{"id":44,"date":"2008-08-18T07:22:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T12:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racismreview.com\/blog\/?p=467"},"modified":"2008-08-18T07:22:14","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T12:22:14","slug":"playing-the-caucasian-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/2008\/08\/18\/playing-the-caucasian-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing the Caucasian Card"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In her \u201cThe Last Word\u201d column<\/a> at Newsweek<\/em> this week Anna Quindlen gave us a new and useful concept to describe what many whites do\u2014the “Caucasian card” (H\/T Jose Cobas). When African Americans object to racist framing, antiblack commentary, or antiblack practices, whites accuse them of \u201cplaying the race card.\u201d This is a white-framed, whitewashed phrase designed to deflect objections to everyday racism. It was doubtless invented by whites for that purpose. (Can anyone tell me its first use?) (photo: kevinthoule<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Quindlen cites the way that African Americans carry a heavy load of racial hostility and discrimination on their shoulders:<\/p>\n

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When one of the white guys blows an account, the office line is that he’s a loser. But when a black guy does it, it means that they\u2014that’s the all-purpose “they,” sometimes used interchangeably with “those people”\u2014don’t seem to be able to close the deal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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This burden of everyday racism makes a black person\u2019s life quite different from that of a white person. Somehow most whites assume their lives are the same. They assert<\/a> that blacks have equal opportunities compared to whites–in education, employment, housing or health care.<\/p>\n

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She later notes that Senator McCain justifiably likes to cite his long trials in a Viet Cong prison with it torture of a physical and psychological kind for five years. That, he and his supporters plausibly assert, \u201cbuilds character.\u201d But they forget or intentionally ignore the huge burden of contending with white hostility and discrimination that black men and women face (as well as other Americans of color). They face it for lifetimes, for far more than five years. This heavy burden often involves physical and psychological torture of its own kind. This should be fully recognized by the white media and voters, but is not.<\/p>\n

Quindlen then comments on the McCain campaign\u2019s reaction to Senator Obama\u2019s recent and reasonable commentary on being viewed by many (whites) as not looking like other presidents on U.S. money and as being portrayed by McCain supporters and others as somehow foreign and \u201cother.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The man is black. His candidacy is indivisible from that fact, given the history and pathology of this country.\u2026 The suggestion of [his doing] something untoward was pandering to stereotypes and fear. Senator McCain was playing the Caucasian card.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She nails it this time. Whites invented the racist system of this country <\/a>and have maintained that system, with great white privileges, since the 1600s. They have \u201cplayed the white card\u201d in every era. They played it in the abolitionist era of the 1850s-1860s, and they played it in the civil rights era of the 1950s-1960s. With no sense of irony, privileged whites (coming from what one blogger<\/a> bobbosphere calls the “deal”) still play that white card today when they regularly accuse African Americans who critique the racist system <\/strong>and try to bring it down as \u201cplaying the race card\u201d and being unfair to our “really democratic” system.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The post Playing the Caucasian Card<\/a> appeared first on racismreview.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tweet In her “The Last Word” column at Newsweek this week Anna Quindlen gave us a new and useful concept to describe what many whites do—the “Caucasian card” (H\/T Jose Cobas). When African Americans object …<\/p>\n

The post Playing the Caucasian Card<\/a> appeared first on racismreview.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[467,521,488,522,118,129,85,523,524,525],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-african-americans","category-anti-racism","category-contexts","category-gendered-racism","category-journalism","category-media","category-politics","category-popular-culture","category-systemic-racism","category-white-racial-frame"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/colorline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}