HERSCHEL WALKER. SOUTHERN WHITE STEREOTYPE

Under different circumstances, a Senate race in the Deep South between two Black candidates would be something to celebrate. But Herschel Walker is so unqualified that the Georgia contest has become cringeworthy.

The Washington Post reported GOP operatives in Georgia united behind Walker in part to offset Reverend Raphael Warnock’s status as Georgia’s first Black senator. They also saw Walker as a buffer against claims that the party is racist, making Walker the party’s Official Black Friend. “A lot of [conservatives] said, ‘He’s Black, and he agrees with us,’” an unnamed GOP strategist told the Post, “and I think that’s why people just gave him the benefit of the doubt.”

In theory, Georgia Republicans’ embrace of a Black Senate hopeful should be a sign of progress. Instead, Walker’s candidacy is extraordinarily uncomfortable for anyone with a brain to watch as he bolsters his political standing by repeating right-wing stereotypes about irresponsible Black fathers, while playing right into those same stereotypes.

Brittney Cooper, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers, had the following to say on Twitter yesterday about Herschel Walker:

“When I see the walking stereotype of Black male mediocrity that is Herschel Walker, I am reminded that a significant swath of white folks need this to be who Black people are, who Black men are. Violent, idiotic, brute, immoral, deadbeats.

“The GOP’s support for Herschel Walker’s candidacy is designed as a continual insult and assault on all who strive to be Black and excellent, or hell, just Black and decent.

“The GOP had spent decades locking up dudes like Herschel, and propagating a narrative that this is who brothers are. (It is who Herschel is. But he isn’t who all Black men are.) Now they want to give him a senate seat.

“This dude is a walking talking Sambo on one hand, and Bigger Thomas on the other. Herschel Walker is the walking embodiment of their white supremacist projections of Black masculinity and I think voters in GA should do everything legal to make sure he doesn’t win.

“And I’m pointing this out 1.) because as a Black person I am enraged at their elevation of that abusing MF. And 2.) because for the brothers in Georgia falling for the GOP okey-dokey, it’s not enough to only vote Warnock. You gotta vote Abrams too. The whole GOP hates you.”

Needless to say, the tweet thread set off a tweetstorm. Some white people showed up to thank her for saying what they had seen but did not feel it was their place to bring up. Others complained that she was denigrating a man who had “overcome much.” Others called the PC Police to complain about the use of “racist” language to describe Walker. Like most serious statements about factual reality made by Black people, the white response is self-describing.

The fact is that the candidacy of Herschel Walker is a perfect example of Southernist, far right, Republican white supremacy in action. That a mediocrity like Walker, a man who is a walking joke, the living embodiment of every white supremacist bigoted belief about Black men, is now a serious contender for a seat in the U.S. Senate, opposing a man like Reverend Raphael Warnock who is to nearly everyone who meets him the exemplar of a Good Man - decent, humane, intelligent, kind - is a slap in the face.

As Professor Cooper said, "The GOP’s support for Herschel Walker’s candidacy is designed as a continual insult and assault on all who strive to be Black and excellent, or hell, just Black and decent."

Basically, GOP support for Walker’s candidacy work like this: They believe he is the candidate with the best chance to win against Warnock. Period. They know the outcome of elections in Georgia are increasingly dependent on the black vote. Black voters are going to vote for a black candidate if one exists, especially if he/she is a Democrat.

So how do they decrease the black vote for Warnock? After passing as many voter suppression laws as possible, the next-best move is to put up another black candidate so that black voters might think they have another choice they can live with, particularly if the candidate is a sports hero, a big deal to black males in particular as well as all males in the South. If you think the sports vote isn’t important, just witness the success of the dimwitted “Coach” Tuberville in Alabama. Another bonus is that Walker is obvioulsy ignorant enough and demonstrably dim enough that he will be happy to be controlled by the more clever and devious (white) GOP leaders, which means white Republicans will consider him “their boy.”

The Republicans have convinced themselves that this combination is powerful enough to overcome other deficiencies that Walker has. That this strategy may very well work is an insult to every black Georgia voter. It clearly demonstrates to anyone who understands even a little bit about politics that the modern Southern GOP is as racist as its always been since the Jim Crow Democrats decided to become Jim Crow Republicans 40 years ago.

White people in Georgia are Walker’s voting base, direct confirmation that the platform of the Republican Party is nostalgia. For the “unreconstructed” Southern whites, Blacks must be brutes, ignorant, controlled and never considered equals to the lowliest White man. Walker fills the bill perfectly for them.

History repeats itself, changing only in the manner in which power plays out from the hands of the plantation owner. The GOP has found their “boy,” and they’re sticking with him come what may.

Walker is Lying. the GOP and media hacks like Hugh Hewitt know he’s lying.

Walker knows they know he’s lying.

And everybody is cool with it.

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