By far, the top story today, discussed on every cable news show, reported on several times by every major news organization is Richard Cohen’s racist opinion column in the Washington Post.
LOOK: Washington Post Writer: Interracial Couples Make ‘People With Conventional Views’ Vomit
For the sake of the few who might not have read it yet, allow us to present the relevant paragraph at issue. The bolding is ours:
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.
The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates explains exactly why this is “horse-shit.”
“The problem here isn’t that we think Richard Cohen gags at the site of an interracial couple and their children. The problem is that Richard Cohen thinks being repulsed isn’t actually racist, but  ‘conventional’ or ‘culturally conservative.’ Obstructing the right of black humans and white humans to form families is a central feature of American racism. If retching at the thought of that right being exercised isn’t racism, then there is no racism.”
Richard Cohen is the perfect metaphor for today’s GOP. He just cannot grasp that America no longer thinks like he does. And even if you buy his argument that he was merely giving voice to those in the Tea Party who do think like that, his previous works really eviscerate that claim.
Which makes it all the more troubling that Cohen’s bosses at the Washington Post not only defended his column once it was clear it was being attacked in seemingly every major news outlet across the nation, but extolled it before the backlash began, as “brilliant.”
Here’s a tweet from the Publisher of the Washington Post, late last night:
Brilliant: richard Cohen on why Cruz beats Christie in iowa: http://t.co/Ofl85i5lf1
— katharine weymouth (@weymouthk) November 12, 2013
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The Post’s editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, offered to take the heat.
“Anyone reading Richard’s entire column will see he is just saying that some Americans still have a hard time dealing with interracial marriage. I erred in not editing that one sentence more carefully to make sure it could not be misinterpreted.â€
Well, that’s false. Let’s look at that again.
“Anyone reading Richard’s entire column will see he is just saying that some Americans still have a hard time dealing with interracial marriage.”
No, what he said was, “People with conventional views” want to vomit when thinking about interracial couples.
And then, there’s the comment that Chirlane McCray “used to be a lesbian.”
Did Hiatt err in not editing that one sentence more carefully, also, to make sure it could not be misinterpreted?
No, I’m pretty sure the Washington Post erred by not firing Cohen by now, and I’m pretty sure that if they opened their eyes and realized that it’s not 1950, they would see just how wrong Cohen is.
Because the fact is that biracial, or interracial couples, today are the norm. President Barack Obama, by the way, is the offspring of a biracial couple.
The dated idea that any of us is “Black” or “white” at this point is a joke — with the punchline being the news yesterday that a white supremacist found out — on TV — that his DNA proves he is fourteen percent African.
“People with conventional views,” Richard Cohen claims, “must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.”
No, actually, people with unconventional views may — but people with conventional views surpassed racists and bigots many years ago.
Apparently, Richard Cohen doesn’t understand this — and thinks that — at least what seems like — the vast majority of Americans who today are calling him a racist, are mean.
“The word racist is truly hurtful,” Cohen told the Huffington Post. “It’s not who I am. It’s not who I ever was. It’s just not fair. It’s just not right.”
“I didn’t write one line, I wrote a column,” he added. “The column is about Tea Party extremism and I was not expressing my views, I was expressing the views of what I think some people in the Tea Party held.”
“I don’t think everybody in the Tea Party is like that, because I know there are blacks in the Tea Party,” he said. “So they’re not all racist, unless I’m going to start doing mind reading about why those black people are there.”
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Regardless, let’s look again at that.
“I was not expressing my views, I was expressing the views of what I think some people in the Tea Party held.”
The only world in which that statement might make sense is if Cohen admits he himself has “unconventional views.”
So while all this “it’s not me, it’s you” excuse-making is swirling in your head, let me share something else with you.
My father was a Brooklyn-born Jew whose parents came from Poland and Lithuania — although we were always told Russia. I’m certain our last name was a lot longer before they landed here. I had relatives we’d see, rarely, on the Jewish holidays, who had numbers burned into their forearms. When I was young I asked why. And I was told we had other relatives who died in the Holocaust. My mother, who denounced the Roman Catholic church after moving to America to attend Columbia University — where my parents met — is from Central America. She has both Spanish and Mayan blood.
Frankly, I have no idea what I’m supposed to call myself.
My sister and I grew up in a household where we called our friends’ parents “Mr.” or “Mrs.” but our parents’ friends by their first names. It wasn’t until high school or college that I even understood that someone with the name Goldberg was probably Jewish. We just never were taught things like that.
I remember growing up, being told by my mother that a friend of hers, who was white, was forced to rent an apartment in her name because her husband was Black and no landlord in Connecticut would rent an apartment to an interracial couple. I didn’t understand how that was possible.
And I remember growing up just assuming that I could never marry because I’m gay.
Today, I’m happily married. My husband is of Irish and German ancestry.
Frankly, with all that “ancestry” sloshing around in our veins, I have no idea what we’re supposed to call ourselves. Bi-racial? Inter-racial? Metro-racial? Legally married will do just fine, thank you very much.
Today, Hawaii became the sixteenth state to extend marriage to same-sex couples. Last week, it was Illinois. Three other states also did this year. Top LGBT organizations promise marriage equality in all 50 states within five years. I suspect it will happen in less time.
Our neighbors down the hall are an interracial couple. I hesitate to use the term bi-racial because I have no idea what their DNA looks like. And I don’t care. They’re lovely people, probably two of the best parents I know.
What I’m certain of is that I don’t know a soul with conventional views who could look at them and their four-year old daughter — who is cute as a button — and be forced to “repress a gag reflex.”
I mention all this merely because, while I acknowledge that being a gay man of mixed ancestry married to a gay man of somewhat less-mixed ancestry, living in Manhattan, may make me, indeed, somewhat “unconventional,” I’m fairly certain there are more of “us” — people of mixed ancestry in interracial marriages and relationships — than “them” — people in monoracial (is that a word?) marriages or relationships.
This is an America that elected — twice — a Black president, an America in which for several years now, the majority has supported same-sex marriage. (“Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?”)
And this, dear friends, is why Richard Cohen is the perfect metaphor for today’s GOP. Today’s dying GOP.
Because they think being racist is when you call someone the “N” word. If you don’t, you’re not. Nuance eludes them.
They think everyone else thinks like they do, because so many on the right only watch Fox News, and so many on the right only read Tea Party columnists, and Breitbart, and Drudge, and listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
And they haven’t a clue that it’s 2013 and they’re a dying breed.
Editorial note: A previous version of this article stated the Post had not reported on Cohen’s column, based on a search of the Post — which when checked after publication later turned up two pieces.
Image: Washington Post