READING TIME: 4 minutes
SUMMARY: Republicans having been ratcheting up the racist rhetoric and offering the most preposterous reasoning for why they aren’t racists, but the liberals really are the racists. The entire country has been steeped in it like the proverbial frog being boiled in the ubiquitous pot. Worse, though, is the weak-kneed response to the blatant racism by white Democrats.
KEY WORDS: Republicans, Racism, Jeremy Faison, Long Play, Crooked Media, Tennessee, Jennifer Palmieri, Milquetoast Responses, Permission Structures
COMMENTS: How long will it take us to get the rampant Republican racism back under control?
The Jeremy Faison Interview on Long Play
I listen to a fair number of political podcasts. Even though I’m a Generation Jones, I understand modern social media — Okay, I don’t get Instagram. Why does it keep showing me commercials and other influencers when I only want to see what my “friends” are doing? I don’t get that platform — so, I’m mixing it up with the podcasts and streaming on Twitch and all the social medias.
I heard a brief interview with Tennessee State Representative, Jeremy Faison, on Tennessee: A Single Party State, which is on the short series, Long Play about the run up to the 2026 mid-terms in six Southern states on Crooked Media. Honestly, it was a bit light weight. More rah rah rah, Democrats than any kind of insightful analysis. But, they interviewed this retiring Republican representative because they felt like they had to talk to a Tennessee Republican, and he was the only one who would.
That’s about the caliber of the podcast, right there: We have to talk to a Republican, and this goober is the only one who will, so let’s let him speak past us on his racism while barely pushing back.
Just consider the following excerpts from the interview Jennifer Palmieri of him. The transcription is by me, so any emphasis and errors are mine. Extend a little grace for a full-time citizen, part-time blogger maintaining his vanity blog.
I’m a Christian!
When asked why he decided to retire after sixteen years in the state legislature: “Republicans introduced a bill that would allow schools to remove children who are here with parents illegally. I’m Christian! So, like I believe all these people are made in the image of god. That bill didn’t pass — thank goodness — but that kind of bill is where the mainstream GOP is at.”
This response shows what he thinks of himself and how his Christian godliness exerts itself. Read that as I’m good, so everything I do is good. He wasn’t going to harm children for the sins of their parents. Good for him, I guess. Except those children are being harmed for the ethnicity of their parents by his party and he don’t seem to give a good goddamn other than trying to keep them in the shitty conservative racism indoctrinating school system. I’m sure those kids will thank him after their parents are deported and they matriculate high school since they now know their parents were criminals — the worst of the worst — and Faison “saved” them from their evil Democratic ways.
Rising and Falling on Who They Are
Palmieri asked him about the Calais decision and the racist gerrymandering of Tennessee, only she didn’t accuse him or the Republican Party of being racist. It led to Faison expounding at length on what he thinks racism is and how it manifests itself.
FAISON: “I always want to remind people, plenty of African Americans get elected all across America, and they don’t have a super minority-majority district to get elected. It’s racist at its core to say because you’re this, then you get this. I just reject that as a daddy of a bi-racial child, me as a father-in-law of a Black man. They rise and fall on who they are, not on the color they are.”
Where in America, other than in the lies Faison and his fellow neo-Confederate slavers tell themselves, is any Black person allowed to “rise and fall on who they are, not on the color they are”? Certainly, not Tennessee (State motto: Birth place of the Klan, y’all!). Majority-minority districts are designed to allow Black candidates to rise and fall on who they are rather than on the color of their skin.
Majority-Minority Districts is Racism Right There
Palmieri went on to ask him about dividing Memphis up into three predominately white districts.
FAISON: “Because it benefitted our party, that’s why you do that. I mean, you know the answer to that. [Unintelligible cross talk] You did it in your party.”
PALMIERI: “You may want to remove race from voting, but you all took the one predominately Black district in the predominately Black city in Tennessee and broke it up into three pieces and the chance that a Black person can win are very low now.”
