In a recent exchange in Congress, Representatives Tlaib and Meadows reveal the way rules and racism coexist: the threats underneath the offense.
When Thomas Jefferson devised the rules for the Congress of the United States, he had human behavior in mind.
Jefferson was no rube or some know-nothing hermit. He was wealthy, learned, and observant. But more than anything, he knew what was going on inside of him. He didn’t just want rules that would protect him, but would protect others from people like him.
The Exchange
Reading The Field of Blood, which explores the nature of Congress in the early 19th Century I wanted to see what it can teach us today. And we have had some very public examples of the very same interpersonal mechanics arise. I wanted to explore one in particular: the way Rep. Mark Meadows (R) responded to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D) at the end of February.
This is the basic sequence:
- Tlaib describes a stunt that Meadows was responsible for as racist.
- He takes offense.
- She clarifies.
- He appeals to the Chair.
- The Chair is caught between definitions of racism and interpretations of the rules.
Three things are happening here;
- Multiple procedural rules are at play.
- Meadows more violates the spirit of the rules than Tlaib.
- Different definitions of racism are at play.
How this plays out is demonstrative.
The Rules
Jefferson devised two very specific rules to mitigate violence on the floor of Congress.
- Congresspersons may not address one another by name.
- Congresspersons may not insult one another.
As a southern man, Jefferson understood the danger presented by the Southern honor code. And he understood that it was bound to supersede any rules of
The rules are intended to restrict direct insults (like speaking directly to the person) which impugn the person’s character. So in other words, you can’t call somebody a liar, or in our case, a racist.
The side effect of that became obvious: the southern man could just consider anything a direct insult. The most insulting, of course, was to suggest that one may not be fully truthful because that would draw an instant protest “Are you calling me a liar?”
But then the trouble becomes immediately obvious: we don’t agree on what it takes to insult. Nor does it give the other members an opportunity to deal with a person who actually is lying!
So rather than protect members of Congress from the Southern honor code, it merely gave them a new weapon. They could now threaten anyone with a threat to use it. And they did. A lot.
They could literally threaten a colleague by simply asking if they are insulting them directly. Because everyone in the chambers knew what would happen when a Southerner asked that. That action has consequences.
Violation
In the exchange, Tlaib neither addresses Meadows nor directs a personal insult.
Note the sequence and the content.
Meadows is trying to defend President Trump from charges of racism. So he brings out an African American employee (who doesn’t get to speak on her own behalf) as an argument to disprove the president’s racism.
Tlaib addresses the argument:
“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them does not mean that they aren’t racist,”
Then the impact:
“And it is insensitive … the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself,”
Tlaib dismisses the argument that a woman’s employment proves or disproves another person’s racism. But importantly, she names the violation Meadows has made to persons of color in the room. She names the personal insult that many were feeling.
Tlaib does so without addressing Meadows or directly insulting him. She calls the action racist, not the person.
Offended
Much like the Southern offense-taking described in The Field of Blood, Meadows, a representative from North Carolina, takes his place opposite a representative from Michigan. The north/south, black/white, woman/man dynamics all stew together.
We may certainly find Meadows’ angry defiance to be reasonable. And it may help explain his actions to us, but it does not justify them. Nor does his emotional response justify his attempts to manipulate the Chair or his colleague.
- He calls for the Chair to strike her comments.
- Then he appeals to his personal relationship with the Chair.
- Next, he describes personal circumstances in an attempt to prove he isn’t racist.
- Lastly, after Tlaib has yielded her time, Meadows calls her description of being offended itself racist.
The last being far more than the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue defense it appears to be.
At the macro level, we might consider that Meadows is genuinely offended and seeks to defend himself from what he perceives is a personal attack. However, to take him at his word, we must consider his own defense against him. If she’s broken the rules, then so has he. If she has called him a racist, then he is calling her one.
His actions are predicated on taking his word more seriously than hers. So to take him seriously, we can’t regard his arguments as justifying his action. They compromise it.
But there’s more to it than offense.
Taking this macro view seems to discredit his argument. Or at the very least, makes him guilty of an overly dramatic expression of taking offense.
This macro view yields something else, however. His offense-taking has a purpose. Like the soccer flop of racist name-calling.
Meadows uses a defense of his supposedly injured honor to both directly attack another member of Congress and muddy the waters of her argument.
