Sarah Palin’s Race Problem

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A review of Sarah Palin’s book Going Rouge in The New Yorker raises questions of her views on race and her discomfort with people outside of white, small-town America:

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’ ”

Palin’s discomfort is easy to understand. Race is often the subtext of populist campaigns; their most potent appeal is to whites who are feeling under siege by changing economic and cultural conditions. Palin’s strength with this constituency can only have grown since the last election. It’s the reason that her bus tour is passing through the small cities and towns (Fort Wayne, Indiana; Washington, Pennsylvania) where the 2008 election might have been won. Already, she has drawn thousands of fans, some pitching tents overnight in the hope of receiving an autographed book. She is avoiding major cities in the Northeast and on the West Coast, a pointed assertion of her contempt for metropolitan élites.


6 Comments

  1. 1
    norris hall says:

    Well, if she hits the campaign trail she’ll need to explain what about Asians and minorities makes her uncomfortable.
    Hard to believe that people feel that way…40 years after Martin Luther broke down the color barrier.
    But I suppose a lot of those “white folks” still feel a little uncomfortable dealing with minorities who aren’t gardeners or servants
     

  2. 2
    Worldvacation says:

    Palin should never be allowed to live down the angry mob mentality she stoked at her campaign rallies in the final days before the election. Israel observers were comparing it to the atmosphere before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. It’s one of the many failings of the mainstream media that this hasn’t been thrown in her face at every opportunity. She was playing with fire, a fire on which Glenn Beck has been more than happy to pour gasoline. Of course she loves him.

  3. 3
    Jcrucial says:

    I agree, but when did MLK “break down” the color barrier? When he got shot? That “barrier” still exists in many places.

  4. 4
    Eclectic Radical says:

    Martin Luther King Jr. broke down the codified, legal color barrier in the Jim Crow South.
     
    He also broke down the mental and emotional color barrier in the minds of many Americans of both colors.
     
    There are plenty of other color barriers still intact. The most insidious is the economic color barrier in nearly every major urban center in the US. This is a legacy of racist political policy in post-Civil War America, when American leaders were willing to free the slaves but not empower them to be free citizens of the same America in which the leaders themselves lived.
     
    This is why Doctor King was as outspoken in his condemnation of the US government’s treatment of the poor as he was in his condemnation of the South’s treatment of the African-American. The issues of race relations and poverty are fundamentally linked.
     
    That said, breaking down the codified, legal color barrier is an achievement. One for which Larry Elder, Alan Keyes, and Michael Steele are no doubt grateful. It’s good to be able to sit at the ‘White’s Only’ table and smile at those less fortunate and tell them racism is a thing of the past.
     

  5. 5
    rickstersherpa says:

    I believe I read this on Nate Silver’s 538.com, but I believe that President Obama only got 6% of the white vote in Mississippi, with similar lopsided margins in Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas.   I would expect Florida north of I-5, which is still part of the South, voted the same way.    Sarah Palin has connected with this group and charismatic, populist leaders should not be underestimated no matter how many silly things you think she says.    Everyone should read Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland to understand this dynamic, understand that we should stop condescending and ignoring these people, but instead start addressing them as real humans with some very bad ideas in their heads.   

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    I don’t think many underestimate the problem they represent. The same voters were helpful to other Republicans in getting elected, including Richard Nixon and George Bush. The problem is that attracting their support is very difficult considering the “very bad ideas in their heads.” Fortunately demographic trends are against these groups in terms of winning national elections, but they will give candidates such as Palin a sizeable number of votes.

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