I did not see the full exchange, and I hope Lord did not get the last word, as he does in this video excerpt, which I found in a piece in The New York Times by James Poniewozik. It’s worth reading the whole thing. Here are two excerpts:
This is 2016. And here was a white panelist suggesting that his African-American peer should really go back and learn his history before criticizing someone about the Klan. Mr. Jones, calmly but with clear emotion, dressed Mr. Lord down: “We’re not going to play that game,” he said. “When you talk about the Klan, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know’ — that’s wrong.”
And:
There is something frightening, in general, about hate groups becoming fodder for the modern cable news argument machine. Does anyone want to see TV take a “both sides have their points to make” approach to the actual Ku Klux Klan? But here, anyway, amid the usual hyperbole and Times Square graphics of an election night, CNN delivered a scene of authentic passion over real concerns: the deep schisms among Republicans, the fear that vile hatreds are being resurrected, the anxiety that the vitriol of the campaign is bleeding into the larger culture. (Mr. Jones said that he’d stopped encouraging his 7-year-old son to watch the news.)
I don’t know much about the present-day Klan and it certainly doesn’t have the power it once did, but I don’t care at all about what they’re like now – anyone willing to call themselves a member of an organization with that kind of past deserves all the condemnation we can give them.
Will I “repudiate” the support of David Duke and/or the KKK? What do you mean?
Ok then — if you can’t tell me what you mean, then I’m going to have to give a 15-minute answer to cover every possible interpretation of what you mean. Here goes:
1. I oppose terrorism. I oppose terrorism from ISIS. I oppose terrorism from the Unabomber. I oppose terrorism from the Weather Underground. I oppose terrorism from the Irish Republican Army, and from the Unionists. And I oppose terrorism from the Klan.
2. I disagree with theories about racial superiority. Indeed, biologically, humans are all members of the same race, regardless of skin color or ethnic origins. Yes, your genetic background can have some influence on you – especially on your likelihood of acquiring an inheritable genetic disease. But overwhelmingly, the degree of variance within any ethnic group utterly swamps the proclivities you might identify with a group. Sure, some Kenyans run pretty fast, but the average Kenyan is no more likely to win an Olympic medal than I am.
3. While the KKK is secretive, the best evidence suggests that today this is a small group that tends to attract members from an economically disadvantaged segment of society who suffer a persecution complex. And this group is wildly unpopular with the great majority of Americans. They rarely hold public meetings – and when they do, they are invariably outnumbered by protestors. In short, but for any inclination to engage in terrorism – which we’ve already covered – this group poses no credible threat to anyone.
So I ask: What purpose is served by kicking this group of disadvantaged people who have a persecution complex? How does feeding their anxieties help anyone?
Again, I don’t share their viewpoint – but so what? In the 1930 and ‘40s, the US repeatedly conflicted with another unpopular group of economically disadvantaged people: the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Why? Well, they said that Catholicism as the work of the devil, and refused to salute the flag. This may strike you as unremarkable today, but in the midst of WWII, that was virtually treasonous. Many people were called upon to condemn the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many people obliged. Indeed, in 1940 the Supreme Court even ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses could be ejected from public schools for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. But the court reversed itself three years later, concluding that their views, while unorthodox, were no threat to society at large.
So, having clarified my views on terrorism and racism, I feel no need to offer gratuitous opinions on every social organization that offers me an endorsement. Otherwise, I’d have no time for anything else.
4. One last thought: Tip O’Neill, one of the longest-serving Speakers of the House of Representatives, famously recalled learning after he had lost an election that one of his alleged supporters failed to go vote because he had never specifically asked her to; O’Neill vowed never to make that mistake again, and he never lost another election.
I’m not going to make that mistake, either. I’m running for president, and I’d like your vote. Everyone who can hear my voice or read my words: I’d like your vote.
Let me assure you, you and I don’t agree on everything. Heck, if I only got the votes of people who agreed with me on everything, I’d get one vote – at most! No, I must rely on the support of people who do NOT agree with me on everything.
