The right kind of racism for 2010

March 22, 2010

The most effective way racists can advance their ugly agendas is to carefully avoid traditional hate speech and, instead, to make adroit use of the bigotry of the day.

For one example, the 16 year-old arrested on March 19 after announcing over a New Jersey store phone, “Attention, Walmart customers: All black people leave the store now,” simply used the wrong technique. Here’s the simple way, using the Walmart example, to accomplish racist goals and win praise from liberals, conservatives, and the courts:

Grab the store phone and announce, “Attention Walmart customers: All persons under age 25 must leave the store now.” Instruct store security to enforce the policy against black people. Toss out a couple of whites if anyone seems to be noticing.

Bingo! Both public and private anti-youth curfews and banishments have been upheld by courts, including the Supreme Court, as proper exercises of state and business authority regardless of how pointless, arbitrary, ineffective, harmful… or even racist in practical enforcement. Indeed, many youth curfews in communities and malls have been established with the thinly veiled purpose of banishing black and Hispanic youth from areas where their presence might make whites nervous (see Males, M., “The New Bull Connors,” Youth Today, February 2007). Instead of issuing epithets, the press, politicians, and other commentators will praise racism framed as anti-youth measures.

For a similar example, had some politically attuned commentator rephrased white, former “shock jock” Don Imus’ April 4, 2007, “nappy-headed ho’s” slur against the Rutgers University girls’ basketball team in proper PC-speak (i.e., “Young African American women afflicted with promiscuity and pseudo-native hairstyles promoted by corporate media”)—that is, nappy-headed ho’s—he would have been hailed as a courageous culture critic like Bill Cosby has been.