What was on the table was whether or not the President is a racist. And then a member of Congress uses a black woman as a prop and is called out for it.
So now look at where we’ve ended up. We were talking about the racism of the President, but we aren’t any longer. Now we’re talking about whether a congresswoman has called her colleague a racist. Of course, this is the part of the story the media runs with.
Race
Which brings us to race and particularly, the charge of racism.
Racism isn’t only the junk in your brain. And being called a racist isn’t the world’s gravest of insults.
Watching the above exchange play out, one might still think No! You’re wrong! Liar, thief, murderer? Sticks and stones will break my bones but suggest that I am responsible for a racist act and the whole world comes crumbling down!
We’re going to say this loud so the people in the back can hear it:
Bias + Injustice = Racism
Racism isn’t about you, Mark Meadows! It’s about the multitude of ways that a dominate racial group is able to marginalize and oppress other racial groups.
So no, calling something racist isn’t racist. That’s definitionally nonsense. It’s like calling solar panels “dirty energy.” It only makes sense if you refuse to accept how words work.
For a white southern man to faint at the suggestion that bringing an African American woman into the chamber without giving her the chance to speak is using her as a prop is as rich as it is disingenuous.
Because I’m going to say it again, it isn’t about what’s in his heart! Or more specifically, what he believes is in his heart. He did it. And he thought it was a real defense. He did not consider the consequences nor listen when a colleague expressed her experience of it.
But when this specific action was called out, he got supremely defensive and turned to the old playbook: manipulation.
Manipulation
How Meadows interrupts Tlaib, then addresses the Chair, appeals to his relationship with the chair, linguistically trots out his family like props (oops!) tokens (oops again!) proof, and then again shamelessly appeals to his personal, “colorblind” relationship with the Chair all demonstrates his attempt to manipulate and take control to change the argument.
As a white man, I know what that’s like! That need to defend myself or challenge the idea that maybe I’ve made a mistake—that I didn’t intend to offend.
But notice how the concerns of the people of color in the room completely disappeared.
Have we forgotten already the offense Tlaib sought to address? Are we suddenly consumed with whether or not she called him a racist? Then when he flashed race card after race card, was that all justifiable self-defense?
Why do we care more about his taking offense than hers?
Instead of putting their offense against each other, or trying to make this a bothsides situation, we should address the more fundamental questions the exchange raises.
- Why doesn’t Meadows listen to his colleague?
- And why would we let him muddy the waters?
Watching the exchange several times, I was aware of how composed Rep. Tlaib was. She stayed within the rules of order while her colleague interrupted multiple times and accused his colleague of impugning his character.
He tried to bury her argument and statement of offense by claiming his own more privileged offense. And the chair, the Congress, and the media for the most part let him.
Southern Congressmen used these kinds of moments to belittle their northern colleagues and control the debate. Not because they are somehow better at parliamentary procedure, but because external forces (primarily the honor code) allowed the threat of a threat to rule the day.
Without that specific problem, what’s our excuse?
Clearly its legacy, and its roots, remain.
Worth Noting
Unlike Rep. Tlaib, there’s nothing stopping us from calling Rep. Meadows a racist.
While it’s not useful to call people names, it is instructive for what we’re actually talking about when we’re talking about racism. Precisely because it isn’t just about bias or who we are at heart. Mark Meadows has a history of expressing both racial animus and white superiority.
Calling out racism and white propensity to protect itself isn’t logically offensive. It is instructive and an opportunity to learn. In some ways, this is at the heart of what Meadow was doing — because he wants to silence this teaching to preserve dominance.
But the precipitating acts are the same. Both his use of tokenism with his family, friends, and this employee and his earlier connection to Birtherism.
His response to these issues was to once again try to make it about the secret recesses inside him: “I can tell you that anyone who knows me knows that there is not a racial bone in my body.”
The problem with cherished whiteness, as Kelly Brown Douglas calls it, is that it is prone to constant defensiveness. A more mature and non-racist response wouldn’t be defensiveness or retaliation. It would be to listen and seek to restore relationship.
This is the fifth of several reflections on The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman focusing on what this period could teach us about today.
Other reflections include:
- How our present moment is like a dysfunctional family system
- Seduced by Inequality
- When our need to protect the powerful actually preserves
division - Speaking is acting
- Congress – the only place its worse to be called a racist than to be a racist