Understanding Paul Ryan's Racism in Three Easy Steps

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Paul Ryan is the leader of a political party that is the country’s premier white identity organization. The Republican Party has also merged conservatism and racism in such a way that appeals to white racial resentment are its Lingua Franca and a taken for granted way of thinking about political and social reality. Paul Ryan traffics in racism because the Republican Party is a racist organization. The calculus is not complicated. 

 
By Chauncey DeVega
Paul Ryan has attempted to clarify  his racist argument that “inner city” black people are lazy and do not want to work. He issued a statement that:

After reading the transcript of yesterday morning’s interview, it is clear that I was inarticulate about the point I was trying to make. I was not implicating the culture of one community—but of society as a whole.

This is a false and disingenuous pseudo apology. Paul Ryan is the leader of a political party that is the country’s premier white identity organization. The Republican Party has also merged conservatism and racism in such a way that appeals to white racial resentment are its Lingua Franca and a taken for granted way of thinking about political and social reality.

Paul Ryan traffics in racism because the Republican Party is a racist organization. The calculus is not complicated.

There has been  some smart writing about Paul Ryan’s use of  coded racial appeals. However, the majority of the news media is asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to figure out “if” Paul Ryan is a racist, the more revealing question is “what type of racist is he?”

There are three basic ways to understand Paul Ryan’s racism, both as part of a pattern of behavior by Republicans, and as an example of (symbolic) white racism in the post civil rights era.

The Southern Strategy.
Paul Ryan’s claim that black people have “bad culture”, may be genetically defective, and do not have “normal” “middle class” values about the merits of “hard work”, is a simple channeling of legendary Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s tactics for mobilizing white voters by leveraging their hostility to black Americans.

Read More