It’s not code anymore*:
Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.
Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.
“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.
Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”
*Which is to say, you remember it used to be:
(Thanks, Ben).
Also, from the OED:
1880 J. C. HARRIS Uncle Remus 86 Hit wuz wunner deze yer uppity little Jack Sparrers, I speck. 1933 Times Lit. Suppl. 9 Nov. 776/2 Grammy is living contentedly enough with an ‘uppity’ young creature named Penny. 1952 F. L. ALLEN Big Change II. viii. 130 The effect of the automobile revolution was especially noticeable in the South, where one began to hear whites complaining about ‘uppity niggers’ on the highways, where there was no Jim Crow.
I believe all three of these usages associated with African-Americanness; I think the TLS review is of Roark Bradford’s Kingdom Coming.
44 comments
September 4, 2008 at 1:37 pm
SomeCallMeTim
Grievance trap. The Republicans want to identify the Democrats as the party that gets upset for African-Americans. I don’t like the priority the DLC gives the Sistah Souljah moment, but it’s not like people didn’t think that Dems were hurt by the identification of the Democratic party as that worried about African-American interests.
Maybe this means McCain is getting desperate.
September 4, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Vance Maverick
SCMT, that’s a cynicism too far for me. Getting upset over this is entirely appropriate. No doubt we have to take care how we communicate this, but if we pretend not to notice that our political opponents regard blacks as slightly less than human, or not to care, we have no business calling ourselves a party.
September 4, 2008 at 1:47 pm
ari
Don’t worry, Tim. Obama won’t say a thing about it. His close surrogates won’t say a thing about it. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t at least document what’s going on here, right?
September 4, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Luke
I suppose it would be too much to ask that the reporter refer to this as “racist” rather than “racially-tinged.” One needn’t read Barbara Fields to call this one…
But then again, I don’t really know what it means to be “a member of an elitist-class individual,” so maybe both the reporter and Westmoreland are just talking over my head.
September 4, 2008 at 1:53 pm
eric
Tim, I don’t work for the Obama campaign.
September 4, 2008 at 1:56 pm
dana
Turnout, turnout, turnout.
September 4, 2008 at 2:02 pm
SomeCallMeTim
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t at least document what’s going on here, right?
I guess not. I note that the Republicans have worked the media ref to claim that there were widespread Dem efforts at smearing Trig (the special needs one, whichever that is) based on a Kos diary. I suppose I worry about the same thing here.
OK, I’m a bit tetchy over this election.
Tim, I don’t work for the Obama campaign.
You should consider it. He’s a nifty guy with a lot of great ideas. I think you’d like him. Give him a listen.
September 4, 2008 at 2:17 pm
blueollie
A couple of comments:
1. I don’t work for the Obama campaign either, though I’ve given money and done some mundane volunteer stuff (e. g., phone bank, go door to door, etc.) But it isn’t as if I have to watch what I saw.
2. As far as the video goes, it brings up the larger point that the Republicans are trying to use success as a negative! Gee, this guy (who came from nowhere) earned degrees from Columbia and Harvard. Oh no, not that!
(psst: Bush came from Yale, McCain from Annapolis…never mind that; those two had the proper connections to get in…)
But anyway, you might go to the Sam Harris website and read his Palin article called “not good enough”. There he absolutely skewers this idea that mediocrity at the top is somehow a good thing.
September 4, 2008 at 2:18 pm
urbino
Uppity, though.
September 4, 2008 at 2:19 pm
urbino
sigh Mine @ 2:18 responds to SCMT @ 2:02. (There is no fricking way I spent 15 minutes reading these comments before commenting.)
September 4, 2008 at 2:20 pm
urbino
Also, I think Bill Clinton is the appropriate surrogate to go after Westmoreland on this, don’t you?
September 4, 2008 at 2:21 pm
albiondia
Did Westmoreland have a stroke in the middle of his sentence? Did the words sneak up on him and take him by surprise? What relationship does a member of an elitist-class individual have to the means of production?
September 4, 2008 at 2:21 pm
eric
Say, have you seen anyone named Clinton in the news lately?
September 4, 2008 at 2:22 pm
david
Well that is depressing. I don’t exactly fit in around here (save that I try to be a historian), nonetheless, that really crosses a whole lot of lines. It makes one feel dirty.
Now the question is whether McCain would distance himself from those comments, I’m pretty confident that he would.
That sounds like what the Clintons spent most of the last year saying, including in Bill’s convention speech.
September 4, 2008 at 2:24 pm
urbino
Did Westmoreland have a stroke in the middle of his sentence? Did the words sneak up on him and take him by surprise?
Oh, sure, make fun of the ESL kid. Xenophobe.
September 4, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Jason B
We should be hearing from one of the Clintons on September 16th.
I, for one, am looking forward to it.
September 4, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Ben Alpers
The response from someone who does work for the Obama campaign (via the Great Orange Satan):
September 4, 2008 at 2:49 pm
ari
That’s pretty good snark.
