Arnold Inflames Racism Against California Indians: Not To Be

We thought it would be classism that defined the California recall campaign, but maybe we were wrong. It's turning out to be racism.

We thought that Bustamante's call to tax the rich and the corporations at higher rates would inspire the traditional Republican reflex, always done with a straight face, of charging "class warfare." Instead, we've got Arnold, the Aryan strongman, inciting race warfare. And he's doing it with great success, it seems.

It's really the only explanation for the traction he's getting by making false charges against American Indians and the casinos that some tribes operate. It is of course true that the casinos provide money for these tribes to contribute to politicians, just as corporations provide money to contribute to politicians. But we don't hear about corporations or the rich having undue influence, or not paying their fair share to the state government. We hear Arnold braying his false charges about the tribes not contributing, even though they do pay millions of dollars directly to the state, as well as relieving the state of millions of dollars more they would be spending for social services and schools and health in a number of communities.

Arnold, who makes his money in one branch of entertainment, is pandering to the guilt involved in a different form of entertainment. The kind of people who gamble are not much different from the kind of people who go to Arnold's movies, but actors are no longer considered innately sinful.

Most non-Indians don't understand what the relationship of tribes is to the state government, to local communities or to the federal government. It is admittedly a complex set of relationships, but Arnold is exploiting that lack of understanding. He's lying, but it's a lie that plays to prejudices derived from ignorance. Focus group tested pandering, no doubt.

Behind this ignorance, feeding these prejudices, is the oldest form of racism in California's history. It is racism against American Indians. In the past it resulted in Indian slavery, in massacres both notorious and unheralded, in policies of extermination, in cultural destruction, in the all-American genocide. It continues to result in injustices every day of the week. This racism is exhibited in the habit of turning Indian reservations into toxic waste dumps, as well as in apparently "small" ways such as racist names and logos for sports teams like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, that would not for a moment be tolerated if they involved any other ethnic group.

So it is this racism that may tip the balance. (Interesting that the media swallows whole the rabid right vocabulary: repeating the "inciting class warfare" line, but calling racism "playing the race card." Why don't they call it "inciting race warfare" and "playing the class card"?)

It makes sense in that unconscious racism is of a piece with the appeal to the undifferentiated anger towards everybody in government for the mess we're in, as if "sending a message" is what voters are actually going to be responsible for doing in the recall election. They are apparently poised to lose their minds and go with their raw rage, and then find themselves with a governor who must lead and make decisions. And nobody has the first clue as to what he will do. Will he gut Medicaid to balance the budget? We have absolutely no idea.

His big appeal is hollow in terms of policy. There is in fact nothing a governor can do to force Indian tribes to cough up more money---that's a fantasy on the order of sending Arnold over to Iraq to clean up the Taliban in ninety-five minutes, while we munch popcorn and cheer.

Arnold seems to think that the governor's job is promotion. Wonder where he got that idea? He's been watching too many old Ronald Reagan G.W. Bush cowboy movies. He's also made it clear that promoting is how you make something "successful" (like bodybuilding) and anything you say can be morally justified if it is done to promote something.

In one of his movies (which he promotes along with his campaign) he recites the famous Hamlet line as he decides whether or not to kill the "bad" guy. To be or not to be? Not to be, he concludes. That's the quality of his solution. It's very satisfying. It isn't real.

Apparently a lot of Californians want to get rid of "the bad guy," or at least the only one they can in this election (polls also show that legislators, Republican as well as Democrat, are as unpopular as Governor Gray Davis). They are currently being aided and abetted by the media that has been promoting Arnold relentlessly, and now seems breathless in anticipation of a star quality governor with media savvy handlers who will provide them with great video and magazine covers.

The problem isn't getting rid of the bad guy. The problem is having a governor who can govern, and electing that governor--even in the sham of a recall election no longer supported by the man who started it---on the basis of policies and political abilities. What are Arnold's policies? Are they based on oversimplified and distorted information as are the few statements he has let slip concerning what he would actually do as governor? What are his political, as distinguished from promotional and "acting" abilities? We don't know that either. The question to be or not to be may hinge on the question of whether enough Californians care about what we know and what we don't know.

There's still a week to go. The election itself may still hinge on turnout. But if the media blitz for Arnold and the accompanying perception that the only choice is Davis or Arnold (though Cruz Bustamante is within eight poll points of Arnold, he has utterly disappeared from media reporting) combine to discourage union and Latino voters and real Democrats from voting, then California will enter its own nightmare. (Another California nightmare would be if Bustamante loses by a vote total equivalent to the Green Party candidate's total.) It will only amplify the national nightmare--let;s face it, the global nightmare---of the Bush administration, and not just for Californians.