think that maybe we have several pieces here?” We have several pieces; George Bush says my grandmother was a typical African-American that had, that had her views bred into her. You don’t think maybe we would ask questions about that comment? How is it that the first time I think in history, you should check on it, somebody says, “Hey. There’s some red flags here maybe we should look at?” … How am I? How am I the target for asking questions?
COURIC: People just want to know. What is white culture?
BECK: I’m going to see if I can play your game. People just want to know.
COURIC: You know, well, Adrian wants to know.
BECK: That’s good for Adrian.
COURIC: No but I mean it’s fine if you make a statement though, shouldn’t you be able to defend exactly what you mean by it. I’m not –
BECK: Katie, how many times have you said, how many times have you said something where you’re like, “I didn’t think. What’s white culture? I don’t know. What’s the white culture?”
What? What is the white culture? I don’t know how to answer that that’s not a trap.
COURIC: Mhmm.
BECK: You know what I mean?
COURIC: Yeah I’m not, I’m just, I’m not trying to trap you, I’m just, I think people wanted to know what that meant exactly.
BECK: Well we know Adrian does.
COURIC: Yeah, and you’re not going to answer her?
BECK: I’m not going to get into your sound bite gotcha game which we already are. We already are.
COURIC: No we’re actually, this is completely unedited so if you felt like you wanted to explain it, you have all the time in the world.
BECK: Mhmm.
COURIC: No? Don’t want to go there?
BECK: Nope.
COURIC: But basically, you stand behind your assertion that in your view, President Obama is a racist.
BECK: I believe that Americans should ask themselves tough questions. Americans should turn over all the rocks and make their own decisions.
Topics: Racism
I think what Mr. Beck means by white culture is the practice of oppressing minorities through extermination (American Indians), lynching (African Americans), demonization (non-Christians) and deportation (immigrants). Am I missing anything, Mr. Beck?
Perhaps he means that they don’t have multiple babies with multiple fathers, live on welfare, do crack and vote 95% for the candidate who is their own race in the Democratic primary?
Hey, buffoon, blacks have been consistently voting for white democrats in excess of 94% for decades. You are part of the problem.
There were only two candidates, one Republican and one Democrat. I really don’t think the math is that complex.
Um, John Doe, your sheets are showing. But thanks for confirming that Beck and his followers are racists.
There are more poor white on welfare than black actually.
John Doe, I would venture to guess that if voting for the candidate who is your own race in primaries is any indicator of a stereotype, then you have probably never broken through.
What’s Beck’s problem? He said it on national TV and now he’s too cowardly to back it up? With Katie Couric, no less? Give me a break, he’s just a wuss!
What Beckkk means by “white culture” (but can’t bring himself to say out loud) is WHEN WHITE PEOPLE RUN EVERYTHING AND BLACK PEOPLE STFU.
No half-black presidents. None of that aggravating hippety-hoppity music playing where the white man can hear it — just Perry Como and Elvis. No uppity minorities demanding to eat at the same lunch counter as whitey (except there ARE no more lunch counters — they’ve all been converted into corporate-owned plasticfast-food franchises.)
“White culture” for Beckkk and his moran minions means “whatever the white man says, goes” and blacks/Mexicans/other minorities/women have nothing to say. Just like it was in the good old days of the 1920s, when white men could wear sheets over their heads and kkkarry guns as they walkkked in parades through Washington, D.C.
In fact, let’s spell the phrase like Beckkk means it: “White KKKultur.” (Linguistic nod to the 1930s Germans there — the real “white culture” Beckkk yearns for…)
This entire debate is disappointingly thin.
In a cursory web scan of dominant American news coverage, I was not able to find one instance of intelligent opposition to the terms “African American Community” “Black America” or a half dozen equally divisive and equally incomplete phrases. We are more comfortable with framing a “Black Culture” wherein we define an amoebic boundary set loosely along the borders of the civil right’s movement and almost exclusively within the scope of socio-economic and racial oppression and division. Within that boundary set, which we don’t mind considering separately from the broader American story, we don’t tend to be uncomfortable with the idea that the “black community”, for lack of useful vocabulary, has a somewhat defined differentiation between what is inside and outside of the African American experience. More simply, we are not upset if a Black representative alludes to a White America.
To admit this, simply accepts that race IS still an issue in America, which, in reading this article and the subsequent comments, is not a startling revelation.
Here is where I’m most concerned, and don’t mistake this position as a defense of Beck, whose stance is VERY poorly constructed and booby trapped against him. We don’t mind, not really, when a black representative speaks divisively even when it does not advance the dialog on American race issues. However, if a white man alludes to the notion that he is aware of an existing division in the American landscape, the blogosphere, main-stream media, and every dolt in America with web access will Burn…..Him….Alive.
Is Beck completely failed in his attempts to target this issue effectively? ABSOLUTELY! Is he a coward for recognizing that any discussion on race is not safe for a white man in America? No. We will end him on this issue and feel righteous in doing so, as though we are safeguarding equality.
rac·ism (noun)
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
Beck, Obama, and all of you are absolutely and consistently aware that there is a division amongst MANY peoples in America. This is NOT racism. It is fact. If we constantly pretend the contrary, actual racism continues in the backstreets of America with NO MEANINGFUL DIALOG.
A woman said to me recently “I’m not racist, but I wouldn’t go into a black neighborhood at night….you know, not because they are black, it’s just that the crime rates are so high, you know, people do what they have to do when they are poor.”
Now, instead of lynching, we quietly sift off into silent segregation and mutter about one another under our breaths, all the while congratulating ourselves on our own enlightened thinking.
Pardon the tirade everyone, but I wanted to append my last comment with:
We, the presumed free-thinking people of this country, continually present ourselves as though we have clear and authoritative views on race and what the current state of race relations actually is.
Let’s agree, here in this random shared web space, that we catastrophically DO NOT. We don’t have a shared understanding of this issue, and should employ our shared communications towards actually ASKING BETTER QUESTIONS, instead of dumping mounds of Information Noise onto the pile of existing broken dialog.
Otherwise, please apply your surplus keystrokes towards something less counterproductive. Take them out of the dialog that you actually are not contributing to. You…Do…Harm..by opening your mouths.
Jason: You have completely missed the point. “White culture” can mean a lot of things but among Neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists, it is a coded reference to the primacy of Caucasians.
These folks believe that both the white race and “white culture” are at risk. They have shed blood to “save” them, and will undoubtedly do so again, especially if they get encouragement from right-wing establishment media figures like Glenn Beck.
If there is a debate here it’s whether Beck half-wittedly blurted out the phrase, thinking he meant that the president hated high-fivin’, beer bongs, Lawrence Welk, bingo parlors, casseroles and other stereotypical representations of the “white culture” — the same culture in which Obama was raised — or whether Beck used the phrase as a sub rosa show of solidarity with the American right’s violent racist base.
But there really is no debate. Beck’s refusal to say what “white culture” is makes it crystal clear what he meant.
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