In one of the articles I read today about
Illinois' crazy governor getting impeached (unanimously) I saw a mention of the last governor to be so summarily tossed out; Arizona's Evan Mecham. I remembered the name and something about canceling the MLK holiday, but it was back in the 80s when I was too young to really follow politics of current events. So I headed to the always-reliable wikipedia, found
a substantial article, and was surprised how funny (in a horrible sort of way) it was. A few quotes from the gold mine of content on the guy. Corruption, incompetence, paranoia, casual racism, and much, much more.
As governor, Mecham was plagued by controversy and became the first U.S. governor to simultaneously face removal from office through impeachment, a scheduled recall election, and a felony indictment.
... [There were many accusations of cronyism as he appointed incompetent or unqualified friends to state offices.] Among these nominations was Alberto Rodriguez as superintendent of the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control, while he was under investigation for murder. Other questionable nominations included the director of the Department of Revenue whose company was in arrears by US$25,000 on employment compensation payments, an appointee for head of prison construction who had served prison time for armed robbery, and as state investigator a former Marine who had been court-martialled twice. Other political appointees who caused Mecham embarrassment were an education adviser, James Cooper, who told a legislative committee "If a student wants to say the world is flat, the teacher doesn't have the right to prove otherwise," and Sam Steiger, the Governor's special assistant, who was charged with extortion.
...Besides the uproar caused by the MLK Day cancellation, Mecham committed other political faux pas. Claims of prejudice were made against Mecham after he defended the use of the word "pickaninny" to describe black children, claimed that high divorce rates were caused by working women, claimed America is a Christian nation to a Jewish audience, and said a group of visiting Japanese businessmen got "round eyes" after being told of the number of golf courses in Arizona. In response to claims that he was a racist, Mecham said, "I've got black friends. I employ black people. I don't employ them because they are black; I employ them because they are the best people who applied for the cotton-picking job.
...Throughout his administration, Mecham expressed concern about possible eavesdropping on his private communications. A senior member of Mecham's staff broke his leg after falling through a false ceiling he had been crawling over, looking for covert listening devices. A private investigator was hired to sweep the governor's offices looking for bugs. The Governor was quoted as saying, "Whenever I'm in my house or my office, I always have a radio on. It keeps the lasers out."
This guy was 20 years before his time. Imagine if he were around today, with cable news and the Jon Stewart show and blogs? God the amusement he'd provide, with this non-stop cavalcade of blunders and foots in mouth. He's like Sarah Palin without handlers or speech writers, albeit without a high school drop out daughter and her self described "fucking redneck" baby daddy.
The racist comments are the worst/funniest/most groan-inducing. I have to assume he was joking (in poor taste) with that "cotton-picking" remark, rather than saying it in inadvertently as a figure of speech. If it was unintentional, it might be the funniest thing anyone has ever accidentally said.
His racist comments
remind me of Rush Limbaugh's a few years ago, when he was briefly on the ESPN pregame football show, until he "resigned" after making some comments about how the media always tries to inflate the value of black quarterbacks. Rush, like Evan Mecham, steadfastly denied that he was racist, going to the notorious "I have black friends" defense. And he probably does (as far as someone like Rush Limbaugh can actually have friends, as opposed to sycophants and boot-lickers). But that's not the point. There's a difference between being a racist and a bigot, though the terms are frequently used interchangeably. You can be a racist and not a bigot, though I don't think you can be a bigot and not a racist.
Rush Limbaugh and Evan Mecham are (were, Mecham's dead now) racists, by the classic,
1st definition in the dictionary sense. They see the world in black and white (and yellow and brown, etc) where race colors (taints) every issue. It's the mindset that MLK was directly attacking with his famous "I have a dream" speech. The whole "by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin" concept. They don't necessarily hate other races; they might even admire them in various ways. You can be white and think Asians are smarter/better at math, Jews are better with money, Blacks are better dancers, etc. All things you might wish to be yourself. That's not the point; the point is that if you attribute those talents to their race, it's the same concept as attributing stupidity or sloth or greed or other negative traits to race. It's racist, even if it's not bigoted.
From even those few quotes of Mecham it's pretty clear that he was bigoted as well, and there's plenty of
past evidence to convict Rush of the same sin. But they're not unusual or exceptional; they're just public figures whose comments on race were broadcast widely. They don't think of themselves as racist either; after all, everyone knows that blacks are dangerous and criminal; what's wrong about saying so?
An anecdote. Last weekend I had a first date with another woman I met via online dating service. It was a disaster. Well, that's overstating. I was miserable and had a horrible time and will never see her again, but it's not like we got into a public altercation. I kind of wish we had; it would have been something interesting. I have never been that bored during two hours with another human being, and it came about because she was just inert. She had no opinions, no observations, no suggestions, no comments, she answered questions with short, declarative sentences, she never laughed or joked or smiled, etc. Halfway through, while waiting for the chocolate factory tour to begin, she took the first of her 3 10-minute bathroom visits and I texted a few friends, and
my Twitter account, in desperation. And the quick text I got back from the IG was the most interesting remark I'd heard all afternoon.
That's not why I bring up the date, though. The funny part, in an Evan Mecham way, was earlier, when we were driving. We met in Berkeley and I drove us down to a chocolate factory near I-80, after we window shopped a bit and had a coffee. That was the plan, anyway. The window shopping turned out to be a disaster since she had nothing to say about anything, didn't seem to be interested in anything but some theater company fliers in a cafe window, and didn't want to go into any of the shops. She thought they looked weird, or so I interpreted from her wrinkled nose and nervous eyes.
