Confederate Flap: Stand Firm, Howard Dean

[mzmolly]

By Constance L. Rice, Constance L. Rice is a civil rights attorney.


Howard Dean wants to represent angry white Confederate flag-wavers. He even quotes Martin Luther King Jr. in doing so. And in a televised debate Tuesday he refused to say he was sorry for starting this tempest.

Well, Dr. Dean, you may have clumsily launched this issue, but keep at it and keep quoting, because you're right.

No, this is not a missive from a Southern rebel driving a Confederate flag-festooned F-150 half-ton to a Civil War reenactment. It's from the great-granddaughter of slaves — and slave owners. A civil rights lawyer, no less, who knows full well the toxic pain and pride tangled in all symbols of the slavocracy known as Dixie.

Dean is right for three reasons.

First, he's right politically. Without a vision big enough to embrace Southern white men — angry or not — this country cannot be diverted from its current path toward corporation-focused, downwardly mobile plutocracy and turned back toward people-focused, upwardly mobile democracy.

Second, one of Martin Luther King's most profound insights came in his warning that to avoid elimination as the irrelevant unskilled, poor whites and poor blacks had to band together in a "grand alliance" and demand from politicians jobs, justice and opportunity for everyone.

King realized that the grand old bargain this country had always offered to poor whites — namely, accept your poverty and we will ensure your racial caste superiority over blacks — must be destroyed before universal opportunity could be realized.

King clearly knew that the very whites he was appealing to clung to both the Confederate flag and empty white supremacy. Yet he still proposed this alliance for the greater prosperity of all: "Together could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for the good of all."

The third reason is that we need to get beyond fighting over Confederate symbols and get to the critical re-founding of this country for its people.

Read on here...

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-...

[Closer]

1. There it is!!!!!!!

[blm]

2. Too bad she believed Dean's lie he was talking about race relations

when he was really defending his NRA support.

I also wonder if these some of these columnist who fell for the spin are sorry that Dean apologized. Did Dean's apology show that he wasn't standing on principle like his supporters believe?

[mzmolly]

3. OMG, not this 'BS' again.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[blm]

21. as inevitable as no good answer for the question posted.

.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JNelson6563]

16. quit crying in your teacup and get over it

In an hourlong interview on a public radio program in Concord on Wednesday, Mr. Kerry, who two months ago publicly chastised his campaign manager for assailing Dr. Dean, again and again turned questions about his own views into attacks on Dr. Dean, until his host finally politely asked that Senator Kerry use his time to talk about Senator Kerry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/politics/campaigns/09...

Keeping up tradition or what? Why not go post some positive development from the Kerry campaign? Oh wait! Nevermind!

Julie

[CWebster]

22. HaHaHa

He pulled the same crap on one of the Sunday morning talk shows. He is so out of touch--his focus on attacking Dean is more persistant and outspoken than he ever directed at Bush.

[deutsey]

5. Rice is right on the mark

She could also point out how Bobby Kennedy (someone who worked for McCarthy, for God's sake) formed such a "grand alliance" among Latinos, blacks, whites, rural, city, affluent, poor.

Dean's been saying this, by the way, since last February when, at a DNC meeting, he said he was going to talk about race in the election and work to make the Democratic vision of America appealing to everyone, including working class whites in the South (and he referred to the Confederat flag then, too).

I know someone who was there in February; she said everyone (blacks, whites, the other Dem candidates, even) gave him a standing ovation. It was at this point, in fact, that she said she became a Dean supporter.

[ant]

9. article about that standing ovation

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1107-04.htm

"You know all those white guys riding around with Confederate flags in the back of their pickup trucks? Well, their kids don't have health insurance either."

Dean said this before a group of African-Americans at a hamburger joint in Spartanburg, S.C. A Newsday story said, "This blunt appeal to a commonality of racial interests won the moment and a burst of applause."

That same month in Washington at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Dean said, "I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. . . . White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools, too."

That brought a standing ovation.

