Should Howard Dean, the DNC chairman, be censured for this statement?

Great Debates
21

Me, too. That’s what I found offensive.

Seriously? If the Chairman of the Republican Party said something like “Hey, we’re short of black people – let’s get the hotel staff in here” you wouldn’t find that incredibly offensive?

I’m certainly not. But that doesn’t make the statement less an offensive stereotype.

I’ll agree that Dean’s remark doesn’t equate to Lott’s, or to Byrd’s, or especially to Harry Reid’s disgusting diatribes against Clarence Thomas. But it wasn’t much of a start for the guy.

22

I for one am completely outraged at Gov. Dean’s implication that there are insufficient numbers of black Republicans to fill a meeting room. I clearly recall watching the Republican convention last September and seeing plenty of minorities up there on that stage. It was, I am sure, a complete happenstance of random demographical chance that substantially all of the folks on the floor were as white as the linens back in their hotel bathrooms.

Also, everybody knows that the typical servile, underpaid hotel worker is not black at all, but an illegal alien from Mexico or Central America.

23

I have no doubt that if a Pubbie said this, the usual suspects would be destroying him in the Pit; however, I think it was simply a stupid comment with no intent to offend anyone. Dean is smart enough not to intentionally attack the very group that he is speaking to, so it’s probably best for the right to take the high ground and let this thing blow over.

24

Nobody said he mentioned segregation. I think that’s the third time you’ve said “it’s out of context.” SHOW US THE FUCKING CONTEXT ALREADY. It’s as simple as this if you ask me: if Lott was praising Thurmond’s conservatism, not his segregationism, and still chose the words he used, then he is a dope. It’s roughly akin to the old joke about Mussolini making the trains run on time (which, incidentally, he didn’t). Making the trains run on time is great if you ignore the fascism, and if somebody said “Mussolini was a great leader,” meaning he made the trains run on time, but didn’t explain he just meant the trains and thinks fascism is bad, then you’d say he’s guilty of stupidity and a poor choice of words.

Likewise, if he was praising Strom’s political philosophies except for segregationism, he didn’t make that clear in his speech. When he was defending himself later, of course, he managed to do so.

I was talking about your post. I’m not sure whether to think you really believe he was making a reference to house slaves, or whether you’re just making a gross distortion of the quote that’s not supported by the actual words. Either one is kinda sad.

I might. But that’s almost the opposite of what Dean said. That would be a blatant stereotype with no other referrent. Dean was talking about Republicans and you’ve omitted that. If the RNC Chair said “You think the DNC could get this many people of color into a single room?” Maybe if they got the hotel staff in there," you’d wonder what he was smoking since 2004’s black vote went for Kerry by about 9 to 1. No comparison.

25

We certainly have some extraordinarily partisan folks on the SDMB who probably would. However, leaving aside that the Republicans could not (currently) make any similar statement to Dean’s, I suspect that Ken Mehlman could easily address a Republcan group and say “I look around this room and nearly all the people of color are hotel staff; we need to demonstrate that their values are our values so that we can welcome them into the Republican fold.” without anyone but the most extreme haters on the Left giving it a second thought.

26

Actually, I think it was something more along the lines of ‘he once again opened his yap without thinking and said something that sounded like a reference to house slaves.’ I have complete confidence that that’s not what lies in his heart and that his offense was not intended. I have equally complete confidence that if a Republican Chairman made precisely the same remark under the same circumstances it would, after a suitable percolation period in the blogosphere, end up on the front of the Times along with calls for his resignation.

27

To you. If you’d said he was saying black people are poor or work in low-paying jobs, I wouldn’t have been flabbergasted. You went right from “hotel staff” to slavery with such speed that it’s hard to take your logic seriously.

Could you explain what the RNC guy’s comparable remark would be? Like tomndebb, I’m trying to imagine something and failing. Dean didn’t even generalize beyond the hotel he was in. And I think he was in DC, which is overwhelmingly black.

28

Is tu quoque the standard for determining who (or what) should be censured? And what does the OP mean by “censured”? Censured by whom?

29

In fact, it was you who went there. I did allow myself to be drawn there by you for purposes of the argument, and I’ll now backtrack to my initial impression. It was the former in your quote.

Me, too. Additionally, I don’t see the logic in addressing a room full of black people specifically drawn together by race and remarking that it would be difficult for the other side to acheive a similar feat – like there’s no black caucus in the Republican Party? . But then, I can’t imagine an RNC guy talking about “white niggers” or belittling the writing skills of a Justice of the Supreme Court without any apparent basis either, at least not in a way where he stays off the front of the newspapers, so what do I know?

30

Talk about stereotyping. The staffs at the major hotels in DC are unionized and make a very good wage.

You just assume because they are of color and work as staff at a hotel they are low wage workers…right?

31

As I said, now that we’re coming full circle, the reason I went there is the impression I got from your choice of words. Did I pick up a wrong impression?

