Who Is the Person of Color in Mark Meadows Family
(CNN)A white man who helped spread the racist conspiracy that Barack Obama wasn't really American put a blackness adult female on display, as though at a slave auction, to defend the white man who did more than than anyone else to take birtherism national against legitimate charges of racism. And then, that white man reacted with outrage and hurt when a adult female of color called him out for what he had washed.
Though Northward Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said Th he does not back up his 2012 comments about sending and so-President Obama "back to Kenya," his stunt during Wednesday's public hearing with Michael Cohen wasn't the most revealing moment of the ugliness and complication of American racial politics that unfolded before the House Commission on Oversight and Reform on Midweek.
The most illuminating moment came later Meadows told Lynne Patton, a HUD official, to stand up like a mute prop so he could literally point to her presence to declare that President Donald Trump couldn't be racist because a blackness woman similar Patton likes Trump. Information technology was when Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, a black man, felt the demand to call Meadows a good friend and got a Palestinian-American woman, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, to say that though she was criticizing Meadows' behavior, she wasn't claiming he was a racist.
The scene harkened back to what was a frequent occurrence in the antebellum South to what historians sometimes refer to as the "Magnolia" and "Sable" curtains of race relations. Though information technology was a fourth dimension when white people utterly dehumanized blackness people, white people besides convinced themselves that black people believed they were beloved members of the white family and appreciated the guidance of their wiser, more moral counterparts. That prevarication could but exist sustained with the cooperation of black people, who went along with the ruse mostly to fend off white fears about slave rebellions. Patton's role was peculiarly instructive, given that she willingly went along with Meadows' disgusting act.
Literal slavery wasn't at pale Wednesday, of class. But the exchange, in which Meadows loudly cried foul, said he had black family members and that Cummings was a good friend even after Meadows had -- as Tlaib rightly pointed out -- just committed an ugly, racist act in the committee room, is the latest example of the racial divide that remains in effect in the United States more than than a century and a half afterwards the Ceremonious War.
Information technology'due south no coincidence that Meadows represents Northward Carolina, where I, too, have lived and where that uneasy existence has never not been in upshot -- it's only changed forms. That's why, as crazy every bit it might sound to rational-thinking Americans, Meadows likely genuinely felt hurt past charges of racism, even though he was caught on video multiple times during the 2012 ballot cycle talking about sending Obama dorsum to Republic of kenya and is one of the most loftier-profile members of a Republican Party that with "almost surgical precision" (in the words of the appellate judges who struck them down as unconstitutional) crafted laws to brand it harder for black people to vote.
In Meadows' thinking, yous tin can do all that and still not take a "racial bone" in your body -- as long as you have a black person or three to trot out when necessary to vouch for your "good white homo" bona fides. I empathise it, because for a long time, I was 1 of those blackness people trotted out past supposed white friends who invoked my name any fourth dimension someone called them racist, including my well-nigh two-decade-long membership in a by and large white evangelical church building.
And I used to let them, even after I knew they had crossed into racism or defended a church structure that all simply ensured white church members would be the leaders and black ones relegated to following. It felt necessary in order to maintain relationships I knew would hateful daily interactions I couldn't avoid -- and in some ways still cherished. When I began to call them out, they acted as though I had betrayed them, in the same mode Meadows acted betrayed even though he had done the muddied deed.
It's but that Meadows didn't count on Tlaib calling him out, because he didn't know that Tlaib, a freshman member of Congress whose Palestinian-American heritage tracks from outside the Deep Due south, didn't get the memo virtually the Magnolia and Sable curtains, fifty-fifty equally Meadows knew he could count on Cummings to ensure the defunction wouldn't exist fully torn disconnected.
That speaks to a deeper, developing divide within the Democratic Party. Some members, such equally Tlaib, Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Rep. Brenda Lawrence, each of whom called out Meadows' racist act during the hearing in diverse ways, have made it clear they have no plans to play past the Magnolia-Sable rules, while Cummings and other Autonomous stalwarts still see some usefulness for information technology.
That'due south why Democrats are struggling between existence frank near Trump voters -- people who knowingly put a bigot in the White House -- and speaking hard truths nearly current racial divides and soft-pedaling their views most voters who chose Trump in 2016 but might be persuaded to choose differently in 2020.
It's the kind of tension that bubbles up occasionally during a racial awakening and reckoning. It's a sign that the long-awaited grappling with the complication of race has begun and won't end any time soon.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/28/opinions/mark-meadows-lynne-patton-elijah-cummings-black-friend/index.html
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