Jake Knotts, "raghead" and the nature of GOP racism
By Gabriel Winant
AP
South Carolina's Republican state senator, Jake Knotts.You know the pattern. Since the 2008 campaign, every few weeks or months some minor political figure in the GOP utters something scandalously racist about the president. The Republican Party distances itself from the comments. Democrats mutter about how the conservative movement is riddled with troglodytes. Nobody gets anywhere.
Yesterday, as Alex Pareene noted, South Carolina Republican state Sen. Jake Knotts gave us an unusually frank rendition. Of his party’s front-running gubernatorial candidate, state Rep. Nikki Haley, Knotts said, "We already got one raghead in the White House. We don't need a raghead in the governor’s mansion." Haley immigrated to the United States as a child from India. She is a convert to Methodism, from Sikhism.
Sikhs are, of course, not Muslims. Hailing from what is now the border area between Pakistan and India, Sikhism bears some similarities to Islam and Hinduism both, but is not a sect of either. To lump it in with Islam makes about as much sense as an insult as calling a Christian a kike. Same geographical origin, very rough theological similarities — close enough, right?
Anyway, despite the crude literalism of the slur — like many Muslims, orthodox Sikh men wear turbans — it's fairly clear from the thrust of the insult that Knotts thought he was just calling Haley a sand black. (Like the president!) So here we have our troglodyte.
Cue damage control. The state Republican chair, Karen Floyd, issued a statement condemning Knotts. And if it sounds a bit halfhearted, well, this is how these things always sound. "The South Carolina Republican Party strongly condemns any use of racial or religious slurs. Senator Knotts should apologize for his inappropriate comments, so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and focus on issues important to moving our state forward."
Knotts, for his part, has offered up a halfhearted retraction. He was kidding around, he says. Except, also, not. "Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize. I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur."
And now, here comes the charge of the left brigade, arguing that Knotts, not Floyd or Haley, represents the true soul of the GOP. That, I suppose, is me.
The rumors about Haley, just like the ones about Barack Obama, wouldn't be around if they weren't compelling to some people. Knotts, who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, seems to make some sense of the world around him by classifying Haley and Obama as foreigners, Middle Eastern category (roughly). But that doesn't really prove that racism is built into the right wing. All it shows is that the right wing includes racists within it.