FAISON: “Now, I see… I think that’s racist what you just said.”
PALMIERI: “I’m looking at records… I’m looking at how people, at what the outcomes are and I just worry about it.”
I just worry about it. Ooh, sick burn, Palmieri. There’s no coming back from that indictment of racist gerrymandering. You didn’t leave him a leg to stand on.
FAISON: “But what you’re saying says, nobody can get elected in Memphis if they’re Black. That’s judging them by the color of their skin, Jennifer [Palmieri], that’s not looking at the content of who they are or their character.”
What? What? How is proclaiming that the white voters in the rural areas around Memphis are so racist that they won’t ever vote for a Black person and realizing that the mixture of rural white voters to urban Black voters means that no Black person can win a free and fair election, judging the Black candidates by the color of their skin?
Palmieri, and all of the other non-racist observers, are judging the white voters by the history of their votes and actions and predicting their future votes and actions. That’s not racism. That’s common sense.
The Back-Asswards Racist Reasoning of Republicans
By deliberately misconstruing the interpretation of what racist gerrymandering is, by accusing the liberals of being racist is (a) first class gaslighting and (b) obfuscating the blatant racism motivating the gerrymander. It’s ridiculous. It would be laughable if so many white people didn’t accept it as true, and I don’t mean the blatantly racist white Evangelical white supremacist, either, I mean the racially anxious college educated urban white voter who locks their car doors if a Black man is standing on the corner when they drive by and wonders what a Black person is doing in their neighborhood.
The entire goal of that argument is to get you to defend yourself from accusations of racism and not point out that back-assward logic that it used on you.
But did Palmieri point that out to his face or after they left his stupid analysis on their broadcast? No, they just oh-welled it and moved on to the next thing.
We’ve got neo slavers — you know they would if they could — pretending that racism doesn’t exist and these soft liberals offering us the analysis and insight equivalent of Wonder bread.
We know they are modern-day Confederate slavers because they keep Jim Crowing Black people every chance they get and social engineering the permission structure for open LEGAL racial discrimination. They are essentially arguing that it is a political gerrymander because Black people vote Democratic. If a BLACK Republican candidate would run, they might could get elected, but, Blacks insist on running as Democrats, so, of course, we can’t let them win.
The Milquetoast Response of Democrats
The white bread milquetoast “I just worry about it” response of white Democrats to the naked proud Republican racism is comes from the same place as white people chickening out on confronting their inner racist. It explains why white suburban middle class votes are continually seduced into voting Republican by racist dog whistling. That the dog whistles have become the equivalent of shouting the n-word from the rooftop of Republican local headquarters is the boiling a frog effect.
Even if we vote them out of office in 2026 and 2028, the neo-Confederates have successfully normalized their racism… again! And, Palmieri’s complete lack of utter disdain when she seeks it out and confronts only helps the normalization creep on up on us.
Image Attribution
This image was found on World History Encyclopedia and has a Creative Commons license.
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Jack I live in Mississippi and racism never really went a way……they tried to mask it but it was there…..and many are what are called ‘good church going’ people….that dodge has been used ever since I can remember….so I am not surprised at the openness of MAGA nor the lame response by Dems. chuq
Howdy Chuq!
I know that my father’s family in Tennessee never gave up on their racism. They were a little more careful about what they’d say out loud or, at least, in front of me. It didn’t take much to get them being more free with their opinion.
It takes generations to change culture, especially now that it has gotten a shot in the arm.
Huzzah!
Jack
The problem here is the family teaches racism and until that change, if ever, not much will change in politics. chuq
Howdy Chuq!
Family, but also, the institutions both private and public, teach racism. That’s the Woodard take that explains why the turn over of people since the Civil War in the most racist counties in the South has left them still the most racist counties in the South. And, it is one of the reasons culture takes so long to change.
Jack
One thing that stands out can be called a partisanization of race. That has its roots in SCOTUS saying that racial Gerrymandering is not ok, but partisan is. So, confabulate the two.
