Yes, of course the big bad flaming racist wackos have to be banished and smacked. But banishing and smacking mostly just serves to make white people feel better about benefiting from systems that continue to perpetrate white supremacy so flawlessly that their engines run entirely without outright racist wackos. HULK SMASH WACKO is always, only a distracting spectacle. Let's don't forget.
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
The problem with Cliven Bundy isn't that he is a racist but that he is an oafish racist. He invokes the crudest stereotypes, like cotton picking. This makes white people feel bad. The elegant racist knows how to injure non-white people while never summoning the specter of white guilt. Elegant racism requires plausible deniability, as when Reagan just happened to stumble into the Neshoba County fair and mention state's rights. ...
Elegant racism is invisible, supple, and enduring. It disguises itself in the national vocabulary, avoids epithets and didacticism. Grace is the singular marker of elegant racism. ...
A racism that invites the bipartisan condemnation of Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell must necessarily be minor. A racism that invites the condemnation of Sean Hannity can't be much of a threat. But a racism, condemnable by all civilized people, must make itself manifest now and again so that we may celebrate how far we have come. Meanwhile racism, elegant, lovely, monstrous, carries on.