I understand you don’t think it’s valid, but I think we’ve established why Dean did and could make such a remark.

Yeah, nobody ever talks about anything Robert Byrd says. :rolleyes:

32

Just because you infer something that Dean didn’t imply doesn’t place the sin on his shoulders.

Though I’m sure the right-wing insta-pundit media network is already tossing this in the echo chamber in an attempt to spin it as such…

33

Re: Trent Lott not meaning segregationist attitudes when he touted Thurmond’s Dixiecrats (who’s major platform was segregation).

It kind of reminds me of when George Bush made that speech about the war in Iraq, oh almost two years ago, when he said, “Mission Accomplished.”

Turns out he wasn’t talking about Iraq at all, but merely the USS Lincoln’s mission. Remember that?

I’m not saying these guys backpeddle much, but you’d think they could be a little clearer when they open their mouths and allude to shit, ya know?

34

stpauler, I’ve tried to find a fuller text of Lott’s controversial speech. No luck so far. Here is his Wikipedia entry, which mentions that the controversy grew because of Lott’s “history of actively supporting segregation during college and making similar statements at various points throughout his career.” They link to a few at the bottom of the page.

A slightly longer version of the offending quote was “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, [the people of Mississippi] voted for him. We’re proud of it. If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.” Still nothing that makes it clear he didn’t mean segregation. I wish I could find a few more sentences. Can you?

35

Rather than ‘wrong,’ let’s go with ‘overstrong.’ From his phrase “if they got (them) in here” I did pick up a strain of the staff being summoned. I hit me exactly wrong. Again, I don’t think he meant it that way.

36

By who? Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity? Joe Scarborough? Micheal Savage? Ann Coulter? Dennis Miller? etc. etc. etc.

37

You know you hit the nail on the head.

38

Nada here… but then again, the link on the wikipedia page wasdisturbingly enlightening.

The comparison in my OP in light of all of that is definitely hyperbolic.

39

Context. In the presidential campaign, Dean said that guys with Confederate flag bumper stickers on their pickups should support Democrats, not Republicans. In classic left-wing knee-jerkery, he was immediately denounced by every other Democratic candidate, causing Karl Rove to develop a firm erection. What Dean said the other day was, I fear, an awkward way of trying to make amends.

40

Why? I mean, if it actually were?

I think people are missing what is going on. Reactions to what people say are really, always, partly reactions to who they are. Hysterical negative (or positive) reactions to words are largely reactions to who the speaker is, not what he says.

Why would blacks or anyone have a negative reaction to what Dean said? It was really just the 8000th iteration by a white liberal of “Dems good, blacks good honest working class, Dems will deliver the spoils to blacks,” or so they had every reason to believe. But look – the last of those three points is the one that really matters. Similarly, if a Republican said “[insert some statement supposedly touching on race], and we’re not going to deliver quite as many spoils to you.” The black or liberal lobby would react with outrage, but their negativity is, again, based principally on the last clause, if pretextually on the first.

Put differently, it is simply partisanship writ large, but with the unfortunately-nuclear issue of the race card introduced. Dean said what he said because he honors the contributions of the black working class. McConnell says the same thing, it’s because he thinks blacks are all porch monkeys who can’t get a job above being a domestic. How much corellation to reality in either kneejerk reaction? Not much, necessarily, other than the fact that some blacks have worked in some service positions, which is essentially a neutral, if observable, phenomenon.

The GOP does the same thing. “Families” and “security” are the shibelloths of the day. GWB has used them to justify record-busting spending increases and foreign adventurism and anti-individual-liberty that are simply anathema within any conventional understanding of “conservative” policies. Yet he’s succeeded in setting a climate in which by suggesting that any critics of his out-of-control Big Government tactics are anti-“security,” he has Dems. apologizing for taking critical positions that are closer to Reagan and Goldwater than to anything actually liberal.

IMHO, the race card is even worse because it’s so predictable, played-out, and (at this point, at least in historical context) largely baseless.

Huerta88’s Practical Hierarchy Of Permissible Speech Regarding Protected Groups:

One protected group can say anything good it wants to about itself, and anything bad it wants to against a non-protected group, and will get in trouble only for criticizing another protected group (cf. Jesse Jackson’s “Hymietown,” Jackie Mason’s schwartzer comments, etc.).

A non-protected group may say anything good it wants about a protected group (but don’t be patronizing, which your opponents will deem you if you are on the opposite political side from them). It can say most anything bad about another non-protected group.

A non-protected group cannot ever say anything bad about a protected group. When in doubt, and especially if the non-protected-group member has mentioned or in any way brought up reference to anything having to do, in positive, negative, or especially neutral fashion with a protected group, the tie will be broken by whether the person or media outlet or organization evaluating the statement shares the non-protected group member’s overall goals and clique memberships.

I don’t agree with this, but it’s pretty much how this stuff works.