After months of beating around the bush with terms like “Messiah” and “His Holiness”, a member of the right-wing crowd has finally stated in plain language the general feeling of conservatives towards Barrack Obama and his wife Michelle:
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a conservative Republican from Georgia, let slip today what critics have been saying is the subtext of many of the attacks on Barack Obama: He’s “uppity.”
According to The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, Westmoreland was discussing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech outside the House chamber today when he veered into his thoughts on Michelle and Barack Obama.
“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mister Obama, Senator Obama, they’re a member of an elitist class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.
When a reporter sought clarification on the racially loaded word, Westmoreland replied, “Uppity, yeah.”
-Washington Post: “Georgia GOP Congressman Calls Obama ‘Uppity’“
While the term uppity literally means putting on or marked by airs of superiority, the social usage towards blacks originated in the deep south and denotes a black person who does not know their place in society (which is presumably at the bottom). It is particularly used against highly educated and upwardly mobile blacks who refuse to be intimidated. Having been called it a few times, I’ve always seen the term uppity (or the many close approximations being used in this campaign) as a last attempt by the mediocre to maintain their social advantage over a class that they still believe -at least subconsciously- should be working the fields.
The term tends to be used more by uneducated whites and by people with a strong racial animus. Legendary baseball player and southern hothead Ty Cobb once stabbed a black elevator operator for being what he called “uppity”. Several lynchings in the deep south have been said to originate from uppity behaviour rather than criminal behaviour.
The worst race riots in recent US history, Oklahoma and Rosewood, took place in well-to-do black areas rather than the slums. Similarly, most of the recent threats by white supremacists against black institutions have been phoned into universities and churches rather than gang headquarters or other places that produce the often-cited black crime wave. Canada’s worst assault was on the self-contained and socially conservative Africville, located just outside Halifax. Indeed, the animus against successful blacks has always been the strongest in North America.
Why bring this up? Because I’ve been reading the same message ad infnitum and initially from Democrats who recoiled in horror that his “boy” would dare interfere with Hillary Clinton’s apparently God-sanctioned right to become president (a phenomenon that many black liberals -addicted to their handouts and kind words- still deny to this day). Once Obama proved this notion false, Republican operatives stoked the racist streak of small-town America but made sure that no direct racial terms were used. Instead, Obama is called “arrogant”, where a white great orator like Bill Clinton is called … a great orator. He is sarcastically referred to as “the messiah” while Ron Paul, a Republican candidate with notable ground-level support, was merely called populist. Barrack and Michelle are called elitist for their upper class status while John McCain retains his all-American status despite having lost count of his houses.
It might surprise you to know I don’t support Obama’s campaign as it is written on paper – he is not the right man for the job in 2008 unless he is willing to throw many of his supporters under the bus via ignoring all that social reform promised. America does not have enough money for universal health care, etc nor can it afford to turn protectionist just to save a few mid-town jobs. Obama is also going to run into resistance from international leaders if he tries to pull out of Iraq too fast – doing such would leave a security hole that cannot be filled by the poorly-trained Iraqi and and Afghan armies. However, the persistent ugliness from the right and from elements of the left is evoking sympathy for the skinny kid from Chicago that has carried a long-shot campaign just steps from the White House. In the long run, I believe other people will feel the same sympathy as they realize that these uppity/messiah/etc attacks are not merely character assessments or even partisan politics.
There are many legitimate reasons to attack Barrack Obama’s spendthrift platform and his unwillingness to dive into mechanics behind it. That “uppity” and other loaded terms are the predominant attack says more about the nature of Obama’s opponents and what they really fear.
…typo?