Racial Apologetics?

Although it initially looked like the House Democrats were going to turn the other cheek on the incident, they ended up voting to “admonish” South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson yesterday for his outburst during President Obama’s healthcare speech last week. According to some experts and insiders, their change of heart pivoted on Wilson’s unwillingness to formally apologize to his colleagues on the House floor — and in response to the ironic fact that he’s been able to financially capitalize from that little breach of decorum, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign coffers (as has his Dem opponent).

According to most news reports, the Congressional Black Caucus has been particularly committed to the idea of sanctioning Wilson, and many critics chalk that fact up to the racial imagery of the entire thing: a lone White representative from the South heckling America’s first black President.

Indeed, former President Carter has even publicly voiced concern about what he considers the racial subtext to some of the current anti-Obama rage. (And for a few poster-making protesters, that is more main text than sub.)

Even infamous radio personality Howard Stern, who has been quite publicly criticized (even shunned) for what critics describe as his own investments in racial insensitivity, has gone on record condemning virulent anti-Obamaisms and linking them to racism, especially the recent hostility and paranoia about Obama’s attempt to address America’s school children.

And even if racism isn’t the causal factor in these very public disputes/controversies (think of all the trouble people had definitively pinning a racial tail on the donkey that was this past summer’s arrest of Skip Gates), we’ve certainly had some very public disputes (and demands for apologies) that cut across racial lines. Indeed, if Obama had a beer summit for all the relatively recent high-profile ones, he’d be downing a lot of alcohol on that White House lawn.

Just off the top of my head, we’ve had the calls for Wilson’s apology, hip-hop artist Kanye’s West’s multiple apologies for his recent MTV “meltdown” (snatching the microphone from country music singer Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech at the VMA’s), and even Serena Williams threatening an Asian judge with bodily harm, which ended her run for a championship at this year’s U.S. Open. (Stern jokingly quipped that the Williams outburst pivoted on old feuds between black communities and Korean-Americans.)

With West and Williams, the apologies came fast and furious. Even Wilson called the White House with his apology immediately after the speech. And although West and Williams haven’t had any qualms about it, such apologies can sometimes be so much more difficult to do publicly, especially when there’s even a glimmer of support for not apologizing — or when you know, as any Congressperson does, that such a move will most certainly be politicized?

And how much more complicated the calculus when purported race/racism plops itself down between the lines of our apologies or apologetics, when gestures of contrition across racial lines get dismissed as hollow and empty, as more about political expediency than actual sincerity? If that’s the baseline, how difficult does it make any attempt at a national “conversation” about race?