NPR's weekday afternoon talk show Talk of the Nation addressed the year 2010 in terms of how it went for Muslims, gays, blacks, and on Thursday, "The Year for White Americans." All four segments were interviews with guests on the left. While the minorities received a predictable NPR sympathy, the triumph of Tea Party candidates clearly suggested to NPR there's something wrong in white America. Host Neal Conan welcomed liberal historian Douglas Brinkley to suggest there's just too many whites who are racially anxious with a black president, that white people feel "perhaps we are losing something in America, the, you know, white male ascendancy. If you look at even a children's breakfast mat, you'll see it's all white presidents. And now, suddenly, there's Barack Obama."
The segment's first caller jumped in: " I disagree with the gentleman's premise. You know, I'm a white man. I'm an educated white man. And I have to tell you, I resent being called a racist because I don't necessarily support the programs of, you know, President Obama." NPR's Conan defended the liberal guest, claiming Brinkley "said that there's a racial aspect to it. He did not say that anybody who disagrees with Barack Obama is, per se, a racist." The caller refused to budge and said " I heard everything he said and I resent his position because I don't think it's true."
Brinkley did not say all Obama opponents were racist, but he clearly described white opposition to Obama with the vaguest of generality as anxious about white dominance, and even hailed literary archetypes of uptight white Protestants as evidence:
NEAL CONAN, host: For a week now, we've been talking with people from diverse backgrounds to ask for stories that illustrate what's changed in their lives this past year - Latinos, African-Americans, LGBT, Muslim-Americans. There's little doubt, though, that the most politically active group this year was white people: the great majority of the tea party that played such an important part in the political debate, the great majority of the vote that swept a Republican majority back into the House of Representatives.
Douglas Brinkley is professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, joins us today on the line from Carmel in California. Nice to have you back with us. Happy New Year.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Happy New Year to you.
CONAN: And is there a story that you think helps explain how things changed for white Americans this past year?
And it created, I think, a real schism of - in the country - oh, in - particularly with white people that perhaps we are losing something in America, the, you know, white male ascendancy. If you look at even a children's breakfast mat, you'll see it's all white presidents. And now, suddenly, there's Barack Obama. And, you know, something had changed, and I'm not sure people knew how to respond to it.
The Tea Party and opposition to Obama -- well "some of it" was legitimate, but much of it was racial animus:
And a lot of grassroots native, this sort of anti-Obama energy, started bubbling to the forefront, some of it legitimate in the sense that people worried about the sagging economy and high unemployment rate. But some of it was connected to the fact that we're - Americans were losing their essence, what Americanism meant. And we're on a downward slide if we're having a guy like Obama who got soon dubbed a socialist in the White House. But there is a lot of veiled, you know, racial references, in one way or another, that dominated much of the political discourse this past year.
If it "dominated" discourse, it's only because liberals couldn't stop blabbing about race to explain why liberalism was failing at the polls. Then we were told novels from the last century perfectly portray what's going on this year:
CONAN: And, obviously, just as we said about Latinos or African- Americans or any other group, white people are a pretty diverse group. Obviously, bowon that election pretty handily, as it turned out. But the majority of white people voted for the other guy.
BRINKLEY: Well, that's right. The majority of white people voted for the other guy. And then, of course, there are breakdown groups, for example, of Catholics. And, you know, Republicans have been gaining Catholic votes on the abortion issue now, for the - for a decade. And it used to be a strong Democratic group, Catholics. But because the Vatican is opposed to abortions and - you know, it's bringing some conservative Catholics into the Republican fold. American Jews are still - some turned to the Republican Party. They used to be Democratic but are turning on a pro-Israel stance in the sense that - feeling that the security of Israel, somehow, is safer under a Republican administration.
So you're getting different groups that splinter in different ways. But what we used to call Protestant America and, you know, brilliantly, incidentally, talked about the mindset of a white male working class, middle class striver, was the Rabbit figure that was written about by John Updike...
CONAN: Sure.
BRINKLEY: ...in his great books and...
CONAN: "Rabbit Run" [1960] and on to "Rabbit Gets Rich." [wrong, it's "Rabbit Is Rich," from 1981]. Yeah.
BRINKLEY: Yeah. I mean, there - I'm not - never been a huge Updike fan per se, but these incredibly valuable novels, because he gets right into the mind of the fear of somebody that's, say - let's call them upwardly noble white person, not particularly well-educated but, you know, trying to make money and trying to stay alive in America. And Rabbit has a lot of fears and part of them are the fear of long gasoline lines and double-digit inflation and business failings. Part of it is worries about his marriage in a country now that - we have 60 percent divorce rate. What happens when a marriage, you know, infects your life.
