Reagan, Race and Remembrance

http://www.blackcommentator.com/94/94_wise_reagan.html

by Tim Wise

If one needs any more evidence that whites and people of
color live in two totally different places, politically
and psychically, one need only look at the visual
evidence provided by the death of Ronald Reagan.

More to the point, all one needs to know about this man
and his Presidency can be gleaned by looking even
haphazardly at the racial and ethnic makeup of the
crowds flocking to his ranch, or his library to pay
tribute. So too will it be apparent from the assemblage
lining the streets of DC for his funeral procession, or
gathering in the Capitol Rotunda to pay respects to
their departed hero.

They are, and will be — in case you missed it or are
waiting for the safest prediction in the history of
prognostication — white. Far whiter, one should point
out, than the nation over which Reagan presided, and
even more so than the nation into whose soil he will be
deposited within a matter of days.

While persons of color make up approximately 30 percent
of the population of the United States, the Reagan
faithful look like another country altogether. As they
gathered in Simi Valley — home of the 40th President’s
library, as well as the jury that thought nothing of the
police beating of Rodney King — one wonders if they
noticed the incongruity between themselves and the rest
of the state in which they live: a state called
California, where people like them are slightly less
than half the population now.

Doubtful. Most of them, after all, are quite used to
never seeing black and brown folks, since the vast
majority of whites live in communities with virtually no
people of color around them.

That the mourners wouldn’t notice the overwhelming
monochromy of their throng is no surprise. But it has
been more than a little interesting that no intrepid
reporter - or at least someone pretending to be such a
creature — has thought to ask the obvious question
about the racial makeup of those losing sleep over the
death of Ronald Reagan, versus those who frankly aren’t.

After all, there are really only two possible
interpretations of the sanguine reaction by people of
color to Reagan’s death: namely, either black and brown
folks are poster children for insensitivity, or perhaps
they know something that white folks don’t, or would
rather ignore.

The former of these is not likely — after all, millions
of black folks actually forgave George Wallace for God’s
sake when he did a partial mea culpa for his racist past
before his death — but the latter is as certain as rain
in Seattle.

What white folks ignore, but what most black folks can
never forget, is how Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act
at the time of its passage, calling it an unwarranted
intrusion on the rights of businesses, and never
repudiated his former stand.

Or that as Governor of California, Reagan dismissed the
struggle for fair and open housing, by saying that
blacks were just ’making trouble’ and had no intention
of moving into mostly white neighborhoods.

Perhaps they have a hard time forgetting that of all the
places Reagan could have begun his campaign for the
Presidency in 1980, he had to choose Philadelphia,
Mississippi: a town famous only for the 1964 murder of
three civil rights workers. And perhaps they recall that
the focus of his speech that day was ’state’s rights,’ a
longstanding white code for rolling back civil rights
gains and longing for the days of segregation.

Maybe they have burned in their memories the way Reagan
attacked welfare programs with stories of ’strapping
young bucks’ buying T-Bone steaks, while hardworking
taxpayers could only afford hamburger, or how Reagan
fabricated a story about a ’welfare queen’ from Chicago
with 80 names, 30 addresses, and 12 Social Security
cards, receiving over $150,000 in tax-free income. That
Reagan picked Chicago as the site of this entirely
fictional woman, and not some mostly white rural area
where there were plenty of welfare recipients too, was
hardly lost on African Americans.

Perhaps black folks and other people of color remember
the words of former Reagan Education Secretary Terrell
Bell, who noted in his memoir how racial slurs were
common among the ’Great Communicator’s’ White House
staffers, including common references to Martin Lucifer
Coon, and ’sand niggers.’

Perhaps they recall that Reagan supported tax exemptions
for schools that discriminated openly against blacks.

Perhaps they recall how his Administration cut funds for
community health centers by 18 percent, denying three-
quarters-of-a-million people access to services; how
they cut federal housing assistance by two-thirds,
resulting in the loss of about 200,000 affordable units
for renters in urban areas.

Or how Reagan opposed sanctions against the racist South
African regime, and even denied that apartheid, under
which system blacks could not vote, was racist, noting
that its policies were ’more tribal than racial.’

And it isn’t surprising that few if any Salvadorans or
Guatemalans who came to the U.S. in the 1980s, fleeing
from violence in their countries, were to be seen
placing flowers outside Reagan’s library either.

After all, the former were forced to seek refuge here
precisely because Reagan was so intent on funneling
money and arms to the murderous death-squad governments
who were responsible for killing so many of their
countrymen and women; and the latter no doubt recall how
Reagan brushed off the genocidal policies of Guatemalan
dictator Rios Montt — whose scorched earth tactics,
especially against the nation’s indigenous resulted in
at least 70,000 deaths — by saying he was getting a
’bum rap’ on human rights, and was instead a man of
’great personal commitment,’ who was dedicated to
’social justice.’

