Page Two: Name-Calling, Part II
The proud badge of 'cowardice'
By Louis Black, Fri., Feb. 10, 2006
Among the more obvious examples is the new, virulent racism with which the words "civil rights," "level playing field," and "equal opportunity for all" have come to mean just the opposite of what was once accepted. Often, those words thinly disguise a virulent, overt racism. At best, they are used to attack the very concept of civil rights by dismissing the very real, ongoing impact of history, as well as dismissing the consequences and existence of accepted and/or institutionalized racism currently, or at least long after the passing of civil-rights legislation. The greatest single predictor of one's personal wealth is family wealth; likewise, the greatest predictor of whether one goes to college or not is whether one's parents did.
The civil rights legislation was idealistic and ambitious, as well as morally and constitutionally centered. Basically, it was humans at their best, intellectually legislating morality – but the problem wasn't limited to schools, homes, or opportunities; rather, it was an ingrained racism manifested in almost all of us, though in different forms, some of it biological and some of it learned behavior. Although not nearly to the same extent, this approach is still very much in the territory of the way in which insisting on abstinence predicts the failure of conviction in the face of biological instinct; civil-rights legislation indicated and initiated a serious reappraisal of existing race relations and perceptions among all of us. Yes, I think racism is based on every human's fear of the other/unknown that is either biological or so inherently learned that it is indistinguishable from the biological.
But all too much of the anti-affirmative-action rhetoric is actually proactively racist. Whenever someone claims that the race card is being played, look at his or her hand first. One of the more ludicrous manifestations of this was the rather tepid Supreme Court affirmative-action decision involving the University of Michigan. Locally and nationally, letter-writers and radio-station callers lamented the death of Martin Luther King's great dream. Even if we were to embrace the ludicrous notion that affirmative action is an overt assault on civil rights, political dreams – especially grand, humanist ones – by their nature are often deferred and rarely easily achieved. Missing this was the tip-off to the very obvious give on the part of these race-card-playing neo-segregationists. Anyone involved in the struggle for civil rights is well aware that setbacks are more common than successes. Unlike armchair "patriots" fighting the great race wars by screaming at their TVs, any movement veteran would never so casually dismiss King's dream as dead.
Read some of the many letters this paper receives that differ with our political positions. Most of the time, they offer words rich in implications carefully nurtured by right-wing ideologues and media pundits, but they lack even an attempt at constructing coherent arguments. It is more than enough to accuse those opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq of being suicidal pacifists or reality-denying leftists. It is so much harder to explain why, exactly, we invaded Iraq – especially when one is asked how this reaction was not exactly what the 9/11 terrorists were hoping for and how this war discourages rather than encourages fanatics. Let's quickly dismiss the absurd notion, bred by too many action movies, that demonstrating to the Muslim world just how tough and not-to-be-messed-with this country is will scare the terrorists silly, dissuading them from conflict.
Why stoop to ideas, reality, and history when, by poetically stringing together the current buzzwords of the active right, one can define one's own extraordinary patriotism, as well as moral and intellectual superiority? Actually offering details just mars the true political beauty, given that almost all of this country's problems are those created by misguided, oblivious fellow Americans or evil, pagan foreigners. Identifying whom to blame is the best way to solve problems. Admitting the complexity and difficulty of most problems, while at least discussing detailed suggestions and rationally based plans, pales next to the intoxicatingly liberating, rap-music-like catharsis of symbolically loaded, nonspecific language, dazzling in the way it overlaps meaningless but evocative phrase over phrase.
I won't discuss until next week the assertion made to one and all present in the Chronicle lobby that I engage in mouth-to-genital satanic contact (whether this relationship is inspired by or actually with the dark one, I'm not sure). But I do want to note that, again and again, over the past few years I've been called every different variant of "coward" because of my opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
Evidently, in the new America, asserting one's rights, protesting this war, standing up to your government, and disagreeing with and risking the wrath of what at one time was the overwhelming majority of Americans is cowardly. What's brave is trying to silence those you don't agree with, while sending your neighbors, their sons, and their daughters off to fight for and instead of you in a war where many on both sides are killed, wounded, and/or psychologically damaged. Under those definitions, I can't tell you how proud I am to be a coward! 