When we give up on confronting the racist BS excuses, yes, that normalizes.
I have always thought that the political gerrymandering rule was a dog whistle to racism. And, just as bad as racial gerrymandering or any other kind of gerrymandering because gerrymandering is antithetical to democracy.
Jack
Yes, it was that and more, a workaround to the restrictions imposed by the Voting Rights Act.
Howdy Bob!
And, just as the neo-slavers have reinvented Jim Crow with their gerrymanders, voter suppression, and voter nullification methods, the democrats have to create new structures to ensure civil and voting rights as well as other reforms and restorations.
We have to look at the deficits that Trump and Republicans have exposed in their oligarchical power grab and address those instead of trying to recreate the past.
Huzzah!
Jack
Quite so. The high points of the past were never supposed to be the end point, but the foundation for further progress. For example, school integration was meant to lead to more familiarity with “others” and over time to erode racist stereotypes. It didn’t work because white parents pulled their kids out to private schools, and it wasn’t accompanied by residential desegregation (racial and class). Worse, the progress made allowed the Republicans to create and sell the myth of “Post-racial America” when Obama got elected. It is not enough to reset to the past maximum of rights and enforcement of rights. The vision and narrative of the vision must go farther. Alas, right now, the most that most Democrats seem able to offer as a vision is Medicare for All, and taxing the wealthy to save Social Security.
Howdy Bob!
The neo-slavers have found ways to stymie every attempt at creating a more perfect union and a more just equitable country. It fooled a lot of people. Because we weren’t being openly racist, many people assumed that we were moving beyond racism. The speed and ease with which it has come roaring back tells us how badly we misjudged the situation.
I am heartened by the rise of the DSA and many dynamic progressive candidates around the country. We may find a new progressive agenda to rally around as we have done in the past.
Huzzah!
Jack
The rise of the DSA is encouraging. Perhaps the damage from Hayak’s “The Road To Surfdom” and the embrace of that equation of socialism with Soviet Communism by both political parties can finally be undone.
Also, we have the opposition to the surveillance state as represented by FLOCK cameras, data centers, and the blatant corruption of the oligarchy that is growing in the core constituencies of both parties. That is the kind of movement that has brought progressive populism in the past.
I suppose that part of the fight against the disguised racism has to be in calling it out and pulling off the mask of “post-racialism”.
Howdy Bob!
No one likes to be manipulated. It makes whatever you end up doing because you were manipulated into sting all the more once you realize that you’ve been had. The problem with MAGA realizing that the oligarchs have dangled white supremacy as the reward for giving up their freedoms and responsibilities is that the white supremacy is a very big reward. It may seem worth it to them even if they could weigh it out consciously. As it is, it induces such cognitive dissonance to make the bargain, we may not be able to cut through it without some catastrophe occurring. Question is, is our collapsing economy, environment, world order enough of a catastrophe to crack that egg.
The only saving grace of having handed our government to a corrupt self-serving demented old man and his cronies is that it has led to massive important reforms in the past. Hopefully, we’ll have enough of an economy, climate, world order, and sense of democracy left to make those reforms.
Huzzah!
Jack
I was hearing an author interview about a new book on parenting. I was struck by the author saying the kids have to fall down to learn how to get up. We learn nothing from success but to do more of the same. Failure is the great teacher. That is why reform movements are born of catastrophe. Will the one we are now in leave us with the resources to learn and recover? We must hope.
Howdy Bob!
Hopefully, we will learn from the spectacular failure of Trump and the Republican Party and build something as lasting and monumental as FDR’s New Deal. Hopefully. I think probably.
Ironically, Trump has done more for renewables and awareness of climate change than nearly any other person other than, maybe, Biden. Will our institutions and the brain drain be able to recover? Probably. We’ll need a very competent capable president to follow. And, the Republican Party has not given up on its oligarchical and anti-democratic goals.
We’ll never recover our place in the world, though. Never again will the world trust the American electorate.
Huzzah!
Jack