September 4, 2008 at 2:52 pm
eric
Is Vietor calling McCain uppity?
September 4, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Vance Maverick
That is good. As several have said upthread*, it’s tricky for Obama himself or his campaign to point out the racism directly. But if they can rebut the statement sharply in another way, they keep it in the public ear.
* grr, why can’t I turn off Chrome’s stupid spellchecker? Even “spellchecker” gets the wiggly red underline.
September 4, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Ben Alpers
Chrome? You are a Maverick®!
September 4, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Vance Maverick
I’m not usually an early adopter. But Firefox lags on certain sites I read frequently, so I tried it, and Chrome is much better there. (It’s the JavaScript issue, I think.)
September 4, 2008 at 3:25 pm
eric
certain sites I read frequently
How can you not be using RSS?
September 4, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Vance Maverick
I do, but I also follow the comments. (Less so for Silliman — he attracts a peculiar grade of nut.)
September 4, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Is Obama “uppity”? – Political Byline
[…] Ta-Nehisi Coates, Washington Monthly, First Draft, Balloon Juice, Washington Post, Think Progress, The Edge of the American West, Pam’s House Blend and The Debate […]
September 4, 2008 at 4:27 pm
kid bitzer
this is the same lynn westmoreland who was unable to remember the ten commandments with colbert, right?
if you’d just like to remind yourself of what a fucking moron this guy is, watch colbert take him apart.
sorry about the text in the intro frames.
September 4, 2008 at 4:40 pm
ari
That’s among the funniest things I’ve ever seen. And yet another way in which this election is devolving into a months-long West Wing episode. I think it was in the pilot that Richard Schiff picks a fight with a fundamentalist and demands that the man recite the commandments. He can’t, of course. Ah life and art. Or art and life. Or whatever.
September 4, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Jason B
The Colbert video is pretty much awesome. Though I’d like to have seen him push that “what other building” angle for another thirty seconds or so.
That’s classic.
September 4, 2008 at 4:40 pm
ari
I totally pwned you, Jason. Suck it.
September 4, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Jason B
Consider it sucked.
September 4, 2008 at 5:16 pm
kid bitzer
yeah, watching that was when i first fell in love w/ colbert.
which felt kind of awkward, believe me, what with him and me looking so much alike and all.
September 4, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Some posts prior to McSame Speaking « blueollie
[…] the GOP is finally open about being racist. Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe […]
September 5, 2008 at 2:59 am
andrew
Oh, sure, make fun of the ESL kid. Xenophobe.
I hope you were thinking of the Tom Lehrer line.
September 5, 2008 at 8:54 am
Neddy Merrill
Sadly, No informs me that Westmoreland now claims that he’d never known that some people think “uppity” has racist overtones.
FFS.
September 5, 2008 at 8:58 am
eric
That’s why I put in the OED cites.
September 5, 2008 at 2:04 pm
parallelsidewalk
I think it’s great we might finally have a black president. However, anyone who thinks this means racism is dead needs to remember that Westmoreland made a straight up racist remark and it didn’t just end his political career on the spot.
September 5, 2008 at 2:13 pm
ari
Not to worry, psw, I don’t know of a single person, nor have I heard of a single person, who believes that the election of Senator Obama will end racism.
September 5, 2008 at 2:16 pm
parallelsidewalk
Right, but I’m sure it will be used that way. “Why are they bitchin? One of them got elected president” etc etc.
September 5, 2008 at 2:20 pm
ari
Yes, that will happen. But of course it already does. And really, electing a black man president of the United States will signal a massive change in race relations in this country. I can’t know what the implications of that change will be, of course — historian, not futurist, unfortunately — but it will be huge.
September 5, 2008 at 4:33 pm
tpb
I agree that “uppity” is coded but what does anyone make of this? Gary Hart on Bill Ritter: “He’s smart but he’s not uppity. He’s a a down-to earthy, everyday guy, which is very important out here.”
Ryan Lizza, “The Code of the West: What Barack Obama can Learn from Bill Ritter,” The New Yorker, September 1, 2008, 62-67, here 63.
September 5, 2008 at 9:13 pm
urbino
Wait, Gary Hart said something incredibly stupid?
September 5, 2008 at 10:13 pm
bitchphd
I don’t know of a single person, nor have I heard of a single person, who believes that the election of Senator Obama will end racism.
Wait, what??? Then why are we supporting him??? I mean, jeez. I thought that was the whole point.
September 5, 2008 at 10:36 pm
eric
tpb, I guess I make of it much the same thing I made of the excuses made back when Kentucky Congressman Geoff Davis called Barack Obama “boy”: there may well be circumstances in which a grown man can call another grown man “boy” without it being racist, but these circumstances do not include a white southern man calling a black man “boy” to denigrate his competence.
September 6, 2008 at 6:15 am
tpb
I like ari’s argument best.