Monday, March 01, 2010

The Fun House

Adam Serwer always has a sharp eye, but I particularly liked this post on the evolution of racist tropes that one today sees only in the South (and even there more and more rarely). Serwer's point is that though the language and framing has shifted, the underlying logic remains essentially the same nationwide, and he does an excellent job drawing the parallels between the Southern storekeeper saying of a local Black pol: "If [he] wasn't black, you'd think he was white," and someone like Chris Matthews saying how he "forgot the President was Black" when he spoke in language that didn't evoke some mythological image of the crazed avenger of racial wrongs and maladies.

H/T: PostBourgie.

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