I hope we agree on many things. And I hope that where we disagree, you can at least understand my perspective. Understand that I’ve come to my perspective in good faith. And understand that I’m open to reconsidering my perspective based on new evidence and reasoning. I hope you can offer me your support based on your faith in my integrity and judgment. Because ultimately, you’re picking someone to confront problems that neither you nor I have even anticipated. Maybe problems that no one has confronted before. And all I’ll have to rely on is my integrity and judgment.
So, people with college degrees: Please vote for me. People without college degrees: Please vote for me. People currently in college: Please vote for me, if you’re old enough.
Left-handed people: Please vote for me. Right-handed people: Please vote for me. Ambidextrous people: Please vote for me – but only once per election. People lacking hands: Please vote for me – and if you’ll need help in the ballot booth, please contact my local campaign office; we’d be delighted to be of assistance.
And members of the KKK: I would be honored to have your support, too.
I am running for the job of President. I am not running for the role of Freelance Opiner on All Mankind. I do not seek to sit above my fellow Americans in judgment. I seek to stand beside my countrymen in support. To know your troubles. To share your victories.
And members of the KKK are Americans as well. They’re part of our club, too.
So if the purpose of asking me to repudiate someone is to get me to play identity politics — to signal that I’m the camp of YOUR type of Americans and against the camp of those OTHER Americans — I courteously decline your invitation. I’m going to be president of ALL Americans. And I ask for the support of ALL Americans.
Thank you.
nobody.really — are you running for president?
is this your response to a KKK endorsement?
because, shit, you just lost my vote.
The Klan “divided people by race” and “killed people by race” …“to further The Progressive Agenda.”
Wow.
The triumph of labels over reality. “Democrat” and “Republican” don’t mean, now, what they did fifty years ago.
Grace
Damn. I knew I should have added “And God Bless America!”
Too late now….
More explicitly stumping for the votes of murderers, terrorists, and bigots.
The Klan were Leftwing. Conservatism want stasis & small government and progressives are about change & using the state to intervene in society. The Klan were very clearly in favour of more education spending, more infrastructure spending, more public health spending, etc, they strongly advocated using the government to help the working classes. This is in line with progressive concerns (though obviously their racial stance isn’t) and totally opposed to what most conservatives believe. It’s not a trick, Lord’s absolutely sincere in his position.
The Klan have basically been reduced to cartoon bad guy racists, but they had some complex and interesting political thinking.
(Black) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Deborah O’LEARY: How could [the President] publicly demand that I apologize without hearing my side of the story first? …[Congressman Wooden]’s a racist.
White House Chief of Staff LEO McGarry: Maybe so…
O’LEARY: Maybe?!? …He’s using his government authority to spit at poor people and minorities, which in his mind are the same thing…. He’s doing it because he can score points with his narrow-minded constituents.
LEO: HIS narrow-minded constituents are also OUR narrow-minded constituents.
O’LEARY: Oh, for crying out loud, Leo. [yells] When are you guys gonna stop running for President?
LEO: When angels dance on pinheads, Debbie. We need their votes on any number of issues, including, by the way, the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
O’LEARY: Attacking HUD is code for attacking blacks.
LEO [dryly]: Thanks. Having been born yesterday on a turnip truck…
O’LEARY: Do you not think it is my role as the highest-ranking African-American woman in government to point out that…?
LEO: I think, Debbie, your role first and foremost is to serve the President–a task today at which you failed spectacularly…. You’re gonna apologize….
O’LEARY: I won’t.
LEO [forcefully]: You will.
O’LEARY: Is that an order?
LEO: You’re doing great work, Deb. The President’s nuts about you, always has been. He’ll cry for three minutes after he fires your ass — and then he’ll say ‘What’s next?’
O’LEARY: Leo, if I’ve gotta go and ask Wooden for forgiveness, he’s gonna lord it over me from now until the end of time.
LEO: It’s the cost of doing business.
West Wing, Season 1 – Episode 22 – “What Kind of Day Has It Been?”
Oooh! West Wing quotes. A surefire and absolute political argument.
yrs–
–Ben
This isn’t surprising. It’s a totally Trump-era exchange.