That whites would view much of this as irrelevant, even
whining or sour grapes on the part of communities of
color, is only proof positive that for many if not most
such folks, the opinions of, and even the humanity of
black and brown persons with whom they share a nation is
of secondary importance to the fact that Reagan - as
many have been gushing these past few days — ’made them
feel good again.’

But how can healthy people feel good about a leader who
does and says the kinds of things mentioned above?
Obviously the answer is by denying that racism matters,
or that its victims count for anything. Even more
cynically, it is no doubt true that for many of them, it
was precisely Reagan’s policy of hostility to people of
color that made them feel good in the first place. By
1980, most whites were already tiring of civil rights
and were looking for someone who would take their minds
off such troubling concepts as racism, and instead
implore them to ’greatness,’ however defined, and
’pride,’ however defined, and flag waving.

Whites have long been more enamored of style than
substance, of fiction than fact, of fantasy than
reality. It’s why we have clung so tenaciously to the
utterly preposterous version of our national history
peddled by textbooks for so long; and it’s why we get so
angry when anyone tries to offer a correction.

It’s why we choose to believe the lie about the U.S.
being a shining city on a hill, rather than a
potentially great but thoroughly flawed place built on
the ruins and graves of Native peoples, built by the
labor of enslaved Africans, enlarged by theft and murder
and an absolute disregard for non-European lives.

As Randall Robinson points out in his recent book,
Quitting America, when such subjects are broached, the
operative response from much of the white tribe is
little more than, ’Oh, that.’

Yes white man, that. That exactly. That thing we were
raised to gloss over, to speak of in hushed tones, as if
by our diminished volume or failure to audibilize it, it
will go away; that perhaps they will forget about it,
and instead join with us in praise of our country, since
that is most definitely how so many of us envision it.

White people, especially those who are upper-middle
class and above, have no reason on Earth to be aware of
the truth, let alone to dwell on it. The truth is, after
all, so messy, so littered with the bodies of dead
Nicaraguans, and dead Haitians murdered by Duvalier
while Reagan stood by him; so soiled by his support for
Saddam Hussein. Better to ignore all that, and to go
mushy before the pictures of Reagan in his cowboy hat,
to remember a President who, for all of his murderous
policies abroad and contempt for millions at home, at
least never got a blow job in the Oval Office.

This is the twisted psychosis of growing up privileged,
as a member of the dominant group: a group that must
view their nation as fair and just, as a place struck
off by the literal hand of God, as a place where
’average’ guys like Ronald Reagan can become ’great
leaders.’ As a place where an ’aw shucks’ smile, and a
profound lack of knowledge about the details of public
policy — or even the names of foreign leaders — is not
only not cause for embarrassment, but yet another good
reason to vote for someone; where refusing to read up on
important policy details prior to a key international
meeting so one can watch The Sound of Music on TV, is
seen as endearing rather than cause for a recall.

This is why we get people like George W. Bush, for those
who haven’t figured it out yet. Oh sure, vote fraud and
a pliant Supreme Court help, but were it not for the
love affair white Americans have with mediocrity posing
as leadership, things never could have gotten this far.

It’s why a bona fide moron like Tom DeLay can brag about
not having a passport (because, after all, why would
anyone want to travel abroad and leave ’Amur’ca,’ even
for a day) and not be seen as the epitome of a
blithering idiot, and why he could probably be elected
again and again in thousands of white dominated
congressional districts in this country, and not merely
in Texas.

Having to grapple with the real world is stressful, and
people with relative power and privilege never know how
to deal with stress very well. As such, they long for
and applaud easy answers for the stress that
occasionally manages to intrude upon their lives: so
they blame people of color for high taxes, failing
schools, crime, drugs, and jobs they didn’t get; they
blame terrorism on ’evil,’ and the notion that they hate
our freedoms: a belief one can only have if one really
thinks one lives in a free country in the first place.

In other words, delusion is both the fuel that propels
people like Ronald Reagan forward in political life, and
then makes a rational assessment of his legacy
impossible upon his death.

I think this is why so many white people remember him
fondly, and are truly crestfallen at the thought of his
physical obsolescence: simply put, much of white America
needs Ronald Reagan; a father figure to tell them
everything is going to be O.K.; a kindly old Wizard of
Oz, to assure them that image and reality are one, even
when the more cerebral parts of our beings tend towards
an opposite conclusion.

With Reagan gone, maintaining the illusion becomes more
difficult.

But knowing white folks — I am after all one of them,
and have been surrounded by them all of my life — I
have little doubt that where there’s a will to remain in
la-la land, we will surely find a way.

Reagan has been released from the lie, finally, and may
his soul find peace among the millions of dearly
departed victims of his policies around the world.

Meanwhile, the rest of us must pull back the curtain on
all phony heroes, Reagan among them, lest we create many
millions more.

Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and father,
He can be reached at timjwise@msn.com.