A Musing About State Representative Michael Clark's Statements

State Representative Michael Clark brought some unwanted national attention to South Dakota this week when he opined on Facebook that businesses should be able to discriminate based on race.  To the best of my knowledge, I have never met Clark, so I have no basis to judge whether he is a racist or merely a person who refuses to think before he speaks. I know this is late, but a part of Clark's comment that got little attention stuck in my craw and I needed to think it through a bit.

Clark's racially charged comments overshadow a statement that revealed some deep cognitive dissonance inside the populist/Trumpist movement, a movement which mislabels itself as conservative.

Clark asserts, "The vote of the dollar is very strong." 

No one should dispute the dollar's power, but the statement contains many implications. In the context with the rest of his statements, one could take it to mean that businesses should discriminate against anyone they chose so long as the business makes a profit. In short, the public can legitimize racism, sexism or any form of otherization it chooses. This reading re-enforces the idea that Clark's comments reflect a deep racism.

The statement may also imply that good, hard-working decent folk will boycott businesses that unjustly discriminate based on race, creed, gender or sexual orientation. This reading implies that the United States has permanently rejected the hateful ideas that produced Jim Crow laws in a wide swath of the nation. This reading implies that human nature has somehow been altered since George Wallace said, "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever." [ellipsis in original]

While the latter reading may be more generous, the belief that human nature has changed and people will suddenly cease supporting with their dollars and voices those who practice injustice is flawed.

The self-proclaimed social conservatives who make up the backbone of the current populist moment used to hold as an article of faith that "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" It's unlikely that the "wicked" will use their dollars to fight injustice. If one wants a secular source, all one has to do is compare the statements made by characters in the Iliad and the entitled pronouncements from professional athletes or other celebrities. If one wants a bit of science, humanity makes up .01% of life on Earth but have destroyed 83% of mammalian life. No amount of dollars seem to change behavior.

In short, trusting the dollar to change human behavior is as foolish and dangerous as advocating legalized discrimination.

Senator* Phil Jensen, Race, And "Revelation"

This morning's Rapid City Journal reports that Phil Jensen, a South Dakota state senator, believes "businesses should have the right to deny service based on a customer's race or religion." According to Jensen, this behavior that the "majority" will find "detestable" can be "fairly addressed by the free market." Jensen also supports drug testing welfare recipients but laughingly admits he hasn't thought about drug testing those who receive other government subsidies

If this situation follows the pattern established when others have made similar gaffes, revealing "a truth the politician did not intend to admit," Jensen and his allies will soon complain that the Liberal Media and RINOs are misconstruing his comments. That effort is beginning. By tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday, he will claim to be a victim of political correctness run amok.

I'm going to help Jensen play the victim card. He's a victim of an insular political system that allows him to get elected without serious opposition. As a politically conservative evangelical Christian, he's a victim of a cognitive-dissonance-filled philosophy that combines Ayn Rand and Christianity in a way that tortures logic to death. And, were I a betting man, I'd bet that he's a victim of an education that did not have him read Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation."

Ruby Turpin, the story's protagonist, spends most of her nights trying to rank African-Americans, poor whites, middle class folks, and the rich. While race is key element in her hierarchy, the most important criterion is understanding "that you had to have certain things before you could know certain things." After being physically assaulted my a young woman who tells Ruby, "'Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,'" Ruby has a vision while washing down some hogs.

Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge. At last she lifted her head. There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black[s]. . . in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer.They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They, alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was.

Jensen's view that the market will correct bigotry and hate ignores Biblical injunction that the human heart is deceitful. It ignores James Madison's reminder that men are not angels. It is based on the view that those who have things must know things and have the "given wit" to use them right. Flannery O'Connor knew that attitude leads to self-satisfied virtues that have no basis. Jensen has yet to learn that lesson.

Update: Bob Ellis has the victim card piece up 12 hours ahead of schedule.
*Post was originally and erroneously headlined Representative. 

Some Things Are Still About Race

While on brief but long journey to see one of the young'uns, my wife and I came across this civic minded (sarcasm alert) display.

Because I am always willing to think well of my fellow humans (sarcasm alert) I, of course, attributed the appearance of the Confederate battle flag as a celebration of states' rights. I was disabused of my optimism when my wife pointed out the racial epithet on the sign's lower left hand corner.

Click to enlarge

Racists Protest Cheerios Ad

I love Cheerios, so I never pay much attention to their ads. I'm going to buy the cereal anyway. Apparently others watch the ads more carefully than I do. I wonder if those who protested this Cheerios ad have full possession of the reasoning skills God gave them.

According to the New York Daily News, they may not:

An innocent ad for heart-healthy Cheerios has sparked an onslaught of disturbing racist backlash on the Internet.

The cereal brand was forced to pull comments from its YouTube page after a cereal commercial featuring an interracial family reportedly prompted a string of messages about Nazis, racial genocide and viewers so disgusted they “want to vomit.”