I'm not exactly bohemian, but I've been in that area a few times, and it's far from dangerous of weird. It's mostly White and Asian, it was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny Sunday, there's no graffiti or barred windows in the area, etc. We weren't even in the heart of Berkeley, (
like the place I got my ears pierced last week, while there to give the IG moral support for her latest piercing) near the Cal campus where you'll see later-day hippies galore, and most of the stores are sprawling used record places and head shops and there are pushy street vendors on the sidewalks, etc. We were
on Shattuck near University, which is a little bit hippy, but is mostly just businesses, small restaurants, quirky jewelry and art stores, etc. It could be a nice semi-downtown neighborhood anywhere in the US. There were a few street people, but I didn't even notice them. It's Berkeley; of course you'll see a few bearded guys walking around with huge backpacks and bedrolls.
She however, very much did notice them. Even very early on, when we were sitting at a little outdoor cafe and drinking coffee (well, hot chocolate actually) she was doing this eye bugging thing whenever someone weird walked by. The funny part came later, when we were driving to the chocolate factory. We headed west on down Ashby, which is kind of a weird street, but it's not the hood by any stretch of the imagination. Certainly not on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Several blocks down Ashby crosses Martin Luther King, on a corner blighted by such dreadful inner city sights as a busy corner market, joggers, dog walkers, children playing, etc. I think there might even have been a woman or two pushing baby strollers. Most of them white people! Horrifying, I know.
As we got to that intersection and waited for the red light, my date peered through the window and saw the street sign. Breaking her near-silence, she said, "Ohhh... Martin Luther King street? I hear it's dangerous here."
I am seldom speechless, or even at a loss for words, but at that one I did take a pause. After taking a breath I said something about the old Chris Rock joke, about the irony of how MLK was a man of peace, but if you found yourself on a street named after him, you'd better run. Run! She didn't laugh, she just kept looking around nervously (there was not a sullen, saggy-pantsed black teenager in sight) and didn't seem all that calmed even when we were half a mile away and parking in a lot entirely full of nice cars and white people.
It was kind of a head-slapping moment; not that she thought it, but that she said it so casually. (Actually, it wasn't that casual. She was on edge right from the start of our date, since she'd obviously expected me to be different than I was, in some unknown way. So probably she blurted out something she'd never have said in racially-mixed company.) And I'm sure that she, like Rush and Evan, would vociferously deny that she was a racist. Nevertheless, I had to think about that afterwards. She worked in the HR department for a tech company and did a lot of their hiring and internal transfers, and I kept thinking about
all those studies when researchers send out identical resumes, but one is from John Smith and the other is from Dikembe Shabungue. And Mr. Smith gets far more call backs.
The other interesting thing about this woman's character was that one of the very few things she showed any interest in all day were the fliers we saw for various plays and shows coming to the Berkeley area. One was by some Black performance company, and she said she was interested in seeing it. (Which she might yet... but not with me.) Afterwards, having seen her uneasiness at street people, MLK boulevard, her refusal to go to the Ashby BART station when I wanted to drop her off (since it was nearer MLK and therefore dangerous), etc, I thought back on her theater interest, and her stated interest in indy films, and all the pieces of the stereotype started to come together.
I've often heard about the white liberal type who are sympathetic and compassionate, but only from a safe distance. This woman had happily voted for Obama, and she would go to a play about black culture, and she's probably seen
A Raisin in the Sun and
The Color Purple, etc. But at the same time she's got this mostly-hidden reservoir of terror of the Other. Weird people, different people, black people, strange things, etc. For her, riding BART to Berkeley was way out of her comfort zone, driving past MLK was scary, etc. It doesn't make her a bad person, and in fact we got along well in email and txt before our date, so we had something in common. But she was only book smart; only interesting when she had time to think of a response. Her real life personality was timid and insecure and non-spontaneous, and that made her boring and hesitant. And that made our date a disaster.
Happily the date gets funnier in retrospect. Talking it over with the IG the next day we were alughing our asses off. Even immediately afterwards, while driving home I called Malaya to vent/rant, and she was laughing hysterically at my depiction of events. I didn't just call her to yell though, I was curious. She used to complain to me how boring her social events were at work. She was surrounded largely by over-educated, suburban, white women, and she always said the conversations were painfully dull. I never quite grasped why that was, but I think I know now. In recent weeks I've gotten to know/dated 2 fairly intelligent, gainfully-employed, well-educated, semi-worldly white women in their early 30s, and both were incredibly boring in person. I'll avoid a massive digression in this post, and just say that after those dates and some discussion of them with friends, I've concluded that there are many different types of "intelligence." People can know a lot of things, be able to write coherently and think, and even do fairly difficult jobs with competence. Yet at the same time they can be horrible at communicating, lack any sense of humor, kill any conversation they're invited into, etc. I'm sure it's not just white people who fall into this trap, but the more white women I date, the more those "white and uptight' stereotypes seem accurate.
And yes, I'm straying in an interesting direction for a post all about racist thinking. The difference, as I see it, is that I don't attribute a genetic, biological reason or predestination for this. It's entirely cultural, just like any superior black dancing ability, or Asian math prowess. Some white people are brought up and live in a way that sews the seeds of them being uptight and uneasy around strange or new or different things as adults. And unfortunately, I keep reaping those harvests via online dating.
Happily, this weekend's date is a lively and intelligent woman who pointed me to some YouTube videos of her doing on-the-street interviews as part of a media project in college, and she's able to talk and think and be sarcastic and wry, on her feet. Literally, in this instance. I'll report how that one goes at some point. Or not. I seem to blog on
CPT these days... wait, what?
Labels: bigotry, dating, online dating, politics
