Republicans Test Drive New Welfare Cadillac

Since the Republican convention, the media have been too busy defending themselves against disingenuous charges of sexism to have noted the taint of implied racism emanating from St. Paul to the campaign trail. But how else to reconcile Republican encomiums for the "small town values" Governor Palin brings to the ticket, with their derision for "community organizers".

After all, isn't the idea of communities banding together to act without government prompting one of the hallmarks of idealized "small town" life? Yet, Palin continues to deride Senator .Obama’s experience even as Senator McCain -- without irony -- joins Obama on the cover of Time magazine extolling community service.

Indeed, there has been some "blowback" from offended community organizers. Humphrey Institute fellow Harry C. Boyte identifies community organizing as the "heart of the democratic tradition", and chastises the Republicans for heaping scorn on them with snappy sound bites. So, why wouldn't obviously coordinated disparagement of Obama’s experience risk offending some salt-of-the-earth small-towners who also devote their time on behalf of their communities?

To appreciate what the delegates were hearing, however, and why no offense was taken, you have to go beyond Palin’s "cute" comparison to the responsibilities of a small-town mayor, and consider the reference made by "Mayor Nueve Once" (fka Rudy Giuliani). With his peculiar charm-free snideness, Giuliani mockingly pretended ignorance of even what "community organizer" meant.

The obvious wink-and-nod to the monochromatic delegates let them know that Giuliani was not talking about them. He meant only to deride community organizers in places like the south side of Chicago where Obama worked (and habitat -- as those of a certain age may recall -- of people like "bad, bad Leroy Brown"). On Countdown, the night after the convention, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman was kind enough to translate: "(Republicans think)...community organizer is somehow about an extension of the government. It's about appealing from a street level to get the government to do things for you."

Of course, however, that isn't really true. As one, the Republican audience immediately understood that Giuliani's mocking was aimed, not at organizers in their towns and suburbs, but only at those from the dark urban places where Obama labored. And Time’s Joe Klein, casting Sarah Palin as the "freshest iteration" of mythic America, notes the "blinding whiteness and fervent religiosity" of the party of Reagan, whose subliminal (racist) message is even stronger because the mythic small town could never have included a product of “miscegenation” such as Obama.

The Reagan reference is appropriate because Palin and Giuliani used "community organizer" in the same way that Reagan referred to the "welfare queen" driving around in her Cadillac to pick up multiple welfare checks. Although her race was never specified, certainly no one ever doubted that she came from a place like "the south side of Chicago", rather than from the Reagan-mythologized “pre-racial” small-town America.

In Republicans’ mythic America, good people lose their work and need a hand until they can transfer to Wal-Mart; they don't endlessly exploit public welfare. In mythic America, teenagers don't use pregnancy to access a government meal ticket. Girls "make mistakes" and are supported by their families in their "right choices" until their callow boyfriends find maturity and "do the right thing" with more-or-less subtle coercion.

However galling it may be to recognize that certain segments of society are excluded from their “small town” mythos, it is even more objectionable to appreciate how quickly and casually the assembled conventioneers understood the rhetorical segregation of community implied in the references by Palin and Giuliani. This disparagement of Obama’s experience as "community organizer" is part and parcel of what Nicholas Kristof labels the campaign to "otherize" Obama.

Kristof notes how the religious prejudice evidenced in the persistent labeling of Obama as a Muslim has become a proxy for racial prejudice. Likewise, deprecating community organizing on the south side of Chicago emphasizes Obama’s "otherness” in surrogacy for overt racism. Unfortunately, this "proxy racism" plays to the prejudices harbored, as revealed in a recent Stanford University study, by a possibly crucial percentage of voters.

At the risk of condemnation for playing the "race card", Democrats ought to call the GOP on its attempt to make "community organizer" an unworthy successor to Reagan's "Cadillac welfare queen". At a minimum, they ought to remind the ultra- religious of Matthew 7:3, and point out that as they strain to discern the smallest speck of sexism in the treatment of Governor Palin, they may consider that their vision might just be obscured by the timber of racism in their own eyes.