Every single time the conventional wisdom believed Trump had gone over the line and would have to climb down on an abhorrent statement, he simply refused to. He never gave the standard apology and we never got the opportunity to debate whether it was sufficient. Instead, he doubled down and doubled down again, until all the people who police the bounds of discourse on left and right started asking themselves what the hell happened.
Phrases (and concepts) like “you can’t say that about women,” “you can’t say that about immigrants,” and on the other side, “you can’t say that about hedge fund managers” are now demonstrably false. You CAN say that about $group and nobody – not ideological enforcers from the right or media figures on the left – can stop you as long as you simply refuse their authority to demand an apology. Joe Sixpack thinks he could get fired for talking like that, so he gets a cheap thrill in the privacy of the voting booth.
Suddenly, it’s all on the table again. It never went away. It just lived in dog whistles, abstraction and euphemisms.
So we have two people on TV arguing about just how bad the Klan is. Maybe talking about the whole submerged white populist/nationalist worldview in plain language will expose it for how ridiculous it is, as opposed to channeling it through proxy issues and coded language. I’m still waiting.
As anyone who follows science news can tell you, broadcast media have already taken this approach with other issues. “Sure, the evidence for evolution or climate change or vaccine/GMO safety is overwhelming… but there’s one corporate shill/creationist/spokesmodel nut who disagrees, so both sides deserve an equal hearing!”
It’s soooo much easier than journalism.
Pete:
This really is offensive on its face. The Klan has not been “reduced” to anything. They really terrorized and killed people, not to promote a socioeconomic agenda, but a racist one. To propose that one can separate their socioeconomic politics from the context of that racist agenda is to deny what the Klan was all about in the first place. The fact that some of their politics might be congruent with things that liberals/progressives say—and I’d appreciate some references—doesn’t make them at all a left-leaning, progressive, liberal organization, which is what Lord argues. It means they wanted certain kinds of benefits for white people, which may have been the Democratic Party’s agenda at the time, but it is hardly a progressive one.
I’m not denying the Klan’s massive racism, I’m just talking about one political dimension – conservatives = small state, progressives = state intervention on behalf of the poor. The Klan were progressive based on this. (I didn’t say they were liberal, they weren’t, they were heavily moralist and pro-prohibition for example).
Pretty much any serious study shows they weren’t just one dimensional racists. You can look up Chapter 2 “The Civic, Educational, and Progressive Klan” of Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949 on google books.
1920’s Klan anti-Catholicism is also really interesting given what we now know. Anti-Catholicism is always written off as obviously misguided, and no-one likes the Klan, but a lot of the stuff they said actually went on to happen. Rome did try and subvert the law, Catholic politicians and law officers did defer to the Church rather than the law, the Church did ally with dictatorships, etc.
The striking down of anti-Catholic compulsory education acts is still listed as one of the great liberal victories over bigotry and intolerance. But I’d be interested on your thoughts on the below links, I can’t but help wonder if the world would have been a better place if they had stayed on the books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Compulsory_Education_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_scandal_in_the_Catholic_archdiocese_of_Portland
So, at least a life-long Republican finally admitted to the racist dog-whistles, which RonF and others have long claimed not to be able to hear.
https://goplifer.com/2016/03/02/why-republican-criticism-of-trump-fails/
While I don’t doubt for a minute that there are plenty of racist dog whistles in conservative politics (and Trump himself, who’s pretty much just overtly racist and a lot of GOP voters don’t seem too bothered by that), I’ve always been irritated by this particular example. What outsider politician hasn’t used some version of “we’ll take our country back,” regardless of their political leanings? Howard Dean basically made it his campaign slogan in 2004, and no one interpreted that as racist. It’s just what people say to drum up support against the group in power.
Also, it’s worth keeping in mind there were plenty of self-identified Democrats in 2008 who weren’t thrilled about voting for a black man. I don’t have time to search for it now, but there was an amazing This American Life episode about an Obama campaigner trying to drum up votes in central Pennsylvania, and how much implicit and explicit racism he ran into from blue-collar union workers who would otherwise be no-doubters for the Dem nominee.
Further, from the piece Elusis quoted:
Grace