(snip)

At this week's Rock the Vote forum in Boston, John Edwards told Dean, "The last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do." Al Sharpton said Dean sounded "more like Stonewall Jackson than Jesse Jackson." Sharpton also said, "Maynard Jackson said that the Confederate flag is America's swastika. . . . I don't think you're a bigot, but I think that is insensitive."

That last dig showed how fast Sharpton and the Democratic candidates get lost without a compass. Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first African-American mayor who died this summer, gave Dean some of the loudest applause at the DNC meeting.

"Dean blew the roof off today," Jackson said. "There was no mealy-mouth wishy-washiness about it. It was very gutsy."

[mzmolly]

18. I saw the speech, it was amazing. The issue was politicized to advance

the agenda of a few...

[jeter]

6. I still have this gut feeling

That the flag thing helps Dean more than it hurts him.

Other than David Broeder (long-time Washington reporter) and self-serving Dean-haters. I haven't read one article or heard one person disagree with him or take exception with him.

[deutsey]

7. And, as Eric Alterman points out, Broder

is hardly the spokesperson for liberal views he's sometimes made out to be.

[Padraig18]

8. I haven't, either.

In the week-plus since the 'flap', I've literally spoken to 100= people about Gov. Dean, and not one has been 'outraged', or even mildly upset about the comment.

[ant]

11. As someone who hasn't picked a candidate yet...

I agree with Dean's comments and appreciate the issue he's trying to talk about. This whole thing has made him more appealing to me.

At the same time, the way the other candidates have responded makes me less enthusiastic about them.

I may not be undecided for much longer.

[Alenne]

12. Yes you have

You just dismiss them as self serving Dean haters.

[spooky3]

19. I'm a Dean contributor (twice and will again if he wins the

nomination), and I believe he did the right thing to apologize. I've posted this type of view and my reasoning on other DU threads, and I was not alone in this sentiment.

[DemDogs]

13. Think about what Edwards said this morning.

Edwards on Meet the Press said that there were two problems with what Dean said.
One is obvious: African-Americans know what the confederate flag means. They have seen it wherever there is violence against them, wherever they are looked down upon, and they don't misunderstand it for a minute. It is the emblem of oppression. You can't wear it or walk next to someone wearing it and not have African-Americans doubt whether you understand the America in which they live. Just a fact.

The second is less obvious, and Edwards really nailed it: When Dean said these confederate flag whites didn't know that the Republican party was wrong for them, this is what he was saying: they are too stupid to know that they are being manipulated, they don't understand where there economic interest lies and I will come down and show them. It's elitist (and that's not a very popular character trait in the south or midwest) and it's disrespectful. Edwards said that the party has to give everyone a reason to be WITH us and respect them enough to let them decide.

And I have a third. There was a great article in one of the papers in the last day or so where Dean was called a "great American" -- by the biggest racist in South Carolina who said he would vote for him in the primary except that he's a Republican. Democrats don't ever win these people. This is the Republican party in the south among the less affluent population -- narrow minded, filled with hate, in love with or at least tolerant of racist images and symbols.

It is not smart politically because with a single reference he turned off Southern African-Americans, disrespected Southern whites, and pleased white racist voters who will NEVER vote Democratic.

Edwards won the white non-racist vote in North Carolina, the independents and the conservative Democrats who sometimes vote Republican. He knows the South and he knows how to respect voters everywhere. If we are going to win in 2004, we need to be listening to him and certainly not to Dean.

I know. I am a Southerner.

[deutsey]

14. How did he "turn off" these large blocks of people with a single comment?

Sorry, but I just see that as hyperbolic nonsense. I think many, if not most, of the people in the groups you mention have the intelligence to see what Dean was really saying about making the Democratic vision of America appealing even to the GOP's base.

I know a few people from the Deep South (liberal Democrats, too, mind you) who wonder why this is such a big deal, especially when the other Dem candidates--Edwards, too, I suspect--were among those who gave Dean a standing ovation when he said these same things at a DNC meeting last February.

Perhaps Edwards wasn't there, but I've been told by someone who was there that all those who were considering running for president were at this meeting and that everyone gave Dean a rousing standing ovation when he said his thing about the flag. If Edwards was in fact there, why wasn't he upset then?

