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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Jesse Helms & The Dense Layers of Denial |
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by Salim Muwakkil
(No verified email address) |
10 Sep 2001
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The harsh reality of the media's complicity in covering up the essential racism behind much of what passes for "conservatism" in the US today. |
When Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) announced he would not seek re-election in 2002, the major media seemed suddenly struck with an odd kind of amnesia about his racist past.
Commentary from the country's national publications was rife with references to his "unabashed and outspoken conservatism," as USA Today put it. To use the Los Angeles Times' words, Helms "personified the unvarnished, uncompromising, attack-dog brand of conservatism," and The Boston Globe noted he was "an unyielding icon of conservatism and anarchenemy of liberals."
Television was hardly more candid; ABC also called him a "conservative icon" and, as an aside, CBS noted "his opponents have accused him of using race to win elections."
So when David Broder, the dean of Washington columnists, penned a piece in the Aug. 29 Washington Post boldly calling Helms "the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country," he provoked a shudder that rippled through media circles. That shudder was triggered primarily by professional embarrassment; if this veteran icon of media rectitude was forthright enough to call a racist a racist, what excuse did others have for their own reticence?
Starkly headlined, "Jesse Helms, white racist," Broder's column charged the media was "pussyfooting" in its coverage of Helms' retirement. Such "squeamish" coverage of Helms' racist record suggests the press is unwilling "to confront the reality of race in our national life," he wrote.
The Washington Post's senior columnist should be commended for scolding his colleagues and, more important, voicing a truth about this country's chronic state of racial denial. Broder's column also raises this question: Why did he wait until Helms was a lame duck before labeling him as a racist?
Had Broder launched his charge while Helms was in his prime and fully ensconced as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the well-connected columnist probably would have lost an important connection to the Senate. He also would have been thoroughly rebuked by his colleagues for violating a subtle cultural code: an unspoken assumption that the media should downplay racial angles and avert their gaze from the contexts of racial disparity.
Media aversion to the realities of race may be a protective impulse sparked by the fear that racial issues provoke such deep-seated animosities, they are best ignored or obscured by euphemisms. This is a hallowed American tradition, established during the country's earliest days and finely honed throughout history. When 19th Century abolitionists urged that racial slavery be ended, their opponents argued the "peculiar institution" actually benefited enslaved Africans. When African-Americans pushed for anti-lynching laws in the early part of the 20th Century, their struggle was recast as an attack on the perquisites of states' rights.
Likewise, the success of the modern GOP was built on a "southern strategy," designed by the 1968 campaign of Richard Nixon and fueled by white backlash to the civil-rights movement.
Not since President Lyndon Johnson enlisted the Democratic Party into the civil-rights movement, with his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, has a Democratic presidential candidate captured a majority of the white electorate.
But the racial animosities that have fueled the GOP's political success have seldom faced much media scrutiny. The politics of backlash instead have been legitimized and transformed into euphemisms by its role in the Republican Party. Helms' charm, for southern conservatives, was his willingness to forego euphemisms. Had Broder spoken earlier about Helms' racist history, it may have delegitimized the senator's corrupting influence on U.S. foreign policy.
The isolationist chauvinism exemplified by Helms during his reign as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has seeped into the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Helms was an early opponent of all arms agreement with the Russians; he opposes relations with China and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
He is a relentless critic of the UN and would never have considered sending a delegation to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. In fact, this country's controversial pullout of WCAR is another of Helms' legacies; he led the U.S. boycotts of the UN's racism conferences in 1978 and 1983 because he objected to their criticism of South Africa's apartheid regime.
Broder's small breach of journalistic etiquette has helped reveal the dense layers of denial that smother our national discourse on race. Now what?
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times http://www.inthesetimes.com/
E-mail: salim4x (at) aol.com
Published on Monday, September 10, 2001 in the Chicago Tribune
Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune
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