Role-Knowing and Place-Keeping

 

Lindsey Graham in 2020 telling Black people where they can go and what they can do in South Carolina:

“If you're a young African American, an immigrant you can go anywhere in this state(SC)...you just need to be conservative not liberal.”

-Lindsey Graham pic.twitter.com/7QuWSvohtY

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 10, 2020

Senator Graham just encapsulated a interestingly large load of freight in a small statement. If you are an African-American or an immigrant, you just have to present yourself as a conservative. I don't even think he really means you have to be a conservative. Think whatever you want, very quietly. But you will conform. 

I can't think of any message more dreary and opposed to the idea of intellectual and religious freedom. The idea that you can go anywhere in a given state in this land of the free and home of the brave--so long as you step correctly and not out of line, has a deep history in sundown towns in particular as a threat and in the idea of respectability (in politics) in general. What Graham is with such southern graciousness explaining is that Black and Brown people very well might have rights that he would respect, if they can produce "the receipts" to legitimize themselves.  

It's breath-taking. And it also explains why so many Republicans seem so fond of voter suppression. They would sure like to let everybody vote, but damn it! Some folks just vote wrong.

I could go further to say that it isn't just Black and Brown people that he, representing Republicans, is talking about. We are not much removed from conservatives wanting to criminalize LGBT people, or from criminalizing women from seeking their reproductive rights. Keep your gayness in the closet, though, or your abortions in the back alley, and maybe, Sen. Graham has a place for you, too. If you vote Republican.

With this particular gaffe, I'd almost like to think a nail was put in the coffin of the bullshit "Democratic plantation" narrative, but probably the heck not. After all, one of it's promoters, Candace Owens, just paid for a very conforming group of people  (well, they were color-coordinated) to sit on the White House lawn to hear from a very sick man for about fifteen minutes. Probably with some infection risk involved but oh well. The optics looked good to them.