The Language and Rhetoric of Racism

It has been a while since I posted here. I was writing an entry on an entirely different topic, but, like much of the rest of the world, found myself distracted by one tragic news story after another. Distracted and angry. And so sad.

Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd.

A pitiful response by a pitiful “leader.”

And all of this wrapped up with a pandemic that is anything but over and an economic situation that is anything but fixed.

I kept thinking how much I wished I had a forum to speak out against the horrors I’ve been reading about and seeing in the news. Then I remembered that I DO have a forum. And here it is. I won’t say that every tragedy in the world can be traced to language, but many can and in very specific ways. I hope you’ll forgive me if I ramble a bit; there is a lot of ground to cover, and this will necessarily be inadequate. In an attempt to contain my rambling a bit, I will focus on the rhetoric of organizations such as Fox News and conservative talk radio. I have done some research so that you don’t have to subject yourself to it. For a bit of background, I started listening to conservative hate radio in tiny bits and pieces (that’s all I could stand) eleven years ago when I had to drive to a job that made me miserable. As a catharsis for my misery, I listened and expelled my anger harmlessly to the radio for the time I commuted. I found myself wondering how much influence these organizations actually had on the people of the US. I fear the answer is a lot. They speak mostly to an audience that already either agrees with them or hold no opinions and that doesn’t pursue information from other sources, so the message is exclusive and the only one many people receive. It becomes the truth because there is no other. That alone is terrifying.

If an insensitive, insecure man feels the need to correct or educate a woman who knows as much as or more on a topic than he does, we have come to call it “mansplaining.” If a similar dynamic is race related, can we use “racesplaining”? That does seem to describe what we often see on Fox News: many white people “racesplaining” to many other white people what black people should be saying and meaning. Or explaining to black people what, in fact, they REALLY mean or should mean. Whatever the actual word is, there’s no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump’s State News Agency, Fox News, is staffed by racist commentators to serve the views of a racist president to the racist portion of the American population. They are joined by the even more established conservative talk radio (“hate radio”) voices such as Rush Limbaugh. It is horrifying and disgusting. But my job here is to discuss language, and, although I am brokenhearted about recent events in Georgia, Kentucky, and  Minnesota, I will try to stick to issues of language and rhetoric and how these on-air people suck in and manipulate their audience. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a handful of “techniques” and quotations I’ve personally had the displeasure to observe.

The language of many people on Fox news is racist. It is language that is often dog whistle (hinting at what only insiders will truly understand), but just as often blatant, loud, and clear for everyone to hear. Racism fed to racists and wannabe racists twenty-four hours a day, giving permission and support for unsupportable beliefs. When it isn’t blatant, it is persistent.

One of the most popular Fox News prime-time personalities (and I use the term loosely because these people are more caricatures than personalities) is Tucker Carlson. Carlson likes to look directly into the camera with a knitted brow and tilted head to show his deep feelings and confusion as to the ways of the liberal world. One of his repeated themes is that ANY exclusiveness of ANY race is racism. He neglects the accepted definition of the word as found in actual dictionaries such as Oxford: it’s not just prejudice against a person or group on the basis of race. It’s typically toward a minority or marginalized group. Carlson (as well as most racist trolls on Facebook and Twitter) conveniently ignore the second part. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, mentions that a legislative committee comprising only white men is a problem, Carlson does whatever the male equivalent of pearl clutching is and screams “Racism!” When members of the Black Lives Matter movement choose to have a Memorial Day picnic for black people only or when black students feel safer and more comfortable in an all-black dormitory, Carlson is apoplectic. How can this be allowed! What, he wonders, would happen if I wanted to have an exclusively WHITE party! Oh, Tucker, you’re adorable. An exclusively white party has never occurred in the history of the United States. Certainly not by people who are heirs to major fortunes (Carlson stands to inherit a substantial sum as one of the heirs to the Swanson Foods fortune). There has never been a country club or a restaurant or a lunch counter or a bus or a drinking fountain that was designated for white people only! See what he’s done there? He has ignored hundreds of years of systemic racism because a group of people want exclusivity and he’s not included. He and his ilk scream nonsense words like “reverse racism,” a non-existent thing; minorities can certainly be prejudiced and exclusive and biased and even hateful, but racism is reserved for the ruling majority. As a bonus, in his continued state of feigned confusion as to why black people are so “racist,” Carlson says that there just aren’t very many hate crimes occurring in the US when, in fact, the number of hate crimes is the highest it’s been in 16 years. That fact, however, doesn’t serve his rhetoric or that of his president. It also is not what Fox News pays him to say.