But another part of it was fear of this - the new minorities, the fact that he was - you know, Rabbit was born into a world where the white men were running things and is - was getting old in a world that was up and kind of an upheaval. And now, not only do women have the right vote, but they're getting equal pay, or at least the attempt for equality is starting to be there for women. And then African-Americans and Latinos were on the rise and had a different culture that was affecting Rabbit's culture. And right there in those series of novels, you can see what's been played out this past year in America. It's still our best artistic model.
When Dan Quayle objected to the CBS show Murphy Brown in 1992 promoting a feminist model of single motherhood, liberals suggested he was simple-minded and didn't seem to understand she was a fictional character. But when liberals want to explain undereducated whites and their fears of being eclipsed, a fictional character is "incredibly valuable." By now, a caller would have plenty of evidence to charge NPR and their invited guest with overgeneralizing:
CONAN: And let's get Pat on the line. Pat's with us from St. Augustine in Florida.
PAT (Caller): Hi. I just have to take - I disagree with the gentleman's premise. You know, I'm a white man. I'm an educated white man. And I have to tell you, I resent being called a racist because I don't necessarily support the programs of, you know, President Obama. So, I'll take my comment - or I'll take your answer off the air.
CONAN: Well, Pat, I think if you go back and look at what Douglas Brinkley said, he said that there's a racial aspect to it. He did not say that anybody who disagrees with Barack Obama is, per se, a racist.
PAT: Well, I - I did listen to what he had said to say. And the subtext is, in fact, that, you know, we have a black president and "Oh my, all the white people are upset. I mean, we never thought we'd see this." I heard everything he said and I resent his position because I don't think it's true. I don't believe it reflects the white people who - across the country. And so, as I said, I'll take my comment off the air. Thank you.
CONAN: All right, Pat. Thanks very much. Douglas Brinkley?
BRINKLEY: Well, you know, we're talking about a very sensitive subject here. And when you add something like white America, it's a very large topic. And so, no...
CONAN: We did that.
BRINKLEY: ...generality is going to ever fit into play. But what we're trying to do and analyze in an un-emotive way is just take a look at how - you know, that the - obviously, the election of an African- American president is historic. It's come with - it was a great moment for our country. And some people are going to be worked up about that. Some people aren't going to be very trusting of that.
But the reason why the caller has the right to be upset - and certainly, I don't - didn't want hint it, to feel neither NPR or myself would be saying that to somebody that's a conservative, white voter who doesn't like Obama and is a conservative, the reason that they hold those views is racial. That's not true. It may be true in a number of examples, but we just can't make that as a sweeping statement. And I'm - I hope I didn't do that.
All I simply am trying to point out to people is that it was a big change and we did hear a lot of rhetoric, you know, cartoons of Obama in African garb in major magazines. [What? Where? Other than the liberal New Yorker trying to mock conservatives in 2008?] And then the question about the birther movement. Where is his birth certificate? He wasn't really born here. A man who's a Christian that constantly has to explain to people he's not a Muslim, well, I don't know who's doing it. It's a minority of white people. But they're out there and it certainly dominated a lot of our news cycle and energies of the past year. And we got to get over that. It's not a good trend. And the new governor of Hawaii is trying to clear this up, because it's been such an annoyance, this birther issue.
And I would say, anybody who's promoting the birther issue has some kind of animosity towards Barack Obama's lineage. There's no other way you could accept it, because it's kooky to be pushing this notion that the president is not an American and is lying about being born in Hawaii. And the newspapers of Hawaii were wrong about his birth. And this movement, birther movement, got a lot of credibility on mainstream, you know, cable networks and on the Internet. And even newspapers have had a - serious newspapers have had to confront it, and it's coming from somewhere.
Look, we have problems in the '60s, when you have the streets on fire and campus unrest. And what happened in - when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill in '64 and '65? He said, there goes the South for the Democratic Party. And he was...
CONAN: For his generation. And that generation sort of came to an end in 2008.
BRINKLEY: Yeah. And it led in '68 to George Wallace's timely successful third party run, simply on a segregationist platform. Just like Strom Thurmond back in '48, had his Dixiecrat run. You know, this is a part of our national politics. We can't be naive ostriches and stick our head in the sand, that race plays a large role in how we could figure our politics in this country.
What's amazing is that even the election of Obama can't stop liberals from thinking a 25-year-old white man who's skeptical of Obama must collect Thurmond-for-President buttons from 1948 or secretly adores George Wallace. (It's not amazing that they'd smear Obama opponents by going straight to the birther conspiracists.) NPR's Conan later uncorked a real leftist jaw-dropper. Maybe the Tea Party's more analogous to the 19th century: "The degree of anger, though, we've had some people email and suggest that there has been some comparison to the period of Reconstruction. I wonder if you think that's valid at all."
Brinkley said, "There is some of that," but quickly changed the subject, perhaps to distance himself from it.
