There’s a good post over at “Politics USA” see: http://www.politicususa.com/en/Carter-GOP-Racism that asserts how timely it is that former President Jimmy Carter has spoken up about the evident racism toward Barack Obama that is circulating on the right. As a white man from Georgia Carter knows a good deal about the histrionic codes of bigotry and how the language of hatred moves from symbolism into action. The entire nation should take stock of what President Carter has to say. Right wing blogs like News Busters are crowing that the liberals are falling back on racism charges because their policies are failing, etc. Such garbled analyses are the rhetorical equivalent of what’s called “piling on” in the world of American football–right wingers conveniently forget the people hidden at the bottom of the pile and dramatically throw themselves on top. Human reality is made up of a thousand vulgarities.
But Jimmy Carter is right. The anti-Obama crowd is not generally impressed by facts and accordingly they ain’t debating policy. Joe Wilson’s outburst is a case in point. By describing racist animosities toward President Obama Jimmy Carter has dared to say in effect that sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar” (apocrypha Sigmund Freud).
Contemporary racism differs from its 50’s and 60’s antecedents since today’s bigots are more adept at the exploitation of what Freud called the reality principle. In effect the R.P. is an unreal boundary drawn between the real and imaginary. By “unreal” I mean that the world outside a man or woman is more complex than the psychological limitations that he or she has acquired from experience and education (good or bad). We can think of the reality principle as an electric fence in the human psyche: you must contain your thoughts “in here” because you can’t get to the larger world where you want to be. The way out of this dilemma is by turns unhealthy or healthy depending on your ability to bring intellectual irony to bear on the problem. We are all lead by our emotions. But what do they mean? In what ways do I make symbols according to my emotional state? The latter question is the one that contemporary bigots grasp to the extent that they understand symbolism better than their KKK fathers–they understand that where the ugly reality principle is concerned its not reality that matters but the shape of the thought, the quality of the symbols. The R.P. is a cauldron of symbolic envy and disappointments. It reduces the complicated nature of existence to a handful of suspicions. And these can be manipulated.
Carter’s assertion that those who oppose Obama are driven by a feeling that a black man isn’t qualified to lead the nation is precisely what the reality principle bears and drives forward among people who do not wish for a civil debate but in turn steer toward vicious symbolism.
As the Freudian historian Norman O. Brown once observed: “The real world, which is not the world of the reality principle, is the world where thoughts are omnipotent.” Notice “thoughts” for “feelings”. Only in the real world can you have political debate. Jimmy Carter fully understands this.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
It seems like no matter what happens, there will always be an issue of racism to some degree.
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