In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family's secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance.
"Niggerhead," it read.
In all seriousness, I think this says very little about Rick Perry, and a lot more about the country he seeks to govern. A few choice quotes:
Mae Lou Yeldell, who is black and has lived in Haskell County for 70 years, recalled a gas station refusing to sell her father fuel when he drove the family through Throckmorton in the 1950s.
She said it was not uncommon in the 1950s and '60s for whites to greet blacks with, "Morning, nigger!" "I heard that so much it's like a broken record," said Yeldell, who had never heard of the hunting spot by the river. Racial attitudes here have shifted slowly.
Haskell County began observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day two years ago, according to a county commissioner. And many older white residents understand the civil rights movement as a struggle that addressed problems elsewhere.
"It wasn't the same issues here you were dealing with," said Don Ballard, the superintendent of the Paint Creek school district. "Certainly were no picketing signs. Blacks were perfectly satisfied with what was happening...
It's just a name," said Haskell County Judge David Davis, sitting in his courtroom and looking at a window. "Like those are vertical blinds. It's just what it was called. There was no significance other than as a hunting deal..."
The cowboys, when they were gathering cattle, they'd say they're going to the Matthews or Niggerhead or the Nail" pastures, said Bill Reed, a distributor for Coors beer in nearby Abilene who used to lease a hunting parcel adjacent to the Perrys'. "Those were all names. Nobody thought anything about it..."
You know, Texas is a little different -- you go where it's comfortable," Reed said. ".?.?. It would have been one thing if they had named it, but they didn't. So, it's basically a figure of speech as far as most people are concerned. No one thought anything about it."
In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Wallar Overton, the son of Mr. Perry's scoutmaster in his home county of Haskell, said the hunting camp had always been known by that name.
"It's just what it was called from Day One," Mr. Overton said. "I personally am not offended by the name, and I don't like the word."
"That's just what people call it," he said.
Surely there are people, in both stories, who find the name offensive. But what we see on display in the quotes is the insidiousness of racism, the way it gets in the blood, and literally alters the senses. A black woman in the county claims she was constantly addressed as "Nigger." A white man, in the very same county, claims that "Blacks were perfectly satisfied."
Several people in the story have no notion of why the name "Niggerhead" would be offensive. It's just what it is. I'm sure the people quoted recognize racism, on some level -- like say an outright lynching -- but if calling a hunting-ground "Niggerhead" isn't offensive to them, I think it's safe to say that white racism doesn't really exist as an actual force in their minds.
I've learned in long years of experience blogging about American politics that there are no racists in the United States. Certainly if there are any, they're not white people. And certainly if there are any racist white people, they're not conservatives.
Of course this has long been true. A deceitful inversion, where you accuse other of carrying the virus which seeps from your very pores, has long been the tactic of actual racists. What connects George Wallace and Jefferson Davis isn't just their racism, but their claim to be fighting for freedom. It's no different today. Shirley Sherrod was just last year.
When people ask why we can't have a "conversation on race," or wonder why Barack Obama generally avoids any discussion of white racism, they really should remember the country he governs. Whatever my critique of Obama's rhetoric to black audience, the dilemma seems fairly clear to me.
We can talk about Skip [Professor Henry Louis] Gates wrongful arrest. Or we can pass health-care. We can not do both.
Faced With Perry's "Niggerhead" Controversy, Conservatives Slam…Herman Cain
2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/ZUMA Press
Adam Serwer Mon Oct. 3, 2011 9:14 AM PDT
As Texas Gov. Rick Perry deals with the fallout from the revelation that his family leases a hunting camp called "Niggerhead," Herman Cain is facing his own backlash—for suggesting that the Perrys' conduct was "insensitive."
According to the Washington Post, Perry's family leases a piece of land referred to by local residents as "Niggerhead"; the word is carved into a rock at the entrance of the property. The rock was painted over sometime after the Perry family began renting the property in the 1980s, although the offending word is still "faintly visible." Locals interviewed by the Post provided comic rationalizations for why the name isn't offensive. Haskell County Judge David Davis told the paper, "It's just a name…Like those are vertical blinds. It's just what it was called." Perry, for his part, told the Post that the term was an "offensive name that has no place in the modern world."
Herman Cain, appearing on ABC's This Week, offered Perry the most mild of rebukes considering he's old enough to recall what life was like when segregation was the law of the land. "I think that it shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking that word off of that rock and renaming the place," he said.
Wrong answer, Herman.
You might have anticipated that Perry would face a firestorm for being associated with the property, but it's Cain whose remarks are drawing the most criticism from the right. At RedState, Erick Erickson concluded, "It also seems to be a slander Herman Cain is picking up and running with as a way to get into second place."Glenn Reynolds remarked that until now, Cain's "big appeal is that he's not just another black race-card-playing politician." Over at the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis called Cain's remarks "a cheap shot, and, perhaps a signal that Cain is willing to play the race card against a fellow Republican when it benefits him."
The key phrase here is "fellow Republican." Because, you see, no one thought Cain was "playing the race card" when he said in the same program that black people are "brainwashed" into voting for Democrats and suggested that black people who vote Republican are "thinking for themselves." Cain wasn't rebuked by conservatives when he previously suggested President Barack Obama was not "a strong black man," implied liberals were out to commit genocide against blacks through support for abortion rights, and said he wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his cabinet.
None of that, in the eyes of the conservatives who cheered him for those remarks, constituted "playing the race card." But when a man who is old enough to recall living under American apartheid gets a little emotional over a piece of land called "Niggerhead," that's where the right draws the line. Not just because Cain is attacking a fellow Republican, but because he stepped out of the proper role of a black conservative, which is to reassure Republicans that their political problems with race are the inventions of a liberal conspiracy. Cain just ran head first into the brick wall of conservative anti-anti-racism, the attitude on the right that accusations of racism directed at white people are of far greater consequence than any lingering vestiges of institutional racism nonwhites might face.
There's also more than a little irony in Perry facing a racial controversy, especially considering the fact that it's his relatively moderate record on immigration that has given him the most trouble in the GOP presidential primary. Given Cain's remarks about Obama and black voters, Michele Bachmann's support for a return to the pre-1965 immigration system (which involved racial quotas), and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's ad that mostly consists of former Mexican President Vicente Fox praising Perry in heavily accented English, Perry's campaign has been largely devoid of race-baiting when compared with his opponents.
Yet conservatives might rally around Perry's embattled campaign because a man with the living memory of what life was like for black people in the segregated South had the chutzpah to suggest that there was something "insensitive" about a place called "Niggerhead." Meanwhile, Cain, whose stock was rising prior to the controversy, may have harmed his own presidential ambitions with the mere suggestion that a white Republican had been "insensitive" on an issue of race. How's that for postracial?
Arizona told someone who is for Cain ..some time back..that he didn't have a chance ..and of course ..that ended up going into .."Why" ..etc.........Arizona's final comment was this .."You just don't know the republican party very well, do you ?..boy was she right ...I expected it to be in a different way..with the electorate .. hush hush ..but this is BLATANT and real....
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