According to Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, “regular folks” = “white folks”. Chris Matthews isn’t even trying to be covert anymore. He’s just outright saying that whiteness is “regular”. Unbelievable. The stench of white privilege is emanating from the video. Whiteness is “regular”. Whiteness is “normal“. That’s what he’s saying.
So Chris, if white folks are regular, what are folks of color? I can’t believe that you are allowed to sit behind a desk and broadcast this racist garbage and call it news.
link tip via Rhetorical Wasteland
From Media Matters:
Tags: Barack Obama, discrimination, overt, Race, racism, Social Justice, white people, white privilegeOn the July 7 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews teased an upcoming segment by saying: “They’re the working-class white voters Hillary Clinton won and Barack didn’t. Can Obama now win over the regular folks, white folks, against John McCain? We’ll ask the strategists.” On the June 30 edition of Hardball, Matthews similarly teased a segment by asserting: “Up next: They’re the working-class white voters Hillary won and Barack didn’t. Can Obama win over the regular folks against John McCain?”
Chris Matthews says something along these lines about once per week.
And he considers himself a Democrat =)
IT was likely just off the cuff, not well thought out like 97% of that blowhard’s work.
crallspace….so what if it was off the cuff? Does that justify it?
What was the point of that comment?
Whether the conflation of whiteness and “regular-ness” was scripted or not makes no difference. The point is that the association of a given racial group (whites) with normalcy (”regular”) is an example of racism. If the comment was, in fact, unscripted, then it is an example of how extremely pervasive racism is in our society.
Eric, thanks for giving me another reason NOT to watch tv!
@ Dennis - Thanks for the link tip.
@ Crallspace - It appears, if you watch Matthews’ eyes that he’s reading off of a teleprompter, which would mean that the remark was not “off the cuff.” However, let’s say that his remark was spontaneous. A racist spontaneous remark is still a racist remark. Matthews does not have to be wearing a white hood and doing an impression of Jesse Helms singing Dixie to be racist. His comment marginalizes people of color while simultaneously normalizing white people as “regular.”
@ Michelle - Thanks for commenting. Long time no see
Eric,
This is not as a ‘but’ it’s an ‘and also’…
Media Matters has also done an excellent job of tracking Matthews “degrading comments about women”
This is one powerful journalist who needs to be exposed for his insidious folksy endorsements of white and male privledge. Thanks for the reminder.
oops…make that privilege
[…] Posted by Jack Stephens on July 27, 2008 Eric Stoller blogs: According to Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, “regular folks” = “white folks”. Chris Matthews isn’t even trying to be covert anymore. He’s just outright saying that whiteness is “regular”. Unbelievable. The stench of white privilege is emanating from the video. Whiteness is “regular”. Whiteness is “normal“. That’s what he’s saying. […]
[…] Eric Stoller blogs: According to Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, “regular folks” = “white folks”. Chris Matthews isn’t even trying to be covert anymore. He’s just outright saying that whiteness is “regular”. Unbelievable. The stench of white privilege is emanating from the video. Whiteness is “regular”. Whiteness is “normal“. That’s what he’s saying. […]
[…] This usage of the term white as something that is good, something that is so powerful it can palliate flaws or conceal crimes, reveals the high esteem ‘white’ holds in the western cultural imagination. As a color it is seen as pure, clean, refreshing. When it refers to people, the same positive associations also apply. White people are seen as ‘purely human’ and not animalized or denigrated in the way people of color are. Or, as Chris Matthews would term it, white people are ‘regular people.’ These associations between whiteness and what is better/normal certainly are readily apparent in advertising. […]
It was sarcastic. He was mocking Hillary Clinton’s racist “hard working americans, white americans” comment. He’s spent some time documenting the Clinton’s Southern Strategy, so one must consider it within that context.