Dissing Diversity
Posted Friday, Sept. 22, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET"Education Savings Accounts" was produced by Richard Nadler for the Republican Ideas Political Committee. Click {{here#90013}} for a transcript of the ad; click {{here#2:http://hotlinescoop.com/web/content/ads/thursday.htm}} to see it on the Hotline Scoop site.
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StumbleUpon{{Photo#90066}}Since the 1968 presidential election, Democrats have been complaining that Republicans make use of "coded" racist messages in campaigns. In 1988, they denounced an independent expenditure ad that featured Willie Horton, a black rapist furloughed from a Massachusetts prison while Michael Dukakis was governor. In 1990, they were outraged at a Jesse Helms spot in which a pair of white hands crumpled a rejection letter, as the announcer said: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority." (The ad was the work of Alex Castellanos, later of "RATS" fame.)
This year, Democrats are making the same complaint about an ad sponsored by an independent expenditure group known as the Republican Ideas Political Committee. The ad is running on a small scale in Kansas City, Mo. In it, an actress playing a mother of two children complains that the Clinton administration blocked a Republican proposal to expand education savings accounts and allow her family to spend pretax dollars on private school for their son.
Most of the 60-second spot is simply the woman speaking from a sofa in her living room, describing her family's experience with public schools. The touchy part comes in the middle, when she describes how her son, "Jason," started "hanging out with the wrong crowd." We see a group of teen-agers sitting in what looks like a school playground. They're wearing their baseball caps backward and look like they're up to no good. One of the boys unwraps a handgun concealed in a towel. The other two sitting with him recoil in alarm. "We didn't want him where drugs and violence were fashionable," Jason's mom continues. "That was a bit more diversity than he could handle."
Things have changed in the past decade. After the Washington Post wrote about the ad in a front-page story earlier this week, Republicans including George W. Bush immediately disowned it and distanced themselves from it, saying they favor diversity. I think this response shows that the GOP has finally put its so-called "Southern Strategy" to rest. Even though the ad is much less racially charged than either Willie Horton or "White Hands," Republicans didn't even try to defend it. Events surrounding the South Carolina primary notwithstanding, the GOP of George W. Bush really doesn't want to benefit from racial prejudice.
But need conservatives have scurried away in such a hurry? This ad is certainly deceptive and not a little grotesque. Viewers would have no idea that the characters depicted in it do not actually exist or that the events discussed are entirely fictional. The actress who plays the mother creates such an unappealing character that it seems possible she's really a liberal engaging in subtle sabotage. Or she might just be an awful actress. She can't even hold her high-class Southern accent for 60 seconds.
But while the add is crude and deceptive, it's hard to argue that it's racist—covertly or overtly. Everything hinges on how you interpret the term "diversity." Liberal critics like Bob Herbert, who excoriates the ad in his {{column#2:http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/21/opinion/21HERB.html}} in the New York Times, recognize this term as a euphemism for "racial integration," especially given the context of Kansas City's only recently resolved fight over desegregation. It's not surprising that liberals read "diversity" this way, because that's how they use the term themselves. They assume that someone who slights "diversity" objects to being around blacks. By saying that her son couldn't handle that much diversity, the mom in the ad must be implying that hanging around with African-Americans wasn't good for him.
But Jason's mom doesn't say that. If you read the text literally, "diversity" refers to drugs and violence. And while it's hard to make out just what's going on in the schoolyard scene, if you look closely, there pretty clearly aren't any African-Americans in it. The kid who shows the gun is white, as is "Jason." Any of the three others in the scene may be Latino, but it's hard to tell. The overall impression is one of delinquency and disorder, with an ambiguous ethnic component.
So, creepy and misleading, yes. But I wouldn't call it racist.
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
Come on Jacob. I challenge you to complete the following sentence in a way that makes any reasonable sense at all: "Guns and violence are diversity of ______".
--Bluea Sofa
(To reply, click here.)
[Note from the Fray Editor: Many many readers wanted to make the same point, but few did so with such brevity.]
That's the whole idea of coded messages--they can be masked by the innocent alternative explanation. Weisberg says that liberals attach the race meaning to diversity because that's how liberals use the word, and that a literal reading of the commercial's text reveals something different. But does it really? What's the other meaning of diversity that would be so obvious and commonsensical to me if only I weren't blinded by liberalism? Is there anyone in America who would use the word diversity to refer to drugs and violence? And besides, the woman in the spot is talking about "too much" diversity. In a commercial about public education, where diversity does have a particular meaning that has in part to do with race, it doesn't take a big leap to see a connection being made: that the continuum that begins with exposure to multiracial and multi-ethnic perspectives ends with Jason joining a street gang.
--Dan Mishkin
(To reply, click here.)
A group of conservative writers must have been aware that the majority of Americans now define Diversity as a term reflecting on the racial mix of any given group of people. This need not be true for all but is a fact stemming from the repeated use of the term over a length of time in that context over the mass media. If they didn't know that and the resulting effect of the message, they are in the wrong business. Let us not try too hard to interpret an otherwise carefully placed message created to appeal to a section of the population that most certainly will not only think of the term Diversity as referring to race but, as used in the message, can have only one interpretation: Democrats are stopping you from keeping your kids away from the wrong people, here defined as that Diverse lot of racially mixed losers.
--Sheila Dickinson
(To reply, click here.)
[Note from the Fray Editor: Nice post, but …"let us not try too hard to interpret" the message? What would happen to the "Damned Spot" feature then?]
What really appalled me about this issue is that any product of a parochial school (myself included) knows that's where all the drugs are. In this day and age, do Republicans really think that their children can be sheltered? Maybe 10 years ago, but not today. At any time during the day, children can log on to the internet, turn on the TV, listen to the radio, and hear things that are far worse than anything they will ever witness in a public school. Parents' jobs are not to shelter their children, but rather to educate them on what is right and wrong.
--Kimberly Hepworth
(To reply, click here.)
[Irate thread followed, with contributions from "Private School Parent" who says it's not like that, and from someone who laid out lines of coke on his desk at private school…]
There is the peculiar logic in the ad about "a bit more diversity" than the child could handle. If drugs and violence are the (supposed) references, a parent isn't going to tolerate any "diversity"--nor will she worry about fine distinctions over "a bit more" or "a bit less". It is obvious that "a bit more" is talking about increasing numbers of you-know-whats in the schools. But why didn't Weisberg say anything about the statement in the ad (by the actress) that "this administration thinks that faith is more dangerous than drugs and violence"? Isn't that totally over-the-top?
--Mark Poyser
(To reply, click here.)
Everyone knows that as soon as your son or daughter starts wearing a backwards baseball cap, they're with the wrong crowd, and probably will be killed as a result of Hollywood-perpetuated violence. Guns don't kill our children, backwards baseball caps do!
--Informis
(To reply, click here.)
[Not everyone realized this post was meant ironically, and the resulting thread included a fine list of types of behavior that might worry Republican parents, including being an LUG--a new one to us at The Fray, click here to find out what it stands for.]
(9/25)