Adweek adds some perspective:

It's another one of those things that shouldn't be a story but is—an ad from a major U.S. brand featuring an interracial couple and their daughter. You'd think this new Cheerios ad from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York might go largely unnoticed, given the plethora of interracial couples on TV shows these days. (NBC's Parenthood is a notable example, though far from the only one.) But it's not going unnoticed—it hit Reddit's front page, a place largely reserved for life's great oddities, and the YouTube view count is rising fast. The problem is that TV ads have always lagged TV programming in this regard, as so many brands are clearly scared of being perceived as making a political statement with the casting of their commercials. Thus, the Cheerios ad, despite its characters being representative of tens of thousands of actual couples in America, sticks out like a sore thumb. And then you have the YouTube comments section, which predictably has devolved into an endless flame war, with references to Nazis, "troglodytes" and "racial genocide." At what point will an ad like this just seem normal?

When I got the link to put the YouTube clip in this post, I noticed that 1153 people disliked the ad. I wonder was Brad Ford one of them?

Update: Someone using the pseudonym Herman V stopped by to tell me and the world that nothing good comes from putting blacks and whites together. I was going to let the comment stand, but it also included a link I didn't trust, so I removed it. Suffice it to say, Herman and I disagree about his statements.

Why Didn't This Stuff Happen Before Finals?

First, A Northwestern University student is refusing to perform a song based on works of Walt Whitman because Whitman was a racist. The choral work does not contain evidence of Whitman's racism.

Whitman was a racist; he was also gay. Oh by the way, he was the best American poet of the 19th Century, and he cared for wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

It would have interesting to ask the young'uns if we should not read "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," "O My Captain!, My Captain!," or "I Hear America Singing" because Whitman was racist or gay or both. It would also have been fun to extend the conversation to ask them if people should not buy Ford products because Henry Ford was an anti-Semite.

This Francis Beckworth sentiment matches mine on this issue:

You do yourself no good by not seeing the greatness even in people who have held disreputable ideas. To look at Walt Whitman and just see a racist is precisely what makes racism wrong: you don’t see the entire person–in all his complexities, virtues, and foibles–you just see the race. By doing this, you artificially flatten the person, and thus you literally lie to yourself, for you intentionally deny the truth that a great man can have within him both grandeur and vice. If you want to be better than Whitman, rid yourself of the habits of mind that in him resulted in the beliefs that you now find offensive. The ability to separate the wheat from the chaff is a sign of intellectual maturity. Thus, discarding the wheat because you can’t bear the chaff does not punish Mr. Whitman; it punishes you.

This post was published before finals, but I missed it until today. It also ties to my belief that literature is essential. From this Jag Bhalla Scientific American post:

It is in our nature to need stories. They are our earliest sciences, a kind of people-physics. Their logic is how we naturally think. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival. . . .

Any story we tell of our species, any science of human nature, that leaves out much of what and how we feel is false. Nature shaped us to be ultra-social, and hence to be sharply attentive to character and plot. We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories. They are a key way in which our ruly culture configures our nature.

Some Folks Get It; Brad Ford Doesn't

I don't have time to go line-byline through the surreal ramblings Brad Ford posted this morning. It's a Gordian Knot of illogic that either posits or yearns for some sort of racial conflict Therefore, discretion being the better part of valor, let's look at a single paragraph:

The Democrats can’t wait to extend their power base by bringing 11,000,000 new illegal immigrants into the voting system.  The 47% automatic voting block will ensure that future elections are unfairly rigged.  The Democrats hope that the new voters will selfishly pursue the welfare society and consumerist spending without giving a second thought to politics otherwise.

George Will, a conservative icon who understands the English language, elegantly provides a rebuttal on yesterday morning's This Week:

Every conservative sympathizes with what Jeff Sessions was saying about not rewarding law breaking, however, conservatism begins with facing facts. The facts are that of the 11 million people who are here illegally, two-thirds have been a decade or more, 30 percent, 15 years or more. They're woven into our society. They're not leaving. And the American people would not tolerate the police measures necessary to extract them from our community.

Therefore, the great consensus has to be on the details of a path to citizenship.

The most important thing Rubio said in your interview was, even if the system weren't broken, if you had no illegal immigrants, we'd still need to do something about this because we need the workers, as the baby boomers retire, and as the birthrate declines. We need something to replenish the workplace to sustain the welfare state [emphais mine].

Even though both decry a "welfare state," Will understands the political situation and gives the American people credit for understanding  reality. Ford, on the other hand, ...I don't know if any sane person knows what Ford is writing about.

Racism Lives On

Relevant Magazine and Rod Dreher both point to this story:

A Jackson couple had their wedding rehearsal last week, two days before their scheduled big day at the Crystal Springs church where they were planning to get married.

But the couple's dream of exchanging vows in the church they had been attending was dashed when the church pastor relayed to them that some members had complained about the black couple getting married in the predominantly white First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs.

Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson said it was devastating having to move their wedding to another church only days before the July 21 wedding.

Galatians 3:26-28 states:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The pathetic members First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs who complained must have a translation that leaves out those verses.