Advancement Project

September 3, 2009

Many Healthcare Reform Haters Are Closeted Racists

I need to say something about the health-care reform debate that our president probably won’t say—at least not while he’s in office. Racism lies behind much of the national opposition to healthcare reform. There’s clear evidence of racially-divisive attitudes at recent healthcare town hall meetings, where gun-toting, sign-carrying health-care reform haters seem to be building a movement around their angst, which seeks to thwart attempts for national health-care reform by any means necessary. One fear for these haters—in my opinion–is that African Americans and Latin American immigrants might benefit. But, also, the nation’s first Black president, in their view, is out to destroy the country and therefore must be stopped.

In the decades after the Civil Rights Movement, when America was shamed into acknowledging that it had fostered racial inequality, it became morally unacceptable to utter racially prejudiced rhetoric in public. Nevertheless, racism is the unspoken subtext behind a lot of the nation’s debates on public policy—and while racist language isn’t used, the prejudiced feelings are there nonetheless. Coded language gets used to express this hostility and to rally like-minded people in a particular political direction.

One protestor at a recent healthcare forum displayed a sign that read: Señor Citizens Get Free Healthcare-Senior Citizens Can Drop Dead. The sign bore a stereotypical caricature of a Mexican American, complete with handlebar mustache and sombrero.

Some have carried signs that say: Euthanize Obama. In the distorted eyes of these folks, White Americans—although all the haters haven’t been White–are thought to be the new victims of Obama’s oppressive ways—as if Obama’s hidden objective was to seek revenge for the sins visited on Black folks for the past few centuries.

These fearful people see doom and gloom behind every initiative that Obama puts forth because that fits in with their perspective that no good could come from this African-American president.
Some of the more virulent types, the gun-toters, reportedly have ties to hate groups and militia groups. While they claim they’re carrying guns to exercise their Second Amendment rights and their liberties, I think the gun carrying is really about something else: intimidating those who disagree with them and showing the public symbols of their willingness to use deadly violence to advance their beliefs.

Some of these anti-healthcare haters seem to view themselves in a heroic sense—saving the country from socialism and from what they see as Obama’s goal of increasing the role of government—which they view as some type of horrible attack on their individual freedoms.

How someone could see national healthcare insurance as a threat to their freedom defies logic. It’s hard to imagine that Social Security benefits, which enable millions of elderly people to keep a roof over their heads or Medicare—national health insurance for those over 65–deprive anyone of their freedom. But the health-care reform haters are fueled by their fears and anxieties–not evidence.

The significant media coverage this anti-healthcare reform crusade has generated is surely encouraging them. The may have scored some major points toward derailing healthcare reform if their wrath has contributed to Obama’s recent consideration of abandoning the public option.

This anti-healthcare reform movement is not only a matter of race. I suspect that if the president were White the opposition to healthcare reform would still be unrelenting given the fact that efforts to reform the healthcare industry have been controversial since President Harry Truman first tried to do so after World War II. What’s different this time is that the proposal for healthcare reform is coming from America’s first Black president in a time of high unemployment and financial uncertainty—which has brought a greater desperateness, a reason to rally and make Obama a symbol of all that’s wrong with America.

In times of economic anxiety and high unemployment, Americans of color have often found themselves targeted by some insecure Whites, scapegoated for the country’s problems.
Racial violence has been most intense when some Whites have felt threatened economically. There were certain Whites who rose up and killed hundreds of African Americans in 1863 in New York City when Congress passed laws drafting more men to fight in the Civil War. These White men feared that they would lose jobs to freed slaves who they thought would work for next to nothing.

Although that very sad event in this country’s history may be the most extreme example of this economic anxiety, violence directed at African Americans who protest exclusion from construction unions, for example, has been an ongoing problem in New York City for decades. Similar anxiety on the part of some Americans about losing jobs to Latinos has also fueled the anti-immigration movement.

With healthcare reform, it seems the haters feel displaced and alienated because a Black man with an African name, whose father was born a Muslim, who lived in Indonesia, is surely too different in background to be a true American.

To make matters worse, America is increasingly becoming populated by People of Color, making many Whites feel—not matter how unrealistic—that they are losing their grip on power. This is all part of the context of the anti-healthcare reform crusade, which is tied into anti-Obama feelings.

A Southern Poverty Law Center indicates that hate groups have grown in the past year-fueled by immigration from Latin America and opposition to Obama’s election. The SPLC indicates that 926 hate groups were active in the United States–a 4 percent increase from the 888 groups that were active last year and a 56 percent rise from the 602 active hate groups in 2000.

It’s essential in understanding the inability to move the nation forward on healthcare reform to know that race has been at the heart of opposition to spending on social programs for decades and such is the case with this effort.

When Ronald Reagan ran for office in 1980, he stoked the racial fears of struggling White Americans with his talk of the alleged “Welfare Queen,” a woman who was allegedly gaming the system by collecting enormous amount of government aid under various names. Although the so-called Welfare Queen’s race or identity was never revealed, Reagan successfully played to White anxieties around the idea that there was this large group of undeserving poor—Black women who were sitting around doing nothing but collecting welfare checks–living off the tax dollars of hardworking White Americans.
The undeserving poor—African Americans–were seen to be overly dependent on the system—and no longer the victims of racial segregation, job discrimination and lack of access to jobs. Getting rid of government programs was put forth as the best way to protect the economic interests of mainstream America ( i.e. White Americans) who, in reality, were also feeling the affects of deindustrialization, the flight of jobs overseas and stagnant income growth. But, instead of focusing on those issues, African Americans were blamed and Reagan cut everything from jobs programs that helped low-income People of Color to the budgets for Medicaid and food stamps, which Black people, who were disproportionately poor, were more likely to rely on.

President Bill Clinton sought to soothe those same anxieties about the undeserving poor in signing the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which set lifetime limits on Welfare and compelled recipients of welfare to work in exchange for benefits.

I won’t debate the merits of welfare reform here. I simply want to point out that race and racism gets tied up in any effort to assist low-income Americans—such as the 47 million uninsured who are disproportionately Black and Brown. Obama, of course, avoids getting bogged down in a discussion of race, to remain politically viable in a country that is loathe to deal with race issues on a national level.

I suspect that America would have gotten closer to passing healthcare reform earlier—like other developed nations in the West—if it were not for these beliefs that the undeserving—the Blacks and Mexicans would benefit. Although legalized immigrants who are not yet citizens are not included in benefits under any of the healthcare proposals that are being considered—truth becomes irrelevant went racial fears and anxieties are stoked.

Simply consider the words of 62-year-old Bob Collier, who was interviewed in the New York Times recently after speaking out at a healthcare forum in Albany, Ga. “Here comes this new guy in town and he wants to centralize everything. He wants to take over the car companies. He wants to take over the banks. Now he wants to take over healthcare. It’s a power grab, and if he gets this, there’s no turning around,” said Collier.

Although Collier’s wife was stricken with breast cancer, his healthcare premiums have been rising fast, and he worries that his wife might be uninsurable if he ever loses his job, he opposes universal coverage because he doesn’t want to foot the bill for the undeserving.

A universal coverage system would distribute tax dollars to “lazy and irresponsible people who play the system,” said Collier. Although it appears from the New York Times’ story that Mr. Collier didn’t mention race. We know he’s talking about–African Americans and maybe immigrants too. Sadly, sadly, we have heard it all before–over and over again.

Rushing, is the writer-editor at Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization that advocates for racial justice.