The Rubber Meets the Road
Well, I still don't know if I'm a neo or traditional, but at least I know what I think of prejudice.
I was arriving in the cafeteria at work which thankfully had a TV tuned to FOXNews coverage of Lott's not-quite-resignation. As I sat down, I heard a nearby coworker speaking loudly at no one in particular. He was sitting alone at a table quite close to the TV, quite obviously trying to draw attention to his comments. I thought he was a liberal, because when a picture of Rick Santorum appeared at some function where the Senator was flanked by a group of black women, the coworker remarked, "What idiots! Don't they know they're just being used?!" It seemed a standard reference to conservatives from a member of the Clarence-Thomas-is-an-Uncle-Tom Left.
But then he asked, "Why don't (the reporters) just shut up? What's the big deal anyway?" Though slightly confused, I thought he was being sarcastic, because the Left always assumes FOX is on the right, and that - as the Lecher of Little Rock said yesterday - racism is SOP for the Republicans.
I couldn't stand it any longer and said, "It's called racism."
"This isn't racism," he said, to my amazement. "They're making all this up out of nothing. He was just saying nice things about the old man. He wasn't even talking about segregation - he was just complimenting the other parts of Thurmond's platform."
I groaned inwardly as I realized I wasn't talking to a liberal, but to a paleo in deep denial. "Thurmond didn't have a platform outside of segregation," I tried to inform him, but he persisted in debating me.
Thinking back on his first comment, I realized I'd come closer to the mark when I labelled the incident "racism". I can't imagine what else to call someone who can look at a muted image of a white politician flanked by blacks and immediately assumes that the blacks are being used. Could it not be a Martin Luther King Day celebration, where Democrats invited Santorum as a way to seem "bipartisan", thus making Santorum the one who was used? Could it not have been a meeting of a group of conservative blacks who honestly believe in Santorum and his views, and were asking him to speak to their group as they tried to make the case for recruiting efforts for their organization?
There was no hope for this one, so I finished quickly and walked away. I just hope the old segregationist right isn't as widespread as the Democrats would like, and Lott and my coworker are rare throwbacks.