[DemDogs]

15. Edwards already said he wasn't there -- he was the next day

And that he never heard it before it was in the Des Moines Register. And it doesn't matter much but the Des Moines Register statement was the worst version: "I want to be the candidate for the Southern voter with the confederate flag on his pickup" or something close to that.

The Democratic message can appeal to white non-racist voters. But a couple of things have stood in the way. One is what they describe as values issues, like gay rights and abortion, and our Party just doesn't agree. We believe that gay rights and choice are the values we want to protect. The other is the way government often tells people what they need. Sometimes people think of this as a debate about guns but it is more than that. Guns isn't even about guns, really. Its about someone from outside your life telling you what is right or good for you. And that's where Dean's tactic vulnerable. Instead of showing Southern voters an economic plan that will make a difference and attracting them to it, he (and this was in his explanation at the debate) wants to tell them that they have been fooled by the Republicans who by using racist language tricked them into voting against their economic self-interest. Stand back from this argument even a little bit and you will see what Edwards understood immediately. You can't treat any voters this way. The fact that you look at them like this means something very dangerous about your capacity ever to reach them at the gut level we will need to reach them since we are already working uphill because of the "values" hurdle.
This is an important debate. I hope it continues, because as a party we need the message to appeal to a broad base. (And it is possible, as you can see, to say that without inflammatory language or elitist perspective.)

[drfemoe]

20. Orwellian

One thing I can't figure out is how you count "white non-racist" votes .. ie, the ones who elected Edwards. Is there a check box for that?

But more importantly, will you consider your arguement?

You're saying that the most important value to Southern voters is the right to self determination. They don't want others telling them they cannot, for example own a gun. I happen to agree on both. Somehow you believe that Dean crossed a line by trying to poke his nose in .. or something (I'm not real clear on this point).

A couple of things really puzzle me. One is, why is it a 'value' worth defending (which somehow Dean violated) when you don't want people putting restrictions on your freedoms (guns), but, the "white non-racist voter" you describe is put off by gay rights and women's rights? It's not valuable enough to think these people deserve the same rights and freedoms as the "white non-racist voter"? That seems like a double standard to me.

So maybe you are saying the "w n-r v" is insulted because they were *assumed* to be racists? When everyone knows it is ever so much better to be anti-gay and anti-woman?

I think Edwards is the one who is trying to manipulate, and I really fail to see how he justifies his position.

call me curious

[JNelson6563]

17. hmmm

I don't knwo that I want to listen to a guy who doesn't even want to re-run for his seat in the Senate. By all accounts it would be a tough battle that he is likely to lose.

As to Edwards "respecting voters everywhere", when pressed on the Iraq issue all he'd say was that Saddam being gone is a good thing. That kind of crap is an insult to my intelligence.

I want a candidate who will actually take a chance and make a statement. Maybe something bold that 100% of the population just might not agree with.

Julie

[CWebster]

23. How many times does this have to be repeated?

Did any of the candidates accuse Dean of being a bigot or a racist? No. Dean was not endorsing the flag, he was pointing out exactly what the civil rights author who authored the above article wrote--which is the same insight Krugman made in his last column. Now, you can ignore that reality and spin it into something to suit your political agenda--just like Edwards, but that doesn't change the issue of poor whites being sold a sense of self-worth that is a bill of goods. If Edwards is so offended that some Northerner would make the observation or open the debate, then why the hell didn't he ever open the subject? Edwards wants to draw the divide between the South and the North - believing Southerners will bond with him as a fellow Southerner? That's the game he wants to play? He can forget the Northern vote then.

[snoochie]

24. Constance Rice is Condoleezza's second cousin...

according to Democrats.com

Not that that means anything, mind you.

[mzmolly]

25. True, it doesn't mean anything..

She sounds much more reasonable then her second cousin however.

[snoochie]

26. Yeah I just thought it was funny.

And is it really hard to sound more reasonable than Condoleezza "we could never have imagined they'd use planes as missiles" Rice?

[Dr Fate]

27. I agree with her and Dean, actually...

...though Dean is not my #1 candidate...


...I have a feeling that most of the black and white Democrats in the South know what he is talking about...