Republicans Are Shouting The N-Word At Judge Jackson

Judiciary Republicans are attempting to smear Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson while pandering to their racist white voters.

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – The Republicans are doing it again. They’re shouting the n-word on television this week, but without literally shouting the n-word. The GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have gone full Lee Atwater once again in a futile attempt to smear Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson while pandering to their racist white voters.

It’s the old dog-whistle politics of the Southern Strategy – a staple of the Republican arsenal for at least the last 50 years and a feature of American society for a lot longer than that. The best way to describe what they’re doing is to quote the infamous Lee Atwater. A precursor and inspiration to Karl Rove and Roger Stone, Atwater was a notorious political strategist for both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He described the racist dog-whistle like so:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, "Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er." By 1968, you can't say "ni**er" – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now, you're talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Ni**er, ni**er.’”

Atwater seemed to suggest that the language was becoming so abstract and opaque that it was no longer specific enough to convey the intended racial overtones of the earlier dog-whistles. He also described the win-win nature of the language, noting that economic dog-whistles carry the added benefit of hurting black people economically, which, the logic goes, helps white people.

Atwater was partly responsible for one of the most notorious dog-whistles in our lifetimes: the overtly racist Willie Horton commercials during the 1988 presidential campaign between the aforementioned Bush and Democratic nominee Mike Dukakis. The series of ads described how a Black convict was released early, due to Dukakis’s weekend furlough policies, and ended up committing additional violent crimes. The key to the success of the ads was the intentional use of a dark-skinned, scary-looking mugshot of Horton as if to say, Hide your white women.

Similarly, an ad produced in support of the late Senator Jesse Helms in 1990, a very racist Republican senator from North Carolina, known as the “White Hands Ad” showed a white man opening a pink slip notifying him that he’d been fired… due to the racial quotas of Affirmative Action. Once again, the n-word isn’t anywhere in the ad, but it’s to be inferred by Helms’s white base. That’s the psychology behind it.

Many of us remember the 2008 presidential campaign and the history made by the election of Barack Obama. Naturally, the Republicans pulled out all the stops trying desperately to emphasize Obama’s race and heritage. Republican strategists routinely emphasized Obama’s middle name, Hussein, as a way to tie the then-senator to terrorists while underscoring his African-American heritage. They added another layer to the recipe by “accidentally” blurting “Osama” instead of “Obama” on too many occasions to count.

Meanwhile, during the same campaign, the late Rush Limbaugh came close to actually saying the n-word when coined the nickname “Barack the Magic Negro.” Later, during Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, challenger Mitt Romney delivered a stump speech in front of a banner that read: “Obama isn’t working,” an obvious dog-whistle emphasizing the Jim Crow-era stereotype of the lazy and shiftless Black man.

These are just a handful of recent examples out of thousands more, illustrating a well-worn Republican device. But don’t ever call them racists, or Lindsey Graham might collapse onto his fainting couch.

Speaking of Graham, he and his Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee spent the first several days of confirmation hearings shouting the n-word at Judge Jackson. But instead of the actual n-word, they’ve been trotting out n-word dog-whistles like “CRT” or critical race theory, and “woke” – both of which in this context have little to do with the righteous definition of the words, and everything to do with blurting the n-word without blurting the n-word to the Republican Party’s few remaining loyal demographic voting blocs: racist whites.

Ted Cruz used his time by demanding to know whether Jackson thinks babies are racist, referencing a book called Antiracist Baby. Cruz, who’s never afraid to misrepresent the facts to make a shitty point, said the book accuses babies of being racist somehow when, in fact, the book merely observes how racism is often learned by children in their homes from their families. 

Cruz also mentioned a book called Stamped (For Kids) and asked Jackson whether she thinks white people should be sent back to Europe, which isn’t what the book says at all. In reality, the book debunks the racist trope that Black people should be sent back to Africa, rhetorically countering that we should no sooner send Blacks to Africa than we should send white people back to Europe. But Cruz is counting on his fanboys to not look into the matter themselves, which they won’t. Cruz’s strategy was to point at Judge Jackson and say: This n-word is coming for your children, white people! And soon you’ll be the slaves!

Marsha Blackburn added another layer to the dog-whistle symphony with her questioning. After doing her own anti-Black screed, she spent the second half of her time trans-bashing, essentially shouting the f-word for the enjoyment of her transphobic base. It’s all part of the broader Republican strategy to force out Blacks, LGBTQ citizens, and reproductive age women of all races from their whites-only states. 

That’s the mission, and today’s Trump-Republican Party is all about doing everything they can, legal or not, constitutional or not, to remain politically relevant in an increasingly liberal American culture.

Judge Jackson will be confirmed. She will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and only the fifth woman of any race to do so. The racist dog whistles will not derail this nominee. But they’re using them anyway. The Republicans can’t win this one, so with nothing to lose they’re making sure to energize their racist base in advance of the midterms. If they can’t win this one, they’ll use their time to win in November by returning to morally reprehensible, decades-old coded language to paint a profoundly qualified jurist as nothing but a whites-hating, gays-loving monster. Lee Atwater of 1988 would be proud.

Read an excerpt from the latest for Banter Members with a free trial on a Banter Membership!:

by Justin Rosario

On Friday, the editorial board of the New York Times jumped the shark and went full “both sides do it” in defense of right-wing extremism. This was not an op-ed put out by one of their numerous right-wing apologists. This was not even a monstrously ill-conceived piece solicited by the paper from a Republican. This was written and published under the byline of the editorial board itself.

The title, as it often does with pieces of this nature, tells you everything: “America Has a Free Speech Problem.” 

Yeah. That sinking feeling you’re getting in your stomach right now? Trust that. This got really ugly, really fast.

Those pesky extremists

The Times carefully sets the stage, making sure the reader is properly outraged at the idea of free speech being, dare I say it?, canceled!

For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.

This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. It feels like a third rail, dangerous. For a strong nation and open society, that is dangerous

That sounds really bad. That sounds like the mere act of having an opinion is taboo. That sounds like America is some kind of police state. You, the reader, should be very upset about living in such a gulag of repression!

How has America come to this sad state of affairs? What nefarious forces have brought us so low? Who is responsible?! Why, both sides, of course.

…the political left and the right are caught in a destructive loop of condemnation and recrimination around cancel culture. Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech. Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.

We’re going to stop right here to expand and clarify the two sides of this conversation. On the one side, we have the left and their dreaded cancel culture. Cancel culture is simply a new name for “political correctness,” the horror that was supposed to doom America in the 90s. It’s more effective these days because when, say, a 30-year veteran at Estée Lauder posts a racist joke, they lose their job. In the 90s, they probably would have gotten a raise and an amusing story to tell at the next corporate retreat.

But the rampant nightmare of cancel culture can’t seem to get Tucker Carlson off the air as he spreads Kremlin propaganda and white nationalist hate speech…

This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only essay. You can continue reading here.