“References to racial or other discrimination on the part of the President are not in order. As such, references may not refer to the President as … a racist.” So reads the latest update to the Manual of Parliamentary Practice, which guides the rules of acceptable behavior and debate in Congress. The original manual was produced by Thomas Jefferson, the revolutionary hero and villain who owned more than 600 enslaved human beings over his lifetime, and who also believed that “one hour of American slavery is fraught with more misery than ages of that which we rose in rebellion to oppose.” In the early days of America’s Congress, it was considered forbidden to so much as discuss (let alone introduce) motions abolishing slavery since it was constitutionally protected. So, it’s all a bit complex.
So we now have the spectacle of Speaker Nancy Pelosi almost getting censured for being out of order, because the House tried to pass a resolution condemning a racist tweet by President Trump telling the “squad” of four uber-liberal freshman Democrats to “go back to your country” if they hate this one so much.
There are two issues of language here. One of them is the question of whether it is more damaging to be subjected to racism than to be accused of it. The basic, radioactive disagreement over that question is why the manual lets the Parliamentarian of the House judge whether or not an accusation of racism is “in order,” rather than leaving it up to members of Congress.
But it is, frankly, a stupid question. These two ideas are not at odds. Anyone presenting it like an either/or is trying to deceive you. The language surrounding race brings out the rhetorical cowardly censor (and self-censor) in us all, though. And the latest parliamentary rules show how and why.
It is simply that the Right is and has for a long time been very tired of nonsense allegations of racism being used as a tool of cynical political and rhetorical control. That’s the second issue: censorship. We don’t talk about race and racism. We signal about it. Now that the Left has become so cannibalistic that its less discerning (discriminating, even?) members are accusing Nancy Pelosi and, ahem, the Congressional Black Caucus of racism, lefties are getting a bit of a feel for why the complaint isn’t just a matter of racists not liking being held to account. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff recently compared Blue Dog Democrats who have to win in places where Republicans actually vote to Southern Democrats from the Jim Crow era. Of course this is insane and inane. But let’s not forget that accusations of racism are very often not cynical, and the more salient issue is minorities who are just sick of racism.
Nancy Pelosi ultimately prevailed on the floor, because Democrats control the House. Which, fine. I don’t have an overall (blue) dog in this fight. What matters is that in discussions of racism we as a society don’t follow our leaders’ example. The way to deal with this important example is not censorship and rules and a socially enforced quietism. Taboos never solved everything. And in my own opinion, she was not in any deeper sense out of order. As Al Pacino might have shouted if he had good sense about censoring discussions of racism out of the corridors of power: “The whole trial is out of order!”
—By Nicholas Clairmont
