David Brooks on race and the anti-Obama backlash

I expect that the left-of-center blogosphere will jump on today's column by David Brooks soon enough. Let's see if I can point out the absurdities of the column before anyone else.



Brooks says it is not racism that motivates the town hall protesters, tea partiers, and marchers on Washington opposed to "Obamacare" in particular and creeping socialism in general. His evidence for this claim is that last weekend he saw white anti-Obama protesters mixing with black African American family reunion celebrators on the Mall. Brooks believes that the protests against Obama have a more distinguished lineage that can be traced back to the dispute between Hamilton and Jefferson over the nature of the American republic:



Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government. Jefferson advocated “a wise and frugal government” that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”



And it has always had the same morality, which the historian Michael Kazin has called producerism. The idea is that free labor is the essence of Americanism. Hard-working ordinary people, who create wealth in material ways, are the moral backbone of the country. In this free, capitalist nation, people should be held responsible for their own output. Money should not be redistributed to those who do not work, and it should not be sucked off by condescending, manipulative elites.



Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector.



Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color. And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.



Let's start with the third paragraph reproduced above. Did not George W. Bush lead a government of highly educated people? Were there no urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information age professionals in his movement? Did he not fuse federal power with Wall Street, etc.? Except for the fact that there are probably more black faces in positions of power under Obama, I don't see a lot of demographic differences. What I do see is one administration that to some people looks black and scary and wants to do things to benefit marginalized groups, versus the previous administration that looked to those same people white, southern, and comforting, whose interest was in preserving the prevailing social order. White middle class conservatives did not rise in opposition to Bush because he was one of them - Obama represents the Other.



Now for Brooks' blinkered view of history. Can it really be true that when Brooks looks out over the crowds on the Mall or at the town hall crazies and tea partiers, he sees noble early 19th century Jeffersonian farmers rebelling against urban industrial elites? I see the reflection of grimmer historical movements: the crowds in Little Rock who didn't want the federal government telling them to integrate their schools; the white middle class voters in the 1960s who, repulsed by urban riots, led a backlash that scuttled the Great Society and brought Richard Nixon to power; the anti-busing movement in the 1970s; the militia movement in the 1990s. These movements too were grounded in a particular vision of the American republic: one in which local majorities could impose a particular social order on their communities free from the interference of the federal government. That social order, of course, was rooted in race. Time and time again in American history, the white middle class rebels when it feels its position at the top of that social order is threatened by the intercession of the federal government.



I don't believe that all, or even most of the anti-Obama protesters are explicitly racist. But the anger and fear has its origins in the long history of race relations in the U.S. Surely Brooks would see this if he looked at the symbols around which the protesters are rallying: secession, nullification, the 10th amendment. These are arguments that trace back to John C. Calhoun and Orval Faubus, not Thomas Jefferson.