Sean Hannity is perhaps the worst of the bunch. For one thing, he is besties with Donald Trump. Reports are that the two of them gab on the phone until all hours while the rest of the world sleeplessly worries over what devastating horror will happen next. Also, Hannity is on BOTH hate radio for three hours a day AND Fox News primetime for an hour every evening. That’s twenty hours a week that his voice can reach into your car, your office, and your living room. Hannity has many tropes and recurring themes (Trump is great, the Deep State is evil, Democrats are evil, liberals are evil, the mainstream press—or any press agency that he doesn’t work for—is evil, and on it goes). His recurring race litany is that “All Lives Matter.” Yes, really. He demands from his staff acknowledgment that HE and he alone is wise enough to point out the folly of the Black Lives Matter movement. How COULD they? What could they possibly mean, he innocently wonders, by saying that ONLY black lives matter! Hannity went so far as to say that if one COULDN’T bring oneself to say “All Lives Matter” as a necessary correction to the actual movement looking for justice and equality in an unequal world, it is nothing but pandering. See what he’s doing? It is the ultimate gaslight on the American people. Don’t let yourself be sucked in by the prejudice of exclusivity! We already include black people in ALL people, so you don’t need anything more! You already had your black president for goodness sake! What more do you want! It’s “pandering” to recognize the hundreds of years of racism perpetrated on a substantial portion of the American population.

Lou Dobbs and Brian Kilmeade are two more Fox News talking heads. Both like to “sincerely” show their sympathy and empathy when racial issues occur. But they also both refuse to consider them racist issues or even racial issues. When Armaud Arbery was lynched by three white men for the crime of jogging (Have you noticed that “He fit the description” is the new preamble to murder when the victim is black? It brings to mind the 1950s when “Why are you looking at that white woman?” gave the same license), Kilmeade expressed to Trump in an interview that justice must be done most certainly. Such a crime is most egregious! He wondered, however, how Trump’s administration would prevent it from ending up “in a racial situation”! He actually said that. Clever, huh? As if no racial issues were involved. Just three concerned (white) citizens in Georgia chasing down and murdering an unarmed (black) man for the unforgivable crime of being black on a Sunday. Lou Dobbs, concerning the recent protests in Minneapolis and the rest of the US, expressed with deep sadness that there was a failure of the community to properly educate and lift up its members, falling into the common fallacy that black people are the ones responsible for ending racism (“if only he would have complied with police orders!”).

Rush Limbaugh is the recent recipient of the prestigious Medal of Freedom that has previously been given to such true luminaries as Helen Keller, Buzz Aldrin, Omar Bradley, Jonas Salk, Margaret Mead, and Rosa Parks. True, many celebrities and entertainers have also received it, usually because of a lifetime of good works leading to social change of some sort. This medal of freedom winner claims that white privilege simply does not exist. It is, he says, merely a “liberal, political construct right along the lines of political correctness [that is] designed to intimidate and get people to shut up and admit they’re guilty of doing things they haven’t done.” No wonder he is deeply beloved by racists who refuse any responsibility.

Tomi Lahren, the self-described Millennial who doesn’t like to be labeled (did you catch that?) looked Trevor Noah in the eye one evening and said she “doesn’t see color.” I didn’t know there were people who still say that. Lahren claims she absolutely believes in the right to peaceful protest (this twenty-something person feels comfortable telling large portions of the population how to act), BUT when it comes to violence, destruction of property, well, THAT just isn’t okay. Only peaceful protest. What about Colin Kaepernick, Noah asked her. Didn’t he remember that she had a problem with that peaceful protest? Well, kneeling during the national anthem isn’t okay either because, no matter what the reason, HER reasoning is that the great flag is being disrespected! So, to conclude, Lahren gives permission to protest, but it’s unclear as to where, when, or in what form that protest may take place to meet with her approval.

Ms. Lahren reminds me of a word I would like to see denied to all conservative talk radio people, all Fox News people, and any other white people who decide to tell black people how to feel and act. That word is “but.” That’s right, the simple, usually benign “but.” The word is not benign in the mouths of the likes of Lahren. Protest is good. BUT it has to be the RIGHT kind of protest at the right time. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and others have ALL been heard in the last 10 days saying that they absolutely support the rights of Americans to protest and what happened to George Floyd was horrible and must be punished, BUT not THIS kind of protest! Not the kind that involves destruction. Not people acting angry. Not protest that makes white people uncomfortable.

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard Martin Luther King’s quote on riots. Just in case you’ve forgotten, I’ll remind you that he said “A riot is the language of the unheard.” There was a lot of peaceful protest that did a lot of good and caused a lot of change in the 1960s. I can still remember people of my parents’ generation (the greatest one, we’re told) back then saying that King’s message was strong and right and good, BUT (there it is again) just “too soon.” The country wasn’t yet “ready.” Then, King was assassinated and there were riots because the world had stopped hearing. Let’s remember that anger is one of the recognized stages of grief, and what was the overall emotion of the country back in 1968 and is the overall emotion of the country right now if not grief? Of course, we now know that at least some of the violence has been perpetrated by plants or white supremacists who want the black community to appear to be violent. For what reason? To prevent them from receiving sympathy? Prevent them from seeing change? Give further reason to victim blame? Continue reasons to say “But. . . .”

I’ll end with another quotation by a famous African American dissenter. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said, “I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.” Marshall said that in 1990, not 1968. So, over twenty years had passed since King’s assassination, and it was still necessary to say. It is now 2020, and we must still quote him. We are going in the wrong direction. The rhetoric of Fox News and the like helps to prevent progress by perpetuating and validating unsustainable racism